Gospel Say, What?: The Right Environment

 March 11 2024

Mark 4:1-20

         In my family, I am the middle child, which probably begins to explain a lot about who I am. I have an older brother, George, and an older sister, Hilary and a younger sister, Becky, and a younger brother, Jeff. I am the only one who stayed in the area, everybody else lives about as far apart as you can get. This past while, I was thinking about my sister Hilary because its about this time of year people start thinking about what they are going to plant in their gardens. Hilary loves to garden the only problem is that she lives in San Francisco. With its cool, wet, weather it is difficult to have much success in growing vegetables. Yet, Hilary keeps trying. That’s why she already has her tomatoes started in her house because she has learned that it takes tomatoes a lot longer to make a crop in the environment that she is living in.

         What is interesting is that Jesus understood the importance of the right environment on the success of seeds to grow and mature. Jesus knew that if you are going to try and grow a crop all sorts of factors can keep seeds from becoming a harvest. Birds can swoop down and eat the seed before it has a chance to grow. Or the soil could have rocks and a hard pan that keeps the roots from developing. Or thorns and weeds can smother the seedlings that have just begun to grow. But, if seeds are planted properly in the right environment, some good, rich, topsoil, then that seed will grow and produce a stalk with a seed head which contains an abundance of seeds and this means a successful harvest. This is all well and good but what can not be forgotten is that, in speaking of planting seeds, Jesus is actually referring to people who hear a word. Just like a seed needs the right environment to grow so too this word that is heard needs the right environment for that word to grow and become a harvest.

         So, if we need the right environment for this word to grow and be effective, we have to ask, just where can we find this place where this word can be transformed in us? This is what we are going to figure out today as we continue in this series of messages for Lent called, Gospel Say, What? The gist of these messages is that Jesus tells us, right at the very beginning of his ministry, that the good news is that he is our king who rules over us with the power of life. This means that faith in the gospel is when we allow Jesus to be our king, a king whose rule will be evident in how we live. Last week, we looked at how Jesus is the king who defeats all the sources of our fear: our sickness, our sin and, of course, Satan; Jesus our king reigns over all of them. His love is always and forever with us, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that can ever separate us from this love that our king Jesus has for us. So we at last can rest secure in his love and when we do we find that we can love all people, all the time. This love of God satisfies us so that no longer do we have to demand that the people we love show us some love in return. This is how we move from our birth families to live in God’s one, great, big, happy, family; God and humanity, united forever. This is the will of God, this wondrous unity that we can be a part of because we have a king who defeats every source of fear so that we can live a life filled with love. This, we explained last week, is how we are faithful to the first part of the great commandment, what the people of Israel call the Shema, because it begins with God saying, “Hear, Shema”. As found in Deuteronomy 6, the first part of this prayer that has become a commandment says, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” As Paul teaches us, if God is one then he is the God not only of the people of Israel but he is the God of all the nations as well. Therefore, when Jesus is our king, and the source of all our fears is defeated so that love can take its place, we can, at last, fulfill this commandment. While love can not be commanded, it can spring to life in the presence of the king whose power is life.

         When we consider how love can spring to life in those who were once held captive by their fears, I think we can begin to see how this weeks story about seeds needing the right environment seems to be in the same line of thought. If we listen again to Jesus explain the meaning of a farmer planting seeds, what we discover is that he is speaking about the sowing of the word. Just what word is it that Jesus expects us to hear? For those who first heard this story, it is not hard to imagine that they, as people who had said the Shema faithfully all of their life, would have known that this word that is to be heard is the word or prayer which begins with the command to hear. Jesus has just taught his disciples about this one, great, big, happy family God is bringing together, a fulfillment of the first part of the Shema, which goes, “Hear, O, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” So it makes sense that here, in the story of the farmer planting seeds, Jesus is going to address just why it is that this prayer which says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your might.”, had never really resulted in a life fully given to God as an offering of love.

         If we read the explanation that Jesus gives for this story of the farmer planting seeds in light of this prayer that has become our primary commandment, we first hear how God is the one who sows the word, the word that is to be heard, and that word is love. In this word spoken by God a plea is put forth for those who hear it that we are to love, and love with all that we are and all that we have been given. This word spoken is reminiscent of how creation was spoken into being with a word. The nothingness of chaos is transformed into creative order, all with a word. Perhaps, this word the sower sows is how people, the last bit of chaos bouncing around in the order of creation, are to be at last transformed into a created order called love.

         What is it then that prevents those who hear this word to love from doing so? Well, in the first case, Jesus tells us, that as, “soon as people hear the word, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word.” What is needed to understand the point Jesus is trying to make is to know just how does Satan operate. In the eighth chapter of John, Jesus tells us that Satan, “ … was a murderer from the beginning, and he has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” In the second chapter of the book of Hebrews, we hear how Jesus came to, “…destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through the fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” Satan, then, represents the lie that the taking of life is the ultimate power. Yet, this power, far from being a power which liberates, is instead a power which enslaves those who believe in the lie that the taking of life should be their way of life. Are you beginning to understand how such a lie can devour the word spoken by God, the word that calls us to love? Perhaps what should drive this point home for us is the teaching of Jesus found in the fifth chapter of Matthew where Jesus tells us, “You have heard it said to those of old, ‘You shalt not murder and whoever murders will be liable to judgment’. But I say to you everyone who is angry with his brothers and sisters is liable to judgment”. You see, when we allow Satan to have an audience and believe that the power of death is the ultimate power, then the door is opened up to all kinds of behavior which comes and destroys the order of love that God created us to order our lives by. The danger of anger is that it tears apart what God is working to bring together, this one, great, big, happy, family. Is it becoming clearer how vitally important it is for us to, as Paul puts it in the forth chapter of Ephesians, to never let the sun go down on our anger and give no opportunity to the devil?

         This lie that death is the ultimate power not only affects our heart, destroying the love which is supposed to be springing up in us, but this lie also destroys our relationship with God and our relationship with each other. When we believe in this lie then we never come to know the truth, that God is our source of life. If you believe that death is the ultimate power then it is death not life that will call the shots in your life. You might start out serving God, finding great joy in the presence of your joyful Master but if, as you serve him, you are asked to suffer or offer your very life to be obedient to the Master, you will yield to the lie. What will be revealed for all to see is that it really is not God who you listen to but instead you are taking orders from the one whose power is the very power of death. You will go from being joyous before the Master to losing face before all who watch your actions. The word Jesus uses for those who step back and lose faith when persecution or tribulation comes is, “scandal”. Life becomes a scandal when it allows itself to be controlled by death.

         This allowing the lie of Satan to infect our lives also leads to a total breakdown of peace not just our lives personally but our life together with each other. We enter into a vicious cycle of unrest when, in our being controlled by the power of death, we in our distorted belief, decide that the best way to be at ease about the future is for us to take what we have been given, what is called our might in Hebrew thought, and we make our stuff our treasure. In doing so, all we have done is to take this anxiety of our future and replaced it with anxiety of losing our treasure. Instead of taking what God has given to us to give life to those in our great, big, happy family, to ease the anxiety of others in need, we have instead just choked the very life out of our existence through our anxiety over our treasure.

         Are you beginning to see how very destructive a lie can be? This lie that the taking of life is the ultimate power may not make us murderers but it may be the way we justify our anger toward someone. This lie will also take the honor we find in offering our life to God and replace it with shame as we withdraw from serving God fully because of the fear of death. The peace and rest found in the giving of what we are given, this knowing ourselves as life givers, this is lost when this lie that ultimate power is taking life finds its home in us. Instead of being peacemakers we become agents of anxiety. We gather up treasures on earth to somehow become less anxious about tomorrow but then we become anxious about whether something will destroy our treasure today. The ones who we could have helped be less anxious about tomorrow by providing what they need for life today, now find themselves without any hope.

