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

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[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.

Two-Part Diagnosis (1 Thessalonians 3:1-13)

Sunday, September 6, 2015

          Have you ever noticed how much an issue changes when it involves a personal relationship?  This hit me quite drastically many years ago.  I felt pretty confident about my views on immigration.  Then I discovered that one of my closest friends in the world was at that time in the United States illegally.  He entered with a visa and then stayed for years after it expired.  All of a sudden this was no longer a question of undocumented workers or illegal aliens.  This was my brother, Juan[i].  When I discovered his status, did I drop him as a friend?  Was he no longer Juan? 

          More recently, this sense of perspective-shifting has come again in the debates swirling around same sex marriage.  I have good friends who are gay and in relationships.  No matter how one feels about the issue, I still love my friends.  I love Morton.[ii]  No one outside my family has been my friend longer than him.  When he decided to come out of the closet, he called me.  We lived in different states at the time, and he felt he had to tell me.  It was awkward, no doubt.  But, he shared it with me.

I love Morton.  I love Juan.  At a certain level, an important level, it is not about homosexuality or immigration.  It is about my friends.  It is about Morton and Juan, people I love.

          This is because God made us to be relational. Theologians contemplate the 3-in-1 nature of God, the trinity.  Many have come to the conclusion that God is inherently relational.  Father-Son-Holy Spirit exist in an eternal relationship of perfect love and mutuality.  This certainly defies our understanding because we read the New Testament and see each person of the Trinity to be distinct.  Yet we see each is God and not three separate gods, but each is fully God – the one and only God.  Fully understanding this is beyond the capacity of the human mind. 

But even in our limited understanding it is important to recognize that God is relational.  This is as crucial a trait of God any we could name.  We say it is crucial to say God is transcendent and all-knowing and all-powerful.  I think it is just as necessary to say God is relational.  Genesis 1 says God made human beings in God’s own image.  Thus, we are relational.  It doesn’t matter if someone is shy and appreciate solitary time or someone is social butterfly with loads of friends.  We are all made for intimate relationships. 

I am going to do something when I finish today that I have never had a physician.  We are in the middle of a series in which we talk about a prescription for living life in Christ; this prescription works for both individuals and churches.  As I conclude today, I will step out of the metaphor and do something doctors are not expected to do, but pastors are.

I know many doctors are Christians and have done this, but in my years of visiting people in hospitals and in my own doctor’s appointments, I have never had a doctor end his or her time with me by suggesting we pray together.  This morning we will see in 1^st Thessalonians chapter 3 the importance of relationship.  That’s the first diagnosis.  We are made for relationship.  Then we will look as the second part of the diagnosis.  It is a caution.  We need to heed this warning.  After the two diagnoses, I’ll pray. 

Relationships: simply hear the words of Paul in 1 Thessalonians 3.

When I could bear it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith; I was afraid that somehow the tempter had tempted you and that our labor had been in vain.

Timothy has just now come to us from you, and has brought us the good news of your faith and love. He has told us also that you always remember us kindly and long to see us—just as we long to see you.

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? ¹⁰ Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith.

Paul’s deep love for the people who make up the churches he has planted is expressed in vivid color in the letters he writes.  This is especially evident in 1^st Thessalonians.  Chapter 3 begin with Paul making the decision to part with Timothy.  Paul would remain, alone, in Athens.  He felt orphaned by the loneliness but he did it because he wanted Timothy to travel to Thessalonica so he could find out about how the church was doing.  When Timothy came back to Athens with a good report, Paul was thrilled. 

He says in verse 6 that Timothy delivered good news.  The word he uses is derived from the same root as the word Gospel.  Gospel means good news.  When Paul heard that the Thessalonians were doing well in the faith and were concerned about him, he felt that was Gospel truth: good news!  More than anything, the relationships were what mattered to Paul.

Church is meant to be a place of relationships.  I often to refer to us as brothers and sisters in Christ.  In some churches they actually call each other ‘brother’ and ‘sister.’  I have never developed that habit.  It just feels weird to me to speak that way.  But even though I have not adopted the lingo, that is how I feel.  We are family – an eternal family linked by love. 

I know that in church someone will do something you don’t like.  He may do many things you don’t like.  Her personality may grate on you.  You see her walk in the room and you cringe and inch toward the door.  What I am proposing here is that in spite the imperfections and it has plenty, and in spite of the flawed people who make up the church and we are all flawed, we are each called to fully invest our hearts in the family.  I don’t see any New Testament model of someone attending church in a casual, non-committed kind of way.  There are no nominal Christians.  And Christianity is not a solitary venture. 

Paul felt the deepest of connections with the Thessalonian church.  We are called to enter this church family in the same way.  And if this is your first time among us or you have been visiting recently, I want you to know what we’re all about.  You don’t have to conform to some image or expectation to be among us.  We invite you in as you are with the hope that you will join your heart with ours.  We will worship God together.  We will confess our sins together.  We will celebrate one another’s baptisms together.  We will grieve together.  We will eat the bread and the take cup together.  The only way we know how to do church is with God as a Father and us as one another’s brothers and sisters. 

