Look! The King is Coming (Revelation 1:4-8)

By way of introduction he simply writes, “I, John, your brother who share with you in Jesus the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (1:9).  John lived in the penal colony named Patmos, a rocky island off the coast of modern Turkey, ancient Asia Minor.  Piecing it together, we figure out that he was in exile because of his Christian faith.  In 96 AD, in Jerusalem, certainly in Rome, and in the region of the seven cities mentioned in the first two chapters of the Bible’s final book, Revelation, followers of Jesus suffered for their faith.

            The Roman Emperor Domitian insisted on deference from all people, even demanding that subjects of the empire acknowledge him as divine.  “Domitian is Lord!”  All were expected to make this proclamation, suffering greatly if they would not.  Christians would not. 

            Some were harassed in their own communities.  Their businesses were forcibly closed, or they were bullied by local constables, or they were shunned by people who did not want to suffer by being associated with them.  Others ended up arrested for their insistence upon saying that Jesus and only Jesus is Lord.  Of those arrested, some were executed in gruesome fashion, or for sport, thrown to lions in the arena, or forced to fight in gladiator games; all because they would not just let it go.  “Jesus is Lord.”  To these late first century believers, that claim was worth more than anything; more than their own lives.

            “Jesus is Lord.”  How much is that worth to us?  Who is Jesus?  A cute ornament, the centerpiece of the nativity that sits on the mantel.  In the final days of the year, when we get rid of our trees, take the lights down, and bid Christmas farewell, do we put Jesus in box in the closet to be left there until we give him a nod at Easter, and then put up our nativity next Christmas?  “Jesus is Lord.”  Do we make that claim?  Do we make it seriously?  In the softness and comfort of our American context, we don’t face severe punishment for saying Jesus matters more than any relationship, possession, or loyalty.  Still, we are as called as John was to acknowledge Jesus not only as Savior who assures us of Heaven but also as master who directs our lives.  Do we? 

            John doesn’t tell the specifics of his story.  Somehow, he avoided the death penalty and instead was exiled, away from his home church in Ephesus to, perhaps, hard labor on Patmost Island.  He wasn’t concerned that future generations of Christians know who John is.  He wanted to help his friends in the seven churches in Asia Minor stay faithful in their commitment to Jesus even as they faced the same persecution that landed him in chains.  Revelation was a letter comprised of his vision of the end.  He presents Jesus as the victor and Lord of all.

            We’re not persecuted, but in our affluence, too many of us who claim to be Christians have reduced Jesus, emptied him of His power, neutering his authority and setting him at the margins of our lives.  Moving from Thanksgiving to Christmas, how can we recover the grandeur of Jesus, the majesty of our Lord, so that this season for us is a season of worship? 

            “From Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”  John takes himself out of the equation.  His vision isn’t for him.  Jesus spoke this word that John might write it and pass it on so that the individuals in the congregations that receive it might be formed as communities of disciples who will stay true to Christ no matter the cost.  Jesus longs for you to read Revelation to grow into a disciple who will see Him and give yourself fully to Him.  Even if you or I never face persecution, we can develop a faith that would stand up in the face it.  Our discipleship takes form as we truly see Jesus.

From Jesus Christ, the faithful witness.  The Greek word for witness is ‘martyr.’  Of course, we hear that and think of those who die for what they’ve said and for beliefs they refuse to renounce.  With that picture in mind, we might hope our faith is strong enough that we would stay faithful, but we don’t aspire to become martyrs.  We are happy to live for Jesus, but we don’t want to die for him. 

Yet, martyrdom – witness – is our calling, by the Holy Spirit.  In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Jesus demonstrates the perfect love of God lived out on the human stage.  He was fully human, he saw people as they were, and loved them as they were.  Even at the end, betrayed, arrested, flogged, and crucified, Jesus modeled perfect love, loving those who betrayed and killed him. 

As our Lord gave witness to the goodness of the Kingdom of God, so too must we.  We can admire the way Jesus forgave people and loved all, even his tormentors.  He wants to see us go beyond admiration.  He wants us to see Him, know Him, grow in our knowledge of Him, and then add our own testimony to conversations with friends and to the public discourse even when doing so sets us uncomfortably apart from the people in our lives who don’t feel that call to follow Jesus.  That’s what a martyr does: testifies to what he or she knows to be true about Jesus.  Will we?  Do we know Jesus?  Will we tell what we know?  As we live our lives through the holiday season to New Year’s Day, 2019, what will be said of our witness?  What will others learn about Jesus from us?

Jesus, the faithful witness is also, the Firstborn of the dead.  The way we think of things, birth begins life, death ends it.  God never intended death to be part of our story.  Death is sin’s descendant, not God’s.  Sin does not get to change God’s story, even the sins we choose.  In God’s story, his children have eternal life in His loving presence.  Just as Jesus showed us how to live, by his witness, in his resurrection, he clears our path.  He is the first born.  We follow Him into eternity when we put our trust in Christ and become his disciples.

Finally, we are told, the Witness and the Firstborn is the Ruler of the Kings of the Earth.  Jesus is not a Christmas decoration or a piece of golden jewelry.  He is the king.  President Barak Obama; President Donald Trump; Presidents Washington and Lincoln; each one of them, just like each one of us will bow before Jesus, the king of kings and lord of lords.  The Bible says that will happen, and confessing Christians believe it to the extreme.  We believe on some future day, we cannot predict when but know it is coming, all this will be gone, and the Kingdom of God will remain, in glory. 

