"Maggots and Lions" (Hosea 5)

            See if you can identify this early ‘80’s pop song from some of the lyrics.

They say there's a heaven for those who will wait
Some say it's better but I say it ain't
I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints
The sinners are much more fun

You know that only the good die young

            Anybody know this song, this Billy Joel song?  Did Billy Joel have it right? Are the sinners much more fun?  People who don’t go to church might suppose every Sunday pastors like me get red-faced mad as we slobber and sweat, railing against the evils of sin!  Pulpit-pounding isn’t really my style, nor is the hurling of threats about hell-fire.

            However, sin is real.  We must tackle this reality head-on and holistically.  Baptists often make the mistake of putting all focus on individual sins.  It is important for you and for me to address our individual sins because they cut us off from God.  Sin causes a rupture in the relationship and God gets angry and we are broken.  In our need to confess our individual sins and repent of them, we need to also be mindful of systemic sins that disproportionately affect the poor and exacerbate systemic racism and other social evils.  Individuals sin, congregations sin, communities sin, and nations sin.  We need to confess because we have our own part in all these areas.

            This might begin to feel real if we can somehow shift from the sense that we are people sitting in church listening the pastor drone on – if we can shift from that to the idea that God is speaking to our hearts, then this word may grab hold.  “Listen to the word of the Lord, O people of Israel” Hosea says, “For the Lord has an indictment” against us (4:1).  When I read Hosea and see mention of Israel or Judah or Ephraim, I imagine that if Hosea were giving a similar message today, he would say, “Listen to the word of the Lord, O church, because He has an indictment against you.”  We are a worshiping community as they were.  Our sins aren’t similar to theirs, but we sin just as much and can be cut-off from God as they were.

            What strikes me in my reading of Hosea 5 is two contrasts.  First, verse 7, “Israel’s pride testifies against him.”  Israel was puffed with a sense of self-importance.  The leaders believed they could exploit the poor, form alliances with pagans, worship God and then worship others gods, and do it all without harm to themselves.  They saw themselves as untouchable.  They went through the appropriate rituals in worship.  Why would God care if they went to a shrine of another, false god?  God did care. 

            God cares about what we say, what we do, what we think.  Remember, by the time we’re in Hosea 5, God has already indicted Israel.  He’s already said, “There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land” (4:1b).  We need not worry too much about specifically why God said that about Israel.  Here’s what should concern us.  What rebellions might we be committing that would cause God to say of us, ‘there is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in that church,’ or ‘there is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in that nation’?  What a terrible thought!  Sin becomes so prevalent that God, in disgust, shakes His divine fisted hands and shouts “there is no knowledge of God”!

            As a key piece of evidence supporting this divine indictment, God says, “Israel’s pride testifies against him.”  Might that be said of me, or of us collectively?  Is the sin that threatens to rip apart my relationship with God my pride?  Do I think so much of myself that I don’t really feel I need God, not that much anyway?  Is pride a factor in your life that stops you from humbly bowing before God in confession and prayer? 

            Hosea declares in 5:7 that the prideful life leads to Israel producing illegitimate children.  What comes from pride is something ungodly, something profane.  Galatians 5 says when we are filled with God’s spirit, what comes is God’s fruit, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”  These are the “children” of the Spirit-filled life.  The prideful life is only concerned for the self, not others, and thus produces “children” with no inheritance in God.  And of course by ‘children,’ I mean what comes out of our lives. 

            Remember, I said, I noted two contrasts as I mulled over Hosea 5.  The first is if we lived by faith instead of pride. 

            It seemed to be a quiet week at HillSong, yet on Thursday, something quite amazing took place.  Four members of the church gathered Thursday evening for prayer.  We prayed about everything.  This has been going on all summer, Thursday night prayer times and it was beautiful. 

            One of the verses used to guide us into prayer comes from 1 Samuel chapter 12, verse 23.  God had promised to be the ruler of this new nation, Israel.  However, the people said they didn’t want God as their king.  They pestered their prophet, Samuel, to give them a human king like every nation had.  Samuel warned them of how disastrous this could be, but they were prideful.  So God told Samuel to go ahead and let the people learn the lesson the hard way.  And they did, over and over, up to the days of Hosea, hundreds of years after Samuel, right before exile would come – utter calamity. 

