April 26, 2009 - Pastor Tim

DEALING WITH THE STING OF BETRAYAL

Luke 22:1-6, 21-23, 47-48

 

[Begin with the video of Charlie Brown and Lucy]

(The scene begins with Charlie Brown and Lucy and the football. Lucy promises that, for once, she won’t swipe the ball away at the last moment, and Charlie’s gullible heart swells with confidence: “This time I’m gonna kick that football clear to the moon!” He barrels toward it, and she, of course, swipes the ball away at the last moment, and he tumbles through the air with a cry before crashing his head on the earth.) Poor Charlie Brown…betrayed once again by ol’ Lucy!

This morning we’re continuing in a series I’ve called, “Looking at the Cross through Resurrection Eyes”—digging into the significance of the Cross from a Post-Resurrection perspective. And, as you may have noted in our bulletin, my sermon for this morning is entitled, “Dealing with the Sting of Betrayal.” And, as our friend Charlie Brown could tell us: Being betrayed hurts…sometimes the hurt goes deep.

As you might guess, we’re looking at Judas’ role in the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, for Judas, one of the 12 disciples, was the one who betrayed Jesus. But, honestly, it’s not Judas I want us to ultimately focus on—it’s Jesus. And perhaps the question before us is this: What can we learn from Christ to help us when we feel betrayed by others?

Turn with me in your Bibles and let’s read from Luke’s Gospel, chapter 22—

[Read Luke 22:1-6, 21-23, 47-48, NIV]

So, what does betrayal look like? How does it feel? Let’s start with Judas. Judas is the great question mark in history. Books have been written about him—trying to get a handle on who he was and why he did what he did.

Some have said that we’re so intrigued with Judas because we’re a lot like him. Some try to put Judas in the best possible light—saying he was loyal to Jesus, but in his concern that things weren’t moving fast enough, he wanted to force Jesus into revealing His power. Some have said that Judas thought he understood more about the world and the kingdom than Jesus did. In some sense, if that were right, it would remind us of Genesis 3 and the first sin of humanity—Adam and Eve disobeyed in an attempt to be as wise as God. Too many of us think we know better than God does—and some say that was Judas’ problem.

Others are convinced that Judas knew exactly what he was doing. They’d say that all we can do is judge Judas by his actions—though we prefer to be judged by our intentions. (Try that the next time a cop pulls you over for speeding—“I didn’t mean to do it!”) But apparently Judas is guilty. He’s a traitor. He was the betrayer.

Imagine the scene—this circle of men reclining, as was the custom, as they shared a meal. They’ve all been together for three years. It has been an incredible experience for all of them. Jesus had shared His kingdom with them—His presence and His power. Now, in the bread and in the cup, he gives them His body and His very blood. He gave Himself unreservedly to all twelve, including Judas.

They were sharing the Passover meal. You see, traditionally, the Passover is celebrated with one’s family. It commemorates the angel of death passing over the children of Israel while slaying the first-born in every Egyptian household. Jesus chose to celebrate the Passover with the group that had become family to Him—those twelve men with whom he had shared His life and ministry for so long. And to this special family, He said, “But here at this table, sitting among us as a friend, is the man who will betray me.” The betrayal by one so loved was especially devastating.

What does betrayal look like in our corner of the world today? Ask a woman whose husband left her for another woman and she’ll give you a clear definition of betrayal—but it won’t be with a smile on her face! I remember in my college years reconnecting with a family I had known well years before—a family from the church my dad had pastored when I was in elementary school. Theirs was a home I had spent a lot of time during those years. The dad, Dave, after multiple affairs across the years, finally left his family and married a woman the age of his oldest daughter. Then he proceeded to build a house next door to his family for him and his new wife to live in! When we visited with the wife and kids, they were all seething with the anger of having been betrayed!

We can feel betrayed by our spouse, our children, our extended family, or our friends. We can also experience betrayal in the context of our work—from our boss, our co-workers, or even our employees. I hate to mention this, but I’m also aware that there have been times when people have felt betrayed by their church. I think there’s a sense in which we can feel we’ve been betrayed by our politicians, by our “system,” and, perhaps more recently, by our banks and our other financial institutions. When the vast amount of your retirement fund has been washed down the toilet in an economy out of control, there’s a tendency to want to blame someone! It wasn’t supposed to be this way! We trusted those in authority over us! Betrayal was why there was so much outrage over the AIG corporate execs receiving billions of dollars in tax-payers’ financial bailout funds and then going ahead and apportioning millions of dollars in bonuses for themselves!

And let me clarify something here. We may feel betrayed by others even when we may not, in reality, have been betrayed by them. We may feel betrayed even in instances when others may genuinely feel they have not betrayed us. I recall a time when I felt betrayed by someone who worked for me—who also would have said he felt betrayed by me. While I did everything I could to avoid the person feeling that way about me, I will likely never be able to change their feelings about the matter. I also recall a situation where I very much felt betrayed by someone who had promised to stand by me in something—though the person contended later that they did nothing wrong by me. My point is that, in this matter of betrayal, our perception is our reality. Whether we’ve been betrayed or not isn’t likely the point—we’re going to have to come to grips with our response—to our feelings—of betrayal regardless of what the intentions of others were in reality.

Betrayal is when our presumptive understanding of trust or confidence in someone has been violated or broken. We thought we could trust someone—and we couldn’t! They let us down—and it suddenly changes everything in our relationship. We might think of the person or the organization as a traitor—and that’s what we feel they are!

Being betrayed carries with it tremendous emotional impact. Generally speaking, the greater the trust that you had placed in the other person, the greater will be the emotional impact upon you if you feel betrayed by them. And I don’t know that we can ignore our emotions at this point—we’ve got to own up to them and deal with them. We’ve got to be realistic about our emotions, and yet we can’t afford to “stay parked” on unhealthy emotions. With God’s help, we’ve got to work our way through them without allowing them to destroy us from within—and they will, if we let them! They can work like a cancer within us. The emotion most felt with betrayal is anger, though there may also be an accompanying fear of loss of the relationship and repulsion at the lack of integrity of the other person.

One of the other side-effects of betrayal is that it’s harder to trust again. And it not only makes it harder to trust that particular person or organization again, but our lack of trust is likely to carry over to others as well—who don’t deserve our prejudice of mistrust! The man whose wife left him for another man may conclude he could never trust another woman again! The person who felt “abused” by their church may feel they can never trust another church again!

Betrayal is such a personal thing—because it’s a violation of a relationship! There are those who have concluded that betrayal can only happen if you love—and there are those who, once betrayed, promise they’ll never love again and keep everyone at arm’s length. Because the reaction to betrayal can be so intense, it can almost destroy hope in our lives. The playwright Tennessee Williams concluded, “We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.” One of our early leaders in American democracy, William Penn, warned, “Only trust thyself, and another shall not betray thee.”

But I must tell you that I’d find that a terrible way to live! How can we ever build healthy, loving relationships with others if we refuse to trust! Perhaps a good question to ask ourselves is this: How would Jesus respond to the betrayal we’ve experienced? This leads to the question I put before you earlier: What can we learn from Christ to help us when we feel betrayed by others?

Shall we explore how it must have felt for Jesus to be betrayed by one who was so close to Him? If we look closely at Luke 22, we find that just before Judas arrived in the Garden of Gethsemane with those ready to arrest Jesus, Jesus was praying intensely through the long hours into the night. The disciples kept falling asleep on Him, indicating that it was getting later and later, encroaching into the hours during which they were normally asleep. But Jesus couldn’t sleep that night—and was a bit frustrated that His disciples couldn’t seem to stay awake in support of Him.

Jesus was overwhelmed with all kinds of feelings that night. We can only imagine what He was going through. And among the myriad of feelings, I’m guessing that there was anguish over Judas’ betrayal of Him. Surely Jesus felt anger when Judas barged into this solemn setting, leading the group of those pursuing Jesus—and the audacity of Judas to identify Jesus to them by the greeting customary between valued friends in their culture—a kiss! Can you imagine how Jesus felt when He said, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?”

I believe it’s important for us to embrace the reality that Jesus knows what it’s like for you and me to experience betrayal. And if we can accept that, then it’s valid for us to try to take our cues from what Jesus did and from what we believe He would have done.

I’ve been pondering a question this week that I invite you to ponder with me: If Judas had not taken his own life that night, would Jesus have restored Judas to fellowship just as He did with Peter—presuming that Judas was willing? Would Jesus have sought out Judas personally after the Resurrection just as He did Peter—who had denied Him three times—and as He did with Thomas—who doubted the reality of Christ’s Resurrection? Would Jesus have been as redemptive with Judas had Judas given Jesus a chance?

Think with me for a moment of the Last Supper scene itself. Luke tells us—

And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” (Luke 22:19-20)

Judas was among those gathered around that table. Was Jesus giving His own body up for even Judas? Was it for Judas that Christ poured out His blood? That’s what Jesus said to them! The new covenant in Christ’s blood carried with it the assurance of forgiveness. We are, as the old song indicated, “covered by the blood.” His sacrificial death paid the penalty for our sins and provided for a new covenant, a new relationship, with our Heavenly Father. So would Jesus have extended that opportunity to Judas, too, if Judas had given Jesus a chance?—if he hadn’t, in his despair, tragically taken his own life after Jesus was arrested?

When Jesus told His disciples that one of them would betray, He also said, “but woe to that man who betrays him” (vs 22). Was Jesus declaring a curse upon Judas? I don’t believe so. I believe Jesus was stating with a broken heart the terrible consequences Judas would bring on himself in the act of betrayal.

You see, it would have been absolutely inconsistent with Jesus’ character for Him not to have forgiven Judas—again, if Judas had given Jesus a chance to do so. If Jesus hadn’t done so, it would have violated His own commands. Do you remember what Jesus had declared in the Sermon on the Mount and various other times during His ministry?—

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. (Matthew 5:44)

Jesus taught us to pray,

“Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors”…for it you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. (Matthew 6:12, 14-15)

There’s a wonderful story about the cardinal of the Philippines, named, oddly enough, Cardinal Sin. When Cardinal Sin was a bishop, a young woman in his parish claimed that she had visions of Jesus. Bishop Sin was given the task of determining if these visions were authentic. He called her in for an interview, after which he made this request: “Daughter, the next time you see Jesus, would you ask Him what sin your bishop committed as a young priest and then come and tell me His answer.” She agreed. The bishop, aware that nobody knew his sin except himself, his confessor, and Jesus, felt this would be a valid test. Months later the young woman returned, reporting she had seen Jesus again. The bishop said, “Good. Did you ask Him about my sin?” She said, “Yes,” “What did He say?” “He said, ‘I’ve forgotten.’”

Would it have been any different for Judas? Of course not! I refuse to believe otherwise! Judas’ betrayal did not cause Christ to love him less. It was for sinners like Judas that He was about to give His life!

So, how are we to respond to those who betray us? Our calling and God’s command of us is to forgive those who sin against us—and is there any better description of betrayal? We must let go of our hurts and wounds, and refuse to nurse them in anger and resentment. Chances are, the deepest betrayals will demand an ongoing commitment to forgiveness—for, in our humanness, we often find it difficult to let go of such things all at once. Resentment and bitterness has a way of continuing to raise its ugly head, continually trying to draw us into its trap once again. My own experience is that it’s a day-by-day process, an ongoing entrusting to the Lord of our feelings and the situations with a refusal to give in to bitterness. The Lord knows that our hurts will consume us and destroy us, if we let them—and He is our greatest ally in our determination to let go of such wounds.

One way in which we’re helped in this process is to dare to remember the ways in which we, in our sin, have betrayed Christ ourselves. We might also remind ourselves of the ways in which we have surely left others feeling betrayed. We dare not be too smug in refusing to forgive those we feel have betrayed us. And in seeing all of this through Resurrection eyes, the disciples of Jesus were all too aware of their own guilt of jealousy, selfish ambitions, denial and defection from Christ. They were surely humbled in acknowledging their own failures—just as we might also be as we commit to resolving our own responses to those who have betrayed us.

So, how are we to deal with the sting of betrayal? As sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father, we are called to respond with forgiveness. Because our sins have also been forgiven, we are called to be part of God’s redemptive work in the lives of others. With the help of the Lord, we can learn to let go of our feelings of bitterness and resentment, trusting such things into the hands of the Lord. We can move on with our lives, set free from that which would destroy us from within. And, with the help of the Lord, we can learn to trust again, though perhaps more wisely and more discriminately. And as we do, we focus our energies in pouring out our lives for the sake of others, just as Jesus did. It’s the way not only to blessing others, but also the way to be truly blessed ourselves.

April 19, 2009 - Pastor Tim

THE ROAD TO SUCCESS

Luke 22:24-30

What a wonderful Resurrection Sunday we had last week! My thanks to all who helped make Easter such a grand day around here!

This morning, the Sunday afternoon Easter, I want to begin something I’ve never done before—that means that you’re all “guinea pigs” as we try something new! I’m going to begin a series of sermons I’m calling, “Looking at the Cross through Resurrection Eyes.” I’ve typically spent the Lenten season, the weeks prior to Easter, retracing the steps to the Cross through one of the four Gospel accounts—and that’s certainly appropriate as we try to grasp the significance of what Christ has done for us and to capture the breadth of the wonder of the Resurrection. As I was doing my sermon planning, I got to thinking about the early days of the Church—and how the Resurrection shaped who they became. And I began to think through the fact that all of the events leading up to the Cross suddenly took on new meaning once they were on the Resurrection side of things! Surely there was a lot of lively interaction after the Resurrection, bringing new meaning to all of what Jesus taught and lived in those final days.

I invite you to turn with me to Luke, chapter 22. The stage had already been set for what was about to happen. Judas had already agreed to the devious ploy of the betrayal. Jesus was gathered with His disciples in the Upper Room, and had just shared the Last Supper with them, instituting what we often call “communion” or “the Lord’s supper.” But did you realize that right after that most solemn moment, the disciples got into an argument? All things considered, their timing was terrible! Their behavior was shocking, to say the least. It was the last thing Jesus wanted to hear right then! It must have been all Jesus could do to keep from smacking them all upside the head, trying to knock some sense into them. But in His patient way, Jesus used it as an opportunity to teach them some extremely important things about His Kingdom.

Listen as I read—

[Read Luke 22:24-30, NIV]

God’s desire in His covenantal relationship with Israel, that we read about it in the Old Testament, was that while all the other nations had kings, God Himself was to be the King of Israel. As you may recall, the people weren’t happy with that, and whined and fussed about it until God finally gave in and gave them a king. And, all in all, the kingship of Israel proved to be a terrible disappointment. The nation split into two, divided by two men who were determined to be king. It wasn’t a pretty thing!

Then came Jesus—hailed by many as “the King of the Jews.” There are times when we refer to Him as “King Jesus,” or “Christ the King.” And Jesus Himself often spoke about His kingdom, though He always spoke of it in terms that contradicted the normal expectations of a kingdom. Jesus redefined a kingdom.

What do we think of when we think of a king?

• Power. Absolutely! Kings get what they want.
• Control. We think of authoritarian rule.
• Wealth. For some reason, I think of silver and gold.
• Extravagant living. The king can afford it, can’t he? And people expect it of a king.
• A throne and a crown—the center of attention, being in the place of greatest prominence.
• Servants. Kings were meant to be served. There were kings—and then there was everyone else.
• Honor, pomp and circumstance…grand entrances…everyone bowing down.

And was that the kind of king Jesus would ever be? Was that the kind of kingdom He aspired to have? Not in the least!

Matthew and Mark both record a similar scene and conversation to the one we just read from Luke’s Gospel. In Matthew and Mark, it took place just prior to what we know as His Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem. The mother of James and John had come to Him, asking if her two boys could be on either side of Jesus when He came into His kingdom. They were so much thinking about all the old paradigms of kings and kingdoms, that they couldn’t grasp the fact that Jesus had something all together different in mind—even though He’d been modeling it for them all along! He said her, “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

When the other disciples learned about James and John’s mother’s request, they were angry! They were probably lining up their moms to go talk with Jesus, too! But Jesus called them together then and said to them,

You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:25-28, NIV)

Luke tells us then about the same old argument popping up in the hours before Jesus was arrested, the eve of His death on a Roman cross. It was incredible that in such a time the disciples would be thinking of their own power and control and prestige and honor!