            Jesus the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the king of kings, loves us, has freed us from our sins by his blood, and makes us kings who serve.  John had the audacity to write this while imprisoned and his followers, themselves facing death believed it.  And the church has preserved this story so we can read and believe.  We are beloved of God.  Jesus actively loves you as you are.  He sees you as a child of God. 

            Jesus the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the king of kings who loves us, has freed us from our sins by his blood.  Sin snares us and we cannot escape.  Paul’s letter to the Romans emphatically makes this point.  Sin wreaks our relationship with God and destines us for an eternity apart from Him.  But Jesus, through his death on the cross, takes on himself the punishment for sin.  He forgives us and invites us to step from our sinfulness to his holiness.  Matthew, one of the 12, stopped being a cheating tax collector and began life as a disciple of Jesus.  Jesus told the woman caught in adultery, whom he had forgiven, to go and sin no more.  Jesus loves us as we are and frees us so that we are no longer slaves to sin.  When we receive his love and forgiveness, we do not remain as we are.  We are new creations, ready to live the life He created us to live from the start.

            He loves us, he freed us, and he makes to be Kings, yet, people who serve; a kingdom of priests serving God.  We worship.  We study.  We share His love with others.  We forgive each other and those outside the church.  The resurrected one is the Jesus of Revelation, the king of kings; Jesus tells us in Revelation that our destiny is to be his people in the world, drawing the world to him. 

            He was a baby born in a manger, but that manger’s been empty for a long time.  Our anticipation in the Advent season is of the coming of the King.  “Look,” Revelation says, “He is coming with the clouds. …on his account, all the tribes of the earth will wail” (1:7).  And later in Revelation we are told people from all the tribes of the earth will be part of his Heavenly gathering (7:9-10).

            In my house, we’ll have a nativity decoration, as will many of you.  It’s part of our remembrance.  It’s how we tell the story.  As we tell it, I hope we can honor John who wrote Revelation while on Patmos, and along with John, all the Christians who have suffered for their testimony that Jesus is king.  The Christmas story we love so much starts with Mary and Joseph, with a baby and a star, with shepherds and wise men.  But that’s only the opening.  That prelude draws us in to the story of the King and the relationship He invites us to have with Him.  Discover life lived in step with Jesus; a life in which we are always anticipating that day when we look to the horizon and say, “Look!  The King is coming with the clouds.”  That story is our story, the story of eternal life with God.  It is a story to be shared.

AMEN

First Sunday of Lent - Forgiveness (Psalm 32)

            This Psalm begins, “Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven.”  Doesn’t that assume that the transgressor feels guilt and shame because of his misdeeds?  If he didn’t, he would not need the forgiveness to feel happy.  Maybe the sin itself gives him a thrill, a guilty pleasure, if you will. 

            Have you had that experience with sin?  You know a particular word is offensive, an abhorrent word, but you giggle when you hear it or say it.  Gossip; does it really even count sin?  And systemic sins – sinful systems; who ever heard of such a thing?  Am guilty for benefitting in a sinful system?  Seriously, who feels guilt over sin whether it’s individual or systemic?  You know the phrase.  I’m only human.  Why even make a big deal about disobeying God? 

            But this singer, in Psalm 32:3, says, “While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.”  Kept silence; he, or she, the singer, kept it inside.  Whatever the sin was, he buried it deep in his heart.   This Psalm is attributed to David and his most public of sins was to have an adulterous affair, try to cover it up, and then have the wronged husband, Uriah, murdered in a way that would protect him from guilt.  David committed both individual and systemic-power related sins in the Bathsheba episode.  You can read about it in 2 Samuel 11-12.  Psalm 32 is one of David’s confession songs. 

            However, the Psalms are portable.  What David sang, you or me or anyone could sing in reference to our own sins.  We could sing, if we feel guilty.   David had help feeling guilty.  He says in Psalm 32:4, “Day and night your hand, [O Lord], was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.”  The way God’s hand fell on heavy David was through the confrontation provoked by the prophet Nathan. 

            God’s heavy hand sets upon us until we have to face our sin, the damage it does, and the guilt it throws on us.  Two of history’s most acclaimed authors have captured this guilt sin has wrought.

            We’ve already mentioned that a parable from the prophet Nathan provoked King David’s guilt.  In 1843 Edgar Allen Poe published “the Tell Tale Heart.” In the poem, the narrator is driven by his own madness to the kill the old man.  He thinks the murder and brilliant cover-up has relieved his gnawing insanity, but it only drives it all the more. 

            A couple of police officers come to the door because a neighbor heard a midnight cry.  The narrator has successfully hidden the body and the police officers are about to leave the house when his screaming madness awakens with a vengeance. 

Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men --but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed --I raved --I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder --louder --louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! --no, no! They heard! --they suspected! --they knew! --they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now --again! --hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!

"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!"

            Day and Night, God’s hand is heavy upon us in our sin.

           

            Twenty years or so Poe published his account of agonizing guilt in ‘The Telltale Heart,’ Fyodor Dostoevsky’s presents a similar theme in his novel Crime and Punishment where the gifted but starving writer and student Raskolnikov bludgeons the old woman Alena Ivanova.  She is stingy with her money and has no pity on this able, but poor young man.  The police suspect someone else in the crime, and that man commits suicide.  Raskolnikov is in the clear.  But, we are never in the clear. 