            Samuel’s prayer shows unbelievable faith.  He already knows the people have rejected his counsel, but he says in 12:23, “Far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you.”  Thank you Todd Baker for calling my attention to this passage on Thursday.  Samuel considered himself a sinner if he ever stopped praying for this people who had long since stopped listening to him.  I never conceived of it this way: failure to pray is a sin!  This is the contrast – Israel’s pride verse Samuel’s great faith.    The second contrast comes in what we think we know of God and in what is said beginning in Hosea 5:12.  “Therefore” the verse begins.  Verse 11 ended with the people “determined to go after vanity.”  Vanity, pride – Ephraim was living for Ephraim and assumed God was also excited for the benefit of Ephraim.  We could substitute ourselves for ‘Ephraim’ whenever we put ourselves at the center of the universe instead of God, whether ‘ourselves’ refers to me, or the church, or the country. 

            We sin, then God indicts us.  God uses our pride as evidence that we have rejected Him and exalted ourselves above others.  We have failed to love and failed to pray and failed to help the poor.  Next comes the verdict.

            God says, “I am like maggots to Ephraim and rottenness to the house of Judah.”  Ugh!  Maggots?  God is like Maggots?  It’s right there in Hosea 5:12.  Facing a verse like that, we can quickly flip over to Psalm 23 or Isaiah 55.  Those are comforting inspiring passages that don’t mention maggots.  We can turn there quickly.  Or we can stop and wonder.  Why would God say, “I am like maggots causing sickness and rot to my people?”

            Might God paint this grotesque picture because God wants us to fully understand what sin does inside us, in our bodies, in our hearts, and in our communities?  In order to root it out, God inflicts us with sickness.  If God doesn’t do this to get our attention, eventually the sin will destroy us.  God may use stark imagery to get the point across, that He hates sin and will discipline us for it, but it is for our good.  Thank God He is like maggots, signaling us that because of sin, something is wrong.  Something needs to change.

            God says in verse 14, I will be like a lion to Ephraim.  Sin doesn’t just corrode us.  It rips us apart.  “I will tear,” says the Lord.  We don’t need to be any descriptive.  Anyone who’s seen a National Geographic program knows that when a lion tears, it isn’t pretty. 

            The first contrast we mentioned was between the convicting pride that reveals our sin and the extreme love and faith of prophets like Samuel who pray even for those already turned away from God.  Are we living by faith or by pride?  The second contrast is in the images God projects – maggots and lions – in his righteous anger over sin, and what those images lead to in the long run.  Decay?  Yes!  Ravaging?  Yes!  Sin is awful. I love Billy Joel’s music, but he got it wrong in that song.  It is not better to laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.  The saints are sinners too – we all are.  But the saints realize the damage sin does.  That’ why they’re crying.  The guffaws of sinners who brag about their debaucher is the laughter of fools who only realize how far they are from God when it is too late. 

            After the decay and ravaging conjured by the image of God as maggots and lions comes restoration.  “I will return to my place,” says the Lord, “Until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face.  In their distress they will beg my favor” (5:15).  Next week, we’ll discover how hard repentance is.  It is not a simple, quick process.  But’s that next week.

            For now, God embeds an invitation in the middle of His angry rant.  “I will return … Until,” God says.  Until!  God hears our prayers.  Even when we are at our very worst, God hears our prayers.  The book of Judges testifies to this.  Jesus’ gracious response to the criminal on the cross who begged to be remembered testifies to this. 

            In the midst of one of history’s greatest evil, the European enslavement and trading of Africans, God heard the prayers of abolitionists like William Wilberforce.  When Hitler ordered the systematic execution of millions, God heard the prayers of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and so many others.  In Charleston, South Carolina, God has heard the prayers of the friends and relatives of those killed by Dylan Roof in 2015.  In each of these cases, awful things happened, but God was with the people.  God saw humanity through these crises.  Even when we as a species are at our very worst, God hears us. 

            That word, “until,” is God’s invitation.  The story doesn’t end with maggots and lions.  It ends in restoration.  We discover how joyful it is in God’s embrace, forgiven, made new.  This is beyond what’s in Hosea 5, but the prophet would want us to go beyond.  He didn’t want the story to end in Israel’s destruction.  He’d want our story to end in salvation. And it can.

