Pastor Tyler’s Blog

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

This morning I sat in a waiting room. As I sat there a gentleman came walking past and happened to sit down in the same area by a friend of mine and myself. He finished his conversation on the phone and we entered into conversation. Jason was his name. A visitor from Canada waiting for the ok to have his leg amputated, recovering from having his left arm amputated. A member of the Canadian Air Force Royale, he had suffered a nightmare of an injury in his recent deployment to Iraq. A misguided missile exploded near his jet as he was about to take off, collapsing the cockpit, melting his left hand to the center stick.

As we talked, he mentioned how he arrived in Boise. Because he is NOT an American citizen, he has run into road blocks to receive the proper treatment. But there he sat in the waiting room with us. He hasn’t left the hospital since he arrived, legs bandaged still, and awaiting the day where they will amputate. Awaiting cash and his family from Canada, he literally has been in a waiting room emotionally and physically.

As we talked he mentioned how much of a nightmare it has been. As he talked, he shared a brief insight into his political views and his frustration with his current situation. I’m not sure what he believes, but nonetheless, my heart was stirred, and it made me think.

“A Passion for God, Compassion for people.” What does that mean? The story above is just part of what has caused me to stop and THINK. Yesterday I listened to a conference call and a statement was made that made me THINK. “Our current world has prevented us from being bored, with all the technology and gadgets out there; we have no need to sit and be bored.”

When I was younger the word was like a four-letter, swear word in our house. We weren’t allowed to be bored. Today we’re not allowed to be bored. Or maybe the statement would be better if it stated, “We’re no longer allowed to THINK.” Scripture mentions how Mary stored up and pondered such things in her heart. When was the last time you pondered? Really stopped to think about what you believe?

The world does a great job of thinking for us. We have instant information 24/7. It’s available to us. The latest analysis, discussion, and insights are written and produced and then displayed in front of us in newspapers, television, movies, and the internet. We no longer have to THINK. We hear things and often times assume it to be the truth. We rationalize and find the opinions that make sense. The world tells us what is right. The media tells us what we should tolerate. We’re told how to vote, what to believe, and what to value. We no longer have to THINK about what we believe and why we believe it, because other sources do it for us.

What exactly is a passion for God suppose to look like? What’s it suppose to mean? What does compassion for people look like? Why should I have compassion for people? Who is God? What is truth? What is wrong? What is right?

Psalm 19 reads, “The heavens tell the Glory of God. The skies display his marvelous craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. They speak without a sound or a word; their voice is silent in the skies.” Have you ever stopped to THINK about the ways in which God displays himself to us?

Where am I going with this? The last couple of days I saw a rainbow declaring the promise of our Lord, I stopped to THINK. Then two nights ago I saw a moon that rose in splendor across a row of clouds that beamed with light. And I stopped to THINK. Last night, I listened to a conference call about young adults and sexuality. And I stopped to THINK. Today I sat across from a man discouraged, homesick, and hurting. And I stopped to THINK.

In a matter of days I’ve seen the beauty of God displayed, and in a matter of days I’ve seen the ugliness of the enemy displayed. It made me stop and think.

“And now dear brothers and sisters, let me say one more thing as I close this letter. FIX your thoughts on what is TRUE and HONORABLE and RIGHT. THINK about things that are PURE and LOVELY and ADMIRABLE. THINK about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”(Phil 4:8) What is true? What is honorable? What is right? What is pure? What is lovely? What is admirable? What is excellent? What is worthy of praise? THINK about it!

April 25, 2010 Pastor Tim Pusey

THE DISTURBING ROLE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
John 16:5-15
April 25, 2010
Third in series: “Are You Filled?”

I’ve got a few questions for you this morning. Are you ready? How many of you like to get speeding tickets? How many of you want other drivers to drive reasonable speeds on the streets near you or where your children or your grandchildren are walking and playing?

How many like having someone tell you that you’re fat? How many of you want to be healthy and to live a good long life?

How many of you like to be told that you’re wrong about something? How many of you have something that you enjoy doing and that you’d like to get better at, even if it means that someone will need to correct the way you tend to do some things?

While on the surface, most of us would say that we don’t like to get speeding tickets and we don’t want someone telling us that we’re fat and we don’t like it when someone tells us that we’re doing something wrong—but there are a lot of people who have what I’d call a “disturbing” role in our society—and we need them and actually want what they offer even though we don’t always “like” what they have to say to us! In some cases, we’re willing to pay them to “disturb” us! The more I thought about it, the more “disturbing” roles I came up with—people who sometimes have to shake us up or shake our world a bit to help us be the best we can be. I’m thinking about teachers, a physical trainer, a life coach, doctors, mentors, supervisors…the list goes on and on! Do any of you like to watch “The Biggest Loser” as much as my wife does? The trainers really rock people’s boats in order to help them and sometimes they make them downright mad in the process—but those same people sure are excited when they see the weight go off!

We’re in a series of sermons called, “Are You Filled?” as we explore the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives. In the Christian calendar, we’ve celebrated again the death and Resurrection of Jesus. Jesus had spoken the promise many times that when He left them He would send a Holy “Other” to be with them—that He would not leave them as orphans, that He would send a Comforter to be with them, the Spirit of Truth—and that this promised Holy Spirit would come to live in them and empower them for holy lives and holy service.

This morning, as we consider words of Jesus regarding the promised gift of the Holy Spirit to believers, we’re going to look at a role of the Holy Spirit that doesn’t always seem to at first bless our hearts! In fact, sometimes we get irritated and are resistant to this role of the Holy Spirit—because the Holy Spirit serves in many ways as the Holy Disturber of our status quo, challenging the way we see things and the way we live our lives.

Look with me at John’s Gospel, chapter 16, beginning at verse 5—
[Read John 16:5-15, NIV]

First, let’s talk about what Jesus meant when He said that the Holy Spirit “convicts the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment.” With the help of a few different translations, let me say it in a different way and see if that helps:
He will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment (John 16:8, TNIV)

He’ll expose the error of the godless world’s view of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8, The Message)

He will convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment (John 16:8, NLT).

The key to understanding the passage is probably found in the word “convict.” The King James Version translates it “reprove,” but there are those who feel strongly that the wrong “reprove” is not strong enough. The original Greek word is a legal term that means to pronounce a judicial verdict by which the guilt of the culprit on trial is defined and fixed. It’s a serious and a definitive thing when someone on trial is “convicted” of a crime. It establishes the fact that, in the eyes of the law, they are guilty and are to be dealt with accordingly. The Holy Spirit is the prosecuting attorney who creates an inescapable awareness of sin so that it cannot be ignored and cannot be dismissed with an excuse.

Now you can see why I’d refer to this as “The Disturbing Role of the Holy Spirit”—because what’s being described here as a significant role of the Holy Spirit is more than just that of one who accuses a person of sin, but rather He brings to them an inescapable sense of guilt so that they realize their shame and helplessness before God. The Holy Spirit exposes the sin of the world—including the sin in my life and in yours! And in our humanness we’re not always so sure we like this dimension of the Holy Spirit! It’s so much like the role the prophet Nathan played in confronting King David with his sin in the Old Testament.

David had experienced the great favor of God. Early in his life he had been singled out as the one whom God had anointed to lead the people of Israel. When even his own family saw in David only a shepherd boy, God saw in David a king. With a gutsy innocence, young David took on the giant Goliath, whom all others were running from! David had a way about him that drew others to him—from the loyalty of those close to him to the crowds who saw hope in his integrity and in his leadership. The people rallied around David in incredible ways! God had surely anointed this man—and, as foreseen by the prophet Samuel many years before, David was eventually made king and experienced great success as the beloved King of Israel as he followed the ways of the Lord in such a way that people considered him a man “after God’s own heart.”

