Father Abraham had many sons (and daughters)!

 September 20 2020

Genesis 12:1-3, 15:1-6, 17:1-6, 22:1-14

         During this time of the year I always look forward to football. So I’m grateful that at least I can watch NFL games because the college season is so up in the air. Needless to say I was overjoyed that the Big Ten has decided to go ahead and play even if I have to wait until October. Now thinking about the Big Ten, I have to confess that not only did I have a child who was a Buckeye, my son Matt but, get this I also had a child who went to that school up north. Yes, my daughter Sarah went to the University of Michigan. Needless to say Novembers at our house were interesting while she was in school.

         As I thought about Sarah getting her Masters Degree from Michigan, I still find it interesting how and why she decided to come back home after finishing up her degree. I mean for the majority of her classmates most of them ended up in a big city not in some rural little town in the middle of Ohio. The reason Sarah made this choice is that while at Michigan she began to realize the importance of having a network to rely upon. When I say network, I mean that connection of friends, acquaintances and coworkers that one has to call upon when you need something. To Sarah, having this network was something she highly valued and she knew that if did move somewhere new she would have to spend a lot of time building up a group of friends so that she didn’t have to go it alone. When she moved back to T-county though she instantly had so many friends, and acquaintances that it was no big deal to find support and help when she needed it. She has ended up with a great job so it seems that moving back here was a pretty wise choice after all.

         As I meditated on Sarah and the importance that she placed on having a network, a group of friends and acquaintances to rely upon I couldn’t help but think about Abram living in the town of Haran one day hearing a voice above and beyond him that told him that it was time to get out of town. What this voice was telling Abram was to leave behind the very thing that my daughter Sarah finds so valuable, this network of family, friends and neighbors. Often times when we read the Bible counts of these hero’s of the faith in the Bible we don’t take into account what they gave up to say “Yes” to God. For Abram to say “Yes” to God meant that he had to leave behind friendships, he had to say his last goodbye to the members of his family and cut the ties he had built up over a lifetime with his neighbors. Not only that but when pushed about why he was doing such a drastic measure, Abram just had to answer that he had heard a voice that spoke to him and this voice had told him that if was willing to go then Abram could expect that he would be the beginning of a great nation, he would become a man whose name, his very reputation would be great. Not only that, but this voice also told Abram that he was going to bless him, to show him favor in a world where favors were hard to come by. Now, the reason why Abram would even give this voice the time of day was that by now Abram was seventy five years old. His wife was also no spring chicken as well so to hear that there was still hope that their dream of being parents was not as dead as it seemed came as quite a surprise. What Abram understood is that the voice of God speaks and connects the most with the desperate people of this world. It is those people who find that their hope can not be fulfilled through anything this world has to offer these are the people who are willing to listen to the voice beyond this world to secure their hope. And so it was with Abram and Sarai. Abram heard the voice of God, Abram listened and obeyed the voice of God betting solely on the goodness of the promise of God. Abram leaving his country, his kindred and his father’s house was a costly move if we only stop and think about what living in our country surrounded by kindred hearts and family means to us, how much we value this way of life we often take for granted. What Abram discovered is the truth that you can not go with God and stay where you are at. Faith requires a letting go of what we have in order for us to take hold of  the newness of what God has to offer.

         This new thing God was doing by speaking to Abram is summed up in the word blessing. As we look at the story that is unfolding in our scripture we have to remember that when Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden their status was one of being cursed. Eve’s curse was to be pain in childbirth and Adams curse was that the ground from which he would harvest his crops would bring forth nothing but thistles and thorns. The common denominator to both curses was that pain had entered into life; the pain of childbirth and the pain of living off the land which refused to bear crops needed for life. Now, it wasn’t as if God caused their pain; we should never come to the conclusion that we have a God who is out to get us for our disobedience. No, we should rather understand that what happened when Adam and Eve listened to the voice of their desires instead of listening to the voice of God is that the perfect order with which God his creation was now broken. God created a world of structure and order,  a world of harmony and flourishing.Part of that order was that God’s highest creation, people, we were created to bear his image and likeness. As we learned last week to bear God’s image is that like the kings in the pagan nations used to do, we are to bring God’s righteousness to bear wherever is our sphere of influence. In order for us to be people of God’s righteousness we must also be people who listen to God’s voice. The Jewish understanding of how this all works is that God in heaven determines judgment which means God alone decides what is good and what is evil. When God speaks we hear what we know as justice what is a just and right way to live. Then when we obey the justice of God what the world sees is God’s righteousness. This is the way God has so ordered the world. So, when Adam and Eve refused to listen to the voice of God, they went against the order God had made an integral part of his creation. Just like if we refuse to acknowledge the law of gravity and decide to jump off a cliff we know bad things will happen. In the same way bad things happen when we as people decide to ignore God’s moral order and refuse to listen to God as God created us to do. The Bible calls these bad things that result when we refuse to listen to the voice of God a curse. To be cursed is to be literally out-of-order and the result in our lives is pain. So the way that the story of Adam and Eve is written it tells us that the pain we experience in our world is the result of our disobedience and is not some flaw in God’s good creation. God in his infinite goodness and wisdom though takes this pain and uses it to motivate people to turn back to him. As we see with Abram and Sarai, it was the pain of having reached old age and never having a child to love and cherish, this is what made God’s promises seem like a way for their hope to remain alive. It was easy for them to understand when God spoke to them of blessing because it was his voice that was to be the end of their life under the curse of barrenness. God promised to bless them but that was not all; God also said that not only was he going to bless Abram and Sarai but they in turn would be a blessing and not only that but through them all families in the whole earth would be blessed through them. This is an astounding, mind-blowing vision that God held out for Abram and Sarai to behold. What God was telling them was through them and their faith the world that is living under the curse now would have a way for the curse to be reversed and for God’s favor to once again be the norm of God’s creation. This is the truth behind what Paul wrote at the end of the eleventh chapter of Romans where he writes, “For God has consigned all to disobedience that he may have mercy on all.” God views the tragedy of our disobedience as an opportunity for him to demonstrate the depth and richness of his mercy to us. As Paul wrote earlier in Romans in the second chapter, “Or do you presume on the riches of God’s kindness, forbearance and patience not knowing that God’s kindness is to lead you to repentance? This is what God’s mercy is supposed to do is to cause our hearts to once again be willing to listen to the voice of God instead of the voice of our desires, and to not only listen but to obey in faith. This is exactly what is seen in the life of Abram and Sarai. Where once they lived life like everyone else eating, drinking living life for the moment now they turned from that way of life to a life of listening to the voice of God.

         When we realize that the kindness of God is what caused Abram and Sarai to turn to God in faith then we can begin to understand just what Paul meant when he wrote in the third chapter of Galatians that “the Scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’ So then, who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.”  Now, for most of us when we hear of preaching the gospel we just automatically think of Jesus and him being our personal Savior. But if we go back and look at the beginning of the gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark and Luke what the main preaching point of Jesus was for people to repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. So knowing that Abraham, in listening and obeying the voice of God had demonstrated that he had indeed repented we have to wonder if he had entered the kingdom of God by faith as Jesus called people to do. What helps us to figure this out is knowing that in Jewish thought, the great commandment where we are called to love God with all of our heart, with all of our life and with all of our strength and resources, this was called the yoke of the kingdom. The idea is that if we love God with all of our heart, with all of our life and all of our resources then most assuredly God has become our king and we quite naturally are living in his kingdom. So as we look at the life of Abraham we have to ask, does Abraham demonstrate that he loves God with all of his heart with all of his life and with all of his resources? The answer we find is yes, his life story is one where he does indeed, love God with all that he is. 