            We learn the lesson – sin is real.  We turn from it.  We open our hearts to God.  We commit to the faithfulness Samuel and so many others modeled.  And we accept God’s invitation.  In humble confession we gratefully receive forgiveness.  That’s where I want to close: with the promise that God will hear your prayers.  No matter what’s going on in your life, God will receive you, pick you up, forgive you, and make you new.  When we are in Christ, this is where every message on sin leads.  God is a loving God.  The images of maggots and lions are part of the story, not to be ignored.  But the end is a father’s embrace and new life.

AMEN  

God’s Character (Luke 15:11-32)

Sunday, July 10, 2016

            In last week’s sermon, we focused on the Biblical commands  “weep with those who weep” and “do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.” These brilliant words come from the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 12.  It’s a message we Christ followers needed the Sunday after a week of tragic shootings in the United States.

            Of course there is no relief to the violence.  Evil keeps finding new ways to break the human spirit as the tragedy in Nice, France on Thursday showed.  In the wake of such horror, some preachers are given to sermons of doom and gloom and judgment and wrath.  And somehow, these are the preachers CNN always tracks down as examples of what Christians think. 

            We do not offer doom and gloom this morning.  However, we cannot ignore that the Bible does speak of God’s wrath.  In fact this comes up in the passage from last week, Romans 12:19. “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”  That verse certainly portrays a God with serious wrath in Him. 

Is that the God we worship and love and proclaim?  Is wrath a defining characteristic of God?  I think Jesus told parables to show us God’s character.  In the swirl of hate, anger, rhetoric, and reaction happening in the world now, in the face of the violence of this summer, I believe that because of God’s character, we can take refuge in the Holy Spirit.  So, we will look at one of Jesus’ parables – the Prodigal Son – to see God’s character, the quality of God that makes God so inviting to people in pain.

¹¹ Then Jesus^[a] said, “There was a man who had two sons. ¹² The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. ¹³ A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. ¹⁴ When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. ¹⁵ So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. ¹⁶ He would gladly have filled himself with^[b] the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. ¹⁷ But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! ¹⁸ I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; ¹⁹ I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ ²⁰ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. ²¹ Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’^[c] 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. ²³ And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; ²⁴ for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.

²⁵ “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶ He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. ²⁷ He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ ²⁸ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. ²⁹ But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.³⁰ But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ ³¹ Then the father^[d] said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. ³² But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

On the cross, God puts Jesus forward as a sacrifice of atonement.  The cross is a brutal instrument of a torturous death designed to show Rome’s absolute power.  Based on the passage from Romans and many other passages, we believe God subverts that Roman torture device by willingly sending his son to die on it in our place.  In this act, our sin is removed and God is satisfied.  This is salvation. 

However, as Jesus bleeds out on the cross, has justice been served?  Why was it necessary to happen that way?  I know Romans mentions God’s wrath, but why?  Is God violent by nature, and is that why a cruel, bloody death like crucifixion was necessary for atonement?  Is there any justice on that cross where Jesus suffers and dies for sins he did not commit?

            Someone who did commit sins was the younger son in Jesus’ story of a man with two sons.  In requesting his inheritance, he declared his father dead to him.  It was a lot of money for his father was wealthy enough to have a lot of land and many servants.  This son who turned his back on his dad and his family, took the money his father had earned through hard work and then generously given him in spite of the outrageous audacity of the request, and he squandered that money through gambling and drinking and wild parties. 

            Than a famine came.  No more gambling.  No more parties.  Friends made when we buy the drinks disappear when we run out of money.  During a famine, neighbors might help each other, but he had no neighbors and no friends and no money.  So he hired himself out to a pig farmer, an unthinkable job for a good Jewish man.  But was it really a job?  He did not make enough money to feed himself.  He would have, it says, gladly filled himself with the pods the pigs ate.  It sounds like he had become a slave. 

That’s where sin leads.  It’s nasty.  It’s desperate.  It’s lonely.  It’s pathetic.  And it is deadly.  He was where he was because of his own choices. Could he call God a bloodthirsty sadist who delights in the way his wrath obliterates sinners?  Is there something in God that demanded the awfulness of the cross and was thus satisfied to see Jesus hang on it? 