But in the midst of his incredible success and enjoying great popularity among the people and the favor of God, something happened inside David. While he seemingly had everything anyone could ever imagine having, it wasn’t quite enough. David gave in to sexual temptation and forced himself upon a woman named Bathsheba—who was married to one of the key officers in David’s army. When she became pregnant, David orchestrated the death of her husband and took Bathsheba to be his wife. And while David apparently was rather cavalier about the whole thing, scripture tells us clearly, “But the thing David had done displeased the Lord” (2 Samuel 11:27). Let me read the account to you, beginning at verse 1 of 2 Samuel 12—
1 So the LORD sent Nathan the prophet to tell David this story: “There were two men in a certain town. One was rich, and one was poor. 2 The rich man owned a great many sheep and cattle. 3 The poor man owned nothing but one little lamb he had bought. He raised that little lamb, and it grew up with his children. It ate from the man’s own plate and drank from his cup. He cuddled it in his arms like a baby daughter. 4 One day a guest arrived at the home of the rich man. But instead of killing an animal from his own flock or herd, he took the poor man’s lamb and killed it and prepared it for his guest.”
5 David was furious. “As surely as the LORD lives,” he vowed, “any man who would do such a thing deserves to die! 6 He must repay four lambs to the poor man for the one he stole and for having no pity.”
7 Then Nathan said to David, “You are that man! The LORD, the God of Israel, says: I anointed you king of Israel and saved you from the power of Saul. 8 I gave you your master’s house and his wives and the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. And if that had not been enough, I would have given you much, much more. 9 Why, then, have you despised the word of the LORD and done this horrible deed? (2 Samuel 12:1-9, NLT)

Nathan’s confrontation with David compelled David to acknowledge his sin and to repent of it. David was so convicted of his sin that he was consumed with a penitent spirit. He saw his sin for what it was—a sin against God and against others, and he begged for God’s forgiveness. And God forgave David, and while there were consequences with which David had to live, he experienced again the blessing of the Presence of the Lord in his life. Many of the Psalms found in our Old Testament were written by David and express the heart of one whose relationship with the Lord God had been wonderfully restored—but only because God had sent a holy disturber to David to expose the sin of his life for what it was. God would have done David no favors by letting him get by with this sin—and it was only by exposing it and forcing David to deal honestly with it that David was able to continue in the mission God had entrusted to him.

That’s what the Holy Spirit does in our lives! He exposes sin for what it is! Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would help the people of the world see that their refusal to believe in Jesus Christ is their basic sin. He made it clear that righteousness—the way of right-living—is established by God Himself. In other words, we don’t get to make up the rules of morality, determining ourselves what is right and wrong. And Jesus made it clear that judgment would one day be pronounced on each one of us.

Now these aren’t the kinds of things that seem to be popular in preaching today. I suppose people used to like “hell-fire brimstone” preaching—but about the only condemnatory preaching anyone likes now is if it’s aimed at someone else! And while the church may be afraid to step on anyone’s toes, the Holy Spirit clearly doesn’t mind stepping on toes at all!

Sometimes we have thought of the Holy Spirit as our conscience—guiding us from within by some sort of inner compass. And while there may be some merit to that way of thinking, the problem is that our conscience may not be set by God’s standard. Apparently the suicide terrorists who flew into the World Trade Center and into the Pentagon and who crashed a plane somewhere in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001, were making decisions based on their consciences. They thought they were doing the right thing!

But I doubt there’d be one person in this room this morning who would say that the killing of several thousand people that day was directed by the Lord God. Their inner compass had been skewed by twisted thinking, as can be the case for all of us—and we need to make sure we’re keeping our inner compass in tune with God’s standards of right-living. That’s the Holy Spirit’s role in our world and in our lives! And while we may sometimes chafe when we become the target of the Spirit’s correcting, we ought to be grateful for this Holy Disturber of our status quo because He is the One best equipped to keep our compass properly aligned!

Why does God care about us being “convicted” of sin? Why does it matter to Him? Is He just trying to heap guilt and shame on us? Why would a loving God be so judgmental?!

I heard an interesting report on ABC’s “Good Morning America” this week. It was reporting on a trend among some families called “unschooling.” It’s about kids who stay home everyday, but they’re not homeschooled. There are no textbooks and no tests. There is no formal education taking place at all. They said that of the 1.5 million kids who are consider “homeschooled,” about 100,000 of those are actually “unschooled.” And for the parents who embrace this approach to child-rearing, the philosophy extends to other areas of their kids’ lives. They make their own decisions and they don’t have chores or rules.

The Massachusetts family profiled had two teenagers they identified as unschooled. The parents said that they want their kids to learn what they want to learn when they want to learn it. The mother was reported as having said, “The key there is that you’ve got to trust your kids to…find their own interests.” They said they didn’t have a need for a lot of rules, and the mother said she wasn’t concerned that her teenager daughter stayed up all night because “she’s getting everything done that she wants to get done.”

The Discovery Health cable TV channel chronicled the life of one young unschooled family, detailing a home in which the children faced no punishment, no judgment and no discipline. One of the parents said, “There is no hierarchy in our house, so there is no punishment, no judgment, no discipline. They get what they want for breakfast and eat whatever they want. It’s all a matter of what feels right to them.”

And I’m guessing that most of you by now are thinking to yourselves something like, “That’s a bunch of hooey! What is wrong with these parents?! Where are their brains?!” And I’ll have to admit that the report took my mind back to a family I once knew quite well—a family that didn’t want any rules imposed on their children and who resisted structure of any kind being imposed on their kids. And their kids were sharp and bright and creative, but they haven’t done much with their lives because their parents did them a tremendous disservice in essentially unschooling them.

I tell you all of this because I think we can hear reports like ABC’s report on unschooling and fairly quickly conclude that parents have a responsibility to guide their children’s education and character development. And I want us to understand that our Heavenly Father accepts such a responsibility for us, His children. He created us and loves us and wants what’s best for each of us—and so He has sent His Holy Spirit to us. And one of the significant roles of the Holy Spirit is to help us see right from wrong, to recognize sin for what it is, and to guide us into a better way. And as a good parent conscientiously guides their child’s education and character development, the Holy Spirit is doing us a favor when He corrects us! The permissive parents does his/her child no favors—for we must learn boundaries in life in order to experience life at its best. There is great freedom within boundaries, for boundaries protect us from that which can destroy us and others.

The Holy Spirit convicts us of our blind spots—like He did with King David through the prophet Nathan. When most areas of our lives appear to be strong and healthy, we may not be mindful of one dimension that is faulty—but it may be the very thing that can absolutely destroy us from within. The Lord understands our need for wholeness and integrity if we are to experience life at its best. One little hole in the wall may not seem to be a big deal until the other side of the wall is filled with water—then you begin to realize that one little hole in the wall is a big deal after all! The Holy Spirit points out our blind spots and helps us to see them for what they are.

Well, doesn’t this fly in the face of positive thinking? Some might think so, but to acknowledge the presence of sin in our lives and to determine with God’s help to do something about it is not negative thinking! It’s smart and it’s wise and it’s the course of action that offers us the brightest and the best of futures—now and eternally!

Our culture has become so consumed with political correctness and inclusivity that we fail to see sin for what it is. And that can set the stage for personal and societal disaster and defeat. Sin is sin whether we want to call it that or not! We can’t whitewash sin! You may clean up the outside of a pig and put a pretty bow around its neck and spray perfume on it, but a pig is still a pig, and given half a chance, it will go right back to wallowing in the mud like it was made to do.

So it is with sin, whether we want to call it that or not! Our refusal to acknowledge sin doesn’t change the reality of how God sees it—and part of what Jesus was saying is that the Holy Spirit, sent from God, will expose the error of the godless world’s view of sin and righteousness and judgment! God’s doing us a favor by this—and, if we’re wise, we’ll embrace it with all our hearts!

Our need is to acknowledge sin when God exposes it in our lives and to seek God’s forgiveness and to turn from sin TO purity and right living and Christlikeness. That’s positive thinking in the best sense of the word!

The truth is that there is great freedom in such an approach to all of life. There’s a wonderful statement made in 2 Corinthians 3:17, where the Apostle Paul wrote,
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. (2 Corinthians 3:17)
God wants each of us to experience great freedom in life—but we don’t experience that by doing our own thing and doing it our way, stepping on anyone else who gets in the way of us doing our own thing! We don’t experience freedom by the removal of all boundaries! No! We experience freedom within the very boundaries that protect us from that which would surely destroy us and others!

Your Heavenly Father loves you too much to let you destroy yourself and others without doing everything He can to get your attention—and so He has sent to us the Holy Spirit, to expose the error of the godless world’s view of sin and righteousness and judgment. And what He asks us to do is to submit ourselves to the scrutiny of the Holy Spirit—to embrace the guidance and correction of the Holy Spirit—so that we can walk in fellowship with God and live lives that are meaningful and purposeful and that make a difference in the lives of others.

God truly wants to come alongside each of us and help us to be at our best! So the important question before us is this: Will you welcome the Holy Spirit to come alongside you in this way, even if there are things He’ll point out that need correction? Let’s ask Him to do just that this morning…

Pastor Casey’s Blog

What a bunch of weeds!

This past week I spent almost all of Friday outside. Not fun playing in the sun, but weeding, mowing, and edging the lawn. It was hard work. Afterwards, my neck was a little red (first time in months) and my legs and my back were sore. It was a long day. I would never say that I enjoy spending that much time weeding. If anyone would say that, they are welcome to come over to my house and take care of it for me.

After mowing, edging, weeding, and watering the landscape, I was finally ready to head back inside and try to relax. Two days later I was watering the grass and I noticed….more weeds! They were not really big, but tons of little ones all around the flowers. They were everywhere, all the picking that I had done didn’t even seem to matter.