This deep feeling of connection is why Paul was nearly paralyzed with worry for the Thessalonians and with grief at being separated from them.  Simply put, he loved them.  So when he heard from Timothy that they were thriving as disciples, nothing could make him happier.  That’s how much we belong to each other.

The second part of the diagnosis this morning comes in the form of a warning.  We’ve been told that God is relational and for us to live as God intended we must see relationships as our top priority.  Our church must be built on the relationships that are fueled by self-giving, agape love.  There is a threat and Paul names it in verse 5.  “I was afraid that somehow the tempter had tempted you and that our labor had been in vain.” 

In the previous chapter Paul said Satan was who prevented him from coming to the Thessalonians (2:18).  We know that it was a combination of political and religious opposition.  We could point to human causes.  But we also know from Paul’s letters, especially Ephesians 6, that underneath any human opposition to the success of the Gospel, Paul saw the workings of demons and the fallen angel, the evil who opposes God at every turn.  In 1^st Thessalonians 2 he is Satan.  In chapter 3, this enemy is called the tempter.  In 2^nd Thessalonians 2, he is the power that drives the “Lawless One.”

Paul fears that the Tempter would uses human forces to undermine the worship and community in the Thessalonian church to the point that the church would dissolve.  For Paul, no death would hurt any more than this.  Nothing could be worse.  Upon hearing Timothy’s good report, he says in verse 8, ‘we now live, if you continue to stand firm in the Lord.’

Seventeen years ago, I was in church that was renting space to another congregation.  That congregation was made of Roma Christians – gypsies.  There was a bit of a conflict that the Gypsies were having with other Gypsies in the area.  Threats of violence were made.  The leaders in the English congregation, the group that owned the building and thus had the power felt it would be prudent to avoid getting in the middle of this.  They wanted to avoid any trouble for themselves.  So they told the Gypsies who were worshipping in their building they had to leave.

It felt like a death.  As the pastor, I had to tell the Gypsy pastor they had to go.  I felt like the knife was in my hands and dripping red.  The look on his face – I can still see it and still feel convicted by it.  Why was it so easy for those Christians in the English-speaking church so easily shove another community of believers out the door and into the street?  They could do it because they didn’t feel any sense of relationship.  It was all about the security of the building for them.  The Gypsies were ‘that church,’ not ‘our church.’  The people were ‘them,’ not ‘us.’ 

As I reflect this event that has haunted me all these years, I think my reading of 1^st Thessalonians 3 puts it in fresh light.  The English-speaking Christians, people I still deeply love, did not connect relationally with the Gypsies, people I also love.  That sense of belonging to one another so evident in Paul’s words in Thessalonians was not there. 

The tempter stepped into that relationship void.  The devil used fear – a perceived threat, not even a real one.  That fear was enough to get the Gypsies kicked out.  For their part, the Gypsies had up to that point found it very hard to find a church that would welcome them.  In their discouragement, the people of the church went their separate ways.  The devil used fear with one congregation and discouragement with another to kill one church and neuter the other.  It never could have happened if the two congregations joined with one another the heart level.  If they felt that they belonged to one another, they would have stood together in faith and faced any threat that came along. 

When Paul says he’s afraid the tempter would render his work to be done vain and would do so by killing the church, he means it.  I have witnessed first-hand this happen in real life.

So then is the moral of the story that we all need to love one another with great intensity and invest our hearts fully here at HillSong?  Yes!  That’s it.

But then, if you have been here any length of time, you know we are already doing that.  In the past 12 months, the work of the Lord in this place has expanded greatly as now on Sunday afternoons a Spanish-speaking church meets under Pastor Lucio’s leadership.  Also on Sunday afternoons, a Karen-speaking church meets in here under Pastor Kerpaw Htee’s leadership.  And we each belong to each other. 

In a sense, what I am doing in holding us up alongside the Thessalonian church and Paul’s letter to them is I am urging us to continue as we are.  Continue being a community of love and welcome that takes full family ownership of each other’s hearts.  Grow in love as an expression of the Gospel and as a guard against the enemy’s evil designs.  Keep on as you are.  And you who are new among us, find out what this community is all about.

With that in mind, I close with that prayer I mentioned earlier. 

May our God and Father himself and our Lord help us increase and abound in love for one another and for all.

May the Lord so strengthen our hearts in holiness that we may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

AMEN

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[i] Name changed. 

[ii] Name changed,

The Jesus Treatment (Luke 20:9-19)

Sunday, September 1, 2013

            Philip Yancey, journalist and author of many popular Christian books, visited China in 2004.  He was there to speak at a seminar held by an international church.  The travel, the air in China, and speaking 6 times in a weekend left him with an extremely sore throat and extremely tired.  However, his host managed to arrange a series of interviews with church leaders from across the nation.

            These were not internationals, but Chinese, leaders in the unregistered, underground church.  Each has experienced tangible persecution for their faith.  Because they followed Jesus, they had endured job loss, imprisonment, and beatings. 