            Leaving Lieutenant Elia Petrovitch, Raskolnikov knows he is free, but when he steps from the police station, there she is waiting, his beloved Sonia.  She knows what he has done.

Her countenance expressed the utmost despair.  At the sight, Raskolnikov smiled, but such a smile!  A moment afterwards he had gone back to the police-office.  Elia Petrovitch was in the act of ransacking some papers.  “Ah!  There you are again!  Have you forgotten something?  But what is the matter with you?”  With pale lips and fixed gaze, Raskolnikov slowly advanced toward Elia Petrovitch.  [He] allowed himself to sink into a chair that was offered, but could not take his eyes off of Elia Petrovitch.  For a moment, both men looked at one another in silence.  “It was I – “said Raskolnikov.  “It was I who killed, with a hatchet, the old moneylender and her sister, Elizabeth, and robbery was my motive.”  Elia Petrovitch called for assistance.  People rushed in from various directions (p.421).

In the Psalm, David sings, day and Night, God’s hand is heavy upon us in our sin.  We are not murders like Raskolnikov or Poe’s narrator, or David for that matter, but sin rests just as heavy on us.  Our sense of guilt is enough to crush us and when it does not, God’s Holy Spirit convicts our soul.  When our conscience is dull and we seem content in spite of our words and deeds that hurt others, not bothered that we are agents of pain and deception, then God steps in and pricks the conscience and convicts the soul.  As long as we deny our need for forgiveness, we waste away, groaning all day.

However, there is hope – the best of hopes.  That’s the point of Psalm 32 and the simple message of this day.  There is a way out of this fog of sin, a fog so thick it is only cleared after God the son is murdered by us all when he’s nailed to the cross.  There’s a light that shows the path from crippling guilt and shame to unfettered freedom, a freedom that enables us to soar to the heavens. 

Again, the Psalm: “Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.  Happy are those whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt, in whose spirit there is no deceit” (32:1-2).  David knew that happiness because he confessed, received forgiveness, and rose to stand as a new man.  He says as much in the Psalm.  “I acknowledged my sin to you … and you forgave” (32:5).  It is a basic, central Christian belief.  When we confess our sins by name, repent of those sins by turning away from them, and turn to Jesus, we are forgiven and we are made new.

In this Psalm, God is not an angry judge waiting to crush us in our guilt.  It is our guilt itself that crushes us.  In the Psalm, God’s heavy hand is meant to lead us to confession that we might be forgiven and rescued from the weight of our sins.  Verse 6 says, “Let all who are faithful offer prayer to you.”  And in the next verse, the singer sings to God, “You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance” (32:7).

Confession is freeing.  We fear it because walking through our guilt is painful, but God walks with us.  And the church must walk with people so they don’t have to face their own shame alone.  We cannot be a judging community that compounds the pain and shame of the guilty by rejecting them.  We have to imitate our Lord by forgiving as God forgives. We have to be a community of grace, a community in which grace is extended to all.

In this way, and only in this way, does confession bring freedom.  And, O, what freedom it is!  Dostoevsky captures it well at the end of Crime and Punishment.  Sonia goes with Raskolnikov to Siberia.  She will wait for him to serve out his 7-year prison sentence.  She has been his conscience, by her purity forcing him to confess, and staying with him when he did.  She did not preach at him, but she lived her faith.  She gave him a New Testament, but never forced him to read it.

On the last page, he sits in his sell, holding the closed Bible, contemplating all that has happened: his crime, his confession, Sonia’s love for him.  He notes that as hard as things have been for her, “nothing could take her joy!”  And thinks to himself, “Her faith, her feelings, may not mine become like them” (p.434).  The books ends, “Now a new history begins: a story of the gradual renewing of a man, of his slow, progressive regeneration, and change from one world to another – an introduction to the previously unknown realities of life.”  Those are the realities of the happiness and freedom we have when we turn to God in Christ and receive forgiveness. 

A final note from the Psalm reiterates the necessity of grace from God to us and from us to one another.  Verse 10 says, “Many are the torments of the wicked.”  And we might expect the next stanza to say, “But great are the delights of the righteous.”  However, it does not say that.  It says, “Steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord.” 

The contrast is not between the wicked and the obedient, the sinful and the righteous.  David, the singer of this Psalm, knows we all sin.  The contrast is between those who are miserable because they are stuck in sin and don’t see the way and just suffer the pain of it all, and those who, in the midst of the messes of their own making, turn to God and trusted God.  God can be trusted with our junk, with our messes.  “Steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord.”

Enter that freedom today.  Fully confess your sin today and look to the cross and know that you are forgiven.  One of the ways God makes things right in the world is the gift of freedom.  God frees us from our own sins by forgiving and making us clean and new.  Confess today, and receive the new life God offers.

When we do that, then the final verse, Psalm 32:11 is ours.

“Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart” (32:11). 

AMEN

If We Forgive (Matthew 6:14-15)

Sunday, May 8, 2016

          Two weeks ago, I suggested that we are all called to sit at God’s table.  One might hear that and imagine a heavenly banquet, and that would not be wrong, but, this is more than simply the hope that we will be with God after death.  This is a call from God now.  God beckons us to live as Kingdom people, and this means we make hospitality a normal way of life.  We invite other people into our lives.  A question I invited the church to ponder is how does participating in communion with other Christians link us to one another?