I started thinking about how we try to remove ourselves from sin (or weeds) in our lives. God wants our lives to be blameless, pure, free from weeds and anything else that might cause us to stumble, or keep us from growing closer to God.

If we try removing the sin from our lives by ourselves, it will not last long before our sin is back and trying to take over our lives. Not only can God remove the weeds from our lives, He can purify us from them and keep them from coming back. Only if we will let him. Are you trying to remove the weeds yourself? Or are you letting God remove the weeds for you?

April 18, 2010 Pastor Tim Pusey

THE DIVINE WOOING
Revelation 22:12-17
Second in Series: “Are You Filled?”

One of my favorite stories from childhood is Gertrude Chandler Warner’s original book, The Boxcar Children. I never read any of the rest of the series that apparently sprung up years later, but the original story captivated my attention as a kid and I’ve never forgotten it—while I’ve read lots of books in my adult years that I’ve long ago forgotten!

The story begins with four children standing in front of a small bakery one evening. No one knew them. No one knew where they had come from. Henry, Jessie, Violet and Benny were brothers and sisters—and both parents had died. Finding themselves orphaned, the older two had stepped up to the plate and assumed responsibility for the younger ones. And as might have been the case in the early 1940’s when the book was written, they were on their own.

Early in the story, you learn that they had a grandfather in a neighboring town, but they had never met him (for reasons I can’t recall!) and somehow were convinced that he did not like them. They were convinced that the only way they could stay together was if they made it on their own. So, out of fear of being separated and fear of this unknown grandfather, they set out on the adventure of taking care of themselves. They discovered an old, red, deserted railroad boxcar out in the woods outside of town, and set out to make it their home—and did an incredible job of making it homey! Thus they became The Boxcar Children.

Henry—the oldest—got hired doing odd jobs for an older gentleman after school and managed to keep his secret about his siblings and where they were living. All seemed to be going so well and they lived one adventure to another. But eventually one of them became frighteningly sick, and Henry determined that he had to divulge their secret and get the help of the older gentleman for whom he worked. He had come to trust the man—and the man was so kind to Henry. The man took them all into his home to see them through the crisis—and, as you may have already guessed, he turned out to be the grandfather they were running from! He moved their boxcar to his spacious property and welcomed all four children into the safety of his home and the security of his love.

I think lots of people’s stories of coming into a meaningful relationship with the Lord is a similar story, for sometimes we fear the very One who is best positioned to help us. And our passage of scripture this morning is all about the Holy Spirit calling out to us, welcoming us into His Presence and into the safety and security found only in Him. And when we fully embrace that, we wonder why in the world we tried so hard and for so long to avoid Him!

Last week I began a series of sermons I’ve called “Are You Filled?” which explores the Holy Spirit’s role in our lives. In the Christian calendar, we’re living in the days of Easter—fully aware of Christ’s Resurrection and anticipating the gift of the Holy Spirit whom Jesus had promised to send to His followers. We’ll celebrate the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon the Early Church on Pentecost Sunday—May 23rd this year. Last Sunday we considered a wonderful passage from Ezekiel 36—where we read the prophet’s God-given anticipation and hope of when the Lord would trade their cold, stony hearts for hearts that are tender and malleable and that welcome the guidance and direction of the Lord. God’s Word through Ezekiel proclaimed that God’s Holy Spirit would come to live in them—and the experience of Christians throughout the ages is that the Presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives makes a powerful difference.

This week we go to the very end of the New Testament—the last chapter of the last book of the Bible, in fact! Revelation 22. John is the author and he describes for us a series of visions God gave him that relate to the future. John sees plenty. There is war, famine, and disease—which wipe out a fourth of humanity. Christians are martyred for their faith. And there are natural disasters too—like devastating earthquakes (which is interesting with all the earthquakes taking place around the globe in recent months). But John sees some delightful things too. Gathered in heaven are the martyred people of God—and there are too many of them to count and they’ve come from every nation (Rev 7:9). Satan and his followers are pitched into a lake of fire. And God’s home becomes the eternal home of everyone who has loved Him. This is a place of indescribable blessing—where there’ll be no “death or sorrow or crying or pain” (Rev 21:4).

Written in a form that’s famous for lots of symbolism and code words, Revelation mystifies most Bible experts. In fact, I’m pretty suspect of anyone who thinks they’ve got the corner in understanding Revelation—because I believe that by design the Lord hasn’t made a lot of things crystal clear to us even though He’s left us a broad image—a broad brush stroke—of what’s ahead. But the big idea is certainly clear: God and goodness win, and Satan and evil lose. God defeats Satan and all the forces of evil. Those who love God and whose lives have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb which Revelation speaks of—which is clearly Jesus Christ—will live with God forever.

In the last chapter, we hear the words of Jesus and we hear a word of invitation that applies to all people. Let’s begin reading at verse 12—
[Read Revelation 22:12-17, TNIV]

So why would I include this passage in a series of sermons on the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives? Because the Spirit of God calls out to us, urging us to Himself. It’s a significant aspect of the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The Spirit of the Lord says, “Come.” It’s what has sometimes been called the divine wooing.

I asked one of my younger staff members if he thought the word “woo” was a good word to use in the title of my sermon. Language seems to change so much and so quickly! I don’t know that it’s a word I’ve used much across the years, but it seems to describe well this holy pursuit from God—the divine wooing. If you check out synonyms for the word “woo,” you find words like persuade, encourage, pursue, and entice. But my favorite is perhaps the word “court.” I’m not speaking here of a court of law; I’m talking about God courting us as a man might “court” a woman. Oh, I know that happens in different ways now, too—but however it happens, there’s still this matter of a pursuit taking place!

It’s been nearly 33 years since I began to court my wife Cindy. It was a whirlwind romance that began soon after I graduated from college and moved to Kansas City for graduate school—where Cindy had been living and working for a couple of years then. A mutual friend had told me when I arrived in Kansas City, “I’ve got the perfect girl picked out for you!” For me it was practically love at first sight! We met on June 19th when both of us were with a group of single adults who went out to eat after church that night. We had our first date a week later, and within a week after that first date I told my parents that there was something different about this relationship—that I was already wondering if this might be “the one” for whom I had waited. I was so taken by Cindy! Looking back, the “courting” and the “wooing” must have gone into high speed—for we were engaged about 10 weeks after we began dating and were married the following April 15th—32 years ago this week!

In a far more significant way, Almighty God—our Redeemer, our Loving Heavenly Father—pursues each of us to draw us into a meaningful relationships with Himself. He woos us—because He loves us and wants the very best for us and knows that we can experience that only in fellowship with Him. And it’s by His Spirit that this is carried out in our lives, thus the Spirit says, “Come…Let those who are thirsty come; and let all who wish take the free gift of the water of life.”

And so we hear the divine wooing in these final words of Scripture. The call is clearly evangelistic—in the sense that it is an invitation to all people. There are those who read the first part of verse 17 as the cry for Jesus to return, but that would seem to necessitate a sudden change, for the last part of the verse is clearly directed at unbelievers. So while there would certainly be those who might want to debate the issue, I’ve accepted the whole of verse 17 as the invitation that is extended to all people—the invitation which comes from the Holy Spirit and from the Church of Jesus Christ, referred to here as “the bride.” Here again in scripture is the divine wooing!

And in the divine wooing is the promise that people’s needs will be satisfied. The third part of verse 17 is an invitation to all who are thirsty to come to Christ—and to drink from “the water of life.” It’s not speaking here of simply a drink of water, but the greater substance of life that only Jesus can give to us—like the living water that Jesus spoke of that so satisfies that we’ll never thirst again. It’s the deep longing of the soul—the longing for God our Father, our Creator, and for what He alone can provide for us.

I’m continually amazed at the deep needs in people’s lives. I’m astounded when I learn of people older than me still struggling with issues from their childhood—and the struggles are real! Just recently, I talked with three senior adults in the course of one day that all talked about how dynamics in their childhood was still impacting their lives today—I was amazed! But then I guess I should get used to it—human needs are so great! And beyond all the hurts and wounds and questions and uncertainties of life, we long to know that our life has meaning and purpose—that our lives somehow make a difference in this world! And if we embrace the reality of the Presence of the Creator God, we somehow long for His approval, His acceptance rather than His condemnation, and ultimately for His companionship in life. We long to feel secure and to know that we are loved. Such longings are the thirst of humanity—and we long for such thirst to be satisfied.

And the divine wooing of the Holy Spirit speaks to us all, saying, “Come!…Is anyone thirsty? Come! All who will, come and drink—Drink freely of the Water of Life” (The Message). The Holy Spirit is joined by the Church—the Bride of Jesus Christ—in calling out the words of generous encouragement to all who are thirsty. It’s the divine wooing!