            The last to come in was Pastor Yuan.[i] Yancey describes him.  “A slender, sprightly senior citizen barely five feet tall [came in] the [room]. ‘I am ninety years old and I’ve spent 22 years in prison – what are they going to do to me!’ he said with a grin in perfect mission-school English” (p.49).  Pastor Yuan spent many, many months in a windowless cell, solitary confinement.  For over 10 years of his imprisonment, he was not allowed a single letter from his family.  No contact. 

            He did hard labor in freezing conditions along the Mongolian border and never got sick or injured.  Many around him were run over by trains or suffered from the conditions, but he was fine.  He counts it a miracle, and who would disagree with Pastor Yuan?  He had no Bible, just passages he memorized.  Also, a missionary, long ago, before missionaries were expelled from China, taught him “The Old Rugged Cross.”  In the paralyzing stillness of solitary confinement, he called on Jesus, singing that song. 

            And he survived the imprisonment, going on to lead a church exploding with growth.  When Billy Graham went to China in 1994, he visited Pastor Yuan.  After that, his story became known, and the foreign reporters flocked to him.  He used the exposure to practice his Christianity openly, baptizing hundreds and daring the government to interfere.

            This is what pastor Yuan told Philip Yancey.  “Think of it: we in China may soon have the largest Christian community in the world and in an atheistic state that tried to stamp us out” (p.51)!

            I recognize that here in Chapel Hill, many who worship in our family of believers will never travel to China, never face imprisonment for our Christianity, never be persecuted in the manner described by Pastor Yuan.  His story is powerful, but can feel distant.  It matter to us for its inspirational value, but also because it is the scripture coming to life before our eyes.

            [The master of the vineyard] sent a slave to the tenants in order that they might give him his share of the produce of the vineyard; but the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. ¹¹ Next he sent another slave; that one also they beat and insulted and sent away empty-handed. ¹² And he sent still a third; this one also they wounded and threw out (Luke 20:11-12).

            Pastor Yuan is the slave sent to work in God’s vineyard, China.  When Jesus originally told this parable, he had a specific context in mind.  The calendar is based around Jesus’ life.  When he was 30, it was 30 AD.  He told the parable of the wicked tenants who abused the master’s workers in Israel when Israel, including God’s city, Jerusalem, was occupied by invading forces, the mighty Romans.  N.T. Wright believes that many Israelites still considered themselves exiles.  Yes, they lived in the land God had given to their ancestors.  They were not enslaved in far off Egypt or far off Assyria or far off Babylon.  But still, they were enslaved.

            In previous times of exile, God’s prophets, specifically Jeremiah and Ezekiel, had experience persecution when they announced that the evil of exile were actually from God.  Yes, it was Assyria and Babylon subjugating the Jews, but the prophets said it only happened because God allowed.  More than that, God brought it on as a punishment against the people for turning against God.  The people responded to this sharp prophecy by imposing harm.  Jeremiah was thrown in a pit and left to die before he was raised out and joined in the exile.

            Jesus had these prophets who suffered for the truth in mind when he told about the slaves of the master being beaten and killed by the wicked tenants who occupied the master’s land.  Israel – China – Chapel Hill – all the earth belongs to God. We exist at God’s pleasure. 

We are creations.  There was a time when we were not, we did not exist at all.  We were not free-floating souls that took on bodies at birth.  Each and every one of us was created by God.  God knows everything minute detail there is to know about you and about me.  The shoes on my feet belong to God.  The car you road in is His.  The beds where we sleep are God’s beds.

When Jesus damned the wicked landholders who occupied the master’s land, he directly condemned the religious leaders in Israel in his own day.  They knew he meant them and this was not the first time he announced the end of their corruption of worship and religious practice.  Luke 19:47 – “Everyday [Jesus] was teaching in the temple.  The chief priests, scribes, and leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him.”  They had two obstacles.  One – they needed Rome to sanction an execution and Jesus had not yet done anything they could stick to him.  Two – his popularity was so great that if they went about it the wrong way, the people would openly revolt against them – the temple leaders – instead of against Rome.

After he completes the parable of the wicked landholders, the scribes and chief priests knew they stood condemned.  Verse 19 says they wanted to lay hands on him right then and there.  Just a few days later, political winds would change directions and the savvy high priest achieved his murderous goal when Jesus was crucified.  Just as they clenched their angry teeth knowing he was condemning them, Jesus knew they would get him.

I think this is a secondary application of the parable, secondary, but extremely important.  In the parable, the master landowner is God.  The tenants renting the land are those in Israel in Jesus’ day who used religion to exalt themselves.  They claimed to praise God but in fact manipulated prayer and public worship for their own benefit.  Not all priests did this.  The father of John the Baptist was a priest – a humble Godly man.  Many Pharisees and clergymen of the day had a deep desire to serve the Lord.  But, the holders of power (or the appearance of power) liked the power. 

It has always been so.  When humans built the tower of Babel, it was for the sake of power.  Today, there are pastors who crave power and popularity.  And in Jesus’ day it was the temple leadership in Jerusalem.  That is who is represented by the tenants in the parable.  The slaves in the parable are God’s prophets, and the son is Jesus himself.