          Last week’s message was each one of us is called to live in God’s story.  We think of our own lives as stories to be told.  We immerse ourselves in God’s story so that the story of our lives cannot be told apart from the story of the salvation we have in Jesus.  Thus we are challenged to name specific things that assure us that we are part of God’s story.  As we look at the world around us and at our lives and relationships, what reminds us that we are part of God’s story?

          Both of these things – fellowship and hospitality, and life lived as integrated story; my story and God’s intertwined – both of these run into the same problem.  We are called to fellowship and we are called to story, but we are sinners.  We mess up, we disobey God, we ignore God, we say discouraging things to each other, we lie and cheat, we fail to give love when God puts people in need of love in our lives, we hoard resources instead of sharing, we curse instead blessing; in a millions ways we are, all of us, sinners.  This means we commit sins daily.

          How can serial rejecters of God’s word and God’s way answer the call to fellowship and the call to enter God’s story?  We destroy fellowship and dump filth on the story.  How, in our sin, do we ever do God any good?  ­­­­­

          We’re in the midst of a 5-part series on call and this week’s may well present the biggest hurdle for many of us to overcome.  We are called to forgive.  We are each sinners, which means each one of us lives among sinners.  Ask my wife or children. They could give you a detailed list of the ways I fumble things.  They could catalogue hurtful words that have spilt out of my mouth.  They could offer extensive testimony to my temper, my forgetfulness, my laziness.  And they wouldn’t be exaggerating, nor would their accounts be intentionally mean-spirited. It would be honest. 

I could give a similar account of each of them.  The people in your life, who know you best, could do the same with you.  Sin wrecks life and one cruel truth is we sin most against those we love the most.  Indeed, how could we, demolishers of all that is good, answer the call to fellowship and the call to tell and walk in the story of God?  James K.A. Smith writes, “The church … is a witness to the renewal of creation.  … But given the brokenness of our relationships, the abuses and violence and competition that fragment our communion, the body [the church] must be reknit together through practices of reconciliation and forgiveness.  A kingdom-shaped community cannot be satisfied with private, isolated individuals only reconciled “vertically” to God, for the manifest witness of such reconciliation will be love of neighbor.”[i]

Jesus connects forgiveness between a person and God and forgiveness between people in Matthew 6.  In the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches the Lord’s Prayer; in the middle of this prayer, we find forgiveness.  “Forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” (6:12).  The first instance, God forgiving me, does not stand apart from the second, me forgiving the jerk who hurt me.  He can’t be “the jerk.”  There’s no doubt he hurt me.  He’s guilty. He bullied, or lied, or cursed, or stole from me.  His sin is reality and I am injured.  But, the call of God on me is forgiveness. 

In the verses that come immediately after the Lord ’s Prayer, Jesus paints a crystal clear picture.   “If you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespass” (6:14-15).

Many Bible commentators, especially evangelicals who want to read the Bible as scholars and as Jesus’ disciples, struggle mightily with these verses.  It sure does sound like God’s forgiveness is contingent.  We read Romans and other passages in Paul’s letters and build our faith a theology of God’s unconditional grace and love.  We are saved because of what God did, not because of what we do.  A major aspect of our salvation is that God, in His mercy, forgives our sins.  But, here in Matthew, straight from Jesus’ mouth, forgiveness sounds conditional.  We are forgiven if we forgive.  If not, well, that’s a sadder story.

Some of the experts I read try to find ways to get us off the hook.  We can be forgiven even if we fail to forgive.  I appreciate their efforts to be thorough in reading this passage as scholars and skilled interpreters.  But I think trying to give us “an out” from the hard work of forgiveness misses Jesus’ point entirely.  We are called to give and receive forgiveness.  Rather doing hermeneutical gymnastics for the sake of making the scripture say what we want it to say instead of what it actually says, as faithful Bible readers we do well to respond to what it actually says. 

If we forgive each other, our heavenly father will also forgive us.  If we refuse forgiveness, we are not living as forgiven people.  We are called to live as forgiven people.  In a moment, I will demonstrate from scripture the fact that God’s forgiveness is unconditional.  God’s grace pours out of God’s heart and floods our lives.  But when that happens, will we dive into the living water?  Will we receive the forgiveness we are given?  As much as I can describe how sinful we are there is more important to realize and hold tightly.  We are completely forgiven, and we are called to live as forgiven people.  When we see ourselves as God sees us and in Christ, we realize God does not see the stains of our sins.  God sees us and sees the purity of Jesus.  We’ve got to see ourselves in that way.  Yes, you are a sinner.  In in Christ, you are new creation, a child of God who bears His image and whose sins have been washed away.

One of Jesus’ most brilliant parables illustrates this forgiveness into which we are called to live.  This is from Matthew 18.

²¹ Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church^[g] sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” ²² Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven^[h] times.

²³ “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. ²⁴ When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents^[i] was brought to him; ²⁵ and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. ²⁶ So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ ²⁷ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. ²⁸ But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii;^[j] and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ ²⁹ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ ³⁰ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. ³¹ When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. ³² Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. ³³ Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ ³⁴ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. ³⁵ So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister^[k] from your heart.”