Would you like to understand more about Christ’s Kingdom? Do you want to know what Jesus’ kingship is all about? Can I answer it in a nutshell? If you want to know what Jesus’ kingship is all about, look at the Cross! If you want to know what kind of king Jesus was, look at the Cross! If you want to understand what His Kingdom is all about, look at the Cross!

What do I mean by that? Jesus’ Kingdom was not about power, control, wealth, extravagant living, a throne or a crown! The Kingdom of Jesus is about serving—and ultimately laying down our lives for others, loving so very much that we would do whatever we have to do for the sake of the well-being of others.

Jesus acknowledged that secular rulers or leaders “lord it over” others, but Jesus made it clear that this was not the way of His Kingdom—He wouldn’t do that and certainly didn’t want His followers doing it either. Years later, when Peter wrote his first letter to the church, he wrote instructions to the elders of the church, admonishing them to

Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, serving as overseers…not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock (1 Peter 5:2-3).

Jesus acknowledged that while others like to have titles bestowed on themselves, that’s not how it’s to be in His kingdom. He said, “But you are not to be like that.” The greatest is to be like the youngest—which, certainly in their culture, reflected subservience to the others. The person who rules is to be like the one who serves. In the social custom of the New Testament times, the person sitting at the dinner table certainly had a higher social standing than the person who was moving around the table, serving the food. And it’s hard for us to read this passage, thinking of the setting in which Jesus spoke these words, and not be reminded of what John’s Gospel tells us happened on that same evening, as Jesus got down on His hands and knees and went around the room, washing the feet of His disciples as a common servant would do.

Don’t you know that, after the Resurrection, the Disciples had to be shaking their heads in disbelief that they had ever talked and acted in such a way just a few days before? They must have felt so ashamed! Jesus had shown them “the full extent of His love” when He went to the Cross, and they had to have been humbled to the core that they had ever fussed over prominence within their own little circle. They had so terribly missed the point!

I saw the other day the most interesting challenge to our cultural icons. I’m honestly not much into the TV reality shows that are seeking out talent, but who seem to enjoy humiliating a lot of people along the way. But the eyes and ears of lots of people were taken back this week when a very plain 47-year-old, unemployed Scotswoman took the stage on Britain’s version of “America’s Got Talent”—called, appropriately, “Britain’s Got Talent.” The crowd and the judges were all set for a good laugh at her expense—just watch their body language at the outset. The table was clearly set for humiliation and defeat…until she began to sing…

[play Utube video of Susan Boyle]

Her voice was incredible! And the jeers and snickers quickly turned to acclaim, as she broke the expectation that to captivate the hearts of people with musical talent you must be stunningly beautiful and debonair. I frankly enjoyed the breakdown of the paradigm, and hope that it accomplishes far more than just a momentary shakeup. And maybe we can come alongside that shakeup this morning to allow the Holy Spirit to shake up our ideas and aspirations about what it means to be great. It’s not what we thought it was!

So, how are we going to respond? How’s this to be lived out in our lives—in a world that too often berates the seemingly not-so-shining-stars and lifts up others for all the wrong reasons?…that pays professional baseball players and movie divas millions of dollars every year but pays schoolteachers and police officers and helping professionals minimally? Despite the shining moment of a Susan Boyle, our world doesn’t generally applaud simple people! It doesn’t applaud servants! So how are we to live out the teachings of Jesus in our world? How are we going to pursue “success” and how are we going to redefine it?

Can I go back to the simple answer I gave you a few moments ago relating to what Jesus’ kingship is all about? Look at the Cross. How are we to live out the teachings of Jesus in our world? What’s it going to look like? What is success? What is greatness? Look at the Cross.

Jesus set aside His glory and any prominence people gave to Him, and embraced the Cross. That’s not what we expected from a King, is it? But, oh what an impact that King has had on our lives! He is the Resurrected King, Lord of our Lives—and He is with us still, everyday, empowering us to rise above the sin of this world and to live as part of His Kingdom! He invites us to greatness—but He redefines what that means!

So, how are we to live? We’re to serve. We’re to lay down our lives as Jesus did. We’re to give our lives for the sake of others. We’re to love—and love so deeply that we forget our preoccupation with ourselves and any selfish desires and self-centered ambitions. We’re to give no thought for how important we may seem to be in the eyes of others or what wonderful titles others might give to us. We are to, in effect, wash the feet of others.

No doubt, one of the great examples of such self-sacrificing service to others in our era was found in the person of the one known as Mother Teresa. At the ceremony for 11 new members of her order of nuns, the then frail and stooped Mother Teresa said,

Love, to be real, must cost. It must hurt. It must empty us of self. (Mother Teresa)

The disciples of Jesus in those days before His crucifixion were so easily distracted by their own aspirations to greatness. And we live in a world that presses us to do the same—every day! But Jesus said that greatness in His eyes isn’t marked by how long we live, how well-known or how popular we are, nor how rich we are at retirement. Jesus said that the measure of life is in our service—how we learned to give our lives away for others. George Truitt, a great Baptist preacher of generations ago, said—

It is not the talents one has that makes him great, however many and brilliant they may be; it is not the vast amount of study that gives mental enrichment to the mind and life; it is not in shining social qualities; it is not the large accumulation of wealth that secures peace and honor. In none of these measured by God’s standards does greatness reside. The true greatness consists in the use of all the talents one has in unselfish ministry to others. (George W. Truitt)

A lot of people have been helped by Alcoholics Anonymous. They speak of four paradoxes:

We surrender to win.

We give away to keep.

We suffer to get well.

We die to live.

Jesus, I believe, would add another: To lead, we serve…to be great, we take on the role of the servant. To be great in His Kingdom is not to sit at the most important table or demand the biggest office or the largest salary, and certainly not the most attention. To be great in the Kingdom of Jesus Christ is to learn to serve as He did and to love as He did…giving our lives for the sake of others.

How’s this going to look in the church? Can I answer that with a little story? It was published in Servant Magazine several years ago (Jan/Feb 1989), though I don’t know the name of the one who wrote it. He apparently was the pastor of a rather large church—perhaps with 5000 every Sunday. He tells of running into a woman at the grocery store who sought him out, wagged her finger at him, saying, “I left your church!” And she was more than glad to tell him why—“Because you weren’t meeting my needs.” He said, “I don’t ever recollect seeing you before, let alone talking to you, let alone knowing your needs. Did you ever tell anyone specifically what your needs were?” She couldn’t recall that she had, so he raised another question. “Can you tell me, if we have 5,000 people sitting in that church, all with your attitude, how anyone’s needs are going to be met? If you reserve the right to have that attitude, then you must give everybody the freedom to have that attitude. And if everybody has that attitude, who on earth is going to do all the need-meeting?” The woman didn’t back down, demanding still who would meet all the people’s needs. The pastor was quicker than I’d be while standing in the grocery store, and he simply said, “This is what will work: when people stop sitting in the pew saying, ‘They’re not meeting my needs’ and start saying, ‘Whose needs can I meet?’ Then needs will be met. When the servant spirit flourishes in a congregation, then they minister to each other as unto the Lord.’”

He was right on target, wasn’t he? And the same thing works in our homes and at our work and in the community. How many struggling marriages would be turned around if both husband and wife determined to meet the needs of the other? How many conflicts that you deal with at work would be resolved if you just set out to “wash the feet,” so to speak, of your co-workers?

And those who are truly great in the Kingdom of Heaven have somehow figured that out, and are following in the footsteps of Jesus, who loved so much that He willingly laid down His life for us. It was His mission in life, and according to the passage we read this morning, He’s given us a commission to do the same. He’s called us to be great in His Kingdom—which doesn’t correlate at all to how greatness is perceived in our world. He has redefined greatness!

Think with me a moment. Who do you know that you believe might be among the greatest in Christ’s Kingdom? Who in your life has best reflected the heart and spirit of Jesus Christ? It’s not always the people of great position or status! For you, it may have been a grandparent, or a Sunday School teacher when you were a kid, or a school teacher who took a special interest in you, or a next-door neighbor, or a youth worker, or the co-worker who lead you to Christ. Maybe it was your mom or dad. They are the people who loved you unconditionally, who took the commission of Christ seriously and poured out their lives for you. Along the road to success, they got it figured out—that Jesus had redefined “success”! He had redefined greatness!

Would you this morning ask the Lord to help you reassess what you’re pursuing? Would you ask Him if what you’re pursuing is really “greatness” in His eyes? Would you allow Him to help you redirect your pursuits and your aspirations—for His Kingdom’s sake?

April 5, 2009 - Pastor Tim

THE HOMECOMING OF GOD

Psalm 24

One of the hot topics in the church world today is “worship.” The church today longs for a renewal in worship—and yet we struggle to agree on just what “worship” is! I too have a deep desire to be an effective worshiper and to lead others into meaningful worship. I guess I’m saying that the struggle is a worthwhile struggle.

My frustration is that we too easily make the focus of “worship” that which satisfies the worshipper, neglecting the very heart of what worship is meant to be. It becomes consumer-oriented—as if the goal of the church is to make each of you “happy.” For what it’s worth, I believe our Heavenly Father must be terribly grieved that the topic of worship is something that has become so divisive in the Christian community today—and He must be terribly disappointed when He sees us divided over how we are best to worship Him. It simply goes to prove that the Enemy of our soul can take and twist and turn even that which is good and lofty in order to undermine Christ’s Church.

The Hebrew word for worship means literally “to bow down,” thus the Old Testament attitude and position of worship is that of a person subject to a reigning king. That’s why we read in Psalm 95:6—“Oh, come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.” To worship is to submit, to surrender (which, by the way, means that it doesn’t have anything to do with making us happy or being tailored to suit us!). When we come to worship the Lord, we come to surrender to Him.

There was a dear older man named Paul Hardy in our church in San Jose when our kids were all little. He was a prayer warrior and cared deeply about spiritually lost people. While other people tried to get our little ones to talk to them or to laugh or to perform some silly thing with them, Paul tried to teach them to “surrender”—with their hands held up in the air. He was such a man of prayer and such a godly man that it was his way to try to impress upon us all the essence of what worship is about—surrender!

The goal of worship is the entrance of “the King of glory.” As we call upon the Lord, as we submit to Him, we are inviting Him to be present in our midst with all His glory. And, unless and until that happens, something is terribly lacking. Our hearts will be satisfied with nothing less than Him. We anxiously await the grand entrance of our King of all glory!

I think grand entrances have a way of making an impression upon us. I was privileged to be part of the inauguration of our new president at Northwest Nazarene University a few weeks ago. There was a huge processional in academic regalia (caps and gowns and colorful doctoral hoods), as an orchestra played an appropriately regal number. The processional included the marching in of representatives of other universities, the Board of Trustees of NNU, and the faculty and administrators of NNU. Then finally was the entrance of the new president—as he strode down the long aisle by himself.

Every traditional wedding anticipates the grand entrance of the bride. Grandparents and parents of the bride and groom are escorted in. The long white aisle-runner is pulled out, creating the pathway for the entrance of the bride. The minister and the groom and his groomsmen enter and take their places at the front, where they immediately turn to watch the entrance of the others in this grand procession. The bridesmaids enter one by one. Then the ring-bearer and the flower girl come next—the ring-bearer carrying the ring that will be placed upon the finger of the bride and the flower girl spreading flower petals on the long white aisle-runner preparing it for the entrance of the bride. And then everything stands still for a moment as the bride comes to the doorway of the sanctuary and the music switches to the tune which signals the bride’s grand entrance. As she and her father begin their long walk down that aisle, the crowd stands to their feet in her honor. And all eyes are upon her as she makes her way to where her groom is anxiously awaiting her arrival. The bride has arrived! Now the ceremony can begin!

Today is Palm Sunday, and it is the Sunday in our Christian calendar when we remember Jesus’ grand entrance into the Holy City of Jerusalem. Have you ever thought of it as His grand entrance? That’s exactly what it was! As a king might do, He was riding on a young donkey. And as he went along, people spread their outer garments out on the pathway as a sort of aisle runner meant to honor the one who would walk on it. And as Jesus entered the city, His disciples and those in the crowd who had become enthralled with Him cried out with great joy, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

And for the astute, it was powerfully reflective of a word spoken by the Old Testament prophet Zechariah many years before when he wrote,

Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion!

Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem!

See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (Zechariah 9:9)

It was an amazing event! And those who were seeking God somehow sensed that God—their King—had come. He had just made His grand entrance!

Did you know that the huge, noisy crowd that flocked around Jesus that day was the only such crowd that Jesus didn’t run from? It was the most public hour of Jesus’ life! And did you know that while only two of the four Gospels tell the traditional Christmas story, all four Gospels seem to come to a crescendo with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem?! It was the one time that Jesus didn’t discourage or restrain the spontaneous and extravagant praise and gestures of the people. Jesus knew good and well that the accolades of praise were directed toward Him. He knew that the people recognized Him as God’s chosen Messiah, and yet He did nothing to hinder the all-out worship that was given Him that day. Jesus did nothing to tone down the adoration.

It was a day of great joy, and yet Luke’s Gospel tells us about Jesus weeping bitterly that day. It was a great reception for Jesus, and yet Jesus capped the day with an outburst of righteous indignation that stirred His enemies to form an alliance against Him. It was the day that ushered in the week in which Jesus was arrested and humiliated and beaten and executed on a Cross.

It was an event of great paradox—and even His followers failed to grasp its enormous significance. They didn’t get it! They weren’t connecting all the dots! It wouldn’t be until it was all over and they saw Jesus after the Resurrection that they would begin to understand—and we’re still trying to put all the pieces together in our own hearts and minds.

I want us to turn to what may seem on the surface to be an unlikely passage of Scripture for us to center on this morning. It is the 24th Psalm in the Old Testament. It is, by the way, a psalm of worship—and through it today we are being called upon to bow down and worship our Lord, the King of our lives. In its words is the cry for God to come, for heaven to open and the King, the most-desired One, to come.

Would you read it in unison with me this morning?

[Read in unison Psalm 24, NIV]

The first two verses settle the breadth of His Kingship—

[Re-read Psalm 24:1-2]

He is the Creator of all—thus He is King over all! To worship the Lord is not to deify animals or the land or any person—it is to worship the One Who created it all and Who put the world all into motion. He is the Creator! He alone is King!

And verse 3 interestingly turns to the worshippers. “Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?” I get a little amused and a little irritated when people speak about worship and perhaps a worship service when they reflect on how it made them feel—as if worship is designed to please the worshipper! In answering the questions of who is qualified to worship, the psalmist answers straightforwardly—

[Read Psalm 24:4-6]

The appearance of holiness in our lives is not enough, because we need not only “clean hands” but also “pure hearts.” Looking religious doesn’t cut it—we need to be pure within. Jesus made a promise to us once, saying, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). We must be holy to enter the holy presence of God in worship, but it is only because of Christ that this demand does not crush us. He Himself becomes our holiness, for He made peace with God for us through the shedding of His blood. It is through Jesus that we “have access by one Spirit to the Father” (Ephesians 2:18).

The worship of any other god disqualifies us as worshipers. The first commandment is clear, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). The temptation to worship idols is as strong for us as it was in ancient times, though it is not statues or figures that we worship. But we still have our own idols. They are abstract idols like “power,” or concrete idols like “money.” “Self” receives a lot of personal devotion today. And the Apostle warned us of times like this—

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. (2 Timothy 3:1-5)

Paul had just described the kind of idolatry we are so easily drawn into—and the psalmist (probably David himself) made it clear that the one who comes to worship the Lord must “not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false.”

While all are welcomed into our worship services, scripture is saying that true worship calls first and foremost for an attitude and mindset of the soul—a submission before the Lord God…a submission that is reflected in a single-hearted devotion to the Lord…a submission which reflects integrity of heart and mind and speech. These are the qualifications for worship. Holy people are welcome in the holy place before the holy God. The Good News for us is that by repentance, by faith in Jesus, and by the gift of the His Holy Spirit we are made holy and have access even into the ultimate holy place—heaven itself.