I think though, the application expands as the parable takes up life in other contexts.   The landowner is always God and the Son is always Jesus.  But the wicked tenants appear in other eras of history.  They are all those who oppose the way of God.  And usually they do so in a position of religious authority.  One example would be the Christian pastors who, in Apartheid South Africa, endorsed racism and a system that forced black people to live in wretched conditions as economic serfs with no hope of freedom from poverty.  The white rulers of Apartheid all claimed Christianity.  They treated their brothers in Christ who were black like rats and yet they themselves claimed to be Jesus’ followers.  In the parable, they would have been the wicked landholders.

The servants who went to collect the master’s harvest are those who do God’s work in the world and then suffer for it.  Jesus was killed a few days after he told this parable.  Those who follow him can expect no less.  When we are disciples announcing the end of Satan, the end of sin, and the end of death, Satan, sin, and death will use people to rebel against the message.  The announcement of the Kingdom of God brings down the violent hatred on the heads of the messengers.  To be a disciple is to be persecuted.

We have spent seven weeks in Luke’s Gospel, thinking about what it is to be a follower of Jesus Christ.  A disciple lives a God-dependent life.  A disciple of Jesus is compassionate, like the Good Samaritan.  A disciple of Jesus is present with God and with people, sometimes recognizing that the work Martha does in the kitchen is good, but the Mary’s willingness to sit and be with Jesus is the best.  A Jesus-follower prays and also listens; prayer is listening to God as much as it is talking to God and the disciple spends a lifetime developing the ability to do both. 

And a disciple lives a life God creates.  We start out with our own ambitions.  This is what I want for my life – success, money, etc.  But then the disciple wakes up one day and realizes life is better when we let go of some personal dreams and begin living the life God makes for us.  In that, our values are re-arranged.  We start understanding what Jesus meant when he said the first will be last.

In our talks about the disciple life, we have not tried to avoid the hard parts or make it sound easy.  It is easy in the sense that Jesus does all the work.  He has to die on a cross.  All we have to do is receive his Holy Spirit and follow Him.  The way we know we are following is we are God-dependent, compassionate, present with him, made by him, and we value what he values.  One last indicator of the disciple life is persecution.  When we follow him with the devotion of a disciple, eventually, we will be persecuted. 

We don’t seek it.  We don’t, as a mark of our deep devotion, like masochists seek out pain that we can then brandish as badge of our discipleship.  We strive to live faithfully no matter the consequences.  Sometimes there are tangible rewards.  The church applauds the one who goes on missions and tells others about Christ and in simpler, every day ways lives faithfully.  Other times the consequence for following Jesus is pain. 

Pastor Yuan in china went through that deep pain.  He knew preaching the gospel would get him big trouble.  He got the Jesus-treatment: solitary confinement; brutal penal labor; agonizing separation from family.  He also got the Jesus-treatment: filling of the Holy Spirit; the ability to sing praise even while being persecuted.  He was able to live to 90, to outlive those who tried to break him.

In my first year of seminary, I met Chet, a student about 10 years older than me.  I was 23, never married, no kids.  I did not have a lot of life experience.  Chet had been extremely successful in business.  He had a beautiful Christian wife and a baby daughter who was the apple of his eye.

Then God pulled the rug out and told Chet he was being called to be a pastor and he needed to quit his job and go so seminary.  Chet’s beautiful wife did not feel so Christian at this point.  She liked the 6-figure salary and told Chet he could leave but she wasn’t giving anything up.  She divorced him.

When I met him, he was a broken man.  He was forced to live with the results of following the call of God, walking the disciple path.  He was in Richmond, Virginia, going to seminary classes that he found thoroughly difficult and seemingly meaningless.  The wife he loved was done with him and he couldn’t see the daughter he cherished.  All because he said, “yes,” to Jesus. 

When the hurt comes, and it comes to disciples, always, Jesus gets us through it.  He did for all the black Christ-followers who endured apartheid and then forgave their oppressors when it ended; Jesus got Chet through that painful first year of seminary and into a ministry of joy – the joy of announcing the Kingdom of God; Jesus took Pastor Yuan from solitary to baptisms to Billy Graham.

Jesus takes you and me to death and then through to resurrection and newness of life in the eternal Kingdom of Heaven where there are no more tears, no more pain, and nothing separates us from the love God.  Jesus, the stone the builders rejected, is the cornerstone.  All life depends on him.  This is true for every person because the world is His.  Disciples understand because we walk the trail he has blazed. 

Become his disciple.  You’ll get the Jesus treatment and it can feel rough for a while.  But you will be drawn into the very heart of God.  You will know God.  And you will know life as God gives it.

AMEN

           

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[i] This account is told in What Good is God (2010), p.41-52.

Lasting Faith

Pray for Kenneth Bae.  It is urgent.  Each day that passes, marks another day that this 44-year-old man is separated from his children and family.  He also goes by his Korean name, Pae Jun Ho.  Whether Bae or Ho, God knows who you mean.  Pray for this man, a Christian whose heart breaks for orphans.