         The good news is that life no longer has to be like this because Jesus our king has come and he invites us to come to him and change our minds. Jesus has come and he counters this lie that the ultimate power is the taking of life with the greater truth that ultimate power is found in the giving of life. Lest we forget this truth, Jesus goes on to tell us that he himself is truth. This one who came pronouncing himself as the king, this one is the one who is the truth that ultimate power does not lie in death but is found in the one who rules in the power of life. Jesus, as our king, lives out this power of life in our relationship with him. This power is found when we know that Jesus interceded for us. To intercede simply means to place oneself between another person and someone or something else, to act as a go between. An image of what this might look like is found in the fifteenth chapter of Genesis, where God, speaking to Abraham, tells him, “Fear not, Abraham, I am your shield…” Here, God is promising to come between, to intercede, to cover Abraham with his very self. Can you understand why God instructed Abraham to not be afraid? Why would Abraham be afraid if God promised to place himself between Abraham and whatever threatened to harm him? It is not hard to understand that Abraham, later in this chapter responds to this promise of God with a promise of his own, a promise to believe God and because Abraham believed in him, God counted him as one of his own. This promise of our king to cover us, to lay down his life to protect us, this is why we hold on to the truth, giving no room in our life for some nonsense lie.

         The right environment that our king Jesus gives to us is a life that is covered by his life. This is why Paul insists in the third chapter of Colossians that we are to seek the things which are above, not the things that are on earth. For we have died and our life is covered by our king Jesus who is one with God.” In John’s gospel, Jesus is portrayed as the Good Shepherd because he is the one who is willing to lay down his life for those in his care, his sheep. Jesus, in the fifteenth chapter of John tells us, “Greater love has no one than this that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus, our king, lays down his life, covering us, and here in this greater love we are kept safe from the great lie so that our hearts set free from fear can at last believe. The good news is that our king has arrived and through his power of life, this laying down of his life for us, we now have the perfect environment for us to love God with all of our heart, all of our life and all of our might. In our experience of this greater love, our hearts believe in the truth that life really is the greater power. In this faith, we find our life is secure beneath the life of Jesus which covers us so when trials and persecutions come we do not waver in our service of our Master. And in the security found beneath the shield of God, we understand that what he has given to us is the means by which we can give as our King has first given to us. The might that we find in our resources is the power we use to take our life and guard over the lives around us. Jesus says this is when he calls us friends, when we go and love others with the same, great, love that he first loved us. And in this right environment of deep, rich, topsoil, there comes a harvest of life that death has no power over. Jesus knew the truth that this life ordered by love would one day be seen popping up like flowers in springtime in little gatherings, of thirty, sixty or a hundred people, those who are his friends, his church.To the glory of God. Amen

         

 

Gospel Say,What?:One, Great, Big Happy Family!

 March 3 2024

Mark 3:31-35

         I talk often about my three kids, Elizabeth, Sarah and Matt but, to be honest, we actually claim another young lady named Taylyn as one of our own. Taylyn came into our life in the fall of 2011. She was a friend of Sarah’s. Sarah has always had a knack of looking out for the people on the margins who need watching out for, and, knowing this, I told her if any of her friends needed a place to crash they were always welcome. You have no idea how interesting life can get when you make a promise like this. So, Sarah came home one day in the fall of her senior year and said that Taylyn’s Mom was kicking her out of the house and she had no where to go, so would it be alright if she could stay with us, just for a little while? As it turns out, it was actually Taylyn’s foster Mom who no longer wanted her. Taylyn found herself living with her because her parents were drug addicts. So, here was a girl who had experienced more abandonment than most people should in a lifetime. What she needed was someone who would be there for her as she made her way in the world and God called us to be those people for her. So, Sarah and I drove over to where Taylyn lived, found all of her belongings shoved into their garage and loaded it all up and brought her to live with us. Now, I would like to tell you that bringing a girl with abandonment issues into a family was an easy thing to do but in all actuality, it was rough. Matt and Elizabeth were not very happy having this stranger with hang-ups suddenly crash their party. When they wondered just why we would do such a thing, I told them that I simply did not have a choice. You see, the choice I made to pledge my allegiance to Jesus meant that I had no other choice than to bring Taylyn into our life and treat her as one of our own because the truth is that she really is family, one of those who make up the one, great, big, happy, family Jesus came to create.

         You see, what most people just don’t realize is that doing the will of God, something that we pledge to do every time we say the Lord’s Prayer, is tied into just who we consider to be family. At least this is what Mark records Jesus as telling us when he says that, ‘…whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.” Paul also understood this because he writes in the first chapter of Ephesians that our Heavenly Father has, “…made known to us the mystery of his will , according to his purpose that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in heaven and on earth.” We might say that God’s will is that we know ourselves as being part of one, great, big, happy family, us and God, at last together forever.

         Now, it should come as no surprise that uniting us together into one, great big, happy, family should be what God is up to because right at the beginning of his journey with his people, God instructed them that they were to pray a certain prayer which they did for thousands of years. That prayer is called the Shema, in Hebrew which means, “Hear”. Every morning God’s people were to, as it were, listen up, turn your ear toward God, step in and hear what God has to say to them. Every morning, they heard: “The Lord our God is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your power.”  Even though God’s people prayed this prayer, over and over again, the significance of what they were praying for was lost on them. We know this to be true because Jesus taught that this was not just a prayer but it is instead the greatest commandment, the ultimate way that we are to structure our life. So, we are forced to ask ourselves just how are we to structure our lives around this idea, ‘The Lord our God is one Lord.” What does this have to say about how we as people are supposed to live together, because after all this is ultimately what the law of God is all about. Well, listen to what Paul says about this very verse as he teaches us from the third chapter of Romans, “…is God of the God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of all of the other nations as well? Yes, God is their God as well since God is one…” What Paul had become convinced of was that if there was only one God then we as humanity must think of ourselves as one people. This is quite interesting because this is not the way that Paul had originally thought about God even though he had prayed the Shema faithfully every day. Paul was bent on persecution of the early Christians because their God simply could not be the same as his God, or could he be? What had changed his mind is that he had an encounter with King Jesus.

         You see, when people have encounters with King Jesus they begin to realize that here is a king who rules in the power of life. After Jesus made his proclamation, “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the good news.”, he went forth from there proving the truth of this statement. Jesus demonstrated his authority over unclean spirits, he healed those who were sick and oppressed by demons. Jesus went forth and cleansed people who had a dreaded skin disease, and he not only healed a paralyzed man he also forgave his sins. Jesus even says, in so many words, that he had plundered the very house of Satan. All of these different situations had one thing in common and that is that they induced fear. Imagine how afraid one might be to suddenly be seized upon by demonic spirits, or to contract a skin disease which meant that you had to be expelled from your home and family? Imagine the dread to believe that you had offended God so greatly that you cannot fathom how you will ever have a right relationship with him again? Haven’t we all been terrified by the dark and evil forces of this world which seem oft so strong, and we wonder is God really the ruler yet?  In each and every terrifying situation, Jesus enters into them and commands that the fear be gone. Jesus gathers disciples to go with him, to witness to the truth that the King of life defeats every source which causes in us the fear of death. These followers would come away from their experience with Jesus having the same exclamation as Paul at the end of the eighth chapter of Romans, where he is convinced that, ‘…neither death nor life, nor angels or rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height or depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in our King, Jesus our Lord.” No matter what might cause fear to rise up in us we can be assured that the love of God will be there to counter our worries.