I love the latter verses of Psalm 24 that prepare us for the grand entrance of the Lord—and which certainly in ancient times pointed to the very scene which we remember today as the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into the Holy City of Jerusalem.

[Read Psalm 24:7-10]

We worship today the One who is “the Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.” Some of you may be put off by the military language, but scripture reminds us over and over that there is a battle going on—a spiritual battle—for the hearts and souls of people. There is a constant battle in the world between good and evil—and the Lord is strong and mighty, mighty in battle! God is not negotiating with evil or gradually curtailing it. All the way through the Bible there are indications that God is fighting a war with evil that He will ultimately win! The evil is really that bad. Because of our sin, we are utterly powerless to fend off evil, and we fall prey to it so easily. But God Himself has not left us to die as rebels and hostages of the Evil One! He has waged a long war. The cost has been unimaginably great—the very blood of the Son of God who was slain! But God has prevailed, and even today He completes His victory of liberation—freeing us from the bondages of sin. This mighty warrior King takes His rightful place in our lives and rightly becomes the object of our worship.

And that brings us to the Gospels and their accounts of Jesus’ grand entry into Jerusalem early in the week in which everything came to a climax—first in the crucifixion of Jesus and then in the His ultimate victory over death displayed in His Resurrection.

Someone has said that the last few verses of Psalm 24 constitute one of the most profound prayers of all the prayers in the Bible. It’s the prayer that the King would come! It’s a cry of heaven to open, for the-most-desired-One to come. And ultimately, this psalm gives us permission to hope. We are not left to make something of the existing things on hand. We are not left to merely cope. We are not left merely to imagine possibilities by which we might vaguely shape our future. Neither are we left empty of hope. We are to live with uplifted heads, crying out to God to make His grand entrance once again in our world and in our lives!

But it all seems surreal, doesn’t it? We’re mostly busy people, preoccupied with our own lives, consumed with both major and trivial problems that consume our hours. And yet each of us was created by God with what has been described as a “God-shaped vacuum” in our hearts—and we can try to fill it with created things all we want, but it won’t work! The only thing that satisfies it is the entrance of the One for whom it was made! We were designed with a desire for the Homecoming of God!

Like the ordinary people who gathered around Jesus on that first Palm Sunday, we find God drawing our hearts toward Him with a hope to see God come to us personally and ultimately to fill our whole earth with His glory. On this Palm Sunday, let’s embrace the hope that the long struggle with evil will someday be over. The staggering cumulative suffering in the world will come be resolved! The Lamb who was slain will have carried our sorrows and redeemed the lives which seemed so broken that no one could fix them…but He can! The glory of God will replace terror and grief and sin. Scripture tells us that He will tenderly dry our tears! And He will usher in a new world—a world of true glory, because He is the King of glory!

On this Palm Sunday, we hear again the cries of the crowd, saying, “Hosanna!”—which simply means “save, we pray!” It’s used as a cry of praise, but was originally more of a cry for help. In proclaiming “Hosanna” this morning, we proclaim that Christ’s victory is sure. We are welcoming the Lord once again with a whole-hearted sense of hope. And in our often dismal world, we need the hope that only God can give to us! In a world so consumed with sin and lust and greed and dishonesty, we need a hope that transcends it all and consumes us in the glory of Christ!

On this Palm Sunday, we boldly enter a holy rehearsal of Christ’s coming. He comes today into the hearts of people, freeing us from the guilt of sin and transforming our lives. But someday He will come again—and I believe it will be a grand entrance beyond anything we’ve ever seen before! And He will take His rightful place on the throne of the universe—and we will join the throngs of those worshipping Him.

Be encouraged on this Palm Sunday, my friend! May you experience the grand entrance of the Holy One as He steps into your life! Embrace the hope that is ours through Jesus Christ! His victory is sure! God is coming!

March 15, 2009 - Pastor Tim

THE WONDERFUL MESSAGE OF HOPE

Isaiah 61:1-4

We had a lot of my family gathered at our home last August—a rare opportunity for my parents to be together with all three of their sons and daughters-in-law and a few of their grandkids and even a couple of their great-grandkids. We had a marvelous time!

I specifically recall one of those warm August evenings we had together that are so pleasant here in Idaho—and we were scattered in the family room, kitchen and patio of our home, with dinner about ready to share. I think we had done hamburgers and hotdogs on the grill.

Sitting on the edge of the countertop in the kitchen was one of those big gallon glass containers so ideally suited for making sun tea—which Cindy had done. But just before dinner, one of my niece’s little boys made his way into the kitchen and wanted some more iced tea. Before any of us could intercept, little 3-year-old Ian had reached up to release some more iced tea into his cup, but, in doing so, caused the whole thing to come crashing to the kitchen floor. It shattered and seemingly exploded into a million pieces. We didn’t care about the glass container; we were just happy that Ian wasn’t hurt. The container could be replaced! A bunch of us quickly sprung into action trying to both soak up the iced tea and pick up the tiny pieces of glass without getting cut ourselves. We found glass probably 10-12 feet in all directions—I don’t know when I’ve seen something go into so many pieces!

As I was reading a passage of scripture this week, I got to thinking about people whose lives are in many ways like that shattered iced tea container—broken into lots of pieces. Their dreams are shattered. Their security has exploded into tiny bits—seemingly impossible to reconstruct. And I got to thinking about the amazing way in which God puts lives back together again—from shattered remains beyond repair. I’ve seen it over and over again—and I never cease to be amazed at how God redeems lives.

In the 61st chapter of the Old Testament book Isaiah, there’s a wonderful message of hope for broken people. Let me read the first four verses of this chapter to you this morning—

[Read Isaiah 61:1-4, NIV]

In these four verses, there are so many images and word-pictures of hope that we don’t have the time to unpack it all—but my prayer is that one of these images will resonate with you, and if there is any corner of your life that seems void of hope today, you will see the difference the Lord can make in your life and in your circumstances.

These verses present a picture of a man anointed by the Holy Spirit for the task of preaching—and his preaching was centered on the message of hope. His calling was to speak for the Lord, and in so doing, to bring good news to the poor, to bring healing to the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for captives and release for prisoners. The words “captive” and “prisoner” trigger in my mind images not just of those who are behind bars, but also those who are held captive by habits and addictions. I also think of those who feel they’ve been held captive by devastating experiences from their past—perhaps abuse for which they had no control and perhaps memories that prompt guilt and shame for choices and decisions they made in the past. The past can so haunt us that we are held captive by it—and God’s Word offers hope to those who feel there’s no hope for ever getting past some of this stuff.

The mention of proclaiming “the year of the Lord’s favor” was a clear reference to the Hebrew “Year of Jubilee”—every seven years when all debts were canceled and many slaves were set free. It’s such a great concept for us of a fresh start—something we sometimes feel we aren’t ever going to get, and something others don’t always offer to us. But if we quit believing that God can give people fresh starts, we’re all in trouble! Someone was telling me this week that there’s a direct connection here with U.S. guidelines for bankruptcy—for individuals can only file bankruptcy ever seven years. Interesting, isn’t it? And while these wouldn’t logically or theologically line up completely, there seems to be a connection—it’s the hope of a fresh start when life has gotten out of control.

Going on, there’s comfort for those who mourn—the crown of beauty instead of the ashes worn in a time of mourning in their culture. There’s the anointing of joy—the oil of gladness—instead of mourning—and the garments of praise instead of the spirit of despair. Lives once wrecked by sin—their own sin or even lives seemingly wrecked by the sins of others—will be transformed into “oaks of righteousness”, standing tall and strong in a way which once seemed impossible.

God rebuilds the ruins! Someone put it this way: God works with rejects! Jesus gave us many examples from which we can better understand this. He transformed a tax collector into a disciple, a prostitute into a saint, a skeptic into an apostle, a madman into a family man, and a thief into a friend. God restores the devastated places! He renews the ruined cities.

When Cindy and I were living in San Jose, California, where part of my responsibility in the church was overseeing our ministry to youth, we got acquainted with a teenager named Jim. It was after our district camp one year that a counselor from camp called me, telling me that he’d had a kid in his cabin who lived in our area but wasn’t attending church—and he thought that if someone provided transportation that this teen would love to be at our church.

Jim had been in and out of foster homes all of his life. His dad was non-existent, and each of the children in his family had a different biological father. Mom was in and out of prison. Early in his life, Jim had been placed in a Nazarene foster home, and while he eventually left them, they had stayed in touch with him and had paid for his way to church camp every year. (Could plug our camping program!)

And it was through the camp that we connected with Jim—and Cindy and I quickly fell in love with this guy. Our home became a sort of safe haven for him, since there wasn’t much attention and certainly no love in the foster home where he was assigned. When he graduated from high school, he was immediately out of the foster care system, and came to live with us until he started college in the fall at Point Loma Nazarene University. On breaks in that first couple of years, he came mostly to our home.

Jim came out of the remains of shattered lives—lives devastated by sin…and God rebuilt the ruins! He completely transformed Jim’s life. If there was ever a story of someone who broke the generational cycle of sin, it’s our friend Jim. By God’s grace, God restored the devastated places for Jim. He gave a crown of beauty instead of the ashes of mourning. He offered release from captivity in Jim’s young life. The generational patterns have been broken!

Today Jim is a Christian medical doctor in the Phoenix area, married to a wonderful Christian gal named Amy. They have three children, including a little girl adopted from Korea. Theirs is a wonderful Christian home. I’m so proud of Jim—and so grateful for the God who redeems lives!

Let’s go back to Isaiah 61. When I read the passage a few minutes ago, did it sound at all familiar to you? Perhaps you’re remembering it from Luke 4, where Jesus quoted this passage clearly identifying the speaker with Himself. The setting was early in Jesus’ ministry. He had returned from Galilee to Nazareth, the town where he had grown up.

…On the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me

to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to release the oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:16-21)

And the point is this: In Jesus Christ, God offers hope to every person. His love and care is good news to the poor! He brings freedom into our lives that we’d never have otherwise! He offers release for those oppressed, a fresh start to those whose lives have been wrecked by sin.

This hope changes everything! And we’re lost without it. Our lives are empty and pointless without such hope. And the Good News of the Gospel—the message He has called us to proclaim to one another and to others—is that not one of us has to be without that hope! God’s redemptive work is available to each one of us. And the hope that God speaks into our lives changes everything!

A few years ago I watched the movie, “Shawshank Redemption.” It’s a pretty intense movie, but permeated throughout the story is a message of hope. Near the end of the movie, the chief character addresses another man, saying, “Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

It’s such a stark contrast from the often dismal state of affairs in life. I know there’s some choice in all of this. Some people seemingly choose to live in the shadows of life—rarely choosing to step over into the sunshine. But the truth is that life’s messy—at least in some ways for us all! And hope paints a sharp contrast to the messiness of life!

I’m not sure if you would have caught it, but in the words from Isaiah is the contrast of the heaviness of a funeral to the joy of a wedding—“a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.” That sort of resonated with me because our family has suddenly gotten caught up in wedding plans—and on Monday afternoon of this week, I went from being with my family with wedding details being discussed with great joy and excitement to a hospital room where a friend of ours was dying. It was quite a contrast.

Weddings are joyful occasions—at least most of them are anyway! As a pastor, I often have the privilege of standing beside a groom and watching as that man’s radiant bride comes walking down the aisle to come alongside him. It can be an incredibly joyful moment! And it hit me last Sunday afternoon that I’m going to have the privilege of once again walking a daughter down the aisle at her wedding—and my eyes start leaking a little just thinking about it.

I had some apprehensions of how hard that would be when our daughter Kara got married nearly 3 years ago. Shortly after she and Josh became engaged, I attended a wedding where a good friend of mine was walking his daughter down the aisle. Suddenly, seeing him with his daughter, arm in arm, coming down the aisle, something inside me almost imploded. If I hadn’t known better, I might have thought I was having a heart attack. It was a moment of stark reality for me in realizing that I too was going to be giving a daughter away and that the moment was fraught with such a wide range of feelings. I saw the father of the bride after the wedding and said, “I hope you didn’t see me as you and Jessica were coming down the aisle. My response really had nothing to do with the two of you!” He graciously said, “Oh, yes, I saw you, but I understood immediately what you were experiencing!”

And yet, on the day of Kara and Josh’s wedding, when it came time for us to make that long walk down the aisle together, she was beaming with so much joy that she nor I had a thought of tears. I was caught up in her joy. She was ecstatic! If there was ever a radiant bride, it was Kara as she walked down the aisle to marry the man who had been her childhood sweetheart. She and I did great—until we got down to the front and saw tears streaming down Josh’s face and Kara’s twin sister as maid of honor blubbering away already. And it was pretty much downhill all the way then for the emotions—though I performed most of the wedding and came away feeling that for me I’d done pretty well—I never sobbed and never had snot on my upper lip!

So in August, I get to do it again. And already I’ve seen the joy in Krista’s eyes. It’s been so fun to see her in love! Someone said last Sunday that I needed to tell her to quit smiling—that her face was going to break from smiling so much! And I’m sure that when August rolls around and I’m about to walk her down the aisle, there will be a flood of emotions all over again, but I have a hunch that I’ll get caught up in her joy too—for there’s something about the joyful radiance of a bride on her wedding day!

Isaiah’s message of hope contrasts the widow in mourning with the radiant bride. You see, hope changes everything! God brings amazing transformations into our lives! He lifts us out of despair and puts us in a place of great joy—abundant peace, radiant gladness deep within! And the truth is that God offers such hope to every one of us!

Let me tell you a story I heard many years ago. It took place at an old apartment building in Russia—long before I first heard the story. The apartment house had a basement, and all the tenants had across the years taken their leftover “stuff” to the basement as so many do who have basements. And among all the boxes and unused items was an old harp, long before discarded as too broken to repair, and yet too valuable to throw away.

On a cold, snowy night, a homeless old man knocked on the door of that apartment building, pleading for some corner in which he might sleep. The apartment owner told him that all of their apartments were filled and that they had no more room. And then she looked out at the terrible snowstorm and blustery wind, and compassion came upon her as she looked upon the pitiful old man. “We have no room for you, but I guess I could clear out some space in the basement.” And so she emptied a corner in the basement and put some old blankets down as padding on the hard floor. And the old man was so grateful.

After several hours, the owner of that old, broken-down harp suddenly heard music in the basement. She rushed downstairs to find the old man playing the harp. “How did you repair my harp?” she asked. “I’ve never been able to find anybody who could fix it!”

The old man looked up and quietly responded, “Mam, when I was young, I made that harp. And when you make something, you know how to put it back together again.”

Your Heavenly Father knows all about broken hearts and shattered dreams. And God’s Good News to you today is that He—your Creator—knows how to mend broken hearts and shattered dreams. He made you—and He knows how to put you back together again! You can depend upon Him. You can trust Him! And the healing and release and freedom and comfort of the Lord is something each of us must first embrace ourselves—and yet we then get to share that wonderful news with others who so very much need to hear it.

Do you need a fresh dose of hope right now? Our Heavenly Father is the God of Hope, and He wants to address your specific need today…

March 8, 2009 - Pastor Tim

DO YOU KNOW THIS MISSING PERSON?

Luke 15:1-32

Have you ever lost your keys? Or your wallet? Or your wedding ring? Or your cell phone? Or maybe your child? (Maybe you’ve lost your mind!…I feel like I have some times!) How many have lost your cell phone and called the number to see if you could hear it ringing and find out where it is?

Have you ever lost the remote control to your TV? We did that a couple of years ago and looked everywhere we could think of before we bought a “one-remote-fits-all” replacement. I dug down into the couch, thinking it may have fallen down there, but we could never find it! It may have been as much as a year later that I noticed a strange bulge on the back of the couch and started doing some digging to find out what it was. Sure enough! It was the remote control!