For those of you who are familiar with much of the Bible, it likely reminds you of Isaiah 55—
“Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost…
Seek the LORD while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.
Let the wicked forsake his way
and the evil man his thoughts.
Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.” (Isaiah 55:1, 6-7)

And I think of the words of Jesus from John’s Gospel—
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.” (John 6:35)

And perhaps even more, I’m reminded of the words of Jesus from Matthew 11:28—
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

Again, it’s the wooing of the Spirit—God calling out to each of us, yearning for us and longing for us to recognize that He alone can provide all that we need! Throughout scripture, the call is universal, salvation is free, and the results are deeply satisfying. The Spirit’s words to us are words of grace to us and to the world! It’s the great heart of God reaching out to the needs of humanity—and God pleads with each of us to come to Him!

Like the Boxcar Children desperately trying to avoid the grandfather they feared, sometimes we run and hide from God—even though He’s the one most positioned to help us. Our minds race to all kinds of things that keep us trying to avoid His grip on our lives. Maybe the loss of control is what we fear the most—failing to see that we’re not in control of our lives at all without God! And what we need to hear today is the Great Invitation from God—and what we need to do is embrace the truth that in Christ alone the longing of the human soul is satisfied.

Years ago I found myself gravitated to the writings of a man named Bob Benson. I’d heard Bob speak several times when I was a student at Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, Tennessee, and loved his wit and his sense of being able to cut to truth so nonchalantly! He was such an incredible story teller! One of his stories that I’ve related to so many times is the one he calls “Parental Math.” Any of you who have had the experience of taking your kids to college and leaving them on a college campus miles and miles away from home will quickly relate—but beyond the basic story there’s a greater truth, and it lies in the mystery of the Divine Wooing. Here are his words—for he tells it best!

Nearly a week ago Peg and I had a very hard week.

Wednesday night—
Mike slept downstairs in his room where children belong and we slept upstairs in ours where moms and dads belong.
Thursday night—
We were 350 miles away and he was in Ramada 325 and we were in 323 in connecting rooms and we left the door open and talked and laughed together.
Friday night—
700 miles from home and he was in 247 and we were in 239 but it was just down the balcony and somehow we seemed together.
Saturday night—
He was in the freshman dorm and we were still in 239.
Sunday night—
We were home and he was 700 miles away in Chapman 309.

Now we have been through this before. Robert had gone away to college and we had gathered ourselves together until we had gotten over it—mainly because he is married now and he only lives ten miles away and comes to visit often. So we thought we knew how to handle separation pretty well. But we came away so lonely and blue.

Oh, our hearts are filled with pride at a fine young man and our minds are filled with memories from tricycles to commencements but deep down inside somewhere we just ached with loneliness and pain.

Somebody said you still have three at home. Three fine kids and there is still plenty of noise—plenty of ballgames to go to—plenty of laughter—plenty of everything except Mike. And in parental math five minus one just doesn’t equal plenty.

And I was thinking about God. He sure had plenty of children—plenty of artists—plenty of singers—and carpenters—and candlestick makers—and preachers—plenty of everybody except you. And all of them together can never take your place. And there will always be an empty spot in his heart—and a vacant chair at his table when you’re not home.

And if once in awhile it seems as if he’s crowding you a bit—try to forgive him. It may be one of those nights when he misses you so much he can hardly stand it.

It’s the divine wooing—and God is calling out to each of us, saying, “Come to me, you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest…Come, all who are thirsty, and drink from the living water—and you’ll never thirst again…” And the divine wooing is reaching out to each of us today, calling us to come to Him—perhaps for the first time, perhaps as prodigal sons or daughters who have drifted away, perhaps simply asking that we trust Him more and deeper and stronger—that we trade in the cares of life for trust in our Heavenly Father. It’s the Divine Wooing…and He’s speaking to you. Would you come?

Bulletin 4-18-2010

— UPCOMING EVENTS —

Monday, April 19
7:00 pm Student Ministries Questions & Coffee @ Library Coffee House
7:30 pm Book Club ~ Library

Tuesday, April 20
9:15 am Ladies Bible Study ~ Room 162
6:00 pm Quilting ~ Rooms 164-165

Wednesday, April 21
7:00 am Men’s Bible Study ~ Library Coffee House
5:30 pm Family Meal ~ Biscuits & Gravy
6:30 pm Student Ministry Worship
6:45 pm Choir/Caravans/Adult Studies

Thursday, April 22
6:30 am Men’s Prayer ~ Chapel
6:45 am Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast

Saturday, April 24
9:00 am-noon Garden Planting ~ VSN Garden
9:00 am Children’s Enrichment Workshops

Sunday, April 25
8:45 am Orchestra Practice
9:30 am Sunday School
10:45 am Worship Service /Children’s Church
5:00 pm Teen Drama Practice
6:00 pm Prayer & Praise Hour

Pastor Paul’s Blog

Well, Spring is here! Or is it? I guess part of the nature of Spring to be a little unpredictable. Spring, for me, brings an almost uncontrollable desire to play golf. I’ve kept it pretty well suppressed until this past weekend watching on television The Masters golf tournament played in Augusta, Georgia. I think part of what makes golf such an enjoyment for me is the aspect of getting outdoors. One famous golfer had this to say about the leisure activity, “Golf combines two favorite American pastimes: taking long walks and hitting things with a stick.”

One of the other aspects of golf that draws me to it is how it is governed. It’s the only sport, that I know of, where a participant can enforce a penalty on him or herself. There are instances, in tournament play, in which players contending to win the tournament disqualified themselves because they had broken a rule. In some instances, no one else was even aware of the infraction, but the player was honest enough and possessed enough integrity that he disqualified himself.

Integrity – doing the right thing even when no one is watching. I can’t say that I’ve always been guilty of having impeccable integrity. One thing that has helped me was my mom’s voice constantly reminding me of Numbers 32:23 which says “But if you fail to do this you will be sinning against the Lord; and you may be sure that your sin will find you out.” Even with her constant reminders I’m still learning what that all means in my life. Let’s face it, God has always known all about our sins, but just like Adam and Eve, we’ve tried to hide them from him and each other. Here is the good news! In spite of our sin God loves us, and the apostle Paul reminds us that “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8. God Loves You! Christ Died For You! I’m trusting you’ll accept His free gift today.

April 11, 2010 Pastor Tim Pusey

FROM THE INSIDE OUT
Ezekiel 36:24-30
First in Sermon Series: Are You Filled?

Do any of you remember the old Heinz catsup commercial where the person is waiting for the thick, rich Heinz catsup to come out of the bottle and they’re playing Carly Simon’s song in the background, “Anticipation. Anticipation is making me wait, keeping me waiting…”? In my strange, demented way, it hit me this week that that’s what Old Testament prophecy was like—anticipation, longing, waiting for what God had ahead for the people that was so much better than what they had. It was about the anticipation of God breaking into their desperate times and lifting them out of their despair and hopelessness.

Well, the Old Testament passage we’re going to look at this morning is very much about anticipation. The pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the Church may have been a New Testament event, something Jesus clearly anticipated and spoke about with His disciples before He left them—but the prophets of the Lord had centuries before heard God speak to them about the Holy Spirit coming to live in the hearts of people and the dramatic changes He would bring.

Just last week was Easter. In the Christian calendar, we’re living in the light of Easter now. We’ve been reminded again that while Jesus faced a cruel, torturous cross in order to provide for our salvation, that death could not keep Him! The Lord is risen! (He is risen indeed!) It’s still true, isn’t it?! But before He died and throughout His resurrection appearances to His followers, Jesus spoke about the coming of the Holy Spirit. We’ll celebrate the event of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon the New Testament Church on May 23rd this year—Pentecost Sunday. But until then we’re going to be in a series of sermons I’ve called, “Are You Filled?”—as we consider the role of the Holy Spirit in each of our lives. I hope you’ll join me on the journey!

We’re going to begin with a passage from the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel. Let me try to set the stage for you. Ezekiel is writing from a bad situation to more than 10,000 fellow Jews in the same situation. They’d been exiled a thousand miles from home and living in the heart of the Babylonian Empire, in what is now Iraq.

Babylon had already invade the Jewish nation twice. They had made their point that they were the new world superpower replacing Assyria. In their two invasions of Israel, they had demanded tax money from the Jews. On their second invasion, they took thousands of Jews with them, Ezekiel included. Political prisoners, of sorts, many were free to live as they pleased in Babylon, as long as they didn’t try to go home.

Ezekiel was a priest—and now he had nothing to do since the work of a priest took place in the Jerusalem temple and the temple for Ezekiel was now a long and forbidden commute. But God gave him a new job—and he became a prophet to the Jewish exiles. His message had two points: first, that God was going to allow the Babylonians to destroy what was left of the Jewish nation because of their unfaithfulness; and second, that God would eventually send the Jews back home to rebuild their nation. While the first part was hard to hear, the second part gave them hope. It was the “anticipation” part I was speaking of earlier.