In this parable, the father represents God.  Was it the Father’s fault that the younger son was starving as he lived as a slave in a pig pen and literally dreamt of eating pig slop?  Did the father condemn him to that fate?  Not at all.  The Father gave the son what he requested – his share of the inheritance.  He let the son go.  And then, every day, he watched the horizon, hoping the son would return. 

That’s God!  He watches for us.  We’ve wandered off, chasing our epicurean appetites. He allows us to choose that.  God allows us to live with the destruction that comes with our sins.  But, just because God allows our sin to come to its natural conclusion doesn’t mean God has abandoned us.  He is watching, waiting, ready to welcome us with arms of love when we turn back to Him.  God sounds merciful. 

Earlier in this same chapter, Luke 15, Jesus describes God as a shepherd who leaves the flock in safety and ventures into the dangers of the wilderness in order to find one lost sheep.  In the Prodigal Son story, God allows the sinner to suffer the fate of his own bad choices but constantly watches for the sinner to return.  In the lost sheep story, God diligently searches for the lost. 

When Jesus thought of God he thought of love, mercy, and grace.  He didn’t think of wrath.  Jesus knew the cross was coming.  He knew his task was to die.  He knew how horrible it would be.  That’s why in the Garden of Gethsemane he desperately begged God to find another way.  God did not grant that request.  But Jesus never imagined that God put him on the cross.  He never presented the drama as God’s active punishment.  As it says in the Old Testament, God gave humanity over to sin. 

When Jesus is hanging on the cross, it is the ultimate and final judgment on sin.  Sin leads to a cross where God allows us to live with the results of our sinful choices: pain, abandonment, and death.  Except, on the cross, we aren’t living with where our sin leads, God is. 

On the cross, God the Father does not punish God the Son in place of sinners who should be the ones hanging there.  Rather, God the Son affirms that sin leads to death.  But, even though justice is to let us suffer for our sins, God the Son takes our place.  In His love, God the Son determines to spare us by the taking the cross himself.  God the Father honors God the Son’s choice. 

What about that Gethsemane prayer where Jesus begs for another way?  Jesus was fully God and fully human.  As a human being, knowing what was coming, Jesus was scared.  Even though he knew the necessity of it, in his fear, he sought an alternative.  Luke write that his prayer was so intense he sweat drops of blood (Luke 22:44).  Mark writes that as he died on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” (Mark 15:34)?  In these moments of doubt and despair, Jesus, a human being, carries the Hell of being separated from God and lost in sin that belongs to all people in history.  It all rests on Jesus and even as God the Son goes through it all willingly as an act of love, Jesus the man expresses the utter desolation humans face when headed to eternity separated from God. 

If we go by our sense of what’s right and what’s fair, this is unjust.  Jesus should not suffer for me or for you.  The younger brother who has gambled away the grace his father gave should not be lovingly welcomed home.  That’s not fair and the older brother expresses this quite forcefully as he confronts his father.

“Listen,” the older brother barks at the father, “for all these years, I have been working like a slave for you.”  Working like a slave.  The father tells him “All that is mine is yours.”  From the Father’s perspective, God’s perspective, this older son shares the life of the Father.  Their hearts are linked.  The Older Son cannot see this because his ultimate standard is the rule book.  In his mind, the rules determine his life.  The ultimate standard should be the relationship he has with his father.  But he’s gotten it confused.

In the Prodigal Son story, the Older Brother represents those Pharisees and legalists who constantly clashed with Jesus.  The Law of the Old Testament was a gift God gave to help people live in relationship with God.  The relationship is what is ultimate and God is the arbiter.  If God decides to override the law, God has the right do that.  When Jesus violated the Sabbath by healing on the Sabbath, he was claiming the right to do so, a right only God has.  When Jesus forgave sins, he was claiming the authority to do so, an authority only God has.  In these actions, Jesus announced, I can do what only God can do.[i] 

The legalists who challenged him felt that God, like human beings, is subject to the law.  They lost sight the fact that because God is the giver of the law, God can supersede the law.  They thought the law was ultimate.  God is ultimate and God’s heart of love leads God to one purpose – relationship with his creation.  We – humans – are the height of God’s creation and the ones most suited to a lasting relationship with God.  The law is to serve God’s purpose.  The law is to help us live in relationship with God.  When it fails to do that, God will do what’s necessary to open the way for us to be in relationship with Him.