Jesus talked about things getting lost. In fact, in the 15th chapter of Luke He describes three different things being lost. Listen as I read this passage—

[Read Luke 15:1-32, NIV]

You’ve probably already figured it out, but Jesus’ stories were really about people who were lost spiritually.

Jesus talked about how people who realize that something is lost go on a thorough, almost panicked search to find it—and how thrilled they are when the lost has been found! And that’s just how Jesus responds to people who are lost spiritually. He goes searching and searching—and when the lost person is finally found, there is great celebration! That’s what our Heavenly Father is all about: finding lost people. That’s what thrills Him. That’s what makes Him tick.

There are two basic ideas I want you to catch from this passage this morning. You might think of it as two sides of the same coin. The first thing I want you to catch is that the Lord loves YOU so much that if you were the only person lost, He would go searching for YOU! God loves YOU that much. And He throws a great party to celebrate when you accept Him into your life—when the lost has been found!

And the other side of the same coin is this: the Lord loves every lost person in that same way—and once we’ve accepted Jesus as our Savior, we are to be about the great search for others who also need Him. So one side of the coin reminds me to thank the Lord for loving me so much that He went searching for me; the other side reminds me to be part of His search for people who need to know Christ too. It may be one of our friends, it may be one of our family members, or the neighbor next door. Christ calls us to care about the lost, to love them, and to be part of His great search in reaching out to them.

Did you catch at the beginning of Luke 15 the reason why Jesus was telling these stories? Jesus was devoting attention to the “low-lifes” of His day. The tax collectors were consistently known to be manipulative, self-serving people who took money from others in a way that was both dishonest and unfair. Then there were with them others scripture simply clumped as “sinners”—which likely included prostitutes, thieves, pagans, outcasts from the Jewish faith and those who were generally immoral. They were intrigued with Jesus because He was kind to them and demonstrated that He really cared about them. But His association with these people had really stirred up the indignity of the Jewish religious leaders, who in their spiritual piety would not have had anything to do with such people! Jesus wanted both his little crowd of unlikely listeners as well as the pompous religious folk to understand how God felt about this group known to be sinners and why Jesus wasn’t afraid or ashamed to devote time and energy to them. And so He told these three little stories.

Jesus wanted it to be clear to us all: Regardless of what anyone else may think about you, God loves you! The religious leaders of Jesus’ day didn’t want to contaminate themselves by associating with ungodly people. But Jesus knew that they had it all wrong! God cares about people who need Him so desperately! He’s genuine about that! Jesus didn’t just give lip service to the idea of caring for ungodly people—He demonstrated it by the way He treated them whenever He was with them! And what Jesus was saying that day is still true today: regardless of what anyone else may think about you, God loves you!

Think with me for a moment about the common threads of all three of Jesus’ little stories. In each story something is lost—first a sheep, then a coin, then a son. In each case, the lost object is eventually found and the finding produces a lot of happy excitement! The sheep I suppose is innocently lost (it’s evidently just too ignorant to know the difference!), the coin is carelessly lost, and the son was willfully lost—but all lost nonetheless! The sheep is 1 of 100, the coin is 1 of 10, and the son 1 of 2. And yet, whether it was one of 100 or 10 or 2, the lost one was the one worthy of attention. The owner was grateful for that which wasn’t lost, but felt passionate about the one that was lost. That one needed his attention—and got it!

And even though there would have been those who might have concluded that the shepherd had 99 sheep and better stay with the 99 who were secure, or the woman should be grateful for her 9 coins that remained, or the father should be delighted that at least one of his sons was living right—that wasn’t how the story went! The shepherd, the woman and the father cared too much about that which was lost to be fully content with just that which was found. And that’s how God cares about those who are spiritually lost! The ending of each story tells us how God rejoices when a sinner finds forgiveness and is restored to the fellowship of His Heavenly Father.

So what does all of this have to do with us? There are people all around us every day who do not know the Savior. Sometimes their habits and their language and their lifestyles and their priorities disgust us—and we long to be in our comfort zone of people like ourselves who already have a relationship with the Lord. But that isn’t what Jesus felt was important! He cares too much about those who are spiritually lost to devote all of His attention to those who are found! According to these stories, God’s greatest concern at the moment are those who are lost! He’s grateful for those who are already at home, so to speak, with the family…but He can’t rest until all who will have been gathered in!

And I think that there are those who do not have a vibrant relationship with the Lord and who look at people who come to church all the time and are maybe highly involved in the ministries of the church and think: “God surely cares more about them than He does about me! I’m not religious. I know I’d have to change for God to accept me, and I’m still struggling with issues that are keeping me from being a good Christian. No, God surely loves religious people more than He loves me!”

Now, if that’s how you think God thinks, listen again to the truth of these stories! Regardless of what anyone else thinks about the matter, God loves you. It doesn’t matter what you think about yourself: God has determined that you are valuable enough to Him that He’s out searching for you—and He’ll keep seeking you because He loves you!

I believe it doesn’t matter if you even realize that you’re lost—God deeply cares about you and wants to find you!

Sheep, which the first vignette speaks of, are known to be fairly dumb animals. That’s why they need a shepherd, for they wander off and get themselves into trouble without even realizing it! The sheep that was lost probably didn’t even know that it was lost! And certainly the coin, inanimate object, didn’t know it had been misplaced! And if the lost animal or the lost coin were valuable enough to stop everything and go searching, surely a lost person is significant enough for God to go searching—and even to get others in on the search!

Joseph Stowell, former president of Moody Bible Institute, tells of the frightening day when something valuable to him got lost. His family was on their annual Christmas trek to Chicago. Each year they brought their family to spend time with Grandpa and Grandma and visit the museums. This time they decided to finish their Christmas shopping at the suburban Woodfield Mall. In the midst of all the fun and excitement, one of them noticed that little 3½-year-old Matthew was gone. Terror immediately struck them. They had heard all the horror stories: little children kidnapped in malls, rushed to a restroom, dressed in different clothes and altered hairstyles and then swiftly smuggled out, never to be seen again! The family split up, each taking an assigned location. Stowell’s was the parking lot. He describes himself frantically kicking through the newly fallen snow, calling out his son’s name at the top of his lungs, feeling like a fool, yet more concerned with his child’s safety than anything else.

Unsuccessful, Stowell trudged back to the agreed-upon meeting place. His wife Martie had not found Matthew, nor had Stowell’s mother. But then Stowell’s dad appeared, holding little Matthew by the hand. They were ecstatic! They became oblivious to everything else taking place in the mall, for they were caught up in rejoicing that their child had been found! He was safe! And he was with them!

Interesting enough, Matthew was not traumatized. He hadn’t been crying. To him, there had been no problem. When Stowell asked his father where he found Matthew, his father simply responded, “The candy store. You should have seen him. His eyes came just about as high as the candy counter. He held his little hands behind his back and moved his head back and forth, surveying all the luscious options.” Matthew didn’t look lost. He didn’t know he was lost. He was oblivious to the phenomenal danger he was in. And I suppose that we live in a candy-counter culture, where people who don’t look lost and don’t know they’re lost live for what they can have today—not comprehending how terribly lost they truly are!

I am often sadly amazed at the lack of spiritual realities known by people today. Some are so lost…and don’t even know it. There’s been such a distortion of truth that people are terribly confused—and don’t know it. They’ve been duped by humanistic teachings, by false doctrines, by the watering down of Biblical truth and a culture that is increasingly anti-Christian. People are so confused about what is right and what is wrong and how we can come to know God. Some interpretations of Christianity have scared them—and others have disgusted them. They have failed to see that Christianity is relevant to our lives today—and that indeed our response to Christ has eternal consequences. They’re rushing through their lives with no thought of eternity and no time for God. But then, they aren’t really sure Who God is or if He even exists and they certainly don’t know if God cares a hoot about them anyway!

And while I cannot prove to you today the existence of God—any more than I can prove to you that the stars in the sky truly exist—I can tell you that God personally cares about you and He cares about your need for salvation! You may not fully understand that you’re lost without Him, but if you are without Christ in your life, you are lost! You may not fully grasp what it means to be a Christian, but it does not change your need for salvation through Jesus Christ and through Him alone. He does care so very much about you. He created you—and He created you for fellowship with Him for all eternity…if you are willing. And if you do not know Him today, be assured that He’s on the search for you!

Another marvelous thing that leaps out to me from these three stories is that it doesn’t matter how far we’ve wandered away from Him—God mercifully cares and welcome us back into His fellowship with great joy! I’m reminded of the words sung by a Christian artist known simply as Carman—

It doesn’t matter who you are

It doesn’t matter where you’ve been

It doesn’t matter what the scar

It doesn’t matter what the sin

It doesn’t matter how you fell somewhere along the way

There is healing for your life today.

There’s a river that flows from the fountain of God

And it heals everything along the way

I have tasted and know that for every broken heart

There is healing in Jesus’ name.

It really doesn’t matter how far you’ve gone from God—in your actions or if only in your heart and mind! God mercifully loves you and is thrilled to welcome you back into His fellowship!

God is like the father who had two sons. The younger asked for the share of the property that would someday fall to him. The father conceded and the young man took his money and moved far away. There he squandered his newfound wealth in loose living. And when he hit rock bottom one day, trying just to survive by eating the slop with which the pigs were fed, he came to himself and thought how much better his father’s servants had it than this. He remembered what it was like back home.

So he decided to go back to his father. When they met, he quickly confessed, “Father, I have sinned against God and against you and I am not worthy to be called your son. So just make me one of your hired hands.” But the father hugged him, had new clothes brought to him, put new shoes on his feet, and announced to all that they were going to have a tremendous feast to celebrate that his son had come home! That’s how God responds when someone who’s lost is found!

I’m afraid that sometimes we too have to come to the end of our rope before we are willing to acknowledge how much we need the Lord. But when we do, God sees us coming toward him in the distance, and rushes out to welcome us with open arms. He’s been waiting all along for us to come back to Him, so anxious to see us leave our dreadful existence without Him and so anxious to have us back with Him.

And God is so anxious to forgive all of the sins of our past! He does not wish us to remember what He is willing to forget! One person said that God has a big eraser (Billy Zeoli). He is so anxious to put our sins behind us and help us move forward with Him into the future.

I remember reading a newspaper article a few years ago in the Kansas City Star about a prisoner who was up for parole after serving 13 years in the Kansas State prison system. Kenny Friburg shot a police officer in the face 13 years earlier. That police officer, Dave Moore, had become a police captain—and the article said that Dave Moore went to bat to try to secure Kenny Friburg’s release from prison.

Three years before that, Moore didn’t feel that way about Friburg. He didn’t want to see him released. But then Friburg wrote Moore a long letter describing his feelings, and the years of bitterness and loneliness. Friburg was just 23 years old when, already in some legal troubles, he was trying to flee the state in a stolen car. When Officer Moore pulled him over for failure to use a turn signal, Friburg panicked and used the gun in the seat beside him. He was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. In the letter he wrote Moore, Friburg said that in the 10 years he’d been in prison, not one person had ever come to visit him.

Officer Moore is a Christian. Actually, Moore is a part of a Nazarene church. He began to sense that God was telling him that he was to reach out to Friburg himself, and so he began to visit him in prison. Officer Dave Moore had the privilege of sharing his faith with Friburg, who eventually accepted Christ and became involved in a Bible study group. Moore’s church got involved in reaching out to Friburg too, and they committed themselves to helping Kenny Friburg make the adjustments to life outside prison whenever he is released. Moore is committed to sticking by the guy who shot him in the face! You see, Officer Moore learned that under all the tough-guy image and beyond all the sins of the past, Kenny Friburg is a person—and God cares about Kenny Friburg just as God cares about you and me.

That’s how God responds to all of us! Underneath all the sins and the rubbish and the stains and the scars of our lives, there is a real person that our Heavenly Father cares deeply about. And God loves each of us—no matter how far we’ve gone from Him. He is merciful in His response to us—and is so anxious to receive us back into His fellowship. He rejoices when those who need Him turn back to Him!

I was probably about two or three years old when our family went a few miles to Fostoria, Ohio to visit friends. My older brothers and I had gone outside to play, and wandered down the sidewalk a little. They decided to race their way back to our friends’ home and took off in a flash. But my little legs couldn’t keep up. I fell way behind and evidently was concentrating so much on my little jog that I didn’t see them end their race and go dashing into the house. I suddenly realized that I didn’t know which house to go into! This neighborhood was strange to me. The whole town was strange to me. I kept walking, hoping to see a house that looked familiar, but never did.

A kind mailman saw me wandering down the sidewalk crying and was immediately concerned for me. After asking me more questions than I could answer, he took me to his home nearby, called the police department, and he and his wife gave me something to eat while I waited. My family and our friends had already realized that I was missing and in their panic had called the police department. A kind police officer came to the mailman’s house where I was, gave me a ride in the police cruiser (which I thought was pretty cool!), and delivered me to grateful parents at the home of our friends.

I can only imagine now how I must have felt then—frightened, alone, confused. And yet I remember the excitement of seeing my parents again and how the desperate feelings of being lost were washed away by the relief of being found.

I remember realizing as a young child that I was spiritually lost and needed Jesus as my friend. And though I felt like I found Him, the truth is that He had been seeking me all along!

You may feel lost today—all alone as you face some hefty pressures in your little world: struggling relationships, work demands, financial obligations, and the whole matter of trying to live a life that has real purpose and meaning. The truth is that you need a Savior! And the Good News today is that God cares about you! It really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about you—God loves you. It doesn’t matter if you’ve realized before today that you’re lost or not—God’s known it all along and He loves you and has already provided for your salvation. And it doesn’t matter how far away from Him you’ve gone—God is merciful and joyfully welcomes you back into His fellowship.

March 1, 2009 - Pastor Tim

DOES REVIVAL EVER REALLY HAPPEN?

Psalm 85:1-13

When I was growing up, we religiously had what we called “revival services” in our church twice a year—services that were held every night for a week featuring the preaching of an “evangelist” who went from church to church holding revival services wherever he went. In years before my time, revival services might be scheduled for two or three weeks, and sometimes even go longer than that if things seemed to go especially well.

As a kid, I was glad we were down to one week!—but every night we were there! And since my dad was the pastor, we’d host the evangelist in our home and I remember that we’d always eat well that week at our house, even though I don’t know how my mom pulled it all off after teaching school all day long! Sometimes there were special services for the children every night before the main service, and there were special awards for the kids who memorized Bible verses and brought friends. Rev. Gene Clark was one of my favorites—and he’d give out a huge “Clark Bar” to the kid who did the best night by night! Rev. James Leonard was another personal favorite when I was a kid. He was part American Indian and would dress up in native costume for a picture with all the kids on the last night of the revival services.

And, surprisingly enough, people would come to those services in great numbers! The evangelists who came to preach tended to be more fiery and animated in their approach than most pastors. I’m not sure if most people could handle that kind of preaching week after week, but the evangelists seemed to be especially gifted in calling people to make spiritual decisions. And many people did make decisions to follow Christ in revival services. Others came to grips with pervasive issues in their lives that were keeping them from living a life of obedience to Christ. It was in revivals that some yielded the controls of their lives to Christ and sought to become fully-devoted followers of Jesus. It was in those settings that young people were sometimes called into a life of ministry.

Well, times have changed. As a pastor, I’ve still had some revival services in my churches in recent years, but our lives seem to be spread so thin that few people commit to come regularly to them. While it used to be that people outside the church would come for special revival services, it seems like culturally now we’re better able to encourage visitors to come when they have some idea of who’s going to be preaching and what they might expect. And we’ll likely have some revival services in days ahead, but when we do, I want to make sure we’re doing so intentionally and that our congregation is willing to buy into the purpose and the plan.

There are those who reflect cynically on revival services as times when the same people would come to the altar and get spiritual help, time after time. And I’ve watched that happen some, though I’m not willing to throw out the baby with the bath water. As a kid and as a teenager, I know I made more than my share of trips to the altar, but, in retrospect, I believe that God was keeping my heart tender, and the more I learned about what it meant to be a Christian, the more I saw how far I was from becoming what God wanted me to be and yet the more I yearned to become all He wants me to be!