         We see Abraham love God with all of his heart when he willingly left behind those things which tug so hard upon our hearts, the love of country, the love of family and neighbor in order to instead listen to God obey and follow him even though the destination was unknown. All that was known to Abraham was that this voice held out a promise and a blessing and this was the foundation of Abrahams love for God. This love continued to grow within Abraham and we hear this in the seventeenth chapter of Genesis where twenty four years after their initial encounter, God speaks to Abraham and tells him, “I am God almighty walk before me and be blameless that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.  Then Abram fell on his face.” To help us further understand what God is asking of Abraham and what was also confirmed is that what is translated here as blameless is better translated as wholeheartedness. God is asking Abraham if he will walk before him with a heart fully devoted to him. Right here we have to pause for a moment and think about what God is asking. Abraham has waited over twenty years for God to make good on his initial promise. He is now ninety nine years old with no children in sight. It’s understandable that God would want to know if Abraham is still on board with trusting the plan and timing of God’s plan. God is asking Abraham, are you still all in with being my partner to bless the world? Abrahams answer wasn’t a verbal answer but rather an answer of great humility for Abraham fell on his face in a gracious act of worship.It was if Abraham was telling God that words could not convey the depths of love he held in his heart for the God he had come to know over these twenty plus years of traveling with him. Even though Abraham still had not received what had been promised, through his journey with God his heart had grown in his love for him so that the certainty of God’s promise was stronger than ever. So, did Abraham love God with all of his heart? This act of worship proved that this was so.

         We the then have to ask, did Abraham love God with all that God had given him and when we read what we are told in the eighteenth chapter of Genesis we find that this also to be true. There we read “And the Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him. When he saw them Abraham ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth and said, ‘O Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree while I bring a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves and after that you may pass on -since you have come to your servant.” In his book “The Discovery of God” David Klinghoffer writes about the life of Abraham giving new insight about him through the use of the oral traditions of the Jewish faith. What he explains about what is happening here in the eighteenth chapter of Genesis is really insightful. The way he tells it, what Abraham and Sarah were doing here at this grove of trees was setting something up akin to our modern day soup kitchens. There at the crossroads they made a little Mom and Pop rest area where weary travelers could stop and eat and drink. As they found refreshment there, these travelers were also entertained by the stories Abraham told of his adventures with the God whose voice had led him there. So, again it is evident that Abraham was using his resources, sharing them with the the weary and tired in order that through them he might tell others about the God he loved.

         So then we are left wondering what about loving God with his whole life? What this means is that we give God free reign over our life never demanding to keep our life but rather knowing that if God asks us to give our life, to lay it down as the greatest act of love knowing that we can do so in the faith that the God we serve is a God who can raise the dead. So does Abraham love God like this? Well, I believe that God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac is exactly God asking Abraham if he loved him with all of his life. For Abraham, his son Issac was his life, the life he had waited in faith to receive and the life that would carry on after his death. So, in calling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac meant that Abraham in effect was laying down his own life to do what God had called him to do. In doing so Abraham revealed that his faith in God was grounded in God’s ability to resurrect the dead. As we read in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son of whom it was said, “Through Isaac your offspring shall be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.” So, it is true that Abraham most assuredly loved God with his whole life never demanding to hold onto Isaac for himself but trusting God fully with the one who was his whole life.

         So, in Abraham’s story we can see that, yes, he had heard and obeyed the gospel. Abraham had repented, turning from a life apart from the voice of God to a life listening and obeying the voice of God. And Abraham had entered into the kingdom of God, putting on the yoke of the kingdom by loving God with all of his heart, with all of his life and with all of his resources. This is why God considered the faith and belief of Abraham as being righteous because God knew that this faith would become an all consuming love for him. considered And as Paul writes in the fourth chapter of Romans, this faith of Abraham, this is the same faith that  God expects of us. Just like Abraham, when we have a faith like this, God calls us righteous because God has faith that our faith will likewise blossom into love for him. This will be a love where we will love God with all of our heart, with all of our life and with all our resources. This is the way the curse is reversed and blessings go out to the end of the earth. So are you ready to be blessed and to be a blessing? All it takes to begin is to listen when God is speaking and to go where God is going. May you be a blessing now and always. Amen!

In the beginning…

 September 13 2020

Genesis 2, 3:1-8

         I was talking with Jennifer last week about how Labor Day always marked the beginning of school for us. You had that one last holiday then back to school you went. And it seems that school was such a big part of our life that even now when you get to this point in the year our minds just quite naturally think about the memories we have about school. We’re not the only ones who realize that September is a month that makes us think about school days and learning as those who are responsible for learning in other areas of our life like churches pick up on this and decide this is a good time to start to learn something new. So today we we are starting on a journey through the Bible story, what is called a narrative lectionary. That’s a big name for just saying that we will be looking at a list of scriptures that tell a story, a story of God and a story of us. Why I like this idea is that so often when we read the Bible or just read say a devotion what we miss is the big picture, that all these little stories we enjoy are actually part and parcel of something bigger, something that spans thousands of years and is still ongoing today. What the writers of scripture understood probably better than we do is that the stories we find in the Bible are not just history that we study as people looking back on those events trying to discover their meaning. No, what the writers of scripture want us to do is to step into the stories we find. They comprehended that the human experience is a universal experience and that who we are as people, what drives us, what controls, those longings and fears and loves that we have these remain a constant over time. Likewise, the God we worship love and adore also is the same yesterday, today and forever. So, it just makes sense then that we should be able to see the stories of the Bible as the stories of us, stories that we can connect with the sort of life we are living out today.

         As we begin with this study of the Bible stories there is also another very important factor to consider and that is, just where do we start. Now, that might seem like an odd thing to say because of course we should just start in Genesis and work our way forward. Yet what we cannot forget is the difference Jesus made in the understanding of the scripture story. I learned the importance of this from a book by the author John Behr which really changed my thinking on the matter. His point was that what we should not do is to come to know ourselves as sinful people and then go looking for a Savior who corresponds to what we think our problems are. This is very much what happened with the people of Israel. They thought their problems were all outside of themselves, to them it was the foreigners who were polluting their world that needed exterminated when the truth that Jesus shouted from the cross is that the pollution that needed removed was actually within their own hearts. It was only at the cross that the disciples began to understand not only the diagnosis of what their problem was  but more importantly what the remedy was to set them free from the sin that held them captive. As Peter, in his first sermon recorded in the second chapter of the book of Acts proclaimed, this Jesus was delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. Peter in his first letter would also write that Jesus was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for our sakes. All of this helps understand that we have to first understand the solution, that Jesus the Son of God came into this world to die upon a cross in order for us to understand just what the problem was.It is not scripture that tells us of our need for a Savior but rather it is our Savior who illuminates the scriptures so that we understand our need for him.We see this so greatly in the life of Paul who writes in the third chapter of Philippians that at one time he thought of himself as a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law a Pharisee; as to zeal the persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.This meant that before meeting Christ having only the scriptures before him Paul considered that he was not a sinner in need of a Savior. It was only when he was confronted by the risen and exalted Jesus on the road to Damascus that Paul began to understand his need and how wrong his understanding of scriptures really was.

         This idea that we only understand scriptures in light of the cross, is especially important as we begin today with our reading from Genesis. We tend to think in linear terms and so begin with God bringing creation into being which was followed by the first human beings Adam and Eve using their God given freedom against their own Creator. This is when the world was plunged into sin and when death entered into the picture. The world then languished in this condition until the work of salvation could be prepared resulting in Christ, the word of God being born in the flesh. There are a lot of people who think that Jesus might not have to come if only Adam and Eve could have behaved themselves but nothing could be further from the truth.Often times people will speak of the Fall of mankind as being the result of an accidental alteration in the life of creation, kind of like a cosmic oops, that resulted from our free human will. This kind of thinking just does not have a clue what to do when Paul writes in the eleventh chapter of Romans that God has consigned all to disobedience so that he might have mercy on all. Or in a similar vein in the eighth chapter of Romans where Paul writes that that the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Paul could only come with this understanding of our world through first understanding that Jesus was the Savior of the world and if Jesus was the Savior of the world then the world has always stood in need of saving. If the world has always stood in need of saving then it also follows that it was God who created it this way. This helps us understand that creation and salvation are not two separate acts but are instead the same continuation of what God started in the beginning. In other words the world has always stood in need of a Savior because this is the way that God created the world.