The Older Brother, locked in legalism, couldn’t receive the love.  The Older Brother couldn’t see the Father’s ultimate purpose either for himself or for his younger, prodigal brother.  The Older Brother was as far from the Father’s heart as the younger one.  His estrangement came in a different form but the union with the Father was just as broken. 

In the end, we can look at the cross and say, “Justice is served,” because God chose it to be this way and God is the source of justice.  Jesus is on it in order to unite with us in our suffering.  Jesus embraces it so He can be where we are.  By our standards, the cross of Jesus is not just, is not fair.  But we don’t go by our standards, not when we have chosen to repent of sin and follow Jesus. 

Look once more at the parable.  The younger son tries to set his own identity.  “Father, I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”  But we don’t set our identity.  God sets our identity.  God runs to the younger son, tackles him in an embrace, puts a ring on his finger, a robe on his shoulders, and throws a party. 

The older son tries to set his own identity.  “All these years, I have been working like a slave for you.”  A slave?  No, we don’t set our own identity, not when we give ourselves to Jesus.  He sets our identity.  A slave?  The Father said to him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”

God is welcoming and loving and grace-giving by nature.  What comes between you and God? What lies are you believing about yourself this morning?  Do you see yourself as unworthy?  The Father God is running to you with arms open wide.  Do you see yourself as a slave to rules?  The Father God invites you to His heart.  Are you crushed under the weight of sin?  God the Son joins you right where you are.  In fact, he has taken your burden to the cross.  He has lifted it off your shoulders.  Receive his gift of grace, his forgiveness, his love, his welcome.  Is it too hard to imagine this could be true?  God the Holy Spirit is here now to help each us understand this story of Him reaching to us.  The Holy Spirit is here to guide us into the arms of God.

However you see yourself, right now, come to God.  Let God determine who you are.  He starts by calling you beloved.  Come to Him.

AMEN

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[i] Fiddes (1989), Past Event and Present Salvation, p.91-91.

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

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

The Messiah in Genesis 3:15

Comments on The Messiah in the Old Testament – Genesis to Deuteronomy

            I look to the first five books of the Bible for creations stories – Adam and Eve; Cain and Abel; Noah and the Flood; the tower of Babel.  This is where we meet Abraham and Noah and read about the Law.  I never thought to look to these books, referred to variously as the Pentateuch, the Law of Moses, and the Torah, for words about the Messiah.  Yet, Kaiser lists two messianic prophecies in the primeval history (Genesis 1-11), two in the patriarchal era (Genesis 12-50), and two in the Mosaic epoch (Exodus-Deuteronomy) (Kaiser, p.36). 

            It begins with what some call the protoevangelium  (first gospel), Genesis 3:15.  After Eve and then Adam disobey God by eating the forbidden fruit, they move from the sparkle of innocence to the stain of sin.  God speaks first to the serpent who tempted Eve.  God says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”  Kaiser comments, “The seed/offspring mentioned in this verse became the root from which the tree of the OT promise of a Messiah grew” (p.37-38).

The serpent, he feels, is a title, not a description of a reptilian animal.  He points out something that should be obvious, unmistakable.  And yet, I had not made this connection previously.  God has already created animals that “creep and crawl”.  And God “saw that it was good” (1:25).  If you hate snakes or spiders or sharks or cockroaches or rats, take up your argument with God.  In the opening chapter of the Bible, God declared these animals “good.”  So, by the third chapter, the snake is not by nature evil.  Nor is it endowed with the image of God as humans are (1:26).

Thus Kaiser feels that “serpent” is a title, and the demotion of the one called “serpent” in verse 15 is directly tied to the prophecy that the woman’s offspring will oppose him.  In Revelation 12:9, Satan is associated with the serpent who invaded Eden.  Kaiser also points out verse where Paul makes this connection (Romans 16:20; 2 Corinthians 11:13; see Kaiser’s footnote, p.39).  Kaiser concludes “the identity of the tempter can be none other than Satan” (p.39).