         The result of what Jesus our king did against these forces of fear is that he defeated all of them. In their place came a sense of peace, souls that at last had found rest. Here in his presence was what all previous Sabbaths pointed to, this time when God would return and  the people would enter into a time of rest from all of their fears. This is why Jesus could say that he is the Lord of the Sabbath because he is the one who has conquered all of our sources of fear and replaced them with an everlasting source of peace.

         All of this we can all agree really is good news, but you might be wondering just what does this have to do with God making us all into one, great, big, happy family? The answer is that only in an environment of everlasting peace, a peace founded through the actions of our life giving King Jesus, can we go from our birth families to living in the big family of God. You see, our birth families are God’s way that we enter into the world. Our families are the place where we hopefully experience love and where we can demonstrate our love to one another. It is in our birth families where all that we need for life is hopefully given to us, a place where we can grow and hopefully mature, a safe and secure place to figure out who we are. In spite of all these good intentions though, sometimes the people in our families may have left us down, they may not have always said or done the right thing, simply because we are all a lot more broken than we care to admit. So, families also need to be places of forgiveness and grace because it is a terrible burden to always have to be everything to everybody. What we figure out from life in our birth families is that the ones who love us are the ones that we show our love to. We do so because when we love those who love us we have a much better chance at getting what we need to live. 

         So, our birth families are where we begin and we go along until we have an encounter with King Jesus. Here is one who demonstrates that he is able and willing to conquer all our fears. Here is one who proves that he and he alone is our life giving King. No longer then must we consider that it is our families and the people who are in it are the ones who give us life. No, now we find that it is King Jesus who proves that he is worthy to hold our life in his hands. No longer do we need to love and expect love in return for now we know the love of our King Jesus which nothing can separate us from. Peace  comes upon us because Jesus our King has conquered all of our fears, and it is this peace that we now pass on to those around us. In this peace making, this is when Jesus says we have gone from life in our birth family to life in the one, great, big, happy, family of God. As strange as it might seem, here is where we hear King Jesus call us his brothers and sisters. 

         You see, this one, great, big, happy family God is bringing forth has to be made up of those who are willing to love without any expectations in return because this is the very way that God has so loved us. Jesus, in the fifth chapter of Matthew teaches us, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you might be sons and daughters of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and he makes it rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Even the tax collectors love those who love them. If you only greet your brothers and your sisters, what more are you doing then anyone else in the world? Don’t all of the people of the nations love those who love them? You must reach the goal God has for you, to love those who show you no love in return because your Heavenly Father, he loves those who show no love to him.”  Of course, we know this is how our Heavenly Father loves all people because this is how he has loved us. As Paul describes in the fifth chapter of Romans, “it was while we were still weak, at the right time, our King died for those who were ungodly. ..God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, our King died for us…while we were his enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son…” You see, if we know that we have been loved with a love like this why should we ever care if someone does not respond when we love them?

         To live as people who know that there is only one, true, living God therefore, means that we must be willing to live as one, great, big, happy family. The only way that we can be this one, great, big, happy family of God is that we love each other with this same love that God first showed to us. Yet, the truth is that love simply cannot be commanded. Love like this can only be brought to life by the King who rules by the power of life. When our king Jesus conquerors every source of our fears, he creates an environment of peace where love can flourish. This is why even though the Shema was prayed for thousands of years this one, great, big, happy family spanning round the globe never happened. Only as God came to us as one of us, as one of the family, could we witness the authority of our King Jesus over all that frightens us. Only in the presence of the peace that comes in the presence of our king can we experience peace in our presence. Now we know that God in his power serves us by giving us life, a greater life, a life in his one, great, big happy family where all find love and love is given with no strings attached.

         This bringing all of life together in one, great, big, happy family is the very will of God. As Jesus teaches us in the sixth chapter of Matthew, “..your will be done as it is in heaven so may it be done on earth.” In heaven, there is one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit who are three persons bound together in eternal love. So here on earth, we are many persons who are to be bound together in eternal love for this is the will of God that we, his people that he created, bear his image throughout the world. What better way to do this than to know ourselves as the one, great, big happy family of God? You see, there really is no God’s will for your life and something called God’s will for my life. This is simply is not what is found in scripture. No, there is the will of God, which is that everything in heaven and earth will be united together. When we know this, then the only question is, are we going to align ourselves with the will of God in how we live or are we going to go against the will of God to our own peril? Can you see how such a response can actually simplify how we do life with each other? I mean, if we understand that God is doing everything necessary to bring everything and everybody together into one, great, big, happy family, then when we interact with each other all we have to do is ask ourselves, am I doing something that goes along with this plan and purpose of God or am I actually doing something that is opposing this new creation that God is bringing forth? I heard a pastor the other day call these kind of decisions, top button decisions because just like if you put the top button of your shirt in the wrong hole every button after it will be wrong. If we don’t first align ourselves with what God is doing, if we don’t allow what our King Jesus has done to bring us into a place of peace, if you refuse to be a member God’s one great, big, happy family then none of our other decisions after that will be right. If you are ready to love with reckless abandonment, then hear Jesus say to you, welcome to the family, the one, great, big, happy, family of God. Amen.

          

         

Gospel Say, What?: If You Think You Know

 February 25 2024

Mark 1:1-15

         It is hard to believe how early Easter is this year. March 31^st is barely at the end of winter. This means that we are, right now, in the season of getting ourselves ready to be impacted by what Jesus has done for us through the cross and resurrection. The church calls this season which lasts forty days, Lent, because it occurs during the time of the year when the length, or lent, of the days is getting longer. Personally, Lent is always one of my favorite times because this is when the church seems to waken from her winter slumber. In the church I grew up in, Lent was always when there would be something special planned to help people get closer to Jesus, to walk with him on the way to Golgotha. This is also when people often choose to fast as a way of uniting ourselves, in a small way, with the sorrow associated with the sacrifice of Jesus upon the cross. Lent’s importance, then, is to help us get our lives focused once again on the mighty acts of Jesus which have been done on our behalf.

         You see, when we are forced out of our everyday, ordinary, way of doing things during this season of Lent then we can continue to grow more like Jesus. I can recall that when I was in the eighth grade that the pastor of our church invited the youth of the church to come before school every Wednesday during Lent, for doughnuts and a Bible study. I also remember that it wasn’t very pleasant to wake up extra early and face the gospel of Luke first thing in the morning. But the doughnuts help persuade me to tough it out and while I came for the breakfast, I stayed for the Jesus. The pastor got us into the gospel of Luke and we followed Jesus as he put his face like flint toward Jerusalem. This special time with Jesus, this is what this season of Lent is all about and this is why I enjoy it like I do.

         Well, as I think about that study of the gospel of Luke I couldn’t help but wonder if everyone I share that story with knows what I mean when I speak about the gospel. This is why this series of messages is called, ‘Gospel say, what?, because just because we think we know what the gospel says doesn’t necessarily mean that we actually know what the gospel really is all about. When we speak about the gospel of Luke we are talking about Luke’s account of the story of Jesus. Luke’s account is found alongside the accounts of Matthew, Mark and John, yet even so, is that all that the gospel is, just the story of Jesus, or is there perhaps more that makes up what we call the gospel? As we prepare to walk once again with Jesus as he heads toward Jerusalem, I want us to think about just what do we mean when we speak about the gospel. 