            Bae is a U.S. citizen from the state of Washington, but has been living in China serving with the highly acclaimed and thoroughly reputable organization Youth With a Mission, YWAM.  YWAM wants to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost in the world.  Bae is ethnically Korean.  He takes people from China on tours into North Korea. 

            On November 12, 2012, in the country legally, Bae was arrested and has been in a N. Korean prison since.  It has been 188 days, and counting.  Our brother in Christ who values evangelism and salvation as we do is now imprisoned for carrying out the Great Commission.  He has received the longest sentence ever imposed on a U.S. citizen in North Korea: 15 years.

            Revelation 14:12 says, “Here is a call for endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and hold fast to the faith of Jesus.”  Indeed.  Jesus sends us out with the good news that He is offering salvation from sin and death to all people.  Bae, sent out by Jesus, is now in prison in a dark place.  Imagine being separated from your family for 188 days; for 15 years.   Pray for him.

            And listen to God’s word.  Mr. Bae would understand the Christian who wrote Revelation, John of Ephesus.  John was imprisoned for refusing to bow to the Roman emperor.  He was sentenced for life to the prison compound on Patmos Island.  John could empathize with Kenneth Bae.  His word to all who suffer for Jesus is “endure.”

            While John passed the time of his internment he met with the risen Christ and was taken to Heaven in a vision.  He writes, “I saw another angel flying in midheaven” (14:6a).  I don’t know exactly what John means by ‘midheaven.’  He does not elaborate.  Rather he emphasizes the angel’s activity. 

            The angel carried an “eternal gospel,” which was to be preached to “those who live on earth – to every nation and tribe and language and people” (14:6b-d).  Because of Christians like Kenneth Bae, that gospel is preached in places like North Korea.  North Korea has been described by Christians who have escaped as being openly hostile to God and to faith.  These believers acknowledge there are some Christians in the country.  However, the large Churches in the bigger cities are facades.

            These buildings are actually controlled by the government and are in place to give the impression to the world that North Korea is a place of religious freedom.  In actuality though, these buildings are occupied by people who actively oppose Christian faith.  This information comes from a report of Max Fisher of the Washington Post.  He interviewed a defector who reported on the conditions in Pyongyang and other cities in that country.[i] 

            Thank God that Kenneth Bae is carrying the word of God to people in a place where there is a terrible cost for committing one’s life to Christ.  Will an American diplomat travel there and negotiate his freedom?  Will he serve out 15 years?  After a decade and a half, will he even be freed then?

            Last week, I mentioned Christians in Syria.  They made up 10-15% of the population before the violence began.  Now, the numbers dwindle as they flee to Lebanon.  God bless those who stay and maintain a church in that war-torn land.  They know the Assad regime is immoral, abusive and must fall.  However, they fear it will be replaced by the rule of Muslim extremists who have no tolerance for the presence of Jesus worshipers. 

            How can the eternal gospel Revelation says is to be proclaimed make it into these places of war and persecution?  We might find comfort reading that it is an angel carrying this gospel not men and women.  But Jesus gave the command to his disciples, and the first ones to “go and tell” the Jesus story were the women who followed him.  Before the angel of Revelation does his work of worldwide gospel proclamation, the church is to go and tell, and to do so in all places, even hard places.

            These extreme examples make for good stories, but if we leave it there, then the good stories end up being really bad preaching.  Why?  Because it is so easy to leave it there.  I am completely serious in telling the church to pray for Kenneth Bae and for the crumbling Christian presence in Syria.  We could add to our prayer list Nigeria.  Always on the brink of war, Muslim-Christian tensions are boiling over right now.  When we answer the call to prayer, it changes us and makes a difference for good in the world.

            However, it is so easy to leave it.  We hear a word a church and the truth might compel us … a little bit.  So we pray and wipe our hands and our brows and say, “Well, I prayed!”  Is there more?  Both the angel and the church are to be about some very specific activities as they pray.  Does this mean I think we are all to go sit in prison with Kenneth Bae?  Maybe. 

Maybe God is calling someone here to that ministry.  We want to open ourselves to do whatever God sets out for us and by “whatever,” we truly mean we will answer God’s call without thought to how difficult it seems.  I met a doctoer early in 2012 who is an American citizen and is ethnically.  She is, by now, in North Korea, there to teach in a medical school.  Also, she will secretly work with Christians to encourage them and grow the church.  She knows full well she could have 15 years of hard labor.  Yet she goes with Heavenly joy in her heart. 

Maybe one of us is to join her and Mr. Bae.   Or one here might be called to Syria or Nigeria or other hard places.  We are all called and God’s church is called to every nation.  In our nation there won’t be arrests and imprisonments.  There is not the threat that the government will soon be dominated by a hate-filled religion that has no conscience or hesitation in killing believers.  What threatens our witness?

Many things in American culture erode, water down, suppress, and relativize the Christian’s message that Jesus is Lord.  It all boils down to compromise.  We aren’t going to suffer bodily harm for our testimony, but our culture tells us to mute the Gospel and only allow it to speak in its proper place – in church buildings on Sunday morning; before meals and bed; and in a word of thanks for secular successes.   Oscar winners and athletes who win the championship are allowed to emphatically thank God.  In those moments of triumph unrelated to anything we see in scripture we see the victors declaring “God has a plan.” 