This morning we’re beginning a series of sermons that’s going to lead us up to Easter, the day we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. (It will be a great day, and we’re already making plans for it and I hope you’ll invite others to worship with you on that morning!) But we have already now entered a period of time of preparation for that. In the Christian calendar it’s called “Lent.” It’s a season of prayer and fasting, preparing believers to enter into the events of Holy Week, the week before Easter, when we focus our attention on the sacrificial death of Christ on the Cross. And, as a church, I’ve been encouraging you to join with me in using a daily prayer guide during this time, and my sermons are going coincide during this Lent season with the themes presented in this prayer guide, matters about which many of us will be centering our prayers.

And at the heart of it all is the cry for the Lord to “revive” us—to revive His Church that we might be all that He wants us to be. Perhaps we’re learning that it’s even more than being what God wants us to be. At the heart of that is the yearning to be in close relationship with the Lord—not just “doing” what He wants, but “being” in fellowship with Him, and thus allowing Him to change us from the inside out.

This morning, as we turn to Psalm 85, I want ask you a question. Does revival ever really happen? Were the week-long and two-week-long revival services of the past for nothing? Is that the only means of achieving what God wants to accomplish in our hearts and in our lives? Is there a biblical precedence for “revival” happening in our lives?

Let’s consider the heart-cry of the psalmist found in the 85th psalm—

[Read Psalm 85:1-13, NIV]

As with any passage of Scripture, we always do well to first try to understand what the passage meant to its original audience. In Bible times, the collection of psalms was the closest thing the Jews had to a hymnbook. The book of Psalms is a collection of 150 songs, prayers and sacred readings that the Jews used in worship. Often we think of the psalms as “songs of praise,” but nearly half of the psalms qualify as complaints—songs or prayers of grief, disappointment, or urgent pleas for help. They’re “songs sung blue”—songs of lament. But even in complaining, most of the poets wrap up their complaints with expressions of trust in God. That would be true of Psalm 85.

What was happening was that the people were crying out to God for deliverance from adversity. Israel had experienced a great loss—perhaps a military defeat…we really don’t know. It appears this was written after they had returned from their captivity in Babylon, having already experienced the mercy of the Lord. But now some kind of national catastrophe had them pressed against the wall again—and they knew they needed God’s help. But they also had an assurance that God would help them.

The psalm seems to be broken down into four sections:

1. Remembering how God has acted in the past (vss 1-3). Their praise and thanksgiving to God reminded them of how He had worked in their behalf in the past:

“You showed favor to your land, O Lord; you restored the fortunes of Jacob. You forgave the iniquity of your people and covered all their sins. You set aside all your wrath and turned from your fierce anger.” It wasn’t a matter of what they had done to help themselves—it was all about what God had done for them already. And it was all about God’s grace.

2. Crying out for God to restore them again (vss 4-7) The beginning of verse 4 summarizes it well—“Restore us again, O God our Savior!” The psalmist is lamenting the recent problems that have deprived them from experiencing God’s blessing upon them. Verse 6 refers to the concept of “revival” as they cry out, “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?” It’s the cry, “Help us again, Lord!…just as you did in the past! Do it again, Lord!” In verse 7 is the heart-cry for God to once again show them His unfailing love. They were dying in some sort of spiritual desert, desperate now for God to show them again that He loves them.

Say what you will, but revival is about our need to experience again the presence of God. That would often happen in weeks of revival, as people would devote time and energy in seeking the heart of God and often hearing God speak to them in new and fresh ways. It also happens in retreat settings, and in week by week worship services, and in private times of waiting before the Lord. When we find ourselves in the thick of the battle of life, there is a real sense of need to experience—to feel, to be assured again—that God loves us with an unfailing love. And we throw ourselves on the mercy of God!

3. Anticipation of God’s deliverance (vs 8). Three words seem to say it all: He speaks peace. God promises peace to His people. He pours out His peace upon His people. And we should also note the warning found in verse 8—“but let them not return to folly.” In other words, “lead us not into temptation”…now that you’ve cleaned us up by your forgiveness, Lord, help us not go out and dive right back into the mud pit where we were!

4. Celebrating the Lord as our Source of Hope (vss 9-13) In some ways, verse 9 answers the question of verse 6. In verse 6 the psalmist raises the great heart-cry, “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?” And at verse 9 we read, “Surely his salvation is near those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land.” Revival is in God’s hands. This God of unfailing love is our only Hope—but He is our marvelous Hope and we can be confident in Him!

So…what are God’s truths for us today from this psalm? And, specifically, can we ever expect from God the kind of “revival” it speaks of? How can we experience more of God’s love and grace in our own lives—wherever we are on the journey right now?

I think the psalmist has done well to remind us to begin with recalling how God has worked in the past—and specifically how your life has been impacted by that! The real essence of revival is restoration—to be restored to a previous condition or relationship. We often thought of revivals as evangelistic opportunities—and they were, no doubt. But the concept of “revival” is actually more for the believer—who is needing to be called back to a relationship he/she once had with the Lord, to an intimacy once enjoyed that has now faded in its luster. But God was the One who forgave our sins. He’s the One who accepted us into His family. He’s the One who sent His Son to die for us, that our lives might be redeemed! He’s the One who did everything significant when we came to Him—and we do well to never forget that!

And then, like the psalmist, we need to call out to the Lord for His help now! Our hope is in the grace of God and in His unfailing love! We can’t accomplish it on our own, so we desperately need Him to meet us at our point of need! We need Him! We throw ourselves upon the mercy of God! And we’re forced to do this when our lives are in upheaval—and I believe our lives find themselves in upheaval sometimes by our own sin and yet sometimes by our obedience to the Lord and sometimes by circumstances absolutely out of our control.

May I unpack that thought for a moment? Clearly, sin wrecks lives. No doubt about it. And I could go all around this sanctuary this morning and, if we were open and honest with ourselves and with one another, each one of us have experienced the train wreck of sin—sin that has thrown our lives into absolute turmoil! Often in the Old Testament we read of the cry of the people for God to forgive them and to help them—they were experiencing the consequences of their disobedience to God and they had been humbled to the point of recognizing that only God could help them make their way out of the mess they had created. And the story’s not just an old story…it’s pretty current, isn’t it? You know it is!

But I also believe that there are times in life when we need the divine touch of God to “revive” us because we’ve become depleted in the battle—as we’ve remained obedient to the Lord. As I said last week, obedience to the Lord isn’t always easy. Think about Elijah in the Old Testament. In 1 Kings 18, Elijah is obedient to the Lord and God uses Elijah to demonstrate God’s sovereignty and His mighty power as Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. It was dramatic and powerful—no doubt about it! But when you turn to the next chapter, Elijah is hiding in defeat, physically, spiritually and emotionally exhausted and depleted from it all! And God responded to those needs and revived Elijah as only He could do!

I’ve also watched, across years of pastoring, as people have come to a point of desperate need for God’s personal touch of renewal and revival as they’ve dealt with circumstances of life which were absolutely beyond their control. They were depleted physically, emotionally and even spiritually as they had walked through weeks and months and sometimes years of brutal circumstances and heartaches…the burdens of life. And often they had nothing to do with what had taken place. And yet they cry out to the Lord, battle-weary, for Him to intervene, to revive them, to restore to them the joy of their salvation. And I believe that it’s absolutely appropriate for us to read Psalm 85 with applicable hope for renewal when we find ourselves in such circumstances.

Whatever our need for renewal, revival, and restoration, we need to hear the Word of the Lord to us today speaking peace upon our lives. “He speaks peace” to us—and it’s not just a one-time word of peace to His children. He speaks peace over and over again to us as we find ourselves buried beneath our own sins or buried beneath the cares of life. He speaks peace to His people!

I think that’s exactly what the hymn-writer had in mind when he wrote the words to an old hymn that reminds us of that wonderful peace—

Faraway in the depths of my spirit today

Rolls a melody sweeter than psalm.

In celestial-like frame it unceasingly falls

O’er my soul like an infinite calm.

Peace, peace, wonderful peace,

Coming down from the Father above.

Sweep over my spirit forever, I pray,

In fathomless billows of love.

He speaks peace to each of us—and it’s such a marvelous thing! Oh, how we need him to speak peace into each of our lives, over and over again!

And as the psalmist did in the last section of Psalm 85, we need to consider the hope that we can find in the Lord. In the thick of the battle, in his darkest night, the psalmist is held by a great vision: God’s mercy and His righteousness will triumph. There is hope in the Lord—and thus there is hope for the future!

In what may seem like strange ideas—like righteousness and peace kissing each other—some very key dimensions of God’s character are personified. God’s covenant love and His trustworthiness meet. His covenant faithfulness and His peace come together. He brings peace and wholeness to those who call upon Him…and, when it all boils down to it, such grace is available to each one of us as we call upon Him.

One of my favorite story-tellers was a man named Bob Benson—who wrote down many of those stories for us to remember now that he’s gone to be with the Lord. Let me share my favorite Bob Benson story with you in closing—

Do you remember when they had old-fashioned Sunday School picnics? I do. As I recall, it was back in the “olden days,” as my kids would say, back before they had air conditioning. They said, “We’ll all meet at Sycamore Lodge in Shelby Park at 4:30 on Saturday. You bring your supper and we’ll furnish the iced tea.”

But if you were like me, you came home at the last minute. When you got ready to pack your picnic, all you could find in the refrigerator was one dried-up piece of baloney and just enough mustard in the bottom of the jar so that you got it all over your knuckles trying to get to it. And just two slices of stale bread to go with it. So you made your baloney sandwich and wrapped it in an old brown bag and went to the picnic.

When it came time to eat, you sat at the end of a table and spread out your sandwich. But the folks who sat next to you brought a feast. The lady was a good cook and she had worked hard all day to get ready for the picnic. And she had fried chicken and baked beans and potato salad and homemade rolls and sliced tomatoes and pickles and olives and celery. And two big homemade chocolate pies to top it off. That’s what they spread out there next to you while you sat with your baloney sandwich.

But they said to you, “Why don’t we just put it all together?” “No, I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t even think of it,” you murmured in embarrassment, with one eye on the chicken. “Oh, come on, there’s plenty of chicken and plenty of pie and plenty of everything. And we just love baloney sandwiches. Let’s just put it all together.” And so you did and there you sat, eating like a king when you came like a pauper.

One day, it dawned on me that God had been saying just that sort of thing to me. “Why don’t you take what you have and what you are, and I will take what I have and what I am, and we’ll share it together.” I began to see that when I put what I had and was and am and hope to be with what He is, I had stumbled upon the bargain of a lifetime.

I get to thinking sometimes, thinking of me sharing with God. When I think of how little I bring, and how much he brings and invites me to share, I know that I should be shouting to the housetops, but I am so filled with awe and wonder that I can hardly speak. I know that I don’t have enough love or faith or grace or mercy or wisdom, but he does. He has all of those things in abundance and he says, “Let’s just put it all together.”

Consecration, denial, sacrifice, commitment, crosses were all kind of hard words to me, until I saw them in the light of sharing. It isn’t just a case of me kicking in what I have because God is the biggest kid in the neighborhood and he wants it all for himself. He is saying, “Everything that I possess is available to you. Everything that I am and can be to a person, I will be to you.”

When I think about it like that, it really amuses me to see somebody running along through life, hanging on to their dumb bag with that stale baloney sandwich in it saying, “God’s not going to get my sandwich! No sirree, this is mine!” Did you ever see anybody like that—so needy—just about half-starved to death, yet hanging on for dear life. It’s not that God needs your sandwich. The fact is, you need his chicken.

Well, go ahead, eat your baloney sandwich, as long as you can. But when you can’t stand it’s tastelessness or drabness any longer; when you get so tired of running your own life by yourself and doing it your way and figuring out all the answers with no one to help; when trying to accumulate, hold, grasp, and keep everything together in your own strength gets to be too big a load; when you begin to realize that by yourself you’re never going to be able to fulfill your dreams, I hope you’ll remember that it doesn’t have to be that way. You have been invited to something better, you know. You have been invited to share in the very being of God.

God’s got something better than what many of us are experiencing today. It’s time to give it up, to call upon Him, to confess our neediness for Him, to turn away from whatever baloney sandwich is proving to be second-best in our lives and embrace all of what He has for us. Does revival every really happen? Absolutely! And it begins when we realize how desperate we are for what only He can give!

February 22, 2009 - Pastor Tim

HIS GRACE IS ENOUGH…ALL THE TIME!

2 Corinthians 12:7-10

[Start with video clip, “Thriving”—2 minutes]

This morning is my last sermon in the series from 2 Corinthians—and, I must tell you, I’ve been looking forward to preaching on this passage of scripture. Words found in this text have come to be tremendously meaningful to me personally, and so I’ve been anxious to share with you how the Lord has spoken to me and continues to speak to me through these words.

You see, like the fallen tree, most of us understand what it is to have been knocked down in some way. The Apostle Paul understood that quite well, and, amazingly enough, he had come to find meaning even in his struggles. Turn with me to—

[Read 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, NIV]

If anyone tried to convince you that life is easy as a Christian, don’t believe them! Don’t get me wrong—it’s the best way to live! But we have no assurance that it will be easy.

Take Paul, for example. What he had written about in the 11th chapter of this letter to the Christians in Corinth makes it clear that his life of devotion to Jesus Christ was not a piece of cake. Listen to his words, beginning at verse 23—

[Read 2 Corinthians 11:23b-29]

My goodness! And yet clearly God had worked through Paul’s life in marvelous ways, for which he was so grateful. In the early part of chapter 12, Paul tells about a vision he had experienced 14 years earlier—early in his years as a disciple of Christ. It was evidently something that Paul had not spoken of publicly until this time—and something about which Paul was careful not to become spiritually proud. He actually tells about the vision in third person as though it had happened to someone else—but biblical scholars all agree that Paul was describing his own experience here. And even though he did not fully understand it himself, the one thing Paul was sure of was that he had been in the very presence of God.

And Paul had come to realize that this was not something about which to take personal pride, but rather that he needed to safeguard himself from allowing such pride in his own life. In fact, he recognized that to protect him from becoming proud, God had allowed Paul’s life to be inflicted with “a thorn in [his] flesh,” what Paul actually calls “a messenger of Satan, to torment [him].” Paul seemed to believe that the “thorn” was given to him to keep him from being excessively proud of the revelations he had received from God—and thus to keep him fully dependent upon the Lord. It wasn’t necessary for him to explain what the “thorn” was because either the Corinthians already knew or he felt it was not essential to the point he was making.

Of course, human curiosity has gotten the best of us throughout the years, and many have tried to speculate on what this “thorn” was! Most common has been the thought that it was some sort of physical problem, and scholars have suggested epilepsy, malaria, tuberculosis, or a serious vision problem. Others have felt that it was more spiritual in nature—possibly a nagging doubt or a persistent temptation. Still others believe it was his constant exposure to persecution or vicious criticism. But one thing is sure: we really don’t know what Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was! But, you know, if Paul had told us, Christians throughout the ages who lacked that particular problem would have tended to find Paul’s experience irrelevant. And as it is, countless believers have been able to identify with Paul’s reference to the thorn in his flesh.

Paul does tell us that he gave himself to earnest and repeated prayer that the thorn would be taken from him. But instead of removing “the thorn,” God gave Paul the reassurance of His grace and the reminder that His strength—the strength of the Lord—was “made perfect in weakness.” Paul never came to feel that the thorn in itself was a good thing, for he considered it “a messenger of Satan.” But he did come to the place in his life where he could see how God’s grace could transform what was bad into something good in his life.

That was the very principle Paul stated in Romans 8:28—

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

He wasn’t saying that everything that happens in our life is good. Lots of bad things happen to good people! And he wasn’t saying that everything that happened was necessarily what God had purposefully willed to happen. But out of experience Paul learned that God can take our weaknesses and use them to demonstrate His power. Paul affirmed that there is nothing that can happen to one of God’s children that, if we turn to Him with it, He cannot take and use for good in our lives. God clearly does not build a wall around us to isolate us from the risk of harm, but He does surround us with a grace that enables us to transform anything that happens to us…just like that tree thriving though lying on its side.