         We are confronted with our need to know what this gospel message is right here with these first few verses of the first chapter of Mark. The story Mark is telling to us starts out stating right here, this is the beginning of the gospel, or good news of Jesus Christ. Now, it isn’t too hard to figure out that the gospel is more than just a story about Jesus because there in the fourteenth verse of this first chapter we find that the gospel is the one and only message of Jesus. So, the gospel is more than the story of Jesus, it is rather the story that Jesus told. Right here, if we say we think we know what the gospel is then we might not really know at all what the gospel is all about. I say this because for most folks, when we speak of the gospel, the story we tell is that Jesus went to the cross for our sins and through his death our sins are forgiven and we are set free from the power of sin. To secure our salvation we must place our faith in Jesus, acknowledging that he alone is the assurance of our righteousness. What we receive in exchange is eternal life which is ours by faith through his grace. Yet if this is all of what the gospel is about how can Jesus here, at the beginning of his ministry, be proclaiming the gospel when the cross is some three years in the future? What is also unusual about this gospel proclamation of Jesus, is that he offers nothing in return for a listeners faith in his message. I mean, don’t most gospel messages we have heard promise something in exchange for placing our faith in the grace of Jesus? We have perhaps been told that if we believe on Jesus in our hearts, we are released from hell, we have the assurance of heaven, we are given the status of righteousness, or we receive forgiveness of our sins, or we are given freedom from the power of sin, or we are promised a reunion with God. Yet, listen again to what Mark records in this first verses of the first chapter, “Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel, the good news, saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” So, upon hearing that the kingdom of God is here at last, we are to repent and believe, and there the message abruptly stops, and we are left wondering, is that it, is that all you have got to tell us Jesus? What is so good about this message, I mean, just what incentive do we have to cast our lot with this guy and buy into what he is saying if there appears to be nothing in it for us?

         This is why if we think we know the gospel we might not really know what the gospel is all about. We have to listen with fresh ears, hearing once again just what it is that Jesus is saying. Listen close this time, hang on every word, see if you can catch what Jesus is trying to say in these, his first words spoken to us, “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe this good news.” Every word that is uttered is overflowing with meaning. When Jesus speaks of the time being fulfilled, he is speaking about the very promises of God. Time is used by God to prove to us of his faithfulness. God tells us what is going to happen and when it will happen and we know that God in his faithfulness will make it so. We remember the promise God made with David that his house and his kingdom would be secure before the Lord, that his throne would be set up forever. Then in the second Psalm, we hear the writer say, “I will tell of your decree: The Lord said to me, You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.”Again from the one-hundred and tenth Psalm, “The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand , until I make your enemies your footstool’. The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies!” These and many other scriptures, tell of the hope of a king who would be out of the lineage of David, one who would come and be highly exalted, the very Son of God, the Lord to whom all other lords bow down to. This coming king is called at the beginning of the second Psalm, the anointed one of God which in Hebrew gives us the word, Messiah, and in the Greek, Christos, where we get the word, “Christ”. We have to remember that when we refer to Jesus Christ, the word, ‘Christ”, is as one author put it, more a claim then a name. To say Jesus Christ is to say that Jesus is the highly, exalted, king that God promised would come and rule over us. This is what Jesus was shouting to the world as he suddenly appeared there in Galilee.

         This understanding that Jesus is the Messiah, or the Christ, the anointed king, promised by God, this is vital to us grasping just what is so good about this good news of Jesus. Yet, once again, if we think we know what it means for Jesus to be our king we might not really know at all what it means for Jesus to be our king. You see, God spoke through the prophets so that we might get a clearer picture about this coming king. In the eleventh chapter of Isaiah, the first five verses, we are told, “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth….”  Knowing this, can we catch the connection between this proclamation of good news and the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan? It was there, down by the riverside, that the heavens opened up, the Spirit came down upon Jesus, and there Jesus was anointed, the Father announcing that this one called Jesus was indeed his beloved Son. Jesus is called the Father’s beloved Son yet he is also God’s anointed king as well. What we need to know about Jesus our king is that Jesus is unlike any other king. You see, Jesus is the king on whom the Spirit rests, and this means that he is a king who rules with the power of life. We know this to be true because the one who tests Jesus in the wilderness is none other than Satan, the one whose power is found in the fear of death. This same power, the power of the sword, the very fear of death, is the power of all of the rulers on earth. Can you begin to understand, how Jesus who rules in the power of life, is a king who is both radically good and radically new in the way that he rules?

         How wonderful it is that into this world where the fear of death grips our hearts so tightly comes Jesus saying that here with him is something new, something good. Satan using the fear of death as a power of control must then be considered evil if good is Jesus using the power of life to bring life and ever more life to the world. This is the fullness of the gospel message of Jesus. You see, even here at the beginning of his ministry was the destiny of the cross for it was there at Calvary that Jesus gave his life in order to defeat death and the fear of death, the very power of evil, all so that we might have life. This is good news!

         When we have a better understanding of what this good news is that Jesus is offering to us then Jesus calls us to, “Repent.” Again, if we think we know what is meant by repentance we might not really know what repentance is all about. We might believe that repentance has to do with condemnation and judgment however when Jesus tells us to “repent”, he is speaking of something very different. Jesus calls us to come to him and through our encounter with him, we are to have a change of mind. How often do we get repentance out of the order we are supposed to have, telling people that they, first, need to repent, change their ways, before they can even think of having an encounter with Jesus. As Paul tells us at the beginning of the second chapter of Romans, “Or do you presume on the riches of God’s kindness, forbearance, and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?”. You see, it is only after we experience the kindness of Jesus that our thinking changes as to how the world actually works. This word, “kindness”, is in the same group of words as the word, “kindred”, which speaks to the experience of being in the same family. Perhaps this kindness of God is that he took it upon himself to become kindred with us, taking on our flesh, all so that we might know God as one of the family. To say that Jesus is our kin folk means that he is one who shares life with us, one who binds himself to us by cords of love, always doing what is best for all. Do you get how very strange this is that Jesus in his kindness welcomes us, of all people, to come on in and take our place at the table set in the royal palace. Yet Jesus does exactly this so that we might experience the power that there is in seeking the very best for each other, the power experienced when we offer ourselves in service to each other, the power of a life which is the very definition of good. Jesus gives us this experience so that we might change our minds about how God changes the world. Instead of living in a world controlled by fear that is rooted in death we, in this newness of life, discover a faith in the good, a faith which overcomes the world.

         So, after we start to think through just what is this good news Jesus is announcing we have to decide just what are we going to do with this message.We could be skeptics refusing to accept that there might be another way to live in this world than what we already know. Or we could accept that Jesus is on to something, being the very God who became one of us all so that we could know God as our kinfolk, and life could at last be lived in the power and service of life. This acceptance of what Jesus is teaching us is our faith. And again, if we think we know what faith is then we might not really know what faith is all about. Just what does it mean to have faith? Is faith saying the sinners prayer, as a one off statement of faith? Or perhaps we might think that to have faith means that we stand before the congregation and state that what the church holds to be the truth is exactly that, the truth? Is this really what it means to believe? I think that Jesus would say that the truth of whatever we believe is going to be found in the way we live. We will either live as those who accept the status quo or we will live true to this new announcement of the goodness that is ours to be found in this one called King Jesus. When we come to Jesus and through the Holy Spirit we are to be convinced that the true way to live is life in the family of God, a life where each member seeks the very best for each other. If this is what we say we believe then this is the way we must live. This is the truth that Paul teaches us in the fifth chapter of Galatians that faith always works itself out in our love for one another. Only through extravagant love will the world know that we are good news kind of people. To love is to live by the power of life, being life givers, and life supporters, and life affirming people. This is the new way to live and this is the good way to live because it is the Jesus way to live. You see, again, just as we found with our understanding of what the gospel is, you know, we may think we know Jesus but the truth is that we might not really know Jesus at all. So, in this Lenten season, let us press on to know who King Jesus really is, and let us live by faith in the good news he came to give to us. To his glory! Amen!