Yes, a major component of God’s plan was for you to win the title and for the seven Christians on the other team to lose.

Our separation-of-church-and-state nation celebrates our announcement that Jesus is Lord as long as we make that announcement conform to the values that reign currently: tolerance; freedom; excess; affluence; and, our infatuation with all things young, all things thin, and all things cool.  If Jesus fits in with all that, then He can be Lord in the hearts of American Christians.  If he does not, then Christians need to bend a little and compromise their statement of faith or at least minimize it so that it does not offend anyone else.

This “eternal gospel” is defined in Revelation 14:7.  “Fear God and give him glory … and worship him.”  Fear God does not mean fear Him like we would fear a bully or fear an intruder or fear an impending storm.  This is not fear of heights or fear of snakes.  Fear God means to hold God in such reverence, to afford God such authority, and to recognize God’s absolute holiness that we see that sin nauseates God.  We know our lives are under God’s watch.  Every instance of rebellion is seen by God, so we fear God’s judgment and we also fear hurting God’s heart.  Both are true.  Appropriate God-fear leads us to see God as the exalted one whom we cannot approach casually.  We exist to serve Him.

Fear is a condition that leads us to the second command in the eternal gospel – glory.  Give God glory.  This happens in our worship.  It also comes about in our living.  When we relate to other humans in love, God is glorified.  When we get the most out of our abilities, God is glorified.  Relationships and work are to be done with God constantly in mind.  We are ever seeking God as we go about life, submitting ourselves to Him and conforming to His ways.  We live to lift God up.

Worship is an activity and it is a posture.  We have talked about worship in recent weeks.  We know it happens in worship services and also in private moments. 

These commands of the eternal Gospel which apply to all people – fear God, exalt God, worship God – contradict our culture’s unwritten rules.  In our culture, we are to fear peer disapproval.  If our peers don’t like how we’re living, we must change.  We exalt ourselves.  And we worship things that make us feel good and do it right now.

To abandon fear of God, glory of God, and worship of God, for fear of peer disapproval, glory of self, and worship of immediate gratification is compromise.  Revelation calls this fornication (14:8) and drunkenness.  Verse 9 says, “Those who worship the beast and its image, and receive a mark on their foreheads … will also drink the wine of God’ wrath” (14:9-1).

God has no place for us reducing our faith and making it fit.  Faith in Jesus and the life lived in his name ignites fire within.  We fear nothing but God and face the world determined to tell about Jesus, knowing He will bring healing, joy, and life.  This is no time for wishy-washy faith.  In Revelation 3:16, Jesus declares he will spit out of his mouth those with lukewarm faith.  We are either with Jesus all the way or not at all.  In our times, where we live, the Bible calls us to live out our witness for Jesus as if doing so would get us killed.  That is the commitment the Lord expects.  God wants all of us – every bit of each one of us.  We won’t be persecuted for testifying that Jesus is Lord.  But we must be as committed as if that were to happen. 

Anything less disgusts the Lord to the point that God is unhappy.  God’s love never fails so our strongest alliance is with him.  The world around us, the world demanding we compromise, will have no influence.  Rather we stand firm. 

Revelation 14:13, “Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and hold fast to the faith of Jesus” (14:13).  Whether a believer is fighting false doctrine like many 2^nd century Christians, a believer sees his life on the line like John on Patmos and Kenneth Bae in Korea, or a believer is tempted to relegate her faith like the affluent 21^st century American Christian, we are called to stand and endure.

Robert Wall points out two implications for the disciple who demonstrates this lasting faith.  First, we will sacrifice.  Some sacrifice social standing or friendships or popularity or even jobs.  Others even sacrifice their freedom or their lives.  An enduring faith is not recognizable in easy times, but rather when it is severely tested.  If we with stick Jesus and don’t yield, we will be tested.

Second, there is good news for the enduring disciple.  “Blessed are those who die in the Lord.”  This could even be translated “Happy are those who die in the Lord.”  Paradoxical?  Ask Kenneth Bae.

After months in prison, he was permitted some phone calls.  His sister said he sounded calm and not discouraged.  Did he know he would be locked up for trying to help North Korean orphans and for doing it in Jesus’ name?  I am sure he was not surprised.  Calm and not discouraged. 

I knew friends in seminary whose wives left them because they did not want to go into ministry.  Calm and not discouraged. 

High school and young adult believers grow to the point that they as Christ followers have to decide.  Will I continue in the party life of my friends knowing that God is not pleased?  Or, will I cease the me-first, party hard, ignore-the-rules life and begin living for Jesus even if doing so means some of my friends will ditch me?  They opt for the Jesus way.  Calm and not discouraged. 

Where in your life is the decision point?  Fear God, glorify him, and worship him, no matter the cost.  Pray like life depends on it because it does for Kenneth Bae and for Christians in North Korea, Syria, Nigeria, and other places.  And in your own walk, develop lasting faith.  Don’t wilt under the hot lights of temptation.  Stand strong in Jesus’ name.  Tell the world about him.  Some will mock you.  Others will hear Jesus through you and turn to Him because of your witness.