While I understand Kaiser’s reasoning here and his logic makes sense, I am hesitant to go as far as he did in affirming with certainty that the Eden serpent = Satan.  I am hesitant because I think the account of Adam, Eve, and the Serpent is legend, not history.  Now let me be clear.  This is does not mean I don’t think it is true.  I do think the world was created “good.”  I think that one of the major points of Genesis 1-3.  I also think Kaiser demonstrates a masterful hermeneutic in identifying the serpent with the invasion of evil into the good God made.  However, making a certain association with Satan goes too far. 

Maybe the simplest way to elucidate why I can’t just say the serpent is Satan is my acknowledgment that I am not 100% sold on a literal Adam and Eve.  I think evolution is a good explanatory framework offered by science for how God made the world.  At some point, God endowed prehistoric humans with His Spirit.  At that point the creature that had evolved to be what is today called Homo sapiens became God’s image-bearer.  What I am offering here is a theological conclusion driven by faith.  My thoughts here do not strip Genesis 1-3 of truth, but rather set those chapters as a theological statement. 

I think Satan was real and played a role in drawing humans away from God and into sin.  But even our understanding of Satan has undergone change over time.  The idea of a divine council that included a role entitled ‘Hasatan,’ the accuser, is one that developed. 

Originally, this Accuser was an important member of the council.  He is not in opposition to God until 1 Chronicles 21:1 and Zechariah 3:1-2.  In those passages, Satan is unquestioningly opposed to God and is thus evil.  But in Job, it not nearly as clear.  In Job, it appears that Satan is fulfilling the role indicated by his title.  It appears God is the provocateur.  A brief analysis of Job is coming, but I think it might anachronistic to suppose that ancient Israelite communities who lived with Genesis as their book of faith had any concept of Satan and if they did, it is not the understanding we have living in a post-New Testament world as we do. 

This excurses on Satan is necessary to interact with Kaiser.  I find his observation of the serpent as a cipher for the entrance of evil into the good God made as a brilliant explanation.  A lot of people have made the connection, but I am particularly enlightened by the way Kaiser does it and the way he demonstrates that the seed of the woman who crushes the serpent’s head is in fact the Messiah.  I feel like my understanding of God’s story has expanded due to this portion of Kaiser’s work. 

I’ll pick the next identification he makes of a messianic prediction the Pentateuch in my next post. 

Christmas Birth (Christmas Eve Sermon, 2015)

Christmas Birth (John 1:1-3, 14)

December 24, 2015 – Christmas Eve Worship

            Luke’s telling of the story of the night Christ was born, is unremarkable.  There was a census.  Because Joseph was in the line of David, he had to go to Bethlehem.  The baby was born in a manger because the inn was full. 

            They did not have hospitals.  They did not have bathtubs.  They did not have climate controlled buildings.  Where did births usually happen?  That the savior of the world, God incarnate, was born in a manger – maybe that was business as usual in the first century.

            Of course, the air was thick with animal smells and sounds.  The birth of Jesus was draped in the pungent fragrance of manure.  Sheep and cows baahed and mooed.   Mary delivered her baby with no epidural or any other medication or medical help.  Joseph’s panicked, beating heart provided percussion.  And baby Jesus cried when his bare skin was exposed to the cold night air. 

            In the birth of Jesus, God entered the everyday messiness of human life.  Jesus was every bit a human being, coming into the world the way all humans do.  At the same time, Jesus was fully God.  This is a mystery.    Somehow, this most vulnerable of living things, a human newborn, was, in a way we cannot quite grasp, God. 

            Why would God do this?  Why leave the glories of heaven to live in the squalor of earthly life?  And I don’t think it makes any difference if God entered humanity with 21^st century creature comforts or with the hardships faced by a peasant family in 6BC.  Either case is a complete emptying of God’s divinity, God’s majesty.  Why would God do this?  Why did God do this?

            “For God so loved the world, he gave his only son that whoever believes in him would not die, but would have eternal life.”  The story of the birth of Christ is the story of God’s work to offer salvation to the world. 

Sin cuts people off from God, leads people into a society of harm and pain and loss, and ends in death.  This is what sin does.  All people sin throughout their lives.  We live on a planet of 7 billion sinners who descend from hundreds of generations of sinners.  The compounded harm makes this place a hellish distortion of the good earth God originally created.