         So it is in this light that we can begin to read and understand this second chapter of Genesis.This second chapter seems like a different account of the Creation story that we first encountered in the first chapter of Genesis and this sometimes throws people for a loop. But the way I believe that we are to read these accounts in the way that they have been written is that the first chapter portrays the ideal world. There over the course of a week God subdued the chaos and created a world where his highest creation, mankind could flourish. God created mankind in his image and likeness which is an astounding idea when we consider that throughout the Bible God opposes making a graven image of any created thing. Unlike any other created beings, only human beings have a prototype, God himself. In biblical times the ones who bore the title of the image of God were kings who were thought to bear the image of the nations deity.What this meant is that the king had a duty to reveal the righteousness of the heavens to the part of the world that he ruled. This understanding helps us figure out why God in the nineteenth chapter of Exodus told the people of Israel that they were to be to him kings and priests, a holy nation. This idea of kings and priests is very close to the idea of being created in the image and likeness of God. The idea of priest is a good definition as to whaat is meant by being made in the likeness of God because a priest is one who intervenes and intercedes, to bridge the gap so to speak which is what God has always done and this is what we as his likeness are called to do.

         So, at the end of the first chapter we have this wonderful portrayal of humankind being sent out into the world to subdue the chaos just as God first had subdued the chaos. They were to rule over a world teeming with life and every seven days they were to pause and enjoy the fruits of their labors. Now if this was the only account of creation that we had we would certainly wonder just what in the world happened because what we do not see is mankind ruling as a representative of God but rather mankind being ruled over by worldly forces. So, the second chapter of Genesis speaks to the reality of our creation as we experience it. This is where it is important that we do not read this account as history but rather that we read this as the story of us, to help us understand our need of a Savior named Jesus. This second story of creation instead of portraying humankind in the exalted manner of the first account instead tells us that God formed man from the dust. What we are to understand by this description is the the lowliness of our existence. We quite naturally realize how fragile we are made and small we tend to feel when contemplating on our place in this world. This is what we are to pick up from reading that we are dust and to dust we shall return. Knowing that this is our origins it is easy to understand the tension that is formed when we as people of dust realize that we were created for the unique and special purpose of bearing he image and likeness of God. We live between the lowliness of our fragile nature and the heights of our divine purpose. The result of this tension is that we become anxious people. Unlike the rest of the animal kingdom because we are God’s image bearers we are aware of our fragile existence and this results in a sense of fear and foreboding within us. To understand what this worry does to us it is helpful to look at how the Greek word for anxiety, merimnao defines it. The Greeks defined anxiety as going to pieces, to be pulled apart, to be divided. So what our anxiety does is it disintegrates us, it makes us a fractured person. This is what we find as we continue to read on in this second and third chapters of Genesis. There we read of how the serpent, the representative of the beasts of the field came to Eve and questioned her about the instructions God had given to her.  Now, in most transactions what the serpent tells Eve goes something like this: Did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?, but if you read the original it reads more like, “Even if God said, don’t eat, so what? What the snake wants to know is this: is God’s word the thing you should be paying attention to Eve or should you instead pay attention to the other voice that calls to you, the voice of your desires. On the one hand God’s voice instructed Eve to not eat of the tree but the voice inside of her, the voice God had installed in her when he created her, this voice of her desire was crying out to her to eat of this fruit.  To the snake, the representative of the animal kingdom, the voice the animals listen to is the voice of desire, the voice of their passions. When an animal is hungry it eats that’s just the way it is. Yet while we are made like animals having desires and passions just like they do, we are created to be far different from them. Only mankind was made in the image and likeness of God. As we said before this means that we are to reveal the righteousness of heaven in this part of the world where we rule. The way this righteousness comes to us is through the voice of God who speaks to us. This is what it means for us to be human that the voice we listen to is this outward voice of God and not the inward voice of our desires and passions. This is what God meant when in the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy that man does not live by bread alone, this being the desire we have to eat and survive but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

         Well, Eve gave into her temptation and instead of listening to the voice of God she instead listened to the voice of her desires. We read that when the woman saw that the tree, she saw that the tree was good for food, she saw that the fruit was a delight to her eyes and she saw that the fruit was a delight she should treasure. So Eve did what God specifically forbade her to do and not only did she eat she ate of the fruit of the tree but she also indicted Adam to eat of it as well. The result of their disobedience was as our account tells was that their eyes were opened, they were like God and they knew good and evil. To understand what is meant here by this phrase “good and evil” is that we have to remember that in the Bible, good besides meaning something that is ethically right; good also means that something is desirable. To say that we have knowledge of good and evil then means that this is what we experience is this sorting out in our lives of just what is good, what is it that is desirable to us. In other words from this point forward all the decisions mankind makes will be tainted by our desire. This is exactly what James writes in the first chapter of his letter, “Now each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” This is exactly what we just read in the second and third chapters of Genesis and this is what we must keep front and center of our lives every time we make a decision.

         This is where God finds all of us fighting this battle over which voice to listen the inner voice of our desires and passions or the the voice that calls to us from a higher place, the voice of God.We have to wonder just what is God’s plan to save us from this life of constant temptation of our desires. The answer is that God uses our desire so that we desire him above all else and the way he does this is through his love. It is God’s love demonstrated for us through Jesus laying down his life for us upon the cross that sets us free to be who God created us to be. God’s love hits at the heart of our anxiety because as we read in the fourth chapter of the first letter of John, “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear for fear has to do with punishment.” God’s love sets us free from the tyranny of our anxiety allowing us to at last focus not on our own survival but instead to focus on what we were created to be, the image and likeness of God. Now as Paul writes in the fifth chapter of Second Corinthians the love of Christ has grabbed a hold of us and it is this love that now controls us not our desires. This love of God we find through Christ makes it possible for us to love God in return with a love where we love God with all of our heart, with all of our life with all that we have; in other words we love God with all of ourselves. So as our anxiety once made us go to pieces Gods love has taken the brokenness of our life and he has united us in a love for him. As God is one and God is love so at last we are one and we love as God has first loved us. In this way we become the image and likeness of God, creation and salvation at last can be seen as but two ends of one process. It is the love of God that creates in us the faith required to listen and obey the word of God and pay no heed to the inner voice of our desires. As God is one he justifies the circumcised and the uncircumcised through faith, a faith that is founded upon God’s love for us.

         So what we find right at the beginning of our scripture story is that God indeed has consigned all of us to disobedience; there never was a time when the world did not stand in need of a Savior. Yet God did so in order that he could show us mercy and forgiveness for as Christ himself taught it is those who know they have been forgiven much are those who love much. And it is this love that sets us free from our disobedience so that we might love God and to make his voice the only voice that directs our steps. The question only you can answer is this: do you know the great love God has for you, the greatest love shown to us by Jesus who laid down his life for you and for me? And only you can answer the question, are you listening to the voice of God or do your desires speak over the still small voice of God? Whose voice is it that controls you? Can you state with Paul that the love of Christ has grabbed a hold of you? I pray that you desire God’s love more and more until the day we see him face to face. Amen!