Why didn’t the slave forgive his fellow slave?  He had not received the grace given to him.  Ten thousand talents is more money than a slave would earn in a 100 life times.  How he came to fall into such a debt is another story, but his reaction was not to claim a mistake had been made.  He did not say, “O My King, how could I ever have fallen behind so much money?”  Imagine a minimum wage earner owing $25 million dollars.  How many centuries of work at minimum wage would be needed to pay it off?  And yet the slave says, “Have patience and I will pay every thing?”  Asking for more time.  More time?  For that debt?  Forgiveness never enter the slave’s mind, even when he receives it.

He grasps his fellow slave by the throat and that guy says the same he said.  “Have patience.”  The guy asks for time.  The difference is the size of the debt.  His fellow slave owed a few days’ worth of wages.  It could be paid off in a week.  But he won’t give even that week because he is locked in debt-payment thinking, not grace-forgiveness thinking.

When Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “If you forgive others their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will forgive you,” I think he’s talk about the entire picture of living in forgiveness.  Live in a mindset where we accept ourselves as forgiven people and extend that grace others.

We know God gives forgiveness and grace as His pleasure and regardless of our actions.  Jesus died on the cross while we were still in our sin.  He died for us whether we ever confessed or not.  After the resurrection, Jesus received Peter on the beach.  This is in John 21.  Peter had denied knowing Jesus, and now Jesus was forgiving Peter and restoring him.  The forgiveness extended to Peter was not contingent on whether or not Peter had forgiven his neighbor.  The forgiveness of God is unconditional.  However, it is not complete if we don’t receive it.  God extends that forgiveness, but if continue, like the man in the parable to operate in a debt-payment view of the world, we’re not walking in grace.

Please not, I am not declaring that failure to receive forgiveness is a determining factor who is and is not saved.  God determines who is saved and I don’t try to make a lists of the saved and the damned.  God has not given me either of those lists nor has God told me I should try to speculate about either of them. 

What I am presenting this morning is what I believe to be a call of God on all disciples of Jesus.  Every one of us is called to live in forgiveness – both giving it and receiving it. 

Where this becomes especially hard is in relation to someone who has hurt you deeply.  The question our small groups will discuss around this is what changes occur in you when you forgive someone?  That is not a simple question (a) because it takes a lot of spiritual energy and Christ-like love to give forgiveness and (b) because giving forgiveness doesn’t instantly erase the pain of the sin committed against you.  So, don’t run out, say “I forgive the one who wounded me,” and then expect instant healing and blessing.  It’s not easy or instant.

However, do explore this.  Who hurt you?  How bad was it?  Can you, in turning to God with some trusted Christian friends alongside praying with you and for you, find in yourself to forgive?  I believe the Holy Spirit will help.  As hard as it is, forgive and then look inside to see the way the Spirit is at work in you.  Note how different life looks when you walk in grace and live in forgiveness instead in a debt-payment mindset.  And, ask that same group of friends to help you see yourself as forgiven and beloved because that is God sees you.

That’s what the cross means.  God loves, forgives us, and receives as His own. Believe it.  When you look in the mirror, see one who is loved by God.

AMEN

---

[i] James K. A. Smith (2009) Desiring the Kingdom p.201.

Seek Wisdom and Revelation

Seek Wisdom and Revelation (Ephesians 1:15-23)

Sunday, October 11, 2015

        Are all churches the same?

        Or …

        Is each church unique?

        I believe the latter.  Each church has an identity. The church building factors in this identity, but it is the people who comprise the congregation that set a particular church’s culture and define an individual faith community’s character. Today we begin a 7-week project.  We will seek the specific call of God for HillSong.

        Our core identity is built on three principles.  We believe church is to be a safe place where people meet Jesus and are made new, and upon being made new are then sent into the world in Jesus’ name.  Remember those three words – Safe, New, Sent.

        We constantly strive for spiritual and emotional safety because Jesus was safe for the most vulnerable of people.  Those with diseases and disabilities were viewed as people under God’s curse.  They were called unclean.  They were pushed to the far margins of society, denied participation in the community.  Tax collectors, prostitutes, shepherds, and leather workers – these were all outsiders.  Shepherds and tanners were unclean because of the nature of their professions, even though both werere needed by society.

        Others were unclean and unacceptable because of their sins.  Everyone - the sick, the sinners and the outcasts – all were welcomed and loved by Jesus. 

If he was safe for people, then his body, his church should be a safe place.  We are to be a community where it is safe to explore Christianity.  It should be OK if someone doesn’t know the words to “Amazing Grace.”  This is a safe place to not know.  This is a safe place to cry. Emotional pain, can break a person.  This is a safe place to be broken.  This is a safe place to ask questions and acknowledge doubts.  Or to propose new ideas. 

        We are far from perfect in this.  Maybe you have had an experience where you felt this church was not safe for you.  Maybe you have felt I was not a safe person to approach or to speak with openly.  We have to constantly strive to be a safe place.

        The second word, New, is about meeting Jesus.  This is the part of our construct that is out of our control.  We cannot make anyone new.  We can set conditions so that people may meet the Holy Spirit in this place.  But actually being made new is something the Holy Spirit does in us.  This is God acting at God’s initiative, on God’s timetable.  Our worship, our groups, and the entire atmosphere is intended to help people meet God.  God will take care of the new birth, the transformation.  We try to foster the setting in which this can happen.