         

 

                   

God’s Mercy Leads to an Altar’d State of Mind

 February 18 2024

Romans 12:1-2

         One thing that I can easily admit is that I watch a lot of football. So it goes without saying that I also watch a ton of insurance commercials. I really laughed at the one where a mother and her grown daughter are talking and the daughter tells her mother that she has saved hundreds of dollars through switching her insurance. The mother says that she will make a note of what her daughter is telling her on her cell phone. So she gets out a Post-It note and she writes the information down on it and sticks this note to the back of her cell phone, where she has put about ten other such notes. Even though its poking fun at us less than tech savvy people, the point is that its kind of funny when people still hang on to the old way of doing things, the Post-It notes, even though they have something new like a cell phone which can keep notes if you knew what you were doing.

         I think Paul could relate to the truth that this commercial points out because he too was surrounded by those who were sticking to the old ways when something new and far better was at hand. The question people asked Paul was this: now that we have been given grace by God, this forgiveness of our past and the favor of welcoming us home so that we have a hope and a future, what are we supposed to do now, just keep on sinning because, hey, God’s got us covered? Or maybe we are supposed to go back to keeping the law, you know the Ten Commandments and all that? Paul responds to questions like these just like we responded to someone who puts Post-It notes on a cell phone, like its just weird. This is how Paul begins the sixth chapter of the letter to the church at Rome, with this nonsensical question that people would ask him when they discover grace and see God’s offer like some kind of get out of jail card. To such thinking Paul responds by saying that by no means should somebody do such a thing because how can those who have died to sin, the old Post-It note way of living, continue to do so when they have been given something new, something as different from our old way of life as a Post-It note is from a cell phone, a very new way of living. Paul then proceeds to answer this question, ‘How are we supposed to now live since through God’s grace we have been given a very new way of living? The answer to this question is what Paul gives to us six chapters later, here at the beginning of the twelfth chapter, which at least tells you that the answer, it’s complicated, so we have to go slow and think about what Paul is telling us. This is why we are looking at these few verses as we come to the last segment of our series of messages, called, Think.Good.Work. The gist of these messages is that before we set off to do the good works God commands of us we first have to do a little thinking to get our minds in the right place.

         We see Paul stressing this necessity of thinking when he states that we are transformed by thinking a new way about God’s grace, his forgiveness of our sins and the favor and welcome into the life of God. For us to really wrap our heads around this new way of thinking, Paul tells the grand and glorious work that God is up to. Paul reminds us that all of us start out as people enslaved to sin. Even the people of Israel, God’s own people who had been given his law, were ensnared by sin. Into this rather hopeless situation came a cross. There our old self, the one enslaved by sin, was crucified right there upon the cross when Jesus died for us. Now, if we can know that we have died a death like Jesus died then we can rest assured that we will be united with him in a resurrection like his. This is the story that is reenacted again and again any time the church brings a person up through the waters of baptism. The church witnesses one who was united in the death of Christ and is now raised up to live with Christ in resurrection life. Once they had lived under the slavery of sin but now through uniting with Christ in his death and rising up into new life they are free. The question for all those who are baptized is, just what are we to do with our freedom? Paul gives us, in the sixth chapter, this picture of two kings, King Sin and King Jesus.The question for us then becomes, in our freedom, just which king will we stand before and offer ourselves to be their servant. Who will you now serve, this is what all who have been baptized must consider as people who have a new found freedom. 

         This hope Paul lays out here, that we are able to be free from the power and control of sin is a foundational belief of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement. Wesley preached that because we have died with Christ and are no longer slaves to sin then at last we are indeed able to live righteous and holy lives. This is our hope of being able to break free from addictions and our former ways of evil living to at last live in the power of the resurrection, united always to the Spirit of holiness. So, if living free in a resurrection reality is a possibility for us then we are left wondering, just how can this become the reality we live in? I mean, we don’t just want to be caught in this endless cycle of falling back into sin, repenting and coming back to Jesus, receiving his grace only to fall into sin again and repent again, doing nothing more then spiritually chasing our tails. Here is Paul’s answer: God’s mercy is what leads us to have an altar’d state of mind. An altar’d state of mind is one where we stand before King Jesus and we offer him not just our service but we give him our whole self as an offering upon an altar in our loyalty to God. This giving ourselves to God in total abandonment, this is just what makes logical sense when we consider and think and calculate just what God’s mercy is worth to us. In speaking of God’s mercy, Paul  is speaking of an attribute of God that is different from God’s grace, which is God’s favor toward us, those whom he has forgiven by the blood of Jesus. The connection between God’s mercy and his grace is that his grace flows forth from the deep well that is the mercy of God.

         The mercy of God is at the very core not just of what God does but mercy is who God is in his essential nature. This is why when Paul speaks of mercy in the New Testament, he has in mind the name of God that is found in the Old Testament, his steadfast love and faithfulness. God’s unchanging character is that he is always a God of steadfast love and faithfulness. Both words are used together throughout the Old Testament in order to enhance the meaning of the other so that we know that our God is faithful because of his love for us and that we also know that our God loves us and he demonstrates his love through his ever faithful presence. This is just who God is, and it does not matter if we respond to his loyal, faithful, love with a loyal, faithful, love of our own, or whether we do not respond at all, God’s love for us remains. This is what the whole story of Israel proves to us that God in his love is always faithful to keep his promises even when those he is faithful to are blatantly unfaithful in their love toward God.

         So, yes, God is faithful to us, and he loves and wants the very best for us. This is why God has always had a special place for us, a destination Paul tells us that was there for us from the very foundation of the world. This place of wonder is called glory. This is the truth Paul tells us in the ninth chapter of Romans that God makes known the riches of his glory for us who are his vessels of mercy, those whom he has prepared ahead of time for life in glory. This same idea is found in the eighth Psalm where the writer states, “Yet, you O God have made humans a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned them with glory and honor.” This is where God desires to take us, think about that for a minute and consider just how wild such a claim really is! Yet this is where God’s mercy begins, with his always having a special place for us, and God is going to stop at nothing until at last we are set where we have always been created to live, there in a place called glory.

         So, the mercy of God is his continual work of moving us from where we are at, people enslaved to sin and he brings us from there all the way until we at last are a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor. Again, lets stop and think about what God desires to bring about in my life and in your life? It is hard not to be in awe of this God who loves us. Paul, in speaking of God’s mercy, uses three different phases to speak of the work of God’s mercy: his call, his justification and his glorification, as we find at the end of the eighth chapter of Romans. In the following chapters of Romans, Paul elaborates on these three phases of God’s mercy by using the story of God’s people, the Israelites as a demonstration of the faithfulness of God. God’s call for example, is heard when he heard the cries of his people and he sent Moses to call his people out of slavery, through the waters to new life. You see, we have a God who talks to dead people as far-fetched as that sounds. Yet, listen to Jesus who, in the fifth chapter of John, says, “…the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.” Jesus, is not speaking of the death we will experience at the end of our life, but rather he speaks of the sentence of death we are under because of our slavery to sin. While we are as good as dead, enslaved in our sin, the voice of God calls us to come out of the tombs of death into life.