AMEN

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[i] Arthur Bright, Christian Science Moniter online, May 10, 2013 - http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2013/0510/North-Korea-explains-why-it-sentenced-American-Kenneth-Bae-to-hard-labor

Revelation 5:6-14

The Worship of Jesus (Revelation 5:6-14)

Sunday, April 21, 2013

            In a vision, John is taken from his prison on Patmos Island into Heaven, into the throne room of God.  He sees a great throne occupied by one he cannot even describe except to say he resembles precious stones.  Jasper and carnelian are gems whose breathtaking beauty come to John’s mind as he looks on this throne and the God who occupies it. 

            The center throne is surrounded by 24 thrones where there are seated elders, in white robes.  Does John think of 12 tribes of Israel, 12 disciples who followed Jesus?  Twenty-four thrones. 

            There are strange things here, heavenly creatures likes those described by the prophet Ezekiel.  These beings are all-seeing.  One resembles an ox, one a lion, one a human, and an eagle.  What sort of place is this with a throne where the indescribable is seated and surrounded by lesser thrones and flying, living, all-seeing creatures? 

            It is place full of sound – songs John has never heard.  The living creatures sing and sing and sing – “Holy, holy, holy: the Lord God, the Almighty who was and is and is to com.”  On and on the song goes and it never grows old.  The music is joined by a choir, the 24 elders.  They cast off their crowns putting them at the feet of the one on the center throne and they sing to Him who lives forever.  “You are worthy our Lord and God to receive glory and honor and power” (4:11a-b).

            John sees all this.  He sees a scroll in the hand of the one on the center throne.  He knows the fate of the world is written on that scroll.  It just needs to be opened.  But no one is worthy to open it.   No one on earth, no one in the history of earth can open it.  Nothing matters more than what is on the scroll.  It must be read.  And no one can open it.  John weeps.  He looks around.  He is in Heaven and no one is able to open that scroll. 

The tears roll down his face.  He has suffered so much for Jesus’ name.  He has seen friends arrested. Families have fallen apart as the son follows Jesus and the father kicks the son out of the house.  Members of John’s church in Ephesus were stoned – bludgeoned to death by boulders because they would not bow to Caesar.  They were killed because they worshiped Jesus.  His story, Jesus’ word for the world is written on this scroll and no one can open it.  How has it come to this?  John falls, broken, shaking. 

One of the elders comes and lays a gentle hand on John’s sagging shoulder.  The man tenderly raises John to his feet.  “Do not weep.  The Lion of the tribe of Judah … can open the scroll” (Revelation 5:5).  Through bleary John looks up and remembers.  Yes, the Messiah, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the mighty one, the heavenly warrior; of course he can open it. 

But when John turns, he doesn’t see a mighty one at all.  “I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered” (v.6). 

We hear the experience of the visionary – the Christian named John, of 96 AD.  He was sent to exile because he refused to offer cult worship to Roman Emperor Domitian.  The emperor did not care if Christians had church and sang about Jesus.  But they were required to acknowledge and proclaim the divinity of the emperor.  Christians knew that Jesus and only Jesus is Lord.  To proclaim Jesus as Lord, they had to deny Domitian as Lord.  Denying Domitian brought on them the wrath of Rome.  In John’s case that meant hard labor in a penal colony.

There, he met the risen Jesus and was taken into Heaven in a vision – the one described in Revelation chapters 4-21.  I have been imagining the beginning, what we see in chapters 4 and 5.  In these chapters, we see that the best Christian response is worship.

Wait, response to what?  Response to tragedy?  The events at the Boston Marathon served as a rude reminder to our nation.  We were reminded of the horrors of the Newtown school shootings and the Aurora, CO theater shootings; and Virginia Tech; and Columbine; and many others.  We were reminded that a quiet Monday can be violated by the worst kind of news; reminded of 9-11.  We were reminded how fragile life is.  The disillusionment and fear casts a more destructive shadow than the precipitating event. 

How is worship an appropriate response to that? 

The man who received the Revelation lived in scarier times than we do.  He saw friends arrested and executed.  He was imprisoned as an enemy of the state.  He was powerless before the power of his day – Rome.  Every terror story we can recite from our times, John can match.  His response was to write about worship because worship reminds us all that there are powers in the universe that are greater than life and death.  There is God who not only overcomes death, but sees us, small as we are.  In the eyes of Rome, John a Jew in Ephesus, was small, insignificant; just one more political prisoner to be silenced.  But God saw him and was with him.  Yes, worship is one of our responses to the Boston Marathon bombings.  The only one who can bring order to the chaos and comfort to the pain is God.  Our response is to worship Him.

Worship is also a response to times of great joy.  A wedding of two Christians is a time of worship.  Graduation includes a baccalaureate and naming of the graduates in the Sunday morning worship service.  Whenever a new baby is born, the pastor visits and touches the baby and prays, and later the new parents bring the baby to church and the child is dedicated to the worship of God. 