        Third, having found welcome and refuge in the family of God, and having met Jesus and become new creations as a result of the encounter, we are sent into the world to announce that Jesus is Lord and that all people can have life in His name.  We are sent each week to be witnesses in the communities of Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Durham, Raleigh, and Hillsboro.  Some are sent from here on trips to faraway places.  Some receive the commissioning prayer as they move out of our town.  In those cases, we say goodbye with our arms open in love, not knowing when we’ll see them again. 

We all need a safe place because sin dictates that there is brokenness in the lives of every one of us.  We all need to become new creations in Christ.  And everyone who is His is then sent to give testimony to His salvation.

The third portion of this vision for church – “Sent” – is a joy, but our enemies, Satan, sin, and death can use the greatest gifts of God against us.  Read Luke chapter 4.  The devil tried to tempt Jesus by quoting something beautiful, passages of scripture.  Look at Mark chapter 10.  Two of the inner of circle of disciples, James and John, let sin – their own lust for power – take their eyes off of Jesus and His mission.  Read the Gospel accounts of Peter’s denial of Jesus.  His fear of death led him down a path in which he not only abandoned the Lord.  He denied Jesus, his rabbi.  Satan, sin, and death; these enemies of God conspire to attack the Almighty by hurting us. 

Midway through 2014 up through this past summer, we did the “sending prayer,” a lot.  Well over a dozen people who were core HillSong members, people who made our ministries run, moved on.  Each time, we laid on hands and joyfully expressed our love and tearfully said our goodbyes.  And we held tightly to our vision of Safe-New-Sent.  However, by Easter of this year, a spiritual enemy was speaking loudly to my spirit.

“Hey Pastor Rob!  You’ve lost a lot of people.”

My response.  This is part of our vision.  We know will say goodbye.  We are in a place where people come, stay for a few years, get a degree and then move one.  We as a congregation embrace that.  We thank God we can walk with people for a few years, love them and be a home for them while they are here and then send them on with our blessing.  That is who we are.

My enemy’s response.  “Keep telling yourself that, Pastor Rob.  You can’t sustain a vision like that.  It won’t hold up.”

I said back, listen, this church has maintained this reality long before I came.  I just put words together to describe God’s work here.

My enemy: “Sure.  But now you’re here and you’re a hindrance.  Take a look around.  You’re not getting new people to fill in the void left by those who’ve moved away.  And, in case you haven’t been paying attention, not everyone who is leaving is a recent graduate.  You’re losing people hand over fist.  Churches all over America are in decline and you are no different.”

This tortured conversation kept arising no matter how many times I drove it down to the depths.  I share all my struggles with my wife.  She heard me and almost in passing dropped a wisdom bomb on me.  She said, “Well, I have been in a Bible study that prays the words of Ephesians 1.  Why don’t you have our elders pray that scripture.”  So, I did.  Imagine that.  A Christ-follower has anxieties, comes to understand those anxieties are possibly a form of spiritual attack, and so that Christ-follower prays and asks others to pray.

If you think I am overspiritualizing concerns that can be explained along sociological lines and if I am guilty of seeing devils behind every problem, it makes no difference.  We are a praying community.  No matter what the source of the threat is one of our responses is to pray with great expectation.  Praying demands that we wait, listen (in the spirit), and live expectantly.  We wait on God, listen to God, and expect God to respond. 

The Apostle Paul did this.  In Ephesians 1, he says, “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him.” God wants HillSong to come together and ask for wisdom and revelation in our lives as individuals and collectively as the body of Christ.  God is calling us to pray for these things. 

Paul had a profound sense that God would give these things.  In verse 18 he speaks of our hearts being enlightened so that we know the hope of the resurrected Lord and the inheritance he gives us and his power at work in us.  He believed God would give the wisdom and revelation he sought.

To close out chapter 1 he says,

²⁰ God^[f] put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, ²¹ far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. ²² And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church,²³ which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

That is us, the body of Christ.  When Paul writes the “fullness of him,” he means the Holy Spirit fills us – the church. 

So, our elders, and Heather, Nathan and I, prayed, listened, and expected in preparation for this season we now enter.  For the next 7 weeks, as a church family we will together pray for wisdom and revelation.

I conclude this morning by sharing a bit of wisdom God has given me and some specific things God has shown me.  Revelation is what God unveils, knowledge, truth, and reality that we cannot discover no matter how hard we try.  Divine wisdom and revelation are things God gives not things we earn.

I already mentioned one bit of wisdom.  When I was struggling spiritually, God, by way of my wife, led me to pray.  A second wisdom God has given is something that has helped me throughout my life at HillSong – the act of listening.  In more ways than I can count, God spoke to me when I chose to listen to people.  I pass that wisdom along.  If someone is talking with you or at you, take a moment to fully listen.  Listen and in your spirit, pray.  No matter type of interaction it is, I think God speaks in it, but most of the time we only hear what he has to say if we are listening.

So the wisdom is pray and listen.  What is the revelation?

What has God shown me?  Recall the national recession of 2008-2012.  In that time frame our church added an associate pastor and a youth pastor.  We also added a partnership with the Care Point for at risk kids in Kombolcha, Ethiopia.  Recall that from 2014 to 2015 nearly 30 people followed God’s call to other places.  HillSong lost that many people but we really didn’t lose anyone. 