         God not only calls us out of death, but he calls to us in anticipation of a response. What messes up our response to hearing the voice of God is our fear of judgment, our sheer unworthiness to come into the presence of a holy God. To speak to our concerns of condemnation, Paul writes of the experience of the people of God, who in their sin had broken their covenant with God and as God had promised, were sent into exile far from their home. This is an image of death. Yet, this was not the end for them because God told his people, in the thirtieth chapter of Deuteronomy, that even in exile, in a very death like situation, even there if they heard the voice of God and trusted that voice, they could once again experience the mercy and compassion of God. But we have to ask, how could they find the courage to trust God? The answer is that in thinking about their situation the people of God would at last realize that even though they had broken their covenant with God, and even though he had every right to walk away from them, still, God went beyond what was required by the covenant, because God in his mercy remained faithful to his people out of his great love for them. This is the perfect love of God. John, in his first letter, the forth chapter, writes this about the perfect love of God, “By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in the world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” This perfect love of God is the love of the cross, the love which held Jesus there so that by that same love we might be held by him who died and was raised for us. Paul tells us in the eighth chapter of Romans that the Spirit takes hold of us in our weakness, and through are allowing God in his love to take hold of us, the rightness of our God becomes our own.This is how God justifies the claim of our being righteous, because we trust him to take hold of us and lift us out of sin.

         So, God calls us out of death and into life and through his perfect love which loved us even when there was no good reason for God to do so, we yield ourselves to God and allow his love to take hold of us so that as Paul writes in Second Corinthians, the fifth chapter, “the love of Christ controls us, because we have made up our minds that one has died for all therefore all have died; and he died for all so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but live instead, for the One who for their sake died and was raised.” Can you see how the mercy of God can lead us to have an altar’d mind? We no longer live for ourselves, we can offer up all of who we are and what we have to God because it just does not make any sense to live to gain anything for ourselves especially in light of glory. You see, the God who has called us out of death, and by his love caused us to place our faith in his strength, this is the God who will not stop until we at last are where God has always intended us to live which is summed up in the word, glory. You see, our hope of glory changes everything. Again from Second Corinthians, Paul says, “…this light and momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory which is beyond comparison.” This is why the love of God refuses to let us go because he desires more than anything to bring us to this place that has been prepared for us before the foundation of the world. It just makes logical sense that we should give all that we are, our heart, our treasures, even our very lives if necessary, as an act of worship to God, its just a no-brainer. If we just allow God’s mercy to overwhelm our minds, then when we stand before King Jesus, the decision to offer him all that we are as a pleasing and acceptable offering is an easy decision, so easy, to quote another insurance ad, that a caveman can do it. If we don’t want the world to force us into its mold of those who think the world is all about how much you can get then we must stop, and consider this mercy of God, so loyal, faithful and true. It is God’s mercy that causes us to not only have an altar’d state of mind but to have an altar’d way of life as well. So let us be done with trying to fit ourselves into the mold of this world. Let us live instead as people who know that because of the wondrous mercy of God we are indeed bound for glory! Praise be to God. Amen!

Good Minds Think Alike

 February 11 2024

Philippians 4:4-9

         My wife, Jennifers work schedule is such that she works from ten in the morning to eight in the evening which is a ten hour day so she gets Friday off. Now for the most part this schedule is pretty rough, no matter how you look at it, a ten hour day is a long day. Yet, we have found that this schedule does have its perks because it gives us time in the morning together. What we do, besides eat breakfast together, is that we play word games, you know the ones like Wordle or Quordle, where you have to guess what word or words are in the puzzle for the day. These kind of games are supposed to exercise your brains but I never feel overly smart after I finish them. It does help that Jennifer and I work on these word puzzles together because sometimes one of us just can’t seem to have any clue what the word is. Now, what is also interesting is that staring at a jumble of letters for a while, both of us will blurt out the answer at the exact same time, and what always follows is that we say, “Great minds think alike”!

         In this message series that we are going through called, Think.Good.Work., we are looking at this connection between the thinking of our minds and our doing of good works. Today, what I want us to think about is not how, “Great minds think alike” but rather how, “Good minds think alike”. Last week, in the third chapter of Titus, we saw how imperative it is that we exercise our minds to live good.We have to consider our past, that time before God has entered our life and remember how very lost and wandering from the truth we once had been. Then we needed to stop and really think about what God in Jesus Christ has done for us, saving us so that we have a hope and a future. We learned that there on the cross the blood of Jesus was not only the blood necessary for the forgiveness of our sins but that same blood ratified a new covenant with God, signifying his favor towards us, the very welcome of us into his life. Through the loving embrace of the Holy Spirit we are made a new creation able at last to do the good works that God desires of us, this extravagant giving and forgiving of others just as God first has extravagantly gave his Son to forgive us of our sins.

         Today then, we are going to build off of what we learned from the letter to Titus so that we know that it is not just great minds which think alike but rather it is good minds which think alike. This doing of good works is something that God intends for us to do as part of a group of like minded people. The reason why this is so true is that, as funny as it may seem, doing good works upsets some people out in the world. Today from Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi we are going to figure out just why it is that doing good works sets people off and how having good minds which think alike can help us weather the storm that comes against us when we do those good works.

         This passage from the fourth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Philippians may be familiar to us perhaps because of the song which goes, “Rejoice in the Lord, always! Again I say rejoice...”. So often we know passages like this so well that we don’t stop to consider just what is meant by this word, ‘Rejoice”. What is curious is that the roots of this word are the same roots for the word, “grace”.  What ties these seemingly different ideas together is knowing that grace is the favor or welcome of God. Holding on to that idea, we then listen to the words from Matthew 25 where Jesus, at the end of a parable states, “Well done good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” What is implied here is that joy is what sweeps over us when we come before our Master and we bask in the glow of his joy. The joy of our God, then, becomes the very source of our own joy; rejoice, indeed! We enter into the presence of our God having served him by giving more than was required for us to do. Jesus, in the fifth chapter of Matthew, describes such extravagant giving like this, “…if one slaps you on the right cheek, turn and give him the other cheek as well. If anyone sues you and takes your coat go on and give him your shirt, too. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him the second mile. Give to the one who begs from you and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.” Here we can see just what excessive forgiveness and extravagant favor, looks like in real time. When our life is marked by such lavish generosity, God is joyful and in his presence, so are we. The radiance of the joy of the Lord glows upon our faces.

         As wonderful as this scene is, us being filled with joy before our God, all is not as good as perhaps it should be because Paul abruptly interjects his letter with a warning against being anxious. What Paul is referring to, in this instance, is not a condition like worry, or a wringing our hands about some crisis we are facing, but rather, Paul here is speaking about being double-minded, that our minds are no longer solely focused upon doing those good works that God desires. We are left wondering just what has happened to cause our minds to become divided in their devotion to God. In the first chapter of this letter to the Philippians we find that Paul writes to the church at Philippi hoping that they, “…are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel…”.Here Paul’s hope is that the church can overcome this division of their minds by their coming together to help one another. You see, what happens when our individual minds waver in our loyalty to God is that the church as a whole is no longer united, no longer standing firm in one spirit. Paul knows that such division is a grave threat to the life of the church. Paul also knows that the source of this wavering of the minds in the church is that the gospel has its opponents, those who want to inflict suffering and fear upon the church. In these times of persecution, this is when doubts arise as to whether living a life of extravagant giving is really the life we ought to be living.