The Lord’s words to Paul have had great meaning to many Christians throughout the ages—

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

And it was just over seven years ago that the Lord wrote those words on my heart and life, with a promise of grace and strength that would clearly come from Him.

At the time I had been serving a congregation in Northern Ohio for over nearly 11 years. I loved the people of that church deeply, and I believe they loved me too. Our first couple of years there had been challenging because of strife that existed before we arrived, but our years there had been marked with significant growth in the church and a new and fresh spiritual vibrancy that had clearly been the work of the Holy Spirit. Our kids grew up in that church—and we loved the people even more for loving our kids as they did.

But by the fall of 2001, I had a clear sense that God was preparing me for transition. It had been a growing awareness over a couple of years—an unsettledness that I had concluded was from the Lord. The church had just completed a $2 million expansion project, purchasing additional houses around us and putting a whole new front to the church. It was an exciting time for the church—and a good time in most every way. All was going well…but within me I knew that God was preparing me for change.

Within those last couple of years, I had turned down multiple opportunities to interview at other churches. For one reason or another, I never sensed God’s nudging that any of them were right. But early in the fall of 2001, I sensed God was telling me that I was not to turn down any more interviews. It wasn’t that I heard His voice declaring this to me, but there was an inner sense that this was His prompting, and it was sustained across weeks and months.

One Thursday afternoon I was scurrying around the office to get things done so that I could pick up my daughter Kara from school and head with her to Olivet Nazarene University on a college-scouting trip. Our twin daughters were in their senior year of high school and trying to make decisions regarding where they were going to go to college. I think this was the last of four college visits I was to make with one of the two girls in a six-week time period. As I was scurrying around, I got buzzed from one of our secretaries that I had a phone call. Would I take it? It was from some man named Keith Wright.

I knew Keith Wright. It was the District Superintendent of the Kansas City District. He had called me about a church or two in the past, and I assumed that perhaps he was calling me about another church. I liked the guy and had always felt that he’d be a good District Superintendent. As we began to talk, I could tell that he was indeed calling about a church, but I had no clue what church he was calling about. When he told me that he was working with Kansas City First Church in their search for a pastor and asked if I’d be willing to be considered, I was absolutely floored. Honestly, I was probably trembling. The pastor of Kansas City First Church had just a few months before been elected as one of our new General Superintendents in the denomination. I was there when it happened. I knew that KC First Church was open, but it never crossed my mind that Keith Wright was calling me about that church.

We talked about a half hour, and when I emerged from my office to the secretary’s office that Cindy then shared with the secretary who had taken the phone call, Cindy immediately wanted to know what Keith Wright was calling me about. She had heard the other secretary trying to screen Keith Wright’s call as if he were a pesky salesman, but Cindy knew who he who too.

Now one thing you need to know about Cindy is that she doesn’t like change. I’m not sure she’s ever felt the Lord preparing her for a transition—for she’d probably rather take a personal beating than make a move. It’s torturous for her! But when I told her that the call was about Kansas City First Church, there was almost a look of panic in her eyes.

What was the big deal about Kansas City First Church? Kansas City is the location of denominational headquarters—now called our Global Ministry Center. It’s also where Nazarene Publishing House is located—the publishers of our curriculum and the largest printer of books in the Wesleyan holiness movement. Our seminary, Nazarene Theological Seminary, is located in Kansas City, as well as one of our universities, MidAmerica Nazarene University. Simply put, it’s the “Mecca” of our denomination, and Kansas City First Church has historically been considered by many “the mother church.”

Oh, it hasn’t really been that for a few decades now, but many there still think it is! It’s a place where many of our denominational leaders as well as our seminary community worship. From one Sunday to the next you never know who will walk through those doors! And it’s the kind of church that most sane pastors would not aspire to pastor—because of the spotlight and the pressures that go with it. It was certainly not the kind of church I wanted to pastor!

But I had heard what I had concluded was a clear word from the Lord—that I was not to turn down any interviews from that point on. And so when Keith Wright asked if I was willing to be considered, I said something like, “Normally I would tell you that I need some time to pray about it, but I’ve recently concluded that the Lord was telling me that I was to turn down no interviews, and so, in an act of obedience to the Lord, I need to tell you that I am willing for them to consider me in their search for a pastor.” He explained that I was on a shortlist of three, but honestly, I felt it very unlikely that they would end up choosing me—though I was certainly unnerved by the whole conversation! He explained that he would be meeting with them again in a few weeks and that he would keep me posted of what was happening.

One week to the day later, I got another phone call from Keith Wright. They had narrowed their search to me and wanted us to come for an interview. While he had wanted us to come in about two weeks, I couldn’t be gone at that time, so we settled on a date three weeks out. A few minutes later the phone rang again, and he asked if there was any chance we could come out the following week—which would mean flying out in four days. I turned to Cindy as she began to sob (I told you she didn’t like change!)…she wasn’t much help in that moment! We got on a plane headed for Kansas City four days later.

It was all such a whirlwind—with only about 3½ weeks time from the initial telephone call to the day the congregation elected me to become their new pastor. Word seemed to spread quickly, even during the process—and it was something about which many had strong opinions. Some saw it as a great “promotion” for me…but I wasn’t looking for a promotion. As far as I’m concerned, that’s not how ministry works. The view of others was best expressed by a pastor friend who said candidly, “You’re an idiot! What do you think you’re doing?!” And honestly, I was scared to death—as was Cindy. I didn’t consider myself the kind of pastor that church would want…but it seemed to be happening anyway.

And early on a Sunday morning during that process in the privacy of my office at the church in Bedford, I began to once again pour my heart out to the Lord, seeking His guidance and direction in this matter. And acknowledging the vast array of opinions and perspectives about the matter, I vividly remember asking the Lord, “What do You make of this?” And immediately the words came to me,

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

It was as if God was saying to me, “Okay, let’s just get this settled right now. You’re not adequate for this task…but I am. And if I open the door for you to pastor that church, I will go with you and help you to be all that I need you to be.”

We began the second Sunday in January, 2002. The installation service was dramatic—feeling almost like a coronation! Several of my predecessors and wives were present—several of which have distinguished themselves as leaders in our denomination. The church was packed. And in my first message to that crowd I held up the program put together for that day which contained the list of former pastors of that church. I told them that I had just seen that list for the first time—and it was like reading from the pages of our denominational history. I said, “I know that my name will never rightfully belong on the same list as these great men, but, in God’s providence, I also believe that He has led us here.”

Our six years in Kansas City were the most challenging years of our ministry. There was never any honeymoon! Some of the most marvelous people I have ever known are in that congregation—but all-in-all, it’s the most difficult pastorate we have ever encountered. I often felt like such a misfit—and in confessing that to a fellow pastor, he said, “You probably are…and that’s probably why the Lord has you there.” And I believe God did have us there for a purpose.

I guess I never felt I had the “aura” about me that one might expect for such a leadership position. I’m not tall enough! I’m not scholarly or dignified enough! I recall meeting one of the pastors on the district for the first time. We were hosting at our church an event for the district pastors. He asked what church I was from, and I told him. Then he asked, “Are the associate pastor?” And I said, “No, I’m the senior pastor.” His eyes got big in amazement, “You’re the senior pastor here?!” To which I said, “It’s okay. I was as surprised as anyone else!”

But throughout the six years, God kept reminding me of His word to me early in the process of going there—

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

God’s promise sustained me. I wasn’t adequate for the job…but He was! And what I came to experience over those years was the depth of grace God pours over us when we are obedient to Him despite our own inadequacies! When we get humbled by our own inadequacies—by our weakness, we’re forced to “get out of the way” and let God do in our lives and in the lives of others what only He is capable of doing! His strength is made perfect in our weakness! And sometimes our obedience to the Lord forces us into situations where our inadequacies are all too obvious…and that’s when He steps in to do what we humanly are incapable of pulling off. And over and over again, in our six years in Kansas City, that was what we experienced.

It forced me to a greater dependence upon the Lord than ever before and a deeper trust in Him. And you know what? He was faithful! That’s just Who He is! He is faithful God! He can’t be anything less than that! His grace was more than sufficient! His power was made evident in my weakness! And He was faithful to do what He said He would do.

Why have I bothered to tell you this story today? Because the very same God will put you in situations that are bigger than you, too. Just this week I talked with several people who find themselves in over their heads in life. They’re facing circumstances that they never would have chosen! And God’s Word speaks powerfully to us in just such moments in life—

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

He is Faithful God! He’s not going to leave you stranded! You can depend upon Him! You can lean hard on Him—and He won’t let you down!

You may feel like that fallen tree in the video. You may not understand why you’ve gone through all that you have. It may be all too overwhelming! But as long as you stay grounded in your faith, in your dependence upon the Lord, you can still flourish—just like that tree that was still sprouting leaves. The truth is that the Lord uses the most difficult experiences of our lives to mold and to shape our character to make us more and more like Him—and He will do that in your life too if you will simply lean on Him.

February 15, 2009 - Pastor Tim

WHAT JESUS ARE YOU FOLLOWING?

2 Corinthians 11:1-15

We got a check in the mail the other day for $10.00. It was addressed to Cindy, and she opened it and left it on the kitchen counter. It looked to me like a rebate check of some sort, so when I was getting ready to deposit another check, I glanced at the letter which this check came attached to and picked up the check with the intention of depositing it too. Cindy called me after I’d left the house that morning and asked if I’d taken the check. She’d read the letter which it came with and realized that if you cash that check, you’re opening a charge account with this company. It wasn’t a rebate check at all! It was a clever ploy to get people to start another charge account—and to pay their annual fee to do so! And in my haste, I almost fell for it!

The Apostle Paul was detecting that the same thing was happening to the Christians in the church in Corinth—but it wasn’t credit card companies that were deceiving them, it was what he called “false prophets, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ.” Let me read from chapter 11 to you this morning—

[Read 2 Corinthians 11:1-6, 12-15, NIV]

Paul spoke so directly with the Christians in Corinth because Paul cared about these people as a father cares about his children—which, in some ways, was what they were to Paul because he was the one who had first taken the Gospel to them! Just as the snake had seduced Eve in the Garden of Eden, Paul feared that they were being sucked into the lies and distortions propagated by those passing themselves off as reputable teachers in the Christian life. And the result was that these Christians in Corinth were being lured away from the simple purity of their love for Jesus Christ.

But what they were happily falling for were all lies! It was as if it was a completely different “Jesus” that was being preached and taught and sought after—and they were falling for it! Those teachers were posing as Christ’s agents but were total shams—and it’s no wonder! Satan does it all the time! Satan dresses up as a beautiful angel of light! So it shouldn’t surprise us when his servants masquerade as servants of God.

While Paul had firmly stated that self-praise was worthless, he evidently felt that in this case it was what he had to do in order to get the attention of the converts in Corinth who were vulnerable to whatever teachers came their way claiming to have a word from God. He had to get their attention! In some ways, what we have here is Paul sharing in God’s divine jealousy. God will not share our devotion with anyone or anything. In that sense, He’s a “jealous” God. And Paul had a father’s passionate concern for the exclusive and pure devotion to Christ in the lives of his spiritual children.

He could see what was happening to them, and was so fearful that their hearts and minds would be corrupted and they would lose their single-minded faithfulness to Christ. His words, “I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy,” picks up an analogy that Hosea used in the Old Testament. We’re reminded here that faithfulness to Christ needs to be like that of a husband and wife to each other. And while we can’t discern from scripture the specific content of these false teachings, what is clear is that there was a gullible willingness on the part of the Corinthian Christians to listen to the eloquent preachers of an adulterated gospel. The “Jesus” these false teachers were proclaiming wasn’t the same Jesus that they had come to know and love and serve under Paul’s discipling ministry.

These wandering preachers had apparently received some financial remuneration for their teaching—and they had encouraged it, as they regarded themselves as apostles. They had felt it was their right to accept or even to demand appropriate wages for their work—and this had become the validation then of the authenticity of what they were doing. Paul, on the other, had refused financial support from those to whom he was currently ministering, and he was hoping that his financial independence would highlight a difference between him and those he called “false prophets” and prompt the Corinthians to rethink their attitude toward him—and recognize that he was genuinely concerned for them!

Turn again to Paul’s words in verses 13-15—

For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. (2 Corinthians 11:13-15a)

My thought today, in reading and studying this throughout the week, is that every generation must deal with its own “false prophets”—those who come with their own version of Christianity or religion. And what’s so absolutely confusing to many sincere church folk is that propagators of a false gospel can sound so spiritual and so sure of themselves, so that without even being aware of what’s happening we’re taken in! The sad truth is that people can easily be manipulated to meet the ego needs of a leader—and it can happen about anywhere! God’s Word to us today is a warning not to be gullible Christians!

How are we taken in today? I want us to first of all consider the danger of that which is cloaked as “Christianity” but isn’t. I’m not talking about a matter of theological fine tuning and the little differences we might have between one church and another. I’m talking here about those that define themselves as “Christian” but, when lined up alongside the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Holy Scriptures, clearly aren’t “Christian” at all.

I’ve enjoyed the Wednesday evening Men’s Class that Phil Weeks and I lead (you’re invited…). The book we’ve been going through is written by Patrick Morley, entitled Seven Seasons of the Man in the Mirror. Early in the book he tells of his own journey, a spiritual journey in which he was caught for a long time in what he calls “cultural Christianity.” His initial commitment was to what he calls “the God I wanted”—and he eventually came to be committed to “the God Who is.” And it seems that a lot of people are happily serving the God we want—and there are a lot of false prophets out there teaching that kind of religion.

Looking back, Patrick Morley would tell you that he simply added Jesus to his life—as another interest in an already busy and otherwise overcrowded schedule. He calls it “the gospel of addition.” He had accepted Christ into his life, but he still wanted to run his own life. He tried to blend together what he saw as the best of two worlds—success in the material world and salvation in the spiritual kingdom. The technical term for this is “syncretism.” It’s the attempt or tendency to combine differing philosophies or religious beliefs. It’s probably at the heart of all false prophets.

People who are trying to approach Christianity in this way pick and choose scripture as it affirms what they’ve already concluded. So when they see a verse in the Bible that agrees with their overall philosophy of life, they underline it and may even memorize it. But when they come across scripture that challenges their way of thinking, they simply pull out a large mental eraser and smudge that verse right out of their minds.

Cultural Christianity is first and foremost committed to building kingdoms of our own. God becomes a means to the end. In cultural Christianity, the devotion is to what we want in life, rather than what God wants for our lives. We call upon the Lord, but our thought of God is “more or less a cosmic genie to help fulfill [our] dreams.” Cultural Christianity is to seek the God or gods we want and not the God Who is.

The problem is that Cultural Christianity doesn’t lead us to Jesus Christ. It leads us to “another Jesus,” so to speak. And all of the blessings of fellowship with God and a life of truly living and life eternal aren’t experienced because we never seemed to find the Jesus that really is.

And you can find churches out there who are teaching “cultural Christianity”! I sometimes call it “Christian Lite.” And these churches and pastors may even have a tremendous following because it’s what we in our humanity want to hear, even though they’re failing to say all of what Scripture says. You see, that’s the problem—when we pick and choose Scripture. There’s no doubt at all that God’s grace and love are primary themes of Scripture—particularly the New Testament. And aren’t we glad for that?! But if we’re preaching and teaching that and failing to come alongside that with an understanding of God’s judgment and His “jealousy” for our devotion and His holiness that will not tolerate sin, then we’re listening to a watered-down gospel.

On the other hand, some of you may feel like all you ever heard in your early years was God’s judgment and His punishment for sinners. Even good intentioned people became false prophets who made the whole basis of Christianity a legalistic system. “If you do that, you’re going to hell!” It neglects the Gospel of God’s love and mercy—and, interestingly enough, it cultivated “false prophets” who were critical, negative and judgmental with others—so different from what Jesus taught us to be. And such people have done more damage in “holiness” churches than they can ever fathom.