We said goodbye knowing this is part of who we are as a church.  We had the privilege of loving each family and sending them with God’s blessing.  Moreover in that time, our church maintained the Ethiopia partnership, grew our Saturday tutoring ministry here in Chapel Hill, had one of our biggest Vacation Bible Schools yet, and explored partnerships in the Dominican Republic and in Quebec. 

The devil would love for us to focus on the losses – loss of money from 2008-2012; loss of people from 2014-2015.  When I heeded the wisdom to pray and when I listened, God showed me that God has been at work in our church family the entire time.  God has involved our church in God’s work around the world.  God does not depend on how much money we have or how many people are here. 

God expects us to know Him through the crucified and risen Christ.  God expects us to be responsive to the Holy Spirit.  And as we respond to the Spirit, God shows us Himself and leads us in the life God wants us to live.  And that life is where we experience the greatest happiness, deepest meaning, and lasting joy. 

We’re going to end with prayer.

As music plays, listen to the Holy Spirit.  After we’ve listened then pray for revelation.  Ask God to show you what God wants you to see and ask God to help you see it.  This can be revelation for your life or for our church.  First listen, then ask for revelation and wisdom. 

If you want to you can come and pray at the steps.  We will have people at the front and back ready to pray with you.  We enter into a time of prayer knowing that this is a season of seeking.  Over the next several weeks we will explore different scriptures constantly seeking God’s wisdom and revelation.

AMEN

Comforted and Strengthened (2 Thessalonians 2:1-17)

          I was around 30 or so and had been a senior pastor for just a few years.  One of the elderly women in our church died and I had preached her funeral.  Her family appreciated the way things went.  So they called me a few months later.  One of her distant relatives, someone who did not have a pastor, was in a coma.  They were considering taking him off life support but they wanted to talk to me first. 

Something occurred to me this week as I remember that time 15 years ago.  It did not occur to me then, but it struck me this past week.  The man was young – only 48.  I was not so dense at age 30 that I thought 48 was “old.”  I was not foolish to think, ‘OK, he lived a good life.’ But it didn’t register with me that 48 is young.  I am now 45 years old.  Forty-eight seems young now.  He was 48 and his wife had to make the agonizing decision to take him off life support and sit with him as he died.  She wanted a pastor present.  She hoped I could offer meaning and make sense of what was taking place. 

I don’t know if I was of any help to her.  She was not part of our church family, so I did not see her after I preached her husband’s funeral.  Often people will turn to pastors, even people who have never been in church, when questions of mortality and ultimate meaning arise and they have no resources to answer such questions. 

The two questions facing us are (1) what bad news or misfortune hits with such devastation that we find ourselves at such a loss and so disoriented or overwhelmed that it would indeed be a crisis?  What losses in life knock us flat on our backs?  Your answer will be different than the person a few rows behind or even the person sitting next to you.  Maybe some of us have been through such a devastating crisis are in the middle of one. 

Syrian refugees are in the midst of life-changing events and indeed a life and death struggle.  In our own community, families locked in poverty face agonizing decisions that could render them homeless and maybe even tear their families apart.  And even families who are in relatively safe communities and have financial means, are middle class or higher, face personal crises that potentially bring suffering and loss.  What is the danger you face or I face?  That is the first question.

The second is what resources do you or I have to stand as the looming shadow of the approaching threat grows and threatens to swallow us?  What do we have that enables us not only to survive the threat, but to thrive in the face of it?  Jesus did not just promise he would get us through, help us survive.  He offered more.  He offers abundant life.  When faced with the death of a loved one at too young an age or the myriad struggles that come with poverty or the trail of tears refugees must walk or some other crisis, what gets us through and helps us joyfully thrive even in dark times?

We approach 2 Thessalonians 2 through these questions because of the first two verses.  We beg you brothers and sisters … do not be quickly alarmed as if the day of the Lord has already come (paraphrase).  The Thessalonian Church members accepted that persecution would come.  They would suffer because they chose to follow Jesus.  That was the course they had chosen.  That was not their crisis.  The letter does not specifically identify the source of the persecution.  It could have come from many corners.  Whatever the source, there were enemies opposing the preaching of Jesus in Thessalonica. 

The crisis came in continued speculation and confusion about when the risen Jesus would return, bring history to an end, judge the word, and usher in the Kingdom of God.  Even though this question had been directly addressed in 1 Thessalonians 4 and 5, confusion and concern over it persisted.  In fact, the people were very alarmed.  Their faith was beginning to crack not because of persecution but because of doubt.  Did Jesus come and did they miss it? 

Our crisis is not theirs but in our church as in their church, doubt comes when we get blindsided by some major problem threatens the vibrant relationship we have with God, and robs us of the joy we have in Christ.  The promise to that ancient church remains for us preserved in this letter. 

We see the specific issue for the Thessalonians beginning in verse 3.  Before the Day of the Lord comes, there will be a rebellion led by the lawless one.  This lawless one is called the beast in the book of Revelation.  In 1^st and 2^nd John, the term used is antichrist.  That term, ‘antichrist,’ is only recorded in two books in the Bible – 1^st John and 2^nd John.  Lawless one, beast, and antichrist – do these terms refer to specific individuals?  Are they each ways of identifying the same individual?