 

Rested Development

 September 6 2020

2 Corinthians 10:1-6, 12:7-10, 13:5-9

         Well, the day has finally arrived when the last of our children, Matt and Sarah are moving out of our house and starting a new life in their own home. It is a strange feeling this being at long last empty nesters yet this is what we had hoped for all along. I remember reading one time that parenthood is an eighteen year journey of letting go and how true that is. The whole point of teaching them and disciplining them and spending time with them is so that they can become an adult who can go out and be independent. We’re proud that all three of our children are gainfully employed, that they know how to save up their money and have made wise choices and at long last they can invest what they have earned in a home of their own. This is what you hope for when you bring that tiny baby home and you wonder just how in the world you are going to care for this child so that one day this child can take care of itself. You want them to grow up, to be somewhat mature because lets face it, even I am still working on the being mature thing. Most of all what you want is for them to be able to carry on with out you because you realize that one day this is probably what they are going to have to do.

         Just like our hope is that our children grow up and become mature adults, God’s hope isn’t much different. God too hopes that his children grow and mature the only difference is that to be mature children of God doesn’t mean that we will become independent but so they will be fully dependent on him. In most of Paul’s letter’s he almost always reminds his readers that growing up is what God expects. Now this maturity that God expects of his children has to do a lot with how we as God’s children react to the suffering that comes from hearing God’s word and obeying that word by loving others. As we learned last week, the world hated Jesus because the works that he did witnessed to the fact that the works that the world does are evil. In other words with the coming of Jesus, there came a new way of ordering life, one where extravagant love, justice and selflessness were to be the norm. The old way of life lived by the flesh and its desires is on the way out and those who still want to live that way are not happy about it. So, when we follow Jesus and live like Jesus then we can expect, like Jesus, that the world is going to hate us. This is why we said we need encouragement. We need the encouragement of God which comes to us through the work of the Holy Spirit and we need the encouragement of our brothers and sisters in Christ so that we do not lose heart, we do not lose our faith.

         What we are striving for as we experience suffering on account of our faith in Jesus is what Paul calls patient endurance. This is the right response when we are living in by and through the power of the Holy Spirit. We have to fight the two responses of the flesh, the first of which is to take flight. As Jesus taught his disciples, those who receive the word with joy, if they do not put their roots deep in his life will want to take flight when persecution or suffering comes on account of the word. The other reaction of the flesh is to fight, to fight against those who persecute us. This is something Jesus clearly taught against. In the eighteenth chapter of John, Jesus responds to Pilate when asked about being the king of the Jews said” My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting…” As citizens of a new and different kingdom we do not fight but rather we take up our cross and follow Jesus. This is what it means to patiently endure our suffering. The Greek wording for patience that Paul often uses means to abide under and this is what we are called to do to, to live under this suffering until God calls us home.  This understanding of patience as abiding or dwelling under helps us understand the hope of our Christian maturity. Just as it is a sign that our kids are mature that they have their own place to live so also with God his desire that we abide or dwell in a place this is a sign of our maturity. We learn of this in the fourth chapter of the book of Hebrews where we read, “Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.” And further on in the chapter, we read, “For if Joshua had had given them rest, God would have not spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for God’s people for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did form his.” The reference to Joshua alludes to the people of Israel entering into the Promised Land. God’s hope for his people though was not just that they would live in the promised land but that they would come to enter his rest.  Sadly, they never did receive the greater promise of God’s rest which life in the Promised Land was supposed to be about. This was the root cause of their being sent into exile and when they did return from exile to once again live in the land promised to them by God the people of Israel still failed to receive the rest that God promised they could experience. The promised land then was a symbol of the greater promise of God, that his people should enter his rest.

         All of this is what we have to understand in order to make sense of just what Paul is speaking of when he writes about being at war and taking down strongholds. These are both images taken from the conquest of the promised land by the people of Israel. Just like the promised land was one where the people of Israel had to fight to lie there so too is the rest that God promises is something that must be fought for. Yet just as in the case of the promised land, the war is fought in and through the power of God; it is a more a war of faith than action.This was powerfully demonstrated in the battle for Jericho, a stronghold city. How was this battle won? This battle was won by trusting in God’s direction to march around the city one time for six days and on the seventh day march around the city seven times. Then the priests were to blow the trumpets, the people were to shout and the walls of Jericho would a come tumbling down. It goes without saying that these directions given to the people of Israel by God required them to trust him.It is the falling of the walls of this great city through faith in God that I believe Paul is calling us to remember when he writes that the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh  but have divine power to destroy strongholds. Now, it seems a little confusing that we just heard Jesus say that his servants were not going to fight because his kingdom was not of this world yet here Paul is seemingly talking about doing just that. But what we have to remember is that the war that Paul is referencing is a war within ourselves not a war outside of us. Paul writes that we are to destroy every argument and any lofty option raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ…” The key to understanding what Paul is saying here is I believe found in what he means by the phrase the knowledge of God. We have to ask ourselves just what does it mean to know God? The gospel of John proves very helpful in figuring out just what it means to know God. It is there in the seventeenth chapter, that we have recorded the prayer of Jesus on the night he was betrayed. In that prayer Jesus states that “this is eternal life, that they may know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” So, first this conveys the importance of knowing God that in doing so is our eternal life. Secondly, when we understand just what is meant by eternal life is then we can also know what it means to know God. Eternal life it just makes sense is the life of God who is eternal. And Jesus describes this eternal life again in this prayer stating, “You Heavenly Father have loved me before the foundation of the world.” So, eternal life is a life of love; the Father loving the son, the Son loving the Father both loving the Holy Spirit and both being loved by the Holy Spirit. This tells us that knowing God has something to do with loving others. This is confirmed by what we find in the twenty second chapter of Jeremiah where God, speaking about king Josiah says, “Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not this to know me? declares the Lord”. This is a further confirmation of what is found earlier in Jeremiah in the ninth chapter where God says, “let him who boasts, boast in this that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.” So, from all of this we can begin to understand that what Paul is talking about when he speaks about the knowledge of God is not just some head knowledge that we know attributes about God but rather that in knowing God we know that we must be people of steadfast love, justice and righteousness just as God is a God of these as well. What Paul is writing about then is how will we fight against whatever keeps us from fulfilling this moral mandate we have to love others with justice and righteousness. You see as Christians we know that we have been set free from sin; no longer are we held captive unable to to do the right we know to do. So, no matter who God might place in our path we are to respond with steadfast love, justice and righteousness; anything else is to come against the knowledge of God.It is right here that the promised rest of God enters the picture. When we do the good that we know that we ought to do our hearts are at peace, at rest and this peace is extended outward to the ones we show our love to. But when we fail to love or refuse to love the person in need this when we find ourselves in a state of unrest, not peace but at war within ourselves because we know we could have done something but didn’t and what we need is a good reason why. This is why Paul tells us that what we need to war against to have peace within ourselves is our thoughts, these reasons we think up that justify why we have failed to offer steadfast love, justice and righteousness when we so easily could have done just that. Paul uses three different words to describe the various workings of our mind that need to be destroyed. The first he speaks of is the Greek word logismos which means what is found to be reasonable, to weigh out the pros and cons to determine what is reasonable. This Paul adamantly writes, we are to destroy. This just makes sense doesn’t it because to be a person who loves with a steadfast love, who does justice and righteous the same way God does means that that we know doing so is not going to be the reasonable thing to do. How do we know this? We know how how unreasonable this life of steadfast love, justice and righteousness can be because of the cross. The cross was the most unreasonable decision ever made, that the one who knew no sin would take on our sin so that we who were held captive in sin might become the righteousness of God. There just is no way that the cross can be understood by reason. As the famous theologian Blaise Pascal so beautifully put it, “Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.” So, as Paul demands, reasoning, this weighing out the pros and cons whether we should act or not should be destroyed so that the heart is free to act as it knows it should.

         The second action of the mind that Paul writes about is our lofty opinion.  The Greek word here is hyposoma and the idea behind it is a towering of self-conceit. Here Paul is addressing the fact that we want to justify our not loving someone on account of who that person is instead of acknowledging the fact that our loving anyone never depends on them but on us. It is the epitome of self-conceit to judge another person to be unworthy of being loved.This is what James addresses in his letter in the fourth chapter when he writes, “Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters. The one who speaks against a brother or a sister or judges them, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge of the law. There is only one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?” The law James speaks of here is the law of love and as he said when we withhold love to another because we find them unworthy of doing so we not only judge them we also judge the law of love. This is why Paul says this high and mighty attitude must be pulled down and destroyed. 

 

         The third working of the mind that must be taken captive is the thoughts we have. The Greek word here is noema and the idea behind it is the mental effort to reach a conclusion. What Paul is addressing here is that people tend to overthink things especially when it comes to loving others so much so that all that gets done is that they think about doing something and not much else. What Paul tells us we should do is to take captive these thoughts we have of loving others. The word Paul uses here for captive is a word that means to be taken captive by the spear, to be a prisoner of war. This fits with how Paul frames his whole argument in this section of Second Corinthians as a waging of a war. Just as the Promised Land had to be conquered in order for the people of Israel to live in peace there so too in order for us to enter into the rest God promises us we must have a conquering mindset. What is at stake is whether we will experience this sense of rest that comes when we love as we know we should or are we going to be filled with unrest because we realize that we could have done something and we should have done something but we deliberately chose not to and the reason for our indecision lies squarely upon us.Paul is saying when you make decisions keep in mind the high stakes of those decisions. What you are doing is fighting for what God promises can be ours. Yet we must not forget that the weapons we fight against these actions of our mind are weapons that have divine power. This is why Paul tells his readers to examine themselves, to see whether or not they are in the faith. They were to test themselves and to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus Christ was in them. Paul knew personally how he needed this power of Christ within him. He faced what he called thorns in his flesh, people who harassed him at every turn. And for Paul the challenge was the same as for everyone else, how to love even these. What Paul discovered is that he did not have it in him to love like he knew how to do but what he did have within him was Jesus. Jesus was the one who powerful enough to defeat the strongholds of his mind. Just as he wrote earlier in this letter, it is the love of Christ that now controlled him. Just as the walls of Jericho fell through faith in the power of God so too the strongholds of our mind can be pulled down and destroyed through faith in the power of God. This power is the power that can raise the dead, the power that can bring into existence those things which do not exist and it is by this power we can be more than conquerors to live in the promised rest of God. Paul’s prayer was that the people of Corinth would be mature, which meant that they would lead lives fully prepared to offer love, justice and righteousness to whosoever stood in need of it next. This should be our hope as well, that we would always be ready through the power of Christ within us to let no workings of our mind keep us from loving others as God has created us to do. To the honor and praise of God. Amen!

The Way of the Goose

 August 30 2020

2 Corinthians 1:1-7

         On of the things that I’ve gotten into in the past couple of years is feeding the birds that frequent our back yard. I have a couple of bird feeders that I keep filled and it is fun in the morning to look out the window and see all the activity around them. Of course, you can’t feed birds without attracting a horde of squirrels and these lovely creatures are on our dog, Mazy’s radar at all times. During this time of the year the squirrels are not only looking for the stray sunflower seed some bird may have dropped but they are also foraging the acorns and nuts gathering them up for the winter ahead. Seeing them scurrying around always makes me think of one of my favorite books called “Gung Ho”. This is actually a book about business management which was written by Ken Blanchard and it deals with what it takes to motivate people. The book is told from the perspective of a wise old Indian who looks to nature to learn what it takes for people to be gung ho about their work. He summarizes what he learns down to three ways of being,; the way of the squirrel, the way of the beaver and the way of the goose. The way of the squirrel is that the squirrel is busy because it knows that what it is doing, gathering nuts, is all about staying alive. So to get excited about work or whatever you do you have to always keep in mind how does what you do affect your life or the life of others. The second way is the way of the beaver and if you watch a colony of beavers build a dam each beaver adds to the building of the dam in their own way. So the way of the beaver is to give people the freedom to figure out how they can contribute to the work at hand. The third way, the way of the goose is the real point of what was on my mind for today. During this time of the year as we enter into fall you begin to notice that more and more flocks of Canada geese are on the move. Now before you even see them you for sure will hear them honking and squawking as they fly overhead. Have you ever wondered why they make such a ruckus as they fly along? I mean wouldn’t it be better if they would just save their energy and flew a little quieter? Well, what they are doing when they are honking is they are cheering each other on. This is the way of the goose, the way of mutual encouragement for the long journey ahead. In order to be gung ho about the work that is to be done all of us need to have others around us to cheer us on.

         If Paul would have known about the way of the goose I think he would have been totally on board with the idea. Where my version has the original Greek word translated as “comfort” a better understanding of the word is actually encouragement.  So reading the first few verses of this first chapter of Second Corinthians again, substituting encouragement for comfort, see how this changes up what Paul is trying to say. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of all mercies and God of all encouragement who encourages us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction, with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God. Paul is saying that God is cheering us on and as God cheers us on we cheer each other on. If you think of the way of the goose then there is a whole lot of honking going on! Yet while all this encouragement is a great thing what we can’t forget is why Paul feels there is such a need for us to be encouraged. The reason for all of this encouragement is that as followers of Jesus we are going to experience afflictions or otherwise translated, suffering. These are the two themes, encouragement and suffering that Paul is bouncing off of each other here in this first paragraph of his letter. So to understand our need for encouragement we really first have to understand why we as followers of Jesus can expect affliction, suffering or trouble on account of our faith. As Paul wrote to his dear friend Timothy in his second letter to him, in the third chapter, “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” Now even though this seems pretty straight forward it is surprising how many followers of Christ, especially here in America are taken aback when they run into trouble because of following Jesus. Paul doesn’t say that you may run into trouble, or you might run into trouble; no, Paul says that you will run into trouble if your aim in life is to live a godly life in Jesus Christ. What most people haven’t done though is to consider just why persecution and suffering are a necessary part of our walk with Christ. The answer lies with what we have talked about in the previous weeks, what Paul has been writing in his first letter. As we said when we began this series this second letter to the church at Corinth is really a bunch of letters, a long distance conversation Paul is having through his writings with this church that he loves. So, in past weeks we covered what was his first communication with them and what Paul wrote about was this new covenant God has brought about with the coming of Jesus. This is a covenant where Gods law is no longer written on tablets of stone but instead God’s law is written on our hearts.With this new covenant everyone can know God through a personal relationship with him.So with this new covenant we are now able to keep the two commandments that Jesus taught us abide by. The first is that we are to love God with all of our heart, to love God with all of our soul or life and to love God with all of our strength or our resources. The second which is like it is that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. To love God with all of our heart is to treasure God’s word. This means that we not only hear God’s word, but we have faith that God’s word is the true way we are to live and so we then obey this word. The faith we have in God is a resurrection faith, a faith that God indeed can give life to the dead and bring into existence the things which do not exist. It is when we have this faith in God that our life is in his hands that we can offer our life to him out of love.  And since our life is safe in God’s hands we then place our treasures in heaven using our resources for his kingdom. We begin by treasuring God’s word and we end placing our treasures in heaven from where God speaks his word.

         Now what is not really spelled out by Paul is just what is this word that God speaks? Just what is it that God is speaking to us? Well, the gospel of John helps us understand just what is this word that God is speaking to us. In the fourteenth chapter of John where Jesus is speaking to his disciples on the night he was betrayed, Jesus tells them, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Then further in his teaching Jesus instructs them “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word.” So the word spoken to us by God that we are to keep or obey is the commandment of Jesus. This commandment is found in the thirteenth chapter of John’s gospel where Jesus commands his disciples and us, “Love one another just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” So, in order to love Jesus, to love God with all of our heart we must love one another. To put it another way, as we read in Johns first letter, the fourth chapter, “If anyone says, “I love God” and hates his brother he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”  What is not apparent when we consider keeping the word of God, obeying his command to love one another just as Jesus loved us, is that this is the source of the affliction that is certain if we desire a godly life in Jesus. Yet if we listen to Jesus it becomes clear why he experienced such hatred from some of those around him. In the seventh chapter of John, we hear Jesus tell his brothers, “The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil.” The love Jesus showed to others, the good works done through the power of the Holy Spirit that gave glory to his Heavenly Father, this life witnessed that all other actions apart from God, done in the power of the flesh were evil and condemned by God. The coming of Jesus meant that a new order was being put into place, an order where goodness, selflessness, and extravagant love were to be the rule. This meant that that the evil way of life lived through the power of the flesh and its desires was on the way out which terrifies those who refuse to know any other way of life. This is the root of the hatred Jesus experienced. And as Jesus taught his disciples on the night he was betrayed , “If the world hates you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, because I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word I say to you, ‘A servant is not greater than their master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”

         This is what we have to keep in mind when Paul writes about the affliction and suffering not only that he experienced but the affliction and suffering he knew his brothers and sisters were sure to face whenever the kept the word of God. This is also why Paul knew the need for encouragement. The word “encourage” means to put something within your heart to make it strong which is what is needed when we are called to love God with all of our heart. As Jesus warned his disciples, there were going to be those who received his message with joy but when suffering or persecution came on account of that message they would fall away and the word of God would never bring about the new life God intended. This is why Paul states that we desperately need to be encouraged. The one who first encourages us is God himself.Now we can understand more how God encourages us in the Greek word we translate as “encouragement” or “comfort.” The Greek word is paraklesis and it is actually two words, para which means alongside like parallel lines run alongside of each other, and the word klesis which means to call. So the image is one of someone who comes alongside of another person and calls out to them.Now what makes all of this even more interesting is that when Jesus tells his disciples about their Heavenly Father sending to them the Holy Spirit, the word Jesus uses to describe the Holy Spirit is Paraclete. This is the God who comes alongside of us to call out to us. This is what Paul was speaking of when he wrote that we first are encouraged by God. Our hearts are strengthened because the Holy Spirit, the God who comes alongside of us speaks his word to us. And what is the Holy Spirit going to say to us to encourage us? Well, what Jesus told his disciples that the Holy Spirit would speak to them about, interestingly enough, is him. In the fourteenth chapter of John’s gospel, we hear Jesus tell his disciples and us, that “the Holy Spirit , whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to remembrance all that I have said to you.” And in the fifteenth chapter of John, Jesus again teaching on the Holy Spirit tells his disciples, “when the Paraclete comes, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.” Lastly from the sixteenth chapter of John, Jesus tells us that “when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth because he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.’Are you beginning to see just how the Holy Spirit that the Jesus sends us from the Father encourages us? The Holy Spirit speaks to us about Jesus. The point is made so clear in the twelfth chapter of Hebrews where we read, “Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our gaze upon Jesus the originator of our faith and the one who brings our faith to completion. Who instead of experiencing joy instead endured the cross that was set before him, disregarding its shame and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow exhausted in your life and lose heart.” The Holy Spirit speaks to us about Jesus, about his faith in his Heavenly Father, our God who has the power to bring life to the dead and bring into existence the things which do not exist. Jesus gave up the unspeakable joy of life in the bosom of the Father to come to earth to live a life of the greater love, a love that laid down its life upon the cross, a cross considered a curse among his people that became instead the place of greatest blessing.  This faith of Jesus, this is why he now abides eternally in the presence of his Heavenly Father and why we have the hope of abiding there as well.Yet, this hope is only ours if we endure. As Paul writes, “If we are afflicted, it is for your encouragement and salvation; and if we are encouraged, it is for your encouragement when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer.” The word Paul uses here for patience is a word that means to abide under, in other words it is to accept to live with suffering as a part of life with Christ. This is the difficulty that is faced when suffering comes, to remain under the suffering instead of listening to the desires of the flesh which can be summed up as flight or fight. Patient endurance is to not fall away when persecution or suffering comes nor is it to fight against suffering demanding what may be rightfully ours. No patient endurance is to fix our gaze upon Jesus who fixed his face like flint toward the cross. For us to do so means that we not only need the encouragement that comes from our Heavenly Father through the Holy Spirit but it also means that we need encouragement from each other. In the third chapter of Hebrews we read, “take care lest there be in any of you an unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But encourage, again the word is paraklesio, one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partners of Christ if we indeed hold our original confidence firm to the end.” This is telling us that we are to come alongside one another and call out to each other and speak to each other about Jesus. This is why the author of Hebrews also writes in the tenth chapter that we should not neglect to meet together but we are to encourage one another all the more as we see the Day of the Lord drawing near.This is why the fellowship we share as brothers and sisters is so important because it is this fellowship with the brothers and sisters that we can see that helps us hold fast to the fellowship we have with the God that we cannot see.When Paul states that we share in his sufferings, the word he uses for share is actually the word for fellowship. In other words, Paul believed rightly that the body of Christ is a fellowship of suffering and encouragement. As Paul wrote in the twelfth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored all rejoice together.”

         So, yes the unpleasant truth is that when we desire to live a godly life following Jesus we will experience the hatred of the world. I mean, if it happened to Jesus why should we not expect that this hatred would come to us those who are following him? But our hearts our strengthened by the Holy Spirit who every morning is there speaking to us about Jesus causing us to fix our gaze upon Jesus instead of focusing in on all of the world’s distractions. As Jesus endured so can we. He is the originator of our faith and he is the very completion of our faith so we look to him to keep our faith. And not only do we have the gift of the Holy Spirit but we also have each other. Ours is a fellowship of suffering and encouragement. When one of us hurts, we all hurt. When one experiences joy, we all rejoice. The common denomination in all of this is this idea of the word. God speaks, calling us to love each other which causes the world to react with hate. So, God speaks again the word, the word called Jesus which strengthens us to keep his word. And we speak, a word, a word about Jesus, a word to give strength to another’s heart just as God first spoke his love to us. This is why we don’t take flight and fall away from God or fight to take up the weapons of the flesh but we patiently endure, abiding under our sufferings until the day when we will all abide in the presence of God forever. Ame. 

         

The Completion of Holiness

 August 16 2020

2 Corinthians 6 and 7:1

         This past while since I’ve been home more I’ve found that I really enjoy cooking and baking. The internet is loaded with recipes so it isn’t hard to find something to try. I should say though that I only really enjoy cooking or baking if what I’m making turns out the way it is supposed to. It’s hard to go to all the trouble of putting ingredients together only to end up with something less than you hoped for. This past while this is what has been happening to a few of my cakes I’ve tried to bake them and they’ve come out a little gooey on the inside. As I tried to figure out what was going on it seems as if our ovens thermostat may be on the fritz. The easy part in getting the oven fixed is that remembering when we purchased it which isn’t to difficult to figure out. We, of course, got it when the tree wrecked our house seven years ago. So, if the oven has been faithful for seven years I guess I can’t complain.

         When I was trying to figure out how old our oven was I just automatically used the event of the tree wiping out our house as a reference point. It’s funny that the tree hitting our house is our defining story even though we have lots of other stories we could tell. When we look back and remember though we always include that what we’re remembering was either before the tree hit the house or after the tree hit the house. I often wonder if other families have defining stories like our family does, an event that happened that kind of changed the course of all other events after it. The family of Israel, the people of God, had such an event. What is surprising is that this event wasn’t what most people would expect, the event of their leaving Egypt as free people under the leadership of Moses. I mean, after all this event was the event that formed them into a nation under the rule of God. Yet as defining as leaving Egypt was there was something else that happened to the people of Israel that shaped and molded how they looked at the world. The reason that this even had such a profound effect upon the people of Israel is that it was very traumatic, an unbelievable happening that even though it was predicted and prophesied that it was going to happen was still quite a shock to everyone when it did happen. This event I’m talking about is what the Bible speaks of as the exile. The exile was where the people of Israel who lived in Judah were taken into captivity by the Babylonians in Five Hundred and Ninety Seven B. C. Now, why this defeat at the hands of the Babylonians came as such a surprise is that the people of Israel believed that God would keep them safe, after all his Temple was at the center of Judah in Jerusalem. Surely God would not allow anything to happen to them as long as the Temple was there? What the people did not understand is that God had grown tired of his peoples idol worship, idol worship that led them into behave in grossly immoral ways. So, what God let his people know, through the various prophets that he called forth, is that he was going to allow Babylon to overrun Judah and take his people into captivity because of their transgressions. Yet even though this seemed like the end of the people of Israel being the people of God, God also told his prophets that he was going to do something that the world had never seen; God was going to bring his people back to the land that he had promised their ancestors. This was unusual because when an invading country overwhelmed a country and took their inhabitants captive those captives were taken away never to be heard from again. Not so with God’s people. They were going to be brought back home, led by God and his servant in much the same way that Moses had once first led the people to the Promised Land. Well, what God promised did happen and through what is very much a miracle, the Babylonians allowed the people of Judah to go home, to go and rebuild the city of Jerusalem and to rebuild the ruined Temple. And even though the people of Judah did return there was always the feeling among the people of Israel that the exile was never truly over, there was always a lingering doubt that what was supposed to have happen actually really happened. The grand visions of the peoples return as pictured by the prophet Isaiah were never experienced. The problem of course, was that the root cause of what had caused the exile, the peoples captivity to sin had never been dealt with.

         Now, I am surprised a little that in churches we don’t ever really talk about the exile all that much even though it is the defining event for the people of Israel. It is perhaps that people don’t really see the relevance the exile has to the way were living today. This is where what Paul has to teach us in our scripture for today is so important for us. You see, as we have said for the past couple of weeks Paul has been teaching about the new covenant how God’s law is to be written on our hearts, how we are to know God in an intimate way and how having his law upon our hearts and knowing God enable us to love him with all of our hearts, our souls and our strength and love our neighbor as ourselves. What we cannot forget is that this new covenant was in response to God’s people returning from exile. In the thirty first chapter of Jeremiah where we learn about the new covenant we also find God telling his people that there is hope for their future because one day their children would come back to their own country. The whole chapter is about how God is going to bring his people back to the country that he promised to them and when this happens this is when he would enter into a new covenant with them. The importance of this new covenant is that only through this new covenant would people be finally able to be free from the power of sin, free from the curse which causes people to be far from God.

         As we look at the second through the seventh chapters of Second Corinthians what we discover is that Paul has used this idea of the exile extensively and he especially used prophecies about the return from exile to drive home his points. When Paul speaks of being in the triumphal procession in the second chapter of Second Corinthians, he is recalling the prophecy where God would be the victor over Babylon and it is God who would lead his people home. When Paul speaks of being a pleasing aroma, he is most likely quoting from the Twentieth chapter of Ezekiel where we hear God tell Ezekiel, “As a pleasing aroma I will accept you when I bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you have been scattered. And I will manifest my holiness among you in the sight of the peoples. So, Paul in his letter, right from the beginning has got the return from exile on his mind. 

         We have to keep in mind that the return from exile is Paul’s theme for his letter when we come to our scripture for today otherwise it might seem that Paul has gone off on some strange tangent. No, what Paul is doing in todays scripture is teaching us how, now with the new covenant, God has brought us back to himself. No, longer does anyone have to dwell in a far country, far from the Heavenly Father who loves them. God tells us, “In a favorable time I listened to you, in a day of salvation I have helped you.” This is God’s promise given to his people in exile found in the book of Isaiah and it is this promise that Paul uses to urge his readers to not receive the grace of God in vain but instead to work together with God. Now, the way Paul words this should make us stop because this phrase “in vain” as we might remember is part of the second command of the Ten Commandments where we are not to take the name of God in vain. Paul is thus pointing out that the new covenant which empowers us to love God with all of our heart, our life and our resources in effect empowers us to keep the first of the Ten Commandments to have no other gods because now we love only the one true living God. So, it only makes sense that Paul would go on to bring up the second commandment to not take the name of the Lord in vain. This commandment is about the people of God bearing the name of God, living a life which exalts the name, the unchanging characteristics of God. This means that we as people of God are to be people slow to anger, people of steadfast love and faithfulness, willing to forgive transgressions and sins. This is what we are to do as we work with God is to bring honor and glory to his name. To bear God’s name in vain then is to live a life where even though we know God and love God the life we lead does not show that the name of God rests upon us so that the reputation of God is ruined because of the way we live. This is Paul’s concern at the beginning of the sixth chapter of Second Corinthians. 

         Now, in order for us to not receive God’s grace in vain what is necessary is that we are no longer living in exile. This is where this idea of exile becomes so important to us here in the twenty first century because the exile  represented the people of God being taken to a far off country to symbolize that even though they were God’s people they were instead actually far from him. Being in exile wasn’t about pagans, or Gentiles who of course had no relationship with God; no, exile is about people who thought they had a relationship with God but found out too late the relationship they had was not as good as they thought it was. The answer as to what was wrong in the people of Israel’s relationship with their God was revealed at the crucifixion of Jesus. There the people of Israel, relying upon the power of their flesh, in horrible violence, put to death the Son of God who relied upon the power of the Spirit. All seemed lost until three days later Jesus walked out alive of the tomb on Easter morning. You see, what caused the people of God to be so far from God that they would crucify God’s own Son was their reliance upon their flesh. So, to come out of exile, to come out of Babylon is a call by Paul to leave the ways of the flesh behind. When Paul states that he puts no obstacle in anyone’s way, he is declaring that the road out of exile, the road out of a life lived by the power of the flesh has been made smooth; there is nothing to prevent anyone from living life in the power of the Spirit. Paul references the Sixtieth Chapter of Isaiah when he writes that his heart is open wide. Isaiah was writing about the returning children of Israel and he wrote “Lift up your eyes all around and see; they shall all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from afar, and your daughters shall be carried on the hip. Then you shall see and be radiant; your heart shall throb and grow large with delight.” This is what Paul was witnessing, the sons and daughters of God returning to him and Paul was thrilled, his heart was wide open with delight.

         So, just as the prophets had foresaw, people were leaving the existence of captivity, their life in the flesh, a life far from God depicted by life in Babylon and they were coming home to God to a life of freedom in the Spirit of God.What Paul’s concern.was was that even though the people of Corinth had experienced life in the Spirit they were still, at the same time, trying to live according to the flesh. When traveling preachers came to town, the people of Corinth were enamored by the letters of recommendation that these preachers passed around. The people of Corinth were also impressed that unlike Paul these preachers were willing to enter into the accepted patron/client relationship receiving payment for their preaching. These were all ways of the flesh, the letters of recommendation elevating these preachers own abilities and getting paid was all about control in the power of the flesh. We also see this in the first letter Paul wrote to the people at Corinth where there were a number of issues that had their roots in the life of the flesh. The church had split into four factions and they quarreled among themselves as to which faction was the best. There were issues of immorality that went unaddressed, they took their grievances against each other to the public courts and when they came together for the Lord’s Supper instead of sharing their food as was expected everyone just ate on their own totally missing the point of the meal symbolizing their unity in Christ. Listen to how Paul describes the work of the flesh in the fifth chapter of his letter to the Galatians that the being in the flesh is marked by sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, and drunkenness. Do you see how many of these were happening in the church of Corinth even though they were believing that they were Spirit filled people of the new covenant? It was if when the people of Israel were at long last being led back by God to come home with him they decided to bring a few momentous of life in Babylon. Paul is saying that when you get out of Babylon you get out of Babylon and never look back. 

         Paul uses four different verses from the prophets of old to drive home his point that they needed to give up completely their old way of life. The first quotation Paul uses is from the thirty seventh chapter of Ezekiel who was a prophet in exile and God spoke to him and told him  that one day God’s dwelling would be with his people. God declares “ I will be there God and they shall be my people.” And further God told Ezekiel that he would make a covenant of peace with them. This is exactly what Paul has been teaching in his letter, that God makes his home with anyone who keeps his word. This is what establishes God’s new covenant with his people. Paul goes on to quote from the fifty second chapter of Isaiah where Isaiah in a vision sees the people of Israel leaving Babylon and he writes “Depart, depart, go out from there touch no unclean thing; go out from the midst of her, meaning Babylon, and purify yourself those who bear the vessels of the Lord.” What Isaiah is saying is that the people were not to bring the impurities of Babylon with them when they come home to Jerusalem to dwell with God. They were to purify themselves, to prepare themselves for a life lived at home with God. Next, Paul quotes from Ezekiel again this time from the twentieth chapter where God declares, “I will bring you out from the peoples and gather you out from the countries where you are scattered with a mighty hand and outstretched arm…” God is bringing his people out from the nations so that they might be set apart for the holy work of life in the Spirit. God’s intention has always been that his people would be separate from the nations in that their actions would be guided by the Spirit and not by the flesh. Finally, Paul quotes from Second Samuel, the seventh chapter where God promises to be a father to his people and they would be his children. This meant that God would discipline them yet his steadfast love would never depart from them.”It was God who would teach his children the ways of the Holy Spirit and he would discipline them out of love when they turned back to the ways of the flesh. As Paul goes on to say, these are the promises of God. God promises to make his home among us, he promises to be our God  and welcome us home. God promises to be our father, to guide and discipline us and to never take his steadfast love from us. This is why we are to cleanse ourselves from every defilement of the flesh, to be holy before our God.

         You see the problem with the way of the Spirit is that it is so radically different from the ways of the flesh that it just doesn’t seem right. I mean look at the life of Paul . He endured afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, riots labors, sleepless nights and hunger. Is it any wonder the people of Corinth were ashamed of Paul’s life? The way of the Spirit is the way of suffering, of being vulnerable, of bearing another’s sin at great cost to yourself. But what Paul found in the midst of all his trial is that he had patience, he had kindness, he had the Holy Spirit, he had genuine love and truthful speech and most of all Paul found he had the power of God which was infinitely greater than the power of his flesh. You see, Paul knew the beauty of  life at home with God and what he couldn’t understand is why anyone would want to go back to the captivity of Babylon. Yet you know, even today Christians get enamored with the ways of the flesh to which Paul would say to them “Cleanse yourself and bring your holiness to completion.” May we take Pauls teaching to heart today. Amen.

Faith Working Through Love

August 9 2020

2 Corinthians 5:6-21

         Well, I’m now officially 59 years old having celebrated my birthday just yesterday. Now to treat myself this past week I decided to check in at a wonderful resort called Aultman for a little R and R. It seems that even after some fifty eight plus years I haven’t experienced all the wonders of God’s great creation so this past while I got to try out what its like to have an abscess. Let me just say its not a lot of fun. I did discover though a level of pain I had yet to experience so its always good to stretch yourself. So after this pain level got to the point I could no longer function it was off to the ER to have it dealt with. Of course it always seems like things take longer than they should when your at the hospital but the truth is things went smoothly and they were able to take care of it right there in the ER so that was great. But after the procedure was over there came the dreaded words from the attending nurse no one wants to here and that is “we have to keep you overnight for observation”. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that hospitals are not great places for sleepovers. I shouldn’t really complain, I had a nice room all to myself but still the thought that kept running through my mind is that I would have rather been home. I guess it was the little things like having to have a clear liquid diet plan for dinner when you haven’t eaten for over twenty four hours. I mean nothing hits the spot like clear chicken broth and a cup of tea topped off by a Jello cup. Yum! And then there was the fact that the my bed had no pillow. It is weird to try and sleep with your head lying right on the hard mattress. And of course being that it’s a hospital getting woke up at three in the morning to get your vitals taken and answer a bunch of questions is just part of the fun. So needless to say by the next morning the only thing I could think of was when am I getting out of here.  It’s probably a universal feeling that when you find yourself in the hospital the one place you long to be is home. There is something about the place you call home that touches your emotions and tugs at your heartstrings like nothing else.

         It’s funny but we don’t often think of Paul as a sentimental guy but it turns out he had the same longing for home that all of the rest of us do. For him, life here in the here and now was like an overnight stay at the hospital, perhaps necessary, certainly needed but still not the same as being home. This is what Paul seems to be reflecting on when in todays scripture he writes about being at home in the body. When Paul speaks about being at home in the body  he is speaking about life in the here and now where let’s face it things are not as they should be. Speaking about life in the body is a reminder of the weakness of our flesh which causes life to be rather uncomfortable. As Paul says he would rather be at home with the Lord. As we heard in last weeks scripture, from the beginning of this same fifth chapter of second Corinthians, Paul spoke of how when this earthly dwelling is destroyed we have a building from God, a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens. When we read verses like these in the Bible we have a tendency to think more about just what kind of house God is building instead of rejoicing that we get to dwell with God forever. It is this dwelling with God that is what is important not the place where we will be dwelling at. Paul is looking forward to the day when heaven and Earth will collide  and come together in a great unity and the separation caused by sin and death will not be remembered. One day our future hope is that the whole world will be God’s home; we have certainty that we will see this reality. Yet what we learn in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews is that by faith we can make what we hope for a reality here today. This is exactly what Jesus taught his disciples on the night he was betrayed. In the fourteenth chapter of the gospel of John, We hear Jesus tell us, “If anyone  loves me, and keeps my word and my Father will love them and we will come to them and make our home with them.” This is how we experience what we hope for, an eternal dwelling with God, in the here and now of today. When we keep God’s word this is when Jesus tells us we are at home with God we just have to hold fast by faith and know that this is true.

         Now what is interesting about what Jesus teaches us here is that what Jesus tells us to do, to keep his word,this is the very same thing Paul taught at the beginning of the fourth chapter of second Corinthians as to how we are to love God with all of our heart. There Paul tells us that we have this treasure in clay jars which echoes the truth found in the one hundredth and nineteenth Psalm, the eleventh verse which tells us that we are to treasure God’s word in our heart. To keep the word of Jesus is to treasure the word of Jesus and when we do this then by faith we are living out our eternal hope of dwelling with God.So knowing all of this what we discover is that in this fifth chapter of second Corinthians Paul is still unfolding the affects of the new covenant that God has brought about, the covenant ratified by the blood of Jesus. It is this new covenant that will cause people to at long last keep the commandments of God. Last week we learned how the new covenant causes us to love God with all of our heart, to love God with all of our soul or life and to love God with all of our resources. Today, in this fifth chapter of second Corinthians I believe Paul is teaching us just how the new