Let’s turn to Ezekiel chapter 36 and I want to begin reading at verse 24. And as I read, may I challenge you with the reminder that the God we speak of here is the same ever-present God who today meets the needs of those who trust him, regardless of what our circumstances may be.
[Read Ezekiel 36:24-30, NIV]

I love the word pictures in this passage. Particularly graphic to me is the image of God removing from us our heart of stone and giving to us a heart of flesh. Other biblical translators have put it in words that add to the imagery—
• “I’ll remove the stone heart from your body and replace it with a heart that’s God-willed, not self-willed.” (Ezekiel 36:26, The Message)
• “I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart.” (Ezekiel 36:26, NLT)
The words of Ezekiel are reminders of what he had earlier written, in chapter 11—
“I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 11:19, NIV)
The new heart would replace Israel’s old heart of stone which had become hardened against the Lord and His ways. The people would be empowered to live in the godly manner called for in the covenant brought before them by Moses centuries before—and they would be God’s people and He would be their God.

In this word of hope from God through His spokesman Ezekiel, God promises to put His Spirit in them and move them to follow His ways. Let’s consider a few of the ways that Ezekiel tells us that God works in our lives through the Holy Spirit. (Through the Holy Spirit, God…)

First of all, God wants to cleanse us. He cleanses us from our sins. Ezekiel’s imagery is that God will sprinkle clean water on us, washing away all our impurities. He’ll scrub us clean. Our filthy behavior is washed away. The shame and the guilt go down the drain. While we can never cover our sins by being good enough to make up for it, God has provided for the cleansing of our sins through the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross. His blood covers our sins—and we are cleansed.

Ezekiel also looked ahead to the pouring out of the Holy Spirit and said that God’s Holy Spirit would come to live in us! He fills us with His Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God comes to abide in us. That’s what was ultimately fulfilled on the day of Pentecost described in Acts 2—and it’s what made the difference in the lives of the disciples of Jesus who so easily wavered in their faith and in their actions before they were filled with the Holy Spirit. And friends, it’s what can make the difference in our lives too—so that we don’t waver in our faith, strong one day and sadly weak another. When God’s Holy Spirit abides in us we are transformed from the inside out. And just as this was a word of hope to the Israelites in captivity, it’s a word of hope to people like you and me who so much need God to deliver us from flakey Christianity and the ups and downs we go through in our spiritual life if God’s Spirit isn’t abiding within us.

And in a wonderful sense, the Spirit empowers us to do His will. We just have to admit that on our own we fumble and fall every time! Whenever we find ourselves relying on our own spiritual fortitude, we find what we’re really made of! We’re like jello! Have you ever tried to scoop jello into a bowl and had it jiggle off the spoon? It has no substance! Have you heard the phrase—“like trying to nail jello to the wall”? Can you imagine that? It would just slip right through the nail and plop onto the floor! And the truth is that we simply can’t have much substance in our spiritual life unless God’s Spirit is empowering us to become the people He wants us to be and empowering us to carry out what He asks us to do!

Several years ago, I sensed God calling me to do something that seemed way beyond my comfort zone! Have you ever been there? Do you ever wish God would quit stretching you in such ways? I’ll admit that looking back I can be nothing but grateful for the ways in which He has led me and empowered me to do His will, but I’ll confess that when I’m going through it I’m not so grateful for every aspect of the journey!

And so it was then. Friends and family members had opinions and gave input—in fact, more people gladly gave their opinions than I cared to hear from on the matter! And in my time with God, I had to ask Him, “What do you make of this?” And almost as clearly as if He were speaking to me I heard the words God spoke to the Apostle Paul when Paul was struggling on his journey—“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor 12:9) It was as if the Lord was saying to me, “Let’s just get this straight now: You aren’t adequate for this task, but I am…and that’s all that matters!”

I’ve learned to live with that promise and come to believe that His grace is sufficient! His power is made perfect in my weakness! He empowers me to do His will! I’ve found it to be true over and over again…in so many of the hurdles and challenges of life. And I’m so desperately dependent upon Him empowering me!

The other day I came upon the notes from the devotional I shared with you as a congregation 2 ½ years ago—the evening that you had your first opportunity most of you had to check me out as your potential pastor. The Church Board had just nominated me to become your new pastor and many of you had come to see this new guy and see what he and his wife were like. I shared the promise from 2 Corinthians 12:9 with you that evening, and noted that we were all stepping out into new water in exploring the possibility of this pastor/church relationship and seeking God’s will in the matter. There was a lot of excitement about the possibilities, but also a bit of anxiety about the unknowns—for all of us! I was recalling this week that just weeks prior to that evening I had never even heard of Meridian, Idaho! And as we’ve leaned on Him, the Lord has empowered us to carve out a wonderful relationship and He is working through us together in marvelous ways! But make no mistake about it—it’s His empowering that makes the difference! It’s always been that way—and it always will be!

Back to Ezekiel’s words about what the Holy Spirit does for us, we learn that the Spirit offers a new covenant with God. Ezekiel was looking ahead and speaking of a new relationship between God and us. Did you know that the labels “Old Testament” and “New Testament” could also be expressed as “Old Covenant” and “New Covenant”? The Old Testament prophets looked ahead to the new covenant that God would make with His people, where the Lord would declare, “You will be my people, and I will be your God.” And as I said a moment ago, the Lord empowers us then to live up to our part of that new covenant! And let’s not forget that there are great blessings in this new relationship. Ezekiel spoke of the way that the Lord would bless them—and He continues to bless those today who eagerly embrace this new covenant that God offers to us.

I suppose the most significant thing to me this morning in the words of Ezekiel is that the Holy Spirit transforms us. It’s this new heart that has gripped my thoughts this week—the removal of our stony heart and God putting in its place a tender, malleable heart that is prepared and eager to do the will of the Lord! God does for us what we could not do for ourselves!

I sometimes wonder if the greatest challenge people face in fully embracing Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord is the matter that in our humanness we seem to have this propensity to resist anyone telling us what to do. We’re glad that Jesus has forgiven our sins and we’re glad for the blessings He brings into our lives—but it’s a whole other thing to embrace all of what He has in mind for us and all of His promptings along the way. So we push back from Him, preferring to do things the way we want to do them, somehow convinced that our way is infinitely better than God’s way—which sounds pretty silly when you consider that He’s Who He is and we’re just—well, we’re just us! But we live out that battle too many times, don’t we?

Did you catch the words from Ezekiel that address this very matter?
And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. (Ezekiel 36:27)
He’ll give us a heart that desires the ways of the Lord! In other words, He wants to give us the “want-to” of obeying Him. He transforms us from the inside out in order that we will have a growing desire to do the will of God.

You’ve probably heard of the young boy who was a bit out of control at school one day and his teacher instructed him to sit down in his chair. He resisted for a while, but she finally made her point and he relented and sat down—but not without mumbling loud enough for her to hear him say, “I may be sitting down on the outside, but on the inside I’m still standing!”

Those of you who have had the privilege of raising strong-willed children know exactly what I’m talking about! We always thought our firstborn, our son Justin, was the one about whom James Dobson had written his famous book, “The Strong-willed Child”! And while Justin’s a wonderful young man today and experiencing great success in his career, I remember my wife Cindy becoming so frustrated with his strong will as a toddler that she’d sit down and put her head in her hands, and express her desperate fears that he’d be in prison by the time he was 20!

But the strong-willed child really doesn’t have much on most of us—because we like to have things our own way too! The problem is that our ways aren’t always the ways of the Lord—and our ways aren’t always the best ways for us or for others. And while God lays out His way for us, we find ourselves resisting it for all kinds of reasons. And what becomes apparent is that it is a “heart” issue—and that’s what the Holy Spirit addresses in our lives. He transforms our hearts and gives us the “want-to” to do God’s will!

He gives us a new heart! He takes away the heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh—that’s tender and willing to do the will of the Lord! It’s a heart transplant! He takes away our heart that resists the Lord and in its place gives us a heart that longs for the ways of the Lord!

Cindy and I have known three people across the years who’ve had heart transplants. One was the mother of our kids’ school friends in their elementary years. She was involved with Cindy in PTA, and became quite a spokesperson for the cause of heart health and organ donation. Another was a pastor friend who had been seemingly quite healthy until a massive heart attack destroyed his heart. And the other is someone some of you would know—Dwight Douglas—son-in-law of Dr. Quentin Howard and brother-in-law to Shirley and Quentin Howard. It’s an amazing thing, isn’t it, to think of a healthy heart being transplanted into the body of someone whose heart is no longer functioning properly!