The “Christian Lite” Gospel demands nothing of us—and we know that’s not the Gospel Jesus taught. Jesus called people to leave behind anything that would distract our devotion to Him. He’s the One who said, “You cannot serve two masters.” And then more specifically nailed us at the point where many of us try to go—“You cannot serve both God and Money.” Ouch! Funny, isn’t it, that Son of God would somehow understand that money is what seems to trip up so many people. We can’t just “add” Jesus to our already busy lives and overcrowded schedules. He calls us to something deeper…something more significant…something more life-changing. He calls us to absolute devotion to Him and to His ways—a life that puts Christ first in all we do and then is willing to trust the Lord to take care of all the things that we might otherwise conclude are our primary issues in life.

I get concerned about how fickle Christians can be. And we’ve been that way throughout the ages! The Church has always had to deal correctively with all sorts of distortions of Biblical teachings! And I’ve watched it happen in my lifetime!

It seems to me that there was a dominance of teaching on the Second Coming of Jesus back in the 1960’s. I suppose it was a reflection of where we were as a society. Now please understand, I believe in the Second Coming of Jesus. I believe that, as Scripture tells us, He’s going to return some day and that everything as we know it in this world is going to come to a screeching halt. I don’t pretend to understand all the specifics of what will happen when and in what order—and I don’t believe Scripture makes that incredibly clear to us, so I have to assume that God doesn’t intend for us to know all the details—just that Christ will return and that we are to be ready to meet Him. But there was such an emphasis on such things a few decades ago that people were getting saved as a form of fire insurance! Preachers were scaring people into salvation! And some false prophets were even foolish enough to declare the time table of Christ’s return—which Scripture tells us none of us will know!

And then a man named Jim Baker caught the attention and the wallets of many in the Christian community back in the 70’s. Much of what he said was true, but he wasn’t living it himself. He got caught up in greed and he and his wife promoted a gospel of prosperity—that God wants to prosper us all. Well, of course, such a gospel sounds good! For the Bakers, it was their justification of an extravagant lifestyle. And it all eventually came crashing down, with Jim Baker spending years in prison. I stood behind him in a line at Branson, Missouri and few years ago and kept thinking, “I should know who this is!” It hit me after we had gone our separate directions. He was a false prophet who was brought to his knees in what I believe ended up being a true repentance.

Today many have become enamored with anything relating to “the emerging church.” Much of it is in reaction to ways in which the church has drifted from what Christ intended for us to be, and in that way it’s certainly legitimate. But in many respects it reflects too broad of a pendulum swing—and it is foolish for any of us to fully buy into authors and teachers simply because they’re part of “the emerging church” movement. Actually, they get a number of things right, including their challenge to evangelicals to be of some earthly good—the idea that how we live and what we do for people is important. The striving for authenticity is admirable. But it seems that too easily that leads to a “what can I do for God” mentality as opposed to a gospel-focus on the atoning work that Christ did for me on the cross. I’ll tell that you I’m afraid of how the emerging church movement too easily is guilty of having a low view of Scripture, minimizing the authority of the Word and removing the trustworthiness of God’s Word to us and shying away from any concept of “absolute truth.” I fear how many are taking it to minimize the need for people of all ages to make a clear-cut, all-out decision to follow Jesus. And when we’re reading emerging church leaders and listening to them, we need to listen with discernment because not everything that’s coming out in the name of “emerging church” comes from an accurate or a balanced view of Scripture. I’m certainly not calling them all false teachers, but neither can I embrace all of what they’re telling us. All I’m saying, friends, is that we can’t trust everything we read in every book that’s supposedly written by a Christian author.

Now, let me come at Paul’s thoughts from a little different angle. We’ve been talking about the dangers of following the teachings of those cloaked as “Christianity.” But I don’t think we’d be true to the passage in our world today if we didn’t also consider the dangers of that which is cloaked as “compatible” with Christianity. There are lots of celebrities and icons out there that Christians are listening to every day! Does the name “Oprah Winfrey” come to your mind? How about Dr. Phil? And the on-going mantra of these and other celebrities who get a listening is that there’s something good to be learned from all religions. It’s exactly what I was talking about in the context of “cultural Christianity” a few minutes ago—syncretism. It’s the attempt or tendency to combine differing philosophical or religious beliefs. And it’s very much a part of the culture in which we live.

It’s often propagated in the name of “tolerance”—what some see as the new 11th Commandment. Don’t get me wrong. I believe all people should be treated with kindness, dignity, and respect—with the love and grace with which Jesus encountered people. But tolerance has come to mean for many that it’s wrong—even “unchristian”—to declare that certain actions and lifestyles are sinful. And some of you are bristling that I’d even say that—because we’re infected by our cultural lie. Jesus wasn’t afraid to call sin “sin”—and it was much because of his love for the sinner. He knew that sin wrecks lives—now and eternally. Do you get it?

The false prophets of our world who cloak their teachings as “compatible” with Christianity place the ideals and philosophies and theologies of other religions on equal par with those of Christianity. Some religions that want to be seen as compatible with Christianity or in line with it have put certain people on equal plain as Jesus, the Son of God—accepting the authority of what they say to be as valid as what Jesus said.

Please understand…I’m not trying to bash certain people or certain religions—at least not in an unkind way. But I’m a Christian. My life has been changed by the love and grace of the God who sent His Son to be my Savior. I’m not wise enough and smart enough to be the final authority on all matters relating to our faith. But in some wonderful, mystical way, I have come to know Him—just as each of us can do through the sacrificial death of Jesus. And He has called us into an exclusive relationship with Him—a pure devotion…to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. And He has called us to take this Gospel to others. All through the Old Testament His warning to the Israelites was not to buy into the false religions of the people around them. And in the New Testament, Jesus gave His life for the salvation of all the people of the world, and His followers put their lives on the line to take that Gospel message to others because they knew that people would die without hope if they didn’t.

We need to be wise and discerning! Funnel what others are saying through the authority of the Bible! Don’t just fall for every person’s ideas because they are eloquent and convincing! Be stronger than that! Seek out the truth of Scripture yourselves! Be faithful in studying God’s Word with me. I’ll do my very best to be faithful to the Word week after week! Get involved in a Sunday School class or a small group—and in those settings study the Word! And understand that we need to study the Word together and hold one another accountable for being true to it. “Private faith” is too vulnerable to being easily led into tangents and ultimately led astray. We need one another!

Email is a part of my every-day life. I get lots of emails—more than I want! And people I know and people I don’t know send me all kinds of emails that propagate some idea or some concern or some theory. And I’m supposed to send it out to everyone I know that day or the sky is somehow going to fall in upon me! But the truth is that I can’t buy into it all. It’s not all true. It hasn’t all been tested. It’s not all consistent with the Word of God, the Bible. The truth is that I shouldn’t even open up many of these emails, because they can “corrupt” my computer. Like viruses that spread from one child coughing to another, the viruses in an email that’s opened can do great damage to my computer. It seems like everyone has equal access to my email account, but I don’t have to grant them equal status. It’s a choice I make, and one that I make every day.

The same is true in our own lives. There are a lot of ideas and philosophies and religious teachings floating around out there, and they may all seem to have access into your life in one way or another. It’s no different than it’s always been…but maybe now with communication as it is we’re even more vulnerable. But God wants to equip us, as His children, with all that we need to discern between His truth for our lives and that which is a lie—merely merely a word from Satan, the great enemy of our souls, who cleverly masquerades himself as an angel of light.

May God make us wise and discerning, loving and patient, strong and incorruptible.

February 08, 2009 - Pastor Tim

LIVING LARGE GOD’S WAY

2 Corinthians 8:1-15

I was raised in a home in which a constant theme was “always do your best.” It honestly was a great lesson in the stewardship of life—making the most of what God gave us. And “always do your best” was applied often to the matter of schoolwork. I suppose that might have come from a dad who was raised with the mantra, “get all the education you can”…which pressed him on toward a doctorate degree and pressed all three sons to complete doctorate degrees in their chosen fields. And as Cindy and I were raising our children and as we encouraged them through their days of education, what was often forefront in my encouragement was the theme I was raised on: always do your best—whatever your best is, that’s good enough!

It really is a matter of stewardship of our lives, and I believe it’s consistent with biblical counsel. I want us to turn this morning again to 2 Corinthians—chapter 8. There was a matter about which the Apostle Paul felt compelled to challenge his Christian brothers and sisters in Corinth. He was challenging them to “do their best” in a particular dimension of Christian living…and I believe our Heavenly Father wants you and me to hear that same challenge this morning.

[Read 2 Corinthians 8:1-15, NIV]

Let me explain what was taking place here. Paul was trying to raise money to help the Hebrew Christians living in Jerusalem. The need was evidently tremendous. It wasn’t the first time Paul had mentioned this need to them, for he was at this point only following up on what had been begun earlier.

We don’t know for sure why the Hebrew Christians in Jerusalem were struggling as they were, but we do have some ideas. Primarily it was likely that, after their conversion to Christian, many of these Jews in Jerusalem would have been ostracized socially and economically. There is also historic documentation of persistent food shortages in Palestine about this time, and, as the mother-church of Christianity at that point, the Jerusalem church was obliged to support a proportionately large number of teachers and probably to provide hospitality for frequent Christian visitors to the holy city—that on top of a crippling twofold taxation there to both the Jews and the Romans.

Paul was motivated to raise this money by brotherly love and compassion for these people—whom he clearly acknowledged as his brothers and sisters in Christ. And with a great degree of tact and wisdom, Paul began this part of his letter by citing an example rather than simply making a plea. The example was that of the Christians in the province of Macedonia who begged for the opportunity to give to this cause—despite their own poverty.

The paraphrase of Scripture called The Message says it better than I can, beginning at verse 1—

Now, friends, I want to report on the surprising and generous ways in which God is working in the churches in Macedonia province. Fierce troubles came down on the people of those churches, pushing them to the very limit. The trial exposed their true colors: They were incredibly happy, though desperately poor. The pressure triggered something totally unexpected: an outpouring of pure and generous gifts. I was there and saw it for myself. They gave offerings of whatever they could—far more than they could afford!—pleading for the privilege of helping out in the relief of poor Christians. (2 Corinthians 8:1-4, The Message]

Here was the truly Christlike example of Christians who did not allow their own poverty to repress their generosity. And Paul saw in these Macedonia Christians the life-changing influence of God’s grace.

When I read these descriptive words about the Macedonian Christians from The Message, I wrote in the margin of my notes, “Doesn’t this describe our economic times well?” “Fierce troubles” have come upon us economically, too—and many of us have been terribly impacted by it. We’re hearing reports every day of the growing numbers of persons unemployed and the tremendous rise in home foreclosures. Many of us have seen our stocks and our retirement accounts plummet in value in just the past six months. And some of you feel like you’re about to go under for the third and final time! And my heart goes out to you today.

Some might even suggest that this is a tacky time for a pastor to be preaching on cultivating the “grace of giving”—but, judging from this example in Scripture, perhaps it’s a very good time for me to do so (even though there are those who get uncomfortable and edgy anytime a pastor preaches on anything relating to money!). Our Heavenly Father wants us to learn the grace of giving. I was particularly struck with Paul’s words to us in verse 7 of this chapter—

But just as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love for us—see that you also excel in this grace of giving. (2 Corinthians 8:7, NIV)

Paul was saying to the Christians in Corinth, and I believe God is saying to us today, “You do so well in so many ways—you trust God, you share the Gospel well, you’ve got great insight and wisdom, you’re passionate about the Christian life, and you’re full of love for others. Now learn to do your best in this matter of giving as well.”

Why did Paul make such a big deal about this? (Why didn’t he just mind his own business?!) Because he had learned that an important dimension of growth in Christlikeness is learning to excel in the grace of giving. Unless we learn to do this, our Christian growth will be stunted.

I remember a summer when our son Justin was likely entering 7th or 8th grade. In the spring he had played baseball, as he always did in those years, and he wore cleats that were size 8. That year he also played in a fall baseball league, and complained that his cleats were too tight. We went to buy new ones and had to buy size 11! His feet had grown that much in a few months! He still hadn’t had his growth spurt in height, and I remember teasing him that with his feet growing so much if he didn’t get some height on him now he was going to look like a duck! I doubt Paul had a duck in mind, but he certainly recognized that the spiritual life of the Corinthians Christians was going to be out of proportion and thus overall thwarted if they didn’t learn the grace of giving that the impoverished Christians in Macedonia had obviously learned so well.

At the heart of the grace of giving is love. Christ’s love in our hearts is where it begins. Paul wrote—

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich. (2 Corinthians 8:9, NIV)

As abundant as the love of Christ is for each of us, so should be our love for others. Christ is our ultimate example of generous love! And when we love others as Christ loved us, such love compels an eagerness to address their needs in any way that we can. It presses us to inconvenience ourselves, even to sacrifice in order for their needs to be met.

The generosity of the Christians in Macedonia inspired Paul! And they didn’t limit their contribution to financial aid. “In keeping with God’s will” they dedicated themselves first and foremost to Christ, but also committed themselves as partners with Paul to address these needs. These people begged Paul to let them have a part in financially supporting those who were worse off than they were. They understood hard times—and it compelled them to do everything they could to reduce the heartache and suffering of others.

I couldn’t help but think here of those who say that they don’t have enough to give financially so they serve instead. I don’t find any biblical support for that logic. Paul was speaking here of people who had fallen on terribly hard times themselves, and yet had embraced the grace of giving of their means. Regardless of our financial status, an important dimension of growth in Christlikeness is learning to excel in the grace of giving.

I had a conversation with someone out in the community the other day that impressed me. I met this lady perhaps a year ago when I was trying to find a barber or hair stylist that I liked. She’s really tried to please, so I keep going back to her—though I’ve wondered how she makes a living at it because it doesn’t seem like she has a lot of customers. Habitat for Humanity is currently building a new house for her and her special-needs son to live in. She’s been so excited about it as the house has taken shape. But I learned this week that she saved up her food stamps so that she could serve a really nice Thanksgiving meal to the prisoners who come from time to time on work release to work on her house. She figured they probably wouldn’t get a nice Thanksgiving meal otherwise. She seems to have an inside scoop on what charities one could donate to that best gets those items to the people who need them. She has a tremendously giving spirit about her, even though she clearly doesn’t have much herself—and I couldn’t help but be inspired by the way in which she has learned the grace of giving.

Poverty is relative, you know. Even those who are struggling the most among us have homes to sleep in and food to eat and clothes to wear. The truth is that the poorest among us is still among the wealthiest minority worldwide—we’re just so used to having it nice and comfortable! Go visit Mexico or Ukraine or China or Haiti or Uganda or India or even the poorest sections of our cities and see how millions of people in the world live today! Perhaps then we’d let loose of what we have—however meager we might feel it is!—and let God cultivate in us the grace of giving.

That’s an interesting phrase, isn’t it? “The grace of giving.” Paul wrote, “See that you also excel in this grace of giving.” Paul was longing to see every dimension of Christlikeness cultivated in the lives of his friends in Corinth and beyond. By using the Greek word “charis”—which means “grace”—of the virtue of giving, he’s making it clear that generosity stands alongside faith, knowledge and love as expressions of God’s grace in us. Already excelling in Christian virtues and gifts of the Spirit, the Corinthians were to make sure they also lived out the grace of generosity in their lives as well. And Paul wasn’t barking orders or trying to lay on a guilt trip as much as he was trying to compel them by Christ’s own love for them to extend such love to others by practicing generosity.

Several years ago I was pastoring a church that was raising money to build a much-needed addition to our facility. In challenging our people to give, we used the theme, “Not equal giving, but equal sacrifice.” And I recall the sacrifices we made in order to participate in that cause, and the tremendous sacrifices others were making. Oh, yea, it could get a little discouraging now and then to consider the fact that some hadn’t embraced the “not equal giving but equal sacrifice” part. I remember letting it get to me a little when I happened to learn that one of the leading couples in the church who I knew were likely the wealthiest people in the congregation were giving less than we were giving…but I also had to sadly acknowledge that their tight grip on their money was really hurting them more than it was hurting anyone else.