Worship is the way to respond in times of spiritual confusion, frustration, or emptiness.  When we are filled with questions we come together and worship God.  When we are not so sure there is a God, we come together with the church and sing praises and pray together and baptize and commune.  Sorrow, horror, joy, confusion, boredom, anger, doubt – worship is the response to all these things.

Worship is not the only response.  We pray individually and with friends and mentors, silently and out loud.  We question, study, and seek.  We get advice and give it.  We work hard.  We wait.  We do many things.  We spend time doing nothing.  But we always worship. 

John shows us in Revelation that worship is constant and surprising.  He turned to see the Lion that was worthy before God and he saw a Lamb.  Jesus is both.  The raging Lion, roaring God’s power from the dawn of creation; this is Jesus. So too is the lamb, the man who would not fight back when ruffians came and beat him up and dragged him off in the night.  He told his disciples to put their swords away.  Willingly, he went to the cross and was slaughtered. 

So John sees a lamb, the meekest, most vulnerable of creatures, but wait!  All in the throne room worship the Great One on the center throne, but they don’t dare approach.  The living creatures, the 24 elders, they sing to God, but they don’t walk right up to Him.  The Lamb does.  This image of weakness walks right up to the throne and takes that scroll that God is holding. 

Now those living creatures, heavenly beings, aren’t flying around anymore.  They’ve fallen to their knees.  The elders are no longer on their thrones.  All twenty four of them are there next to the living creatures and they too are bowed in humble reverence.  To the Lamb they sing, “You are worthy” (v.9). 

We’ve had our attention on the throne and the Lamb, the elders and the living creatures but they are not the only ones in the picture.  There are all about this throne room of God thousands and thousands and thousands of angels.  And they have all stopped doing whatever it is angels do, and now, with music you’ve never heard, they sing.  “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing” (v.12).

What more could come than this?  Oh, there is more.  We have not even noticed the uniqueness of this throne room.  We think of it as in some faraway place.  But it is actually close enough that we can see the earth – the whole earth.  Where can one go and see the entire earth – see everything up close?  Here.  And on the earth every living being is singing.  We might expect to see every person, but this is more.  The people are joined by the trees and the waters and the birds and the animals.   When he came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Jesus told the protesting Pharisees that if his followers did not sing “Hosanna,” the rocks would cry out praise.  Here in the throne room of Revelation, John sees the people and the rocks and the mountains all singing together.  All created things add their voice to this song.  “To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever.”  And when all of creation sang that song, the living creatures shouted, AMEN and the elders fell on their faces and worshiped and it all happened because worship is our response and worship is our response because God is God.

Last week we began our time in Revelation receiving.  Revelation is a letter in which we are given grace and peace, gospel truth, and life.  This is to us from God – the eternal God who is over and over seen in the son, the Messiah, Jesus.  God has something for us and it is good.  When we receive from God, we have abundant, eternal life.  This promise is enough to sustain us through harsh, dark times.

Yet, we don’t live only waiting for the fulfillment of it.  We have activity to which we are called.  As we receive from God grace and mercy, forgiveness and peace, love and hope, we have something to give God.  Worship is our primary vocation.  As living creatures, elders, angels, and every created thing attest, our worship is specifically to Jesus.  Our life is lived to worship Him. 

Worship happens when we gather as a church body, in our songs, in our prayers, in baptism and communion. Even in the time of the sermon, there is worship as the remarks and the receiving of them are all centered on the Word of God.

Worship happens at other times in the life of the church: in small groups; in meetings; in one-on-one get togethers.  It happens with music and without.

Worship happens when we are alone or involved in secular activities.  It can come about while driving or hiking or gardening or golfing.  Even at work, as we pray in the lunchroom, as we glance at the scripture verse we keep in a frame on our the desk, as we utter a silent prayer for a troubled colleague; yes even there worship occurs because it first and foremost proclaims in our hearts and in the loving way we see the world that someone else is in command.  God is over all this and God is Jesus and Jesus is God.  So, in Holy Spirit, Jesus is here and our loyalty is to Him.  There is probably a supervisor to whom we give the respect that is due even if he doesn’t live up to it.  There are rules we uphold except when God tells us to do otherwise.  We live within the world but all the while we are turned to the God who sustains the world and will one day redeem and renew and remake the world. 

So worship is an orientation; it is a heart attitude; and it is activity.  It is worship of God as we know God in Jesus Christ and it is what we are all about.  More than all this definition though, worship is relationship.  There are professional clergy men and women, but he has made us all priests and sons and daughters of God. 

Thus we join the song.  Deep within us, whatever our emotions and experiences, in good times and bad, we seek God, see God, and sing.  This is the best response a Christ-follower can make to all things because all is under the lordship of Jesus.  My friends find your voice.  You are sad?  Meet God in your sadness.  He will give comfort, you give worship.  You aren’t sure?  He will give clarity and answers, you give worship.  You are broken?  He will heal and mend and raise you.  You and I – we worship.

He doesn’t always give what we think He should when we think it should be given.   But God’s gifts are the best and the timing is perfect.  We worship.  Along with the Heavenly chorus we sing, “To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and glory and honor and might forever and ever!”

AMEN