The trade-off is a pretty good one—a healthy heart for a sick and dying heart. The doctors surgically remove the heart that is so weak that it’s barely functioning—the color isn’t what it’s suppose to be, the muscle that a heart is suppose to have simply isn’t there, and part of the heart has already died—it’s quit working! And in its place the doctors put a heart with a strong beat and good color. It’s absolutely amazing! It changes everything! It’s absolutely transformational!

And what scripture is getting at this morning for us is that God—through His Holy Spirit living within us—removes our heart of stone that is cold and resistant—like this rock. As hard as I would try, I couldn’t shape this rock to be in some other shape. Even with the right tools, I’d shatter it if I tried to reshape it. I really can’t do much about it—just as we sometimes feel hopeless in changing who we think we are and the problems we face and the temptations that seem to have a firm grip on our lives. So we excuse away our anger when we blow up at someone—“that’s just the way I am!” And we rationalize that which is sinful and dirty and shameful, making excuses that it’s still not as bad as some people or it’s just “who I am.” All the while, we resist truly becoming the people God wants us to be.

Have you ever felt your heart was hard? Have you ever felt yourself resistant to God? Is your heart cold and indifferent to God’s daily promptings? Do you even hear His voice anymore? Maybe “indifference” is the greatest tragedy of a hard heart. I suppose our indifference to God can be seen as the result of a lot of things. Maybe it’s our own weariness of trying to do it His way and failing miserably every time. Maybe we just don’t feel ourselves worthy of this new kind of relationship with God (even though He clearly thinks every one of us is worthy of it!). Maybe others who said they were following the Lord have disappointed you and made you doubt that any of us can ever truly live a Christian life! Maybe you’ve been hurt and you’re just angry with the world and angry with God (though your anger’s not gotten you anywhere except for making your heart even harder)!

Do you believe that God could change you—from the inside out? If He could really do it, would you be willing to let Him?

You see, that’s what this whole passage is about this morning—God wants to transform us from the inside out! He wants to send His Holy Spirit to live within us—to cleanse us from our sins, to fill us with the abiding presence of His Spirit, to empower us to live the way He wants us to live, to offer us a new covenant—a new relationship with God, and, ultimately, to transform us from the inside out! He wants to give us new hearts that long to do His will—and remove from us our hard, resistant, cold hearts.

Do you realize what this hope that Ezekiel proclaimed said about our Heavenly Father? It tells us that He loves us deeply and wants to help us live life at its best. It tells us that our Heavenly Father provides all that we need in order for that to happen! It reminds us that He is the God of Hope!

We’re beginning a journey for the next six weeks as we explore what God can do in our lives through the Holy Spirit. I want to ask you to commit yourself to this journey with me—to be here every Sunday you possibly can be, but, even more importantly, to seek the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in your life. Just as it’s true for our physical hearts, sometimes we have spiritual heart problems and aren’t even aware. I want us during these weeks to open ourselves up—to be open and honest before ourselves and before God—to let Him change us as He sees fit so that each of us has a heart that’s tender toward the ways of the Lord, that yearns to do the will of God, that seeks the heart and mind of God in all our ways. Will you commit yourself to that journey? I believe God will bless you if you will.

Pastor Tim’s Blog

THE CHOICES WE MAKE

Along with my Bible reading this year I’m going through a collection of author C. S. Lewis’ writings called A Year with C.S. Lewis that is broken down into 365 daily readings. It’s quite good—and certainly gets both the heart and the mind engaged! The other day, this is what I read (taken from his book Mere Christianity):
People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, ‘If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.’ I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.

So, if Lewis is correct (and I believe he is), we are becoming more and more one kind of person or another. Judging by the choices you’re making today, what kind of person are you becoming and where will that ultimately get you?

April 4, 2010 Pastor Tim Pusey

HIS PEACE…OUR PEACE
John 20:19-31
Easter Morning

So let’s talk about the Resurrection. The Resurrection of Jesus was not a spectacular event marked with crashing cymbals and blaring trumpets and lights flashing. It most likely took place as His disciples slept, or as they tried to sleep through another long night of relentless tossing and turning over questions and the heartache of deep disappointment: Jesus was dead—and they were devastated that it was all over! But as they slept—or tried to sleep, the Resurrection of Jesus unfolded like the quiet dawning of a new day proclaiming the defeat of the night.

The risen Christ met His friends personally at unexpected times and places—shocking the daylights out of them, I might add!—dispelling their grief and their doubts. In a moment, everything changed! There were no spectacular accompanying signs that they observed. The only trumpet fanfares were the ones within the souls of those who encountered the Risen Jesus, for everything suddenly changed! Jesus spoke peace to them, and His peace overwhelmed them! They gained the wonderful assurance that things weren’t all over as they had feared. Jesus is alive!—and that changes everything!

If John’s Gospel—His account of Jesus’ life—had ended with chapter 19, it would not have been nearly as exceptional as it was, for all human biographies eventually end with death. We expect that! Without chapter 20, the whole picture of Jesus would have been that of a man of exceptional character, who did miraculous things, who made extraordinary claims and whose sincerity couldn’t reasonably be doubted. But the story would have ended with a terrible sense of frustration. His claims would have been negated, his aspirations would not have been realized, and his teaching would have eventually been dismissed as too lofty to be true. The major difference between the life and teachings of Jesus and those of any other great religious leader lies in the fact that Jesus rose from the dead and the others have not, however persistent their influence may be.

And in presenting the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection, John deals more with its effect on specific persons than with the material proofs our Western minds might prefer! John assumes the reality of the Resurrection because Jesus appeared to him and spoke to him! Jesus spoke peace to John—and John’s life was forever changed by His encounter with the Resurrected Lord! So John tells about how the Resurrection of Jesus impacted other people in such a way that they could never doubt the Resurrection again! Jesus spoke peace to them! Listen now to John’s Gospel, chapter 20, beginning at verse 19—

[read John 20:19-31, NIV]

If I were to mention to you the name Thomas, one of the disciples of Jesus, what would be the first word that pops into your mind? I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the vast majority of those who know anything about Thomas would say some form of the word, “doubt.” In fact, there are many who probably think that Thomas was his last name and that “Doubting” was really his first name, because we know him as “Doubting Thomas.”

It’s probably not fair. The first three Gospels don’t really tell us much of anything about Thomas. John’s Gospel is the only one that does. Thomas is known primarily by his lack of willingness to believe in Christ’s resurrection until he could see Jesus with his own eyes and put his own fingers into Jesus’ wounds. Wouldn’t you have hated to have that reputation and be known for something so negative!

Let me tell you something you may not understand about Doubting Thomas: He was the first to unequivocally declare Jesus to be both his “Lord” and his “God.” Here is the one place in all the Gospels where the Divinity of Christ is bluntly stated. He didn’t just call Jesus his “Teacher”—He called Jesus “my Lord and my God”! This is the only place where Jesus is called “God” without qualification of any kind. Thomas speaks it with the conviction of one who just learned that 2 + 2 = 4. He may have doubted it for a while, but in some ways he was the first to really come to faith in Jesus Christ!

I suppose it will always be a mystery as to why Thomas wasn’t with all the other disciples when Jesus first appeared to them. They were all terribly disheartened, and perhaps Thomas just couldn’t bring himself to be with the rest of the disciples right then. In his solitude, Thomas missed that first resurrection appearance of Jesus to His disciples. And we might do well to note the way in which Christ often chooses to reveal Himself even now is within the community of the Body of believers we call His Church—and any time we isolate ourselves from the community of Christ’s family we put ourselves in the position of missing out on the full blessings He wants to reveal to us. We really do need one another!

I’ve been intrigued again in contemplating the way in which Jesus invaded the house where the disciples were gathered. They had come together—and they were certainly preoccupied with desperation, not knowing where to go from this point. Jesus had been leading them and teaching them, but now he was gone! What were they to do? They had seen what the religious leaders had done to Jesus and so they could not shake the fear that consumed them—fear that what had just happened to Jesus would soon happen to each of them too.

And because of those fears, the doors were locked. Fear speaks “death” to us. Fear consumes us. It seeks to destroy us from within. But despite their locked-up fears, Jesus broke through! He broke past the locked doors and appeared before them. I don’t know how He did it or what it looked like—I just know that He did! And what was it that He said to them—not once, but twice? “Peace be with you!…Peace be with you!” To their fears, Jesus spoke peace!

They were overjoyed! And a peace they had not known came rushing over them like a cleansing, refreshing wave. They experienced such marvelous peace in that moment—and they were to continue to experience such peace over and over again. Christ breathed on them the unfathomable blessing of the Holy Spirit (something we’re going to explore further over the next seven weeks), and He sent them out once again on their God-given mission of taking His forgiveness and cleansing to all people.