         You know, what also should make us wonder is just why anyone would get upset by those just striving to do good, why get mad at those whose goal is to love God and each other with a profound passion, why would this cause such an uproar. Part of the answer is found in the second chapter of this letter to the Philippians, because there Paul instructs this church that they are, “…to be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life…”. When we live doing good works, works which show forth excessive generosity, when we give to others and forgive others, then we stick out from the crowd because were to be as different from those who do not know God as light is from darkness. When Paul says that we are to shine like stars, he is quoting a saying from the twelfth chapter of the book of Daniel, where we are told that the righteous who sleep in the earth will awake and enter into everlasting life. These are the ones who will shine like the brightness of the sky above, like the stars forever.” You see, the Holy Spirit has lifted us up from death into a new life. It is the Spirit poured out upon us without measure, this is what raises us up to live a life where we give ourselves in return, to God without measure. It is when we are people of the light, this is when the people of our corrupt and twisted world take offense. The reason for their opposition is explained to us by Jesus who in the third chapter of John says, “This is the judgment :the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light, lest his works be exposed for what they really are. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so it may be clearly seen that their works have been carried out in God”. What Jesus is saying here is that when we do good works, we can be utterly certain that we do so in partnership with God. We might say that God is in the giving. The people of the world though, are only concerned with what they can get, not what they can give. They are looking for some way that they can manipulate God so that he might be the source of fulfilling their desires. Can you understand why Paul calls such people crooked and twisted, to think that they might actually discover a way for Almighty God to be at their beck and call. God, quite rightly wants nothing to do with such schemes. So can you understand why such people are so angry at such news? It is hard to accept that God is in the giving and that he works through those who give. Those who have this, “ what’s in it for me”, mindset simply refuse to believe that the kingdom of God can actually be brought into existence through excessive giving. Yet, this is who our God is, the Father who generously gives his Son to save the world, the risen Son who gives usthe Holy Spirit without measure so that through the Spirit we might be given without measure to the Father. 

         So, yes, in this world we will have trouble, the question is just what are we going to do about it? Paul tells us, at the end of the first chapter of his letter to the church at Philipi that the answer to our question is that we are to, “…stand firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.”. You see, facing the opposition is a team effort, an athletic undertaking we do together. Think of it as a work out of faith to make us strong against what comes against us. So, we train together in order to be ready for the fight. This training, Paul tells us at the end of his letter, consists of four actions,-prayer, peace, praise and practice. 

         It goes without saying that we must pray together and do everything in a spirit of prayer. We are to know that good minds pray together.  Prayer is an act of humility, an act of kneeling before God admitting our need for him. In our humility we find that our God, as Isaiah tells us in the fifty seventh chapter, is a God who, “…dwells in the high and holy places and also with those of a humble and lowly spirit”. God kneels, comes down to us, when we kneel. What we find in this moment, as Jesus explains, in the sixth chapter of Matthew, is that our Heavenly Father knows what we need before we even ask him. So, we pray knowing that our Father already is aware of our need, absolutely certain that our God knows us, that he is indeed the very searcher of hearts. Together in prayer, we become known to one another as God already knows us. Thankfulness fills our hearts. Our relationship with God is founded on gratitude for we are people who know that we have been given everything by God. In prayer, we come to know the people who God has given to us, as gifts to be thankful for. Kneeling together, then, gives us strength, for in our humility we declare our need for God and each other.

         From our kneeling then, we rise and stand. This is the image Paul gives us in the fifth chapter of Romans when he speaks about the peace God has made with us. Paul writes, ‘Therefore since we have been justified by faith, we have peace  with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand…”. So, it is the peace of God which makes it possible for us to stand with God. We know that good minds know of God’s peace, and in this peace we stand together. You see, the peace of God guards our hearts and in this peace we know that not only do we stand with God but we also stand with each other.  So, together, then, we need to encourage each other, make each others heart strong, by always reminding each other that no matter how hard the fight, God still stands with us.

         Our third action is praise. We do so because we know that good minds praise God together. We need to stop and breathe in, take into ourselves the Holy Spirit, the breath of life and consider the greatness of the life God has given to us. You see, a glorious new way to live has been revealed to us through Jesus Christ, a life that Paul tells us is worthy of the very honor of God, a life where all people are equals, a life cleansed from the pollution of the world, a life that finds everyone worthy of love, a life worth talking about, a life that others can tell is morally good. So, breathe in, draw in the Holy Spirit, and consider the greatness of this life; how can this life not be worthy of our praise?  Our praise tells God that no matter what God asks of us, no matter what the cost to us, God alone is worthy of all that we are. God is worthy because he found us worthy, worthy of the giving up his only Son for us upon a cross so that through his death we might be able to receive his life. So, we breathe in the Holy Spirit, we find our life in Jesus and we breathe out our praise, ready to pay any price, even the offering of our lives because our God is worthy.

         Finally, after we have knelt in humility as we pray, and risen to stand with God and find that God stands with us because of the peace he has made with us, and we fill our lungs with the Holy Spirit and with this life breath we lift our voices in praise for our God is worthy, then we are ready to go forth to practice what we know in our hearts to be true. Jesus tells us that we therefore must be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, and as they say, practice makes perfect. This means that we need to make a habit of doing good works, loving others with the perfect love of our Father with no thought of receiving love in return. As we go, we do so knowing that good minds practice together. We try hard to get it right, yet we are always ready to confess when we fail. So, in our, prayer, in our peace, in our praise and in our practice, this is when our good minds are thinking alike about our gospel faith. These actions assure us that God is with us, willing and working for his good pleasure, In his presence we rejoice and again, I say, rejoice. Amen.

Exercise Your Mind to Live Good

 February 4  2024

Titus 3:1-11

         One of the things that has been interesting about our children moving out and living their own lives is that they do things that you just never imagined that they would do. Take for example our son Matt, who is twenty-seven, who can be found at the gym more often than not. Now, Jennifer and I were never the kind of people who could be found running on treadmills or lifting weights. I always thought that if I was going to work that hard then I wanted paid for doing so. So, it catches us off guard that Matt spends so much time working out but in his defense he has a very good reason for all of this exercise and that is so he can eat all of the junk food that he craves and not have any guilt about it.

         Now, Matt is not alone in his exercise endeavors because, as he told us,  January is one of the few times that his gym, Planet Fitness, ever advertises. The reason why this is so is that at the start of the year there is always this mad rush of people going off to the gym to work off everything that had been put on in November and December. It is here, at the beginning of a new year, that people stop and take stock of their life and perhaps decide to do something to alter the course that they are on. Most people know that they need to exercise to live well and what better time to put this truth into action than here at the beginning of a fresh, new year.

         Since it is here, at the beginning of the year, that we take stock of life, I believe that perhaps we should take this time to pause and to think about our spiritual life as well. Today is the first of a series of messages I’ve given the title, “Think.Good.Work.” The idea is that there is a connection between our thinking and our doing good work. Much like people know that they must exercise their bodies to live well, we as followers of Jesus must exercise our minds to live good. Yes, this sounds like bad English but nonetheless, to live good is the very way God has for us to live. Yet in order to live good, being people who do good work, requires that we exercise our minds. At least this is what Paul explains to his friend,Titus, in this letter Paul has written to him.

         There in the third chapter of this letter to Titus, Paul in the eighth verse, says, “I strongly desire, I insist emphatically, make absolutely certain, about these things that I have just written, so that those who have faith in God might connect what you know to be true in your minds with your outward behavior”. In other words, Paul is telling us, that we need to be people who exercise their minds, people who think about the good and then go get it done. We are to exercise our minds to live good, always standing ready to do the kind of work which is helpful, beneficial. This is the kind of good that makes the people around us to sit up and take notice of our life of love.