You see, it doesn’t take great means to excel in the grace of giving. It just requires a generous heart. Every person is challenged to give. I can’t help but think of the poor widow who gave all that she had and Jesus’ comments about her gift—

Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny.

Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.” (Mark 12:41-44, NIV)

God wants to teach each of us the grace of giving. It’s a part of His character that He wants to cultivate into the fabric of our lives—and in His great wisdom, He knows that our lives will be better too if we learn to give and that the needs of others will be met at the same time. It can’t be coerced or manipulated, and we can’t cultivate it in our human strength and wisdom. But, if we will submit ourselves and our resources completely to the Lord, He will teach us this grace of giving.

Did you know that God actually created you in such a way that you are healthier, happier and more fulfilled in life when you learn to truly love others and when you give of yourself and of your financial means to help them? Isn’t that an amazing thought? Scientific studies even reveal that you’ll live longer! Proverbs 11:25 says,

A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed. (Proverbs 11:25)

It’s written into the fabric of who we are to become and how we discover life at its best! Giving to others is the way to “Living Large God’s Way.” Hoarding what we have never brings the satisfaction we anticipate.

I heard a well-known scholar share some interesting scientific data this week that validated that. Imagine…science confirming the goodness of God’s plan for our lives! Scientific studies done by people who may not acknowledge the existence of God conclude that materialism doesn’t make people happy.

* Science magazine concluded in 2008 that our happiness is not related to our income, but that those who give more to others and to their churches and to charities were happier people. They even noted that making a donation for just $5 can improve your mood!
* A 2005 Time Magazine poll revealed that 75% of people identified that giving to others is a source of happiness in their own lives.
* A study in 2006 revealed that making a donation activates chemicals in our bodies that make us feel happy—the same kind of chemicals that are often used in anti-depression medication.

Loving others and giving to them go with the grain of how we are designed and created rather than against it! Giving is good medicine—it’s good for your health and well-being.

In our churchy language we have said, “It’s a blessing to give.” But however we express it, God’s way of learning to live large includes increasing our willingness to give to others regardless of how much or how little we may have ourselves.

I suppose this has been one of the eternal benefits of people of all ages being involved in Work and Witness projects. Our young and our old have seen firsthand the great needs of people near and far, and we’ve also witnessed the great joy of Christians who live in the midst of such poverty and yet radiate the joy of the Lord in their lives despite it! They’re inspiring though they have so little!

Do you believe God wants you to experience joy in life? Do you believe that God wants to enrich your life—not by material things by those things that increase our joy and our fulfillment in life? Then learn to live life large His way—by learning to excel in this grace of giving. Let Him teach you how to do your best in this important dimension of spiritual growth. Let Him stretch you to give more than you might think you can give—just as the Christians in Macedonia had modeled for the more economically stable Christians in Corinth.

But just as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love for us—see that you also excel in this grace of giving.

February 1, 2009 - Pastor Tim

DON’T GET ON A MOTORCYCLE

WITH JUST ANYONE!

2 Corinthians 6:14 – 7:1

My dad’s a great guy. Raised in a Nazarene pastor’s home himself, his personal story was that of a young man who ran from God, leaving Ohio to go to college in California, only to find out that God was there too! He finally gave in to God’s persevering love, and from that time on he pursued God’s calling for his life with great passion.

I remember various times when we three boys were young and the family was driving through the part of Southern Ohio where Dad had grown up, and it seemed like every few miles Dad would point out a place where he had wrecked a vehicle in his early wild life. I often thought that if any of his three sons had wrecked that many vehicles, he’d have taken our licenses away! And though Dad is conservative in most ways, I have vivid memory of getting on a motorcycle with him when I was a teenager. It was as if something inside him triggered a flashback to his wild days of youth. We were on hilly dirt trails on wooded land, and I was scared to death! At one point, he flipped the motorcycle and we crashed, and as much as I love my dad, I promised myself I’d never get on another motorcycle with him!

Why would I tell that story? Because I was reminded of it when I was thinking through the implications of the passage of scripture we’re going to look at this morning. Here the Apostle Paul—after whom my father was named!—makes a strong and incredibly helpful statement about the importance of Christians living a different kind of life. Turn with me to 2 Corinthians 6:14, and I would like to read to you from the New Living Translation of the Bible because I believe it puts it in words that have greater meaning to many of us—

[Read 2 Corinthians 6:14 – 7:1, NLT]

The New International Version of the Bible and the King James Version begin verse 14 with the admonition, “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers.” What I just read began, “Don’t team up with those who are unbelievers.” The paraphrase of scripture called The Message begins, “Don’t become partners with those who reject God.” Paul’s imagery with his original audience was that of two oxen being “yoked” together—harnessed together with wooden beams that kept the two beasts of burdens heading the same direction and at the same speed. And Paul’s warning is about not putting ourselves as Christians into positions where we’re partnered with or teamed up with or “yoked” with those who do not share our faith and trust in Jesus Christ.

Can we just acknowledge that hearing such a “prohibition” from scripture makes some of us bristle—just because we’re being told not to do something! We don’t like to be told what we’re not to do! I suppose it’s human nature. What I want us to understand as we look at this passage of scripture is that, as it is in every restriction God places upon our lives as we journey with Him, it is done out of the protective heart of a Father who loves us and desires the very best for us.

If you read the Old Testament, you find lots of warnings being given to the people of Israel, the people God had chosen to be His own, the people whom He had promised to bless and prosper, as long as they remained faithful to Him. And in order to keep them faithful to Him, there were strong warnings about not intermarrying with pagans of other nations.

God’s warnings didn’t have anything to do with race, as it has sometimes been supposed. It was all about remaining faithful to God. Our Heavenly Father knew that if we partnered in marriage with those who worship other gods, we would be drawn away from our single-hearted devotion to Him—not to mention that the marriage would be under great duress because two people can’t go two different directions in life when they’re “yoked” together! God understood how our lives will be different if we commit to following Him—affecting what is important to us day by day; how we spend our time and our money; our dreams and ambitions, our goals, our priorities.

And while we sometimes bristle with the things God tells us not to do, why wouldn’t we want God’s Word to give us appropriate warnings? I would think we would welcome them! If I were busy talking with you as we were crossing a street and you saw a car coming right at me, I would hope that you’d interrupt me and tell me I better move it or I’m going to lose it! I really won’t mind if your words aren’t gracious and kind or if you raise your voice a little! But please don’t just go on as if nothing was happening and let me get run over! Do you suppose we could embrace God’s Word to us in such a way this morning?

What I believe Paul is saying to us is this: Don’t form any partnerships, whether temporary or permanent, with unbelievers that could lead to compromise in your commitment to Jesus Christ. Why? Because the unbeliever does not share the Christian’s standards, values, priorities, or goals. And, I might add, if your standards, values, priorities, and goals aren’t different from the person who is not following Jesus Christ, I have to seriously doubt the validity of your commitment to Christ. Is that fair?

What I don’t believe the Word is saying to us here is to avoid close contact with the world apart from Christ—the “pagan world,” if you will. By Christ’s Great Commission to us, we need to be in contact with the world, or we’re missing our calling as His Church. What Paul is calling us to stay away from are partnerships with those who do not share our commitment to Christ—teaming up with them. By the very nature of partnerships, we make mutual agreements and commitments with another—and that’s what Paul is telling us is extremely unwise and dangerous for the Christian.

So what’s he saying? How are we to apply this? Let’s start with Paul’s illustrations—

How can righteousness be a partner with wickedness? How can light live with darkness? What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil? How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever? And what union can there be between God’s temple and idols? (2 Corinthians 6:14b-16a)

Paul asks five rhetorical questions presupposing a negative answer to each one. A rhetorical question is when you ask a question to which you don’t expect an answer because the answer already seems obvious! I had to be careful in one of the churches I pastored because I had a lady in the crowd who would often respond out loud to my rhetorical questions and her answers weren’t always appropriate! What Paul is trying to make clear in his rhetorical questions is the incompatibility of Christianity and the world apart from God, the incongruity of intimate relationships or fellowship between believers and unbelievers. The chief reason why believers aren’t to enter any syncretistic or compromising relationship with unbelievers is that we belong exclusively to God. In many ways this Word of the Lord through Paul was an elaboration of the first two of the Ten Commandments: “You shall have no other gods before me” and “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything…”

It’s fair to think that Paul might be implying by his words to the Corinthians that some of them had perhaps become defiled by occasionally sharing meals at the local idol-shrines or by continuing to attend festivals or ceremonies in the pagan temples or even by maintaining their membership in some local pagan cult—trying to blend it in with Christianity in some way. All of scripture is clear to us: if we’re going to follow Jesus Christ, we have got to make a clean break with attachments that keep us somehow bound to the world apart from Christ. We are to live holy lives, and holy lives are lives that are fully devoted to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

So how might we apply Paul’s words to us today? Certainly the quickest application we make—and appropriately so—is to marriage. Scripture gives vivid warning here for a Christian not to enter into marriage with someone who is not a believer, who does not share their passion to follow Jesus.

I remember attending a wedding when I was growing up. A girl who had grown up in the church was marrying a young man who was not a Christian. It was perhaps in the early years of using the unity candle to symbolize two lives becoming one. I remember that once they had lit the unity candle, it wouldn’t keep burning. It was kind of awkward and embarrassing. The flame went out. And my mom later commented to me her concern that it was reflective of what would happen in that bride’s life spiritually—and, as I recall, it’s exactly what did happen in the months and years that followed.

In watching lots of relationships across the years, I’ve concluded—and I often told our kids and the kids in our churches—you choose who you date, not who you’re going to fall in love with. Choose carefully the people you’re willing to date, because once you start dating them, you don’t really choose if you’re going to fall in love with them or not—you’ve already opened yourself up to that. It’s a dangerous thing to even start to form a dating relationship with an unbeliever. “Missionary dating” isn’t very smart. I know there are stories out there of people who have led someone they dated to the Lord—but for every such story I’m guessing there are 10 or 20 stories of people who thought they could change someone, fell in love and got married, only to find themselves in a marriage with someone whose life was aimed a completely different direction from them because they did not share a faith in Christ. And it seems complicated enough when it was just two, but start adding children to the family, and the disparity in values and priorities only become more obvious and more heartbreaking.

I also believe we can rightly apply Paul’s warning to forming a business partnership with someone who is not a believer. Again, the problem is with values and overall purpose. Our commitment to Christ should affect everything we do—including how we do business. It impacts why we do what we do, what we’re willing to sacrifice, what our ultimate goal in life is. And if you become a business partner with someone whose life goals are taking them a different direction than yours, you’re setting yourself up for a lot of frustration and grief. If we’d simply hear God’s warning, we’d spare ourselves a lot of grief in life!

Again, the problem is with values and overall purpose. Money is a powerful thing—and the true follower of Christ sees money through a different set of lenses than the person who is not committed to Christ. And while my first thought is that of the typical business setting, I also believe the same issues would arise in professions such as the medical field. Just think of all the ethical dilemmas facing our medical people today! Christian attorneys partnered with unbelieving attorneys are setting themselves up for certain conflict. Even educators find themselves facing dilemmas today, spurred by the clash in values. Lots of Christians today are struggling with the issue of unions—because in uniting with some unions they are uniting with those who do not share their Christian values. This warning against partnerships with unbelievers could also be broadened to give us strong warnings about employee/employer relationships—because if we’re not careful who we team up with, we find ourselves in a serious conflict of values. Oh, it’s getting complicated, isn’t it? How wonderful that we have the Lord to guide us through such complicated issues, granting wisdom and discernment to those who seek it with open hearts and open minds.

I have a dear Christian friend who is in the construction business. He was in a partnership with a man who turned out to be crooked in how he did business. My friend ended up facing prosecution and almost ended up serving time himself because of the actions of his business partner. He carries the label “felon” today because he made the unwise decision to go into business with an unbeliever. If he and his wife were to stand before our crowd today, I’m somehow guessing they’d have some convincing words to share about this passage of scripture!

Now, I think we’ve got to acknowledge the balance that we must learn to strike between being “light in a world of darkness” and yet not being “unequally yoked” or “partnered” with unbelievers. We are called to be the light of the world—to let Christ’s light shine through our lives that others may be drawn to Him. It’s our mission as individuals and as a church. And when we read passages like John 17—Christ’s “high priestly prayer” before he went to the Cross, it’s clear that His heart and passion for us is that we would be “in the world but not of it.” We are to live our lives in the world and to do so in such a way that others are drawn to the Savior whom we serve. But Paul is warning us not to partner with the world in any way that might lead to compromise of our primary devotion to the Lord. I might note here that this is the very reason why Nazarene churches and other holiness churches have throughout the years asked its members not to be part of what is often referred to as “oath-bound secret orders”—organizations that are quasi-religious in nature and to which its members must make an oath of allegiance, even though the values of that organization may not always reflect Christian values.

Paul was not calling for withdrawal from the secular world, but rather pleading with Christians not to put themselves into relationships with either pagan persons or pagan institutions that would water down or undermine their Christian values. And for those believers who are today in an unequally yoked marriage, if you read 1 Corinthians 7:12-16, Paul actually encouraged the Christian partner in a mixed marriage to maintain the relationship once in it if at all possible—though it’s clear from the whole of scripture that it’s terribly unwise for a Christian to enter into such a marriage.

There are those who might take Paul’s warning from 2 Corinthians 6 to be in conflict with the call to love others. Some might accuse us of being “intolerant” of other religions or of those who do not share our Christian faith, but please understand that scripture is clear that God will not share our devotion with any other god of any sort. Christianity is not by its nature a faith that can be syncretistic—blended in to merge acceptably with other religions. God will not share our devotions, though God is love and invites all people into fellowship with Him through Jesus Christ. Scripture tells us that Jesus “is the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to Father except through Him.” We are to love others, but we must choose carefully those with whom we partner.

We to carry out the words of Paul that came from the pen of the Old Testament prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel—

“Therefore come out from among unbelievers, and separate yourselves from them,” says the Lord. “Don’t touch their filthy things, and I will welcome you.” (2 Corinthians 6:17, NLT)

It is the call for us to live holy lives.

Some of us remember the day when the church tried to define holy living simply by the things we did not do—and it’s taken us awhile to figure out that such an approach produced Pharisees instead of healthy Christ-followers. The effort to define the church in terms of a haven from the world has an element of truth in it, but it also offers all sorts of danger. It can produce a kind of “enclave” (closed society) mentality in the church. In this model the church is not a fellowship in which we are equipped to function with integrity in the world, but a place where we do everything we can to hide from the world.

There’s no doubt that it can be intimidating and frightening to try to live a Christian life in an un-Christian world. At the same time, it’s a serious mistake for the church to cocoon itself in a protected environment from the world. I’m afraid that if we do that we become, as they say, “so heavenly minded that we’re of no earthly good.” But Christ has called us to be salt and light in our world—and we must figure out how to live that out dynamically and responsibly.

When it’s all said and done, what’s the bottom line for us as Christians? God insists on our single-hearted devotion to Him—a devotion that is not threatened or compromised by any other allegiance or devotion. And to such a person God promises that He will be our Father, and we will be His sons and daughters. As the Lord repeated to his people throughout the Old Testament, God is saying, “I will live with them and walk among them…I will be their God, and they will be my people.” It’s a wonderful promise! It’s a wonderful covenant God has made with us—and it’s a covenant that we are to keep with Him, a covenant we are to protect by guarding the commitments we make to others that might compromise our overall commitment to Him.

Let’s go back to my motorcycle ride with my dad. I won’t get on a motorcycle with just anyone because I value my life—and I’ve come to believe that motorcycles can be incredibly dangerous if the one in control isn’t safe. Now my dad’s almost 80, and I’d probably get on a motorcycle with him if he wanted now, but I can assure you that I won’t get on a motorcycle with just anyone! Why? Because I know I won’t be in control—which is a real problem if they ride like a maniac and you value life more than they do! And I won’t partner with just anyone either in any kind of partnership unless I’m confident that the person with whom I’m partnering shares my values and my whole-hearted commitment to follow Christ and to fully submit to His ways. That’s what Paul is saying to us today.

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