But Thomas had missed it! While the other disciples tried to tell Thomas, he would not accept it! These were the men with whom he had shared life for three years, the men with whom he had shared the incredible journey of following Jesus and hearing the life-changing words of Jesus and witnessing all the miraculous things Jesus did for people! But for some reason Thomas couldn’t believe them now! He couldn’t trust what they were saying. He couldn’t take them at their word. He was not willing to believe that Jesus was alive on their word alone. They may have had the doors of their house locked once again out of fear, but Thomas was locked-up within because he couldn’t trust. It must have been a lonely, lonely week for him—and it was a whole week before Jesus would appear to Thomas! Thomas was consumed with his own doubts! There had to have been a real battle going on within him throughout that week—and I’m guessing he spent many sleepless nights pondering the possibilities and snuffing them out by his own stubborn resistance to believe!

But our Lord is so patient with us—and so kind, isn’t He? Jesus appeared to that group once again, this time with Thomas present. And Jesus again spoke peace to them—“Peace be with you!” And then Jesus saw the doubter, and He kindly turned to address Thomas, just as He so many times seems to turn His attention to us as individuals and addresses us right where we are! Jesus invited Thomas to place his fingers on Jesus’ wounds. “Enough of your doubt!” he said. “Stop doubting and believe!” And when Thomas could see and feel for himself, he embraced faith in the resurrected Jesus—his Lord and his God! The peace followed faith and trust!—just as it does for us!

Our Lord Jesus sees this crowd today and He sees past our nice clothes and pleasant smiles to see what’s lurking around the corners of our lives. Most of us—if not all of us—have fears! Life gets messy! Fear eats away at us like cancer! Fear steals our joy! Fear snuffs out our hopes and dreams. Fear can consume our lives! And the Risen Lord has a marvelous way of breaking past the padlocks with which we’ve tried to secure our hearts from further harm—and He comes to give us hope and peace! He breaks past the locked doors of our hearts and invades our lives in the most wonderful way!

And do you know what He says to each of us? “Peace be with you!” Don’t you love those words? Jesus speaks peace to each of us today. “Peace be with you, my friend! I am here…you do not need to be afraid!”

The Biblical word “peace” covers the full realm of relationships in daily life with one another and our relationship with God Himself. To be at peace is to be in harmony with others and, most significantly, to be in harmony with God. Peace nurtures a sense of well-being and wholeness in life that is ultimately untouched by difficult circumstances. When someone speaks God’s peace to us, it’s a prayer for the best that God can give to us!—the most full and complete blessings we can experience in life, blessings that exceed that which is material, blessings that reflect harmony with God.

Do you realize that the peace that Jesus gives was announced in Bethlehem before Christ was born? God announced that peace would come through the gift of God’s unique Son. Now we see this baby grown, having spent His life teaching and reaching lost people, having given His life for us, and having risen again to new life—and our peace is still His mission and His ministry.

It is also the mission that He entrusts to us today—the message we are to take to others. Wherever we go, we are to speak His peace—in our words and in the very lives we live. We say to the world, “Peace be with you.” It’s not the peace of our presence, but rather the peace of the presence of God we are declaring on them. Jesus came to bring peace to all who will look to Him for help and salvation! Jesus died in order that there might be harmony between us and God! And oh! What a difference it makes!

A few years ago a student training to do hospital chaplaincy described to me something he had learned from his mentor. He’d learned to pause before entering a hospital room where he would hope to minister to the spiritual needs of a patient he had never met before. In that brief moment, he was to realize once again that our loving Heavenly Father, by His marvelous prevenient grace, had already entered that hospital room ahead of the chaplain-to-be! And with that assurance this chaplain-in-training could step into the room to be the messenger of God’s peace.

And my mind immediately goes to situations into which I have had to step. I’ll never forget as a young pastor when I had to tell a mom and dad that their 18-year-old daughter had been killed in an automobile accident. It was the same parents I had to visit late one night to share the news that a son had been arrested on attempted murder charges. I’ve stepped into hospitals where people were dying, visited a couple who had lost a baby, was the first person a parishioner came to see after catching her husband in an affair, sat with a friend whose wife had just died suddenly in the night, and stood with people when they were facing the most difficult thing they’d ever faced.

How do you do those things? On my own, I would be so consumed with fear, but I’ve come to expect that the Lord has already entered the scene before me—and He speaks peace to my soul and to those to whom I’ve sought to minister. He is the Living God—and He is there! He had already invaded the space! He had! And with that comes a tremendous sense of peace!

Someone said to me a while back that God doesn’t always lay out the whole roadmap when He’s taking us on a journey. He may only lead us town by town. I mused to the one who said this, “And sometimes He only leads us block by block!” Sometimes we feel like it’s merely inch by inch! And if we can dare to trust the Lord for the whole journey even when we can’t see it, then we can embrace the peace that He wants us to enjoy all along the way! It’s the peace that dispels fear!

I’m wondering if much of this is not at the core a trust issue. Thomas couldn’t trust his fellow disciples; and until he experienced it all on his terms, he wasn’t sure he could ever trust Jesus to be Who others were saying He was!

Could it be that the reason why many of us fail to experience peace day after day is that we not only don’t fully trust others but we don’t even trust God! Perhaps that’s why we too easily feel we’ve got to remain in control and call all the shots. When we don’t fully trust God—with every aspect of our lives and everything that we hold dear—we lock the doors of our lives to keep everyone, including the Lord, out! We clutch what we think is ours! We hold on for dear life! And if life circumstances seem to threaten what we’re holding onto so tightly, it does more than just rattle our cages. It shakes us at our very core—because we’re banking on us being in control—and sometimes, we just have to admit that we’re not in control at all! And I honestly don’t believe the Lord ever expected us to be! He knew life would get messy—messier than we expected and messier than we ever wanted!

As gently but as surely as Jesus invited Thomas to put his finger on the wounds of Jesus and to experience the reality of His resurrected body, Christ gently invites us today to set all of our fears aside to touch Him and to have our faith and trust renewed. There will never be peace for us unless we can experience Christ in this way. It requires a little act of faith, but it opens us up to a whole life of peace as we trust in the One who promises to lead us and guide us and to give us “life” in the truest and most meaningful sense of that word! Our trust in Him opens the door to peace over and over again! He speaks peace to us! The Living Lord brings His Resurrection power to my life and to yours—and He gently calls us away from our fears and into His Presence. And that’s where we find peace.

I’ve been wondering this week if we aren’t our own greatest enemies when it comes to having that kind of trust in Christ. We’re pretty good and pretty capable people. We have learned to handle most of life on our own—and so we’re conditioned to think that we can handle this faith thing on our own too. And we’re trying to do our very best at it—and many of us have even gotten pretty good at this “religion” thing! Listen to what one man had to say in response to this—
To do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do—to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst—is, by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from. (from The Sacred Journey by Frederick Buechner)

You see, we can survive on our own!—but our Creator has in mind more for us than just surviving our way through life! He wants us to thrive! And we weren’t created with a capacity of thriving as God intended each one of us to do without the peace of God dwelling deep within us! We need peace with God in order to experience life at its best—and that’s not something we can do on our own, regardless of how hard we try or even how good we are! But the Living Lord, our Resurrected Savior, speaks peace into our lives as we acknowledge Him as Lord and God.

I’m thinking that’s why Jesus said that the rich person has as hard of a time getting into heaven as a camel would have getting through the eye of a needle—because with his credit card in his pocket and with his thick wad of cash, the rich person is so effective at getting for himself everything else he needs that he doesn’t see that what he needs more than anything else in the world can be had only as a gift! The one thing a clenched fist cannot do is accept a helping hand—even from our Heavenly Father!

Let me ask you a question: What are you afraid of? What are we afraid of? Why would any of us grit our teeth and clench our fists to maintain life as it is when God desperately wants to pour out on us His Holy Spirit with new blessings and new graces to equip us for living life at its best? Can we dare to believe that the Living Lord can do something for us that we cannot do for ourselves?

And the peace that Jesus offers is a gift—just as every blessing we receive is a gift. We can’t concoct peace. We can’t produce it. It’s a gift from God Himself—and we only experience it by His Hands and by His grace. We’ll only experience that peace when we learn to place our trust in Him.

The disciples of Jesus couldn’t produce such peace as they gathered together behind locked doors, consumed as they were with fear and questions and confusion. Their sweaty palms and shaky knees could not produce peace. They had absolutely nothing going for them at that moment except that as they were gathered together the Risen Christ pushed through the locked doors and stood among them!

And despite our proud notions of otherwise, we don’t have much going for us either unless, by the grace of the living God, the Holy Spirit slips through our locked doors and all of the things we have tried to concoct and manage and control on our own! We don’t have much going for us unless the Holy Spirit breaks into our lives and takes over! All of our impressive efforts to be good and to live worthwhile lives don’t matter at all unless the Risen Christ speaks peace into our lives!