James Efird who taught at Duke Divinity School points out that because Paul did not specifically identify this person it is futile to try to do so.[i]  Paul felt the lawless one would be active soon, within a decade of his writing.  And, the Roman Emperor Domitian would have fit the bill as his persecution of Christians in the last decade of the first century AD did make things hard for Christians.  Abraham Mallherbe believes Paul was not identifying a specific enemy of God but rather had in mind an end-times “personification of lawlessness, the ultimate representative of those in whom lawlessness comes to expression.”[ii]

We could fill in names.  Hitler was the antichrist, the lawless one.  Osama Bin Laden is who Paul meant.  Or maybe today, the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is the one.  When he’s off the seen another enemy of humanity will come along.  The point is evil is in the world right now.

God has already won the final battle.  That happened when Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world and then rose from the grave.  Those two events are inseparable.  Taken together, we see what God has won – our freedom from death and sin.  There is no final battle coming. 

However, the news of the victory has not yet made it throughout the world.  So for the time being, we live as people who have the Holy Spirit, are saved, born again, and are called to be heralds announcing the life people can have in Christ.  We have this truth and the mission to which we are called in the midst of a world where there is pain and suffering.  Evil has been defeated but not yet sentenced to eternal death.  In this interim period between resurrection and second coming, we live in the tension of the eternal power of God and the present reality of evil, suffering, and death. 

The Lawless One of 2 Thessalonians 2 represents the reality that evil is in the world.  We have to live within that reality.  This chapter falls in with a style of writing called apocalyptic.  This style uses fantastic images as an artistic way of describing God’s activity within human history.  Many reader mistakenly see in apocalyptic writing a script or a forecast of the end times.  It doesn’t actually work that way.  The book of Daniel, Matthew 24 & 25, and the book of Revelation are examples of apocalyptic writings.  In each case, the thing to catch is the promise of God described in poetic images.

Again, Professor Efird on the lawless one in 2 Thessalonians: “given the symbolic nature of apocalyptic thinking, it is possible that Paul did not have anyone or anything in mind as this “man of lawlessness.”  It appears that he speaks again in traditional symbolic imagery to describe a scene he does not know how to depict with specifics.  Paul always realized, as some others have not, that the future belongs to God and will be worked out by God.”[iii]

The urging in 2 Thessalonians is that the church not be shaken by rumors or lies or threats.  Whomever or whatever power opposes God and injures God’s people will wilt before the force of Jesus.  Verse 8, “The Lord Jesus will destroy [the lawless one] with the breath of his mouth, annihilating him by the manifestation of his coming.”

Of course this promise raises a more immediate concern.  It is wonderful to think that one day Jesus will come and conquer evil and death will no longer threaten nor will anything else.  We can count on that.  But what about between then and now?  Remember, we began with two questions: (1) what crises threaten us?  And (2) what helps faces these threats?  So, we say, great!  One day Jesus will come and defeat evil.  But what about today?  How do we live under threats to world security and safety, the threat of disease and death, and the specter of destructive behaviors and relationships that fall apart and leave us defeated and heartbroken? 

I have not mentioned Satan, this morning.  Verse 9 says the lawless one and Satan are affiliated with each and they use “all power, signs, lying wonders, and every kind of wicked deception” in the destruction of the lives of men and women.  Satan’s works are made manifest in antichrists and lawless men and women.  We don’t see the devil, but forces of evil are real and active.  We see the results of their malevolence when we fall prey to temptation and step off the path of discipleship and onto the way that leads away from God.

This takes different forms in each person’s life.  Evil is extraordinarily individual.  What tempts you has no allure for me.  What leads me into sin wouldn’t be snare for you at all.  In the promises of this passage, what help do have that enables us to repel these threats and live an abundant life in Christ?  What assurance do we have for today?

In 2 Thessalonians 1:3-5, we see the potentially redemptive character of persecution and the concomitant suffering.  As we endure and keep our eyes on God, we receive his blessing and direct the attention of our persecutors to Him.  Paul prays for God’s grace for the church.  Today people in the church pray for each other and God answers with encouragement and transformation.  God’s Holy Spirit is with us.  It is God himself with us that gets us through our trials.  Through our suffering, God can actually work for good.  I don’t believe God causes suffering, but I do believe God works in it.

In 2 Thessalonians 2, that same Holy Spirit is said to sanctify us.  Just as the forces of evil conspire to tempt us into causing our ruin, the Holy Spirit God is at work in us, making more God-like.  Sanctification is a fancy word that means we become holy.  And as the closing verses the chapter reaffirm, this is not something we accomplish but a work God does in us.  We are told, “stand firm and hold fast to the tradition of faith,” but immediately after that instruction we see that our Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father both comfort and strengthen us (from 2:15-17).  The fullness of God – each person of the Trinity - stands by us with the Spirit makes us more like God and less prone to sin, and the Son and Father comfort us so that our suffering is muted and our blessing multiplied and strengthens so we can stay faithful when tempted and tested.

What temptation do you face or what trial are you suffering through at this moment in your life?  Whatever the answer, we have a promise.  God is with us in it.  With our focus on him, even trials will become the grounds on which our faith is honed and enlarged and we find ourselves in the joy of the Lord instead of the clutches of the enemy. 

May our Lord Jesus Christ … carry us into every good work and word.

AMEN

---

[i] J. Efird (2006), Left Behind: What the Bible Really Says about the End Times, Smith & Helwys (Macon, GA), p.51

[ii] A. Malherbe (2000), First and Second Thessaloians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Doubleday (New York), p.431-432.

[iii] Efird, p.51.