         This life of good, a good which is the kind of good that draws others to stop and wonder what we are up to, this kind of living good, this all has its source, Paul insists, in what we are thinking about, the way that we are exercising our minds. The first area of our lives that we are to think about is our past, you know,  before God reached into our lives and turned us around. It is telling that the first thing Paul describes is those who are far from God. They are people who are foolish, literally, “without a mind”. So, as we begin to exercise our minds we need to remember that there was a time when we were those who seemed to have no mind to exercise. No wonder we refused to put any faith in God. In our past, we just did not have any confidence in what God is doing. We were unpersuaded in the truth of what God said because we did not want to consider just what it is that God is up to. Having no faith in God to anchor us, we instead became people who wandered off just as Jesus describes in the fifteenth chapter of Luke, where the shepherd must leave the ninety-nine to go after the one who had become lost. You see if we are not persuaded by the truth does it not just make sense that we will be those who go chasing after every lie? We should not be surprised to hear Paul tell us that we end up being slaves to our hungers and our lusts wasting the time we have been given. We were people not living the good but instead living opposed to the good purposes of God. This evil intent shows up in real life as an embittered mind, always comparing ourselves to our neighbors, angry when all is well with them instead of us, somehow believing that to complain at another’s good fortune can somehow make our life better.

         You see, this life before God entered into it, is one that unravels into a life that Paul calls, “detestable”, a life that is disgusting and repulsive. This life Paul finds so ugly is a life consumed by hate. Now, the word that Paul uses here for hate is a word which really means that one loves somebody less than someone else. What Paul is speaking about here is this picking and choosing who we will love and who we will refuse to love. Can you see why Paul says such a life is so nasty? Yet, this life Paul describes is the very life that we see out in the world on any given day. This is kind of how we normally think about living and loving; there are those that I am going to choose to love and there are those who just don’t make the cut. That is very much the norm and the reason that Paul is so grossed out about such a life is that it is just common; there is nothing about living such a life that would catch anyone’s attention. It is quite normal that everyone is living with two sets of lists, those who get our love and those who get our contempt. That is where we all begin in life, our past, where we love some and hate others. We were people who might show you some love or you know, today just might not be your day, and tomorrow is not looking very good either. This is why Paul insists that we cannot forget where it was that we came from so that we make sure our past remains just that, the past. We need to exercise our minds and consider this: are we still hanging on to those two lists, you know the ones we love and the ones we don’t? We also need to remember our past so that we remember that most of the people in the world are living just such a life. Remembering where we came from is supposed to temper us when we interact with the people we meet. We are to see those we share life with as people who might not yet be persuaded of the truth that God is speaking. There are still many people who have wandered off, chasing after every lie, enslaved to their base desires. We know this is who they are because that is who we used to be, before Jesus.

         You see, we begin with our past because it is there that God through Jesus Christ reached into our lives and gave us a hope and a future. Yes, we had a past but then…God. Here is where our story turns with this exclamation that the goodness of God, his giving to us exactly what we needed, calling us one of his own, this is the God who saves us, the one who has made himself real to us. This is the only way that life changes, when the arm of God reaches into our life and takes hold of us. The word for the love of God that Paul uses here is an unusual choice, “philanthropy”, which means the warm brotherly and sisterly love felt between people. Perhaps Paul uses this very human word for love because we have a God who became human for us, to love us as brothers and sisters. This is the love that saved us, the very human Jesus, taking our place upon the cross to save us, tasting death for all of us. He took upon himself our deserved judgment, as one of us, so we could experience the mercy so undeserved.

         So, yes, as Paul reminds us, we are not saved because of us living life in the right way. No, the only thing that rescued us was that God, in Jesus, was merciful to us. It was Jesus who gave us the undeserved gift of the Holy Spirit, the God who comes to us to make all things new. As the Spirit hovers over us the world begins again, our world begins again, and we are made new. The Spirit reaches into our lives and seizes hold of us, transforming our life. The very favor of God welcomes us, people who hate others and those who are hated by others, into his life of holy love. This love of God is an uncommon love because God only has one list of people, and on it are the names of each and every person, giving love to all. Our God is the one who makes his sun to shine on the evil and the good, giving life to all. This love that draws us close to God is grace, the very grace that claims us as being people who belong to God. This is why we make the claim that at last, we are right with God; his love forgave us through the blood of Jesus. Through that same blood God made a covenant with us, an unbreakable bond of love. This is a bond which not even death can dissolve. This is the ground of our hope that we will be at home with God even in the age to come.

         So we exercise our minds. We consider, first, our past apart from God, a life opposed to God and what he is up to. Then we thought of God, breaking into our life, a life that was so lost. God has taken us and through his love, has made us a new creation. The Holy Spirit hovers over us, we are transformed through the grace of God. Now we have a future and a hope.  If we think about it, does it not make sense that what God has done will impact this present moment? Of course! This is why Paul teaches us in the first verse of this chapter, that we are to exercise our minds in order to live out the good, right here in the present. Paul has already told us that we are not saved by our good works; no, we have been saved byGod so that we might be people who are able to do good work. This just leaves us wondering, well what do these good works look like. Paul anticipates this question. He goes on to give us a description of just what is meant by good works. Good works begins by how we talk to each other. Paul very strangely tells us that we are to not blaspheme another person which is odd because normally blaspheme is unholy talk against God. So, why would Paul use a word that is only used for God here where we consider how we are to talk to each other? The answer is that all people are made in the image of God. There is something sacred about the way that God has created us but more, there is something even more holy about the way that he saved us. You see, our God considers our humanity not only worthy of being redeemed by the life of his Son but God also finds us a fitting place for him to dwell through the Holy Spirit. We need to exercise our minds, then, whenever we speak to one another because the fingerprints of God are all over every person we encounter. God takes it personally whenever we speak less of those he considers to be his own. As we think about the saving work God does through his love and grace then we must also consider that God does this not just for us, but God does this for every single person. When we exercise our minds and think about this then it just makes sense that we are to be done with fighting words, words that tear down and tear apart. We cannot tear apart those God is working so hard to make whole. No, instead of people picking a fight we are to be gracious and extravagantly forgiving those who have an axe to grind with us. The words Paul uses here echoes what Jesus taught in the fifth chapter of Matthew, “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn and let him have the other one as well, If anyone wants your outer coat let him have your shirt as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.” Why would Paul want us to live like this? Well, if we think about it, this is what God has done for us. On the cross the blood gave us not just forgiveness, which dealt with our past, but Jesus went further because that same blood ratified the new covenant, granting us the favor of God, which gave us our future. Here in the present then, forgiveness and favor must be our way of life. And why should we choose to mimic God in this way? Paul, says that we need to exercise our minds because when you live this kind of life, people will see something different about us, we might even say, something beautiful, the rare beauty of the cross. Through our life their Savior will appear for they will see the Christ who lives and works through us. They too will come to know the God who loves them like no other. Paul continues that such a life is one that is heaping over with abundance. The image here is the one given to us by Jesus as found in the sixth chapter of Luke where we hear Jesus say to us, “Forgive and you will be forgiven; give and it will be given to you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over and pouring into your lap, for the measure you use this is how it will be measured back to you.” This life of overflowing, abundant, blessing, this is the reason why Paul’s words scream at us off of these pages. We must emphatically resolve to exercise our minds, to think about our past, to think about our future and think on this life of good we can do here in the present. Jesus promises us that the more we offer forgiveness and favor, grace and love to all people the more grace and love, favor and forgiveness will overwhelm our life. This life is the life we were made for, saved for, this wonderful life we have with God, think about that. So by all means, do a little exercise to live well, but most importantly, exercise your mind to live good, all of your days. Amen!