Oh, may we experience the intrusion of the Living Christ among us! That is my prayer for each of you today! May He help us to relax our gritted teeth and clenched fists that steel us against a harsh world, and may He speak peace into each of our lives today. Will you trust Him for that this morning?

April 1, 2010 Maundy Service~Pastor Tim Pusey

JESUS—THE AUTHOR OF FORGIVENESS
Luke 23:32-43
Maundy Thursday Service
April 1, 2010

The Passover meal that Jesus shared with His disciples was the prelude to a quick escalation of events which found their climax in the crucifixion of Jesus. Betrayed by one of His own, Jesus was arrested and brought before the high priests, who sent him on to face the Roman governor. It was before Pilate that the trial took place, though clearly the trial was a total miscarriage of justice. In the end, it was Pilate who gave in to the whims of the Jews and pronounced the sentence, “Let him be crucified!” Immediately, Jesus was led away from the court and toward the execution site. In the heat of the moment, many followed the insidious parade of Roman soldiers with the now bruised and bleeding Jesus. A man named Simon was yanked from the crowd and ordered to carry the Cross. Let me pick up the Scriptural account at Luke 23, verse 32—
[Read Luke 23:32-43]

I want us to focus this evening on Jesus—the One of such mercy and grace that He went to the greatest lengths conceivable to provide forgiveness for us all. It’s an amazing thing to think about, but it is certainly true: Forgiveness was paramount in His heart and mind as Christ hung on the Cross. It’s what He was thinking about as He hung there in agonizing pain! It’s what He was about even in His suffering! His thought was for others! His thought was even for us! His love and His mercy superseded His own pain.

The first glimpse is seen in His response to the Roman soldiers who put the nails through His hands, hoisted the Cross into place, and cast lots for His clothing. How did He respond to them? Jesus prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Doesn’t it strike you as amazing that in His darkest hour Jesus was thinking about the spiritual needs of those who were at that very moment inflicting such pain upon Him! What a tremendous insight into the awesome grace of God!

Some of you have experienced terrible pain. Many of us can really only claim to have experienced more incidental pain. It wasn’t too many years ago that nurses were trying to get an I-V in my arm as both precautionary measure as well as for a procedure they were doing. One would get it in and it might last for a little while, but then it would “blow out,” as they call it, and my skin would swell and it would have to be re-done in another spot. By the 3rd, 4th and 5th times—and the third person trying, they were sticking the large needle in my vein, and then trying to maneuver it around to where they wanted it. I’ve got to tell you, it hurt! It hurt bad!—and I had bruises on my arms for weeks to prove it!

But in those moments of pain—pain that was so minor compared to Christ’s pain on the Cross, the last thing I was thinking about was the needs of my pain inflictors!—even though my pain inflictors were acting out of professional kindness rather than the hatred and indifference emanating from those inflicting pain on Jesus. I think that our natural tendency when we’re in pain is to center on that pain and to be indifferent to the needs of those around us. We’re certainly not at our best when we’re in pain—but not Jesus. Even in His hour of deepest suffering, His thought and prayers were for the forgiveness others needed.

Let’s be honest, if we’d been Jesus, we’d have been more likely to have tried calling down God’s wrath upon those making us suffer. We’d have wanted them to burn for what they were doing! It was all so unfair and unjust! We might have quickly concluded that their sins were beyond forgiveness—but Jesus didn’t go to that conclusion at all. In His hours of deepest suffering and humiliation, Jesus interceded to the Heavenly Father on behalf of those around Him, pleading with the Father to forgive them, for they could not comprehend what they were doing.

And then we see the forgiving spirit of Jesus as He responded to the repentant thief dying on a cross next to His. Scripture tells us that there were two criminals being crucified at the same time as Jesus—one on each side. While one thief used his last bit of breath and energy to join the crowd in mocking Jesus, the other man was experiencing a change of heart. He was willing to admit that he deserved to die, but it was clear to him that Jesus did not deserve this death penalty. To him it was clear that Jesus was not just another criminal facing execution. He had some degree of faith that Jesus was more than just a man, for he cried out to Jesus, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And with mercy and grace, Jesus used some of His last breath and energy to pronounce wonderful hopeful words of forgiveness—“I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”

What a powerful scene that must have been! Here was the guiltless Son of God being unjustly executed, and He cared enough about a thief in the last hours of His life to extend mercy and forgiveness to him. Even in His darkest hour, Jesus was about the redemptive, reconciling work of His Heavenly Father. It’s simply what Jesus was all about!

His mercy and grace is what took Him to the Cross—and what prompted His determination to follow through regardless of the cost to Himself. He saw how sin destroys lives. He saw the burden of sin upon the shoulders of people like you and me, and His love for us compelled Him to endure the Cross so that our sins could be forgiven! It was over this that He had struggled in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane—and had determined to go forward and face the Cross according to the will of the Father. Someone had to pay the penalty for the sins of humanity—and He was the only one worthy to be our substitute, for He was the spotless, sinless Lamb of God. It was His passionate desire for you and me to know and experience the complete forgiveness of the Father, to thus be reconciled with God and to know the hope of eternal life. The marvelous truth is that God wants every person to experience such forgiveness and hope!

And every one of us needs forgiveness, for “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). As long as there is unconfessed, unforgiven sin in our lives, we cannot enjoy significant relationship with our Heavenly Father. Sin separates us from God. It always has, and neither you nor I are going to be the exception! Unless sin is confessed and forgiven, we become slaves to sin, and when we’re slaves to sin, our slavery to sin keeps us from knowing and enjoying the blessing of being sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father, warmly embraced in His Presence, dearly loved for all eternity. We may not feel ourselves worthy of God’s forgiveness, but this is the very point at which we must be willing to trust God to do what He has promised to do. 1 John 1:9 tells us, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” What a powerfully freeing word for us all!

Now—let’s make sure we catch the full extent of this forgiveness. Not only is God willing to forgive our sins, but He will forgive all who call upon Him with a repentant spirit! This forgiveness is extended to all! That’s good news for us all. God’s mercy and compassions are not limited to one people group, to one race, to one gender, to one skin color, to one socio-economic level. His mercy and His grace reach across all those barriers—aren’t we grateful for that?!

The catch that’s sometimes hard for us is that this forgiveness is offered even to those who may have hurt us and to those whom we may not for some reason feel are worthy of such forgiveness. Some of us have had persons hurt us so profoundly in life that we’re not sure they could ever deserve God’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ. But God’s love is deeper and more profound than our human nature alone can fathom. Christ died for all.

And if we’re going to follow Christ, we must be willing to follow in His footsteps of forgiveness—which calls for us to forgive one another just as Christ has forgiven us. I say this fully aware that forgiveness is costly. The forgiveness we’ve experienced from God was costly. It cost Jesus His life. And human forgiveness is costly too. We must let go of anger, resentments and pride—even if we have a “right” to be angry or resentful and even if our pride tells us we were “right” and the other party was wrong! The mom or dad who has a prodigal child pays a price for forgiving that wayward child when he/she returns—it is a price carved out in heartache and sleepless nights. Forgiveness is costly.

Divine forgiveness was certainly costly. We’ve been reminded of it already in this evening’s service. God is love, but God is also holy. God cannot break the great moral laws on which the universe is built. Sin must have its punishment or the very structure of life disintegrates. And God alone could pay the price that was necessary for our forgiveness. Such a price made it clear that God’s forgiveness is never just a matter of God saying, “It’s okay; it doesn’t matter.” Of course sin matters! Forgiveness is the most costly thing in the world. And such mercy and grace was what cost Jesus His life.

This mercy and grace brings Christ before us this evening. His desire to provide forgiveness to each of us brings Him before us, calling for us to respond. The very nature of His mercy and grace compels Him to reach out to people—including people well beyond these walls—people who so much need to discover such forgiveness and the new life that it brings.

As He stands before us this evening, He looks into our eyes, and instantly we see His love. His eyes penetrate beyond all that we might carefully hide from others, for He sees our souls. He longs for each of us to be holy and pure—and in His mercy and grace, offers the cleansing we need, the cleansing we can accomplish in no other way.

As we contemplate the privilege this evening to receive the Lord’s Supper, let me encourage you to see the Lord standing before you. He’s the Lord of grace and mercy—the One who gave His life so that you could experience forgiveness and freedom from sin and its devastating effects on your life. Receive His forgiveness—even if you struggle to forgive yourself. Thank the Lord tonight for forgiveness. Worship the One who loves you so much that He gave His life for you. Acknowledge the great love of Jesus that offered forgiveness to all people—even to those who put Him on the Cross. May our Lord Jesus draw us to His side, and may such love compel us to fully embrace His mercy and His grace. And may the Lord teach us to embody such mercy and such grace to those around us.

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