And we can’t shake our sins.  We cannot, by a herculean moral or ethical effort, stop sinning.

In Jesus, God rescues us from our sins.  The story’s climax is Jesus on the cross taking on himself the end results of sin – suffering and death.  Resolution comes in the resurrection, the defeat of death.  Sin has been accounted for and death defeated.  In Christ, we are saved from sin, saved for relationship with God, saved to eternal life. 

Our first step is to acknowledge our sins and ask God to save us.  We do this and we receive his forgiveness.  We give our lives to Jesus and acknowledge him as our Lord.  And God’s rescue comes – to each who turn to Christ. 

‘Incarnation’ is the theological term that describes God inhabiting humanity.  Jesus is God in human flesh.  This is what is meant when the term ‘incarnation’ is used. 

The Gospel of John illustrates this.  The gospel opens this way: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” 

‘The Word’ in John refers to Jesus.  The Gospel establishes that this is God. Another Bible author, the Apostle Paul, makes a similar point about Jesus in Colossians 1. 

He writes, “The Father … has enabled [us] to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. ¹³ He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. ¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; ¹⁶ for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. ¹⁹ For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,²⁰ and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:13-20).

Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, is God and has always been God.  He became human in order to endure the reality of human life.  But he was a human who never sinned.  He lived the human life the way God intended.  John writes, “The Word became flesh and lived among us” (1:14).  Jesus left Heaven’s glory and arrived in a noisy, smelly, cold world.

Because he did this, every human being is invited by God to put their faith in him through Jesus Christ.  When we do we are freed from sin and drawn into eternal life in spiritual, resurrected bodies that cannot be hurt or killed, but that live in perfect love and perfect, unending community.  As John puts it, “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, ¹³ who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13).  Jesus left eternity and entered our humanity that we might be freed from the limits of corruption that come with sin and join him in eternity.

Paul also asserts this in Colossians.  “⁹ For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, ¹⁰ and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. ¹¹ In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision,^[d] by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ;¹² when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. ¹³ And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God^[e] made you^[f] alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, ¹⁴ erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵ He disarmed^[g] the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it” (2:9-15).

On Christmas Eve, God sits before us and bids us to come and enter the divine, eternal story.  For some it is unbelievable.  Maybe it is too good to be true?  Maybe it is too fanciful and we are people of logic and reason and science? 

Lee Strobel was an investigative reporter for a Chicago newspaper.  He didn’t believe in fairytales like Christianity.  He was interested in facts, not stories.  Then, his wife became a Christian and this threw him for a loop.  He had to get to the bottom of the phenomenon.  So, he did an exhaustive investigation of Christianity in order to show her the fallacy of it.  He came to a conclusion he could not avoid.  It is all true.

In his book The Case for Christmas he gives this invitation to anyone stuck in doubt, resisting the invitation of God.

I had come to the point where I was ready … [to believe in] the Christ child, whose love and grace are offered freely to everyone who receives him in repentance and faith.  Even [a skeptic] like me.

So I talked with God in a heartfelt and unedited prayer, turning from my wrongdoing and receiving his forgiveness and eternal life through Jesus.

… I know some people feel a rush of emotion at such a moment.  For me, there was something equally exhilarating: a rush of reason. 

Over time, there has been so much more.  I have endeavored to follow Jesus’ teachings and open myself to his transforming power, my priorities, my values, my character, my worldview, my attitudes, and my relationships have been changing for the better (Strobel, 1998, p.91).

And then Strobel writes, what about you?

That’s where we end this evening?  Would you consider turning from sin, turning to God, and receiving Jesus as your Lord and as your Savior.  When you do this, Christmas moves from being a nice story to becoming a part of the greatest turn to happen in your life.  In Christ we turn from sin and death to forgiveness, resurrection, adoption, and eternal life.  Would you make that turn this Christmas?

We end our Christmas service by lighting candles.  We take the light from the center candle, the Christ candle.  We sing “Silent Night.”  As we sing by candle light, open your heart to God.  Let Him in. 

After the service we’ll have some refreshments.  Please join us and enjoy some Christmas cheer.  If you would like to talk further about following Jesus, I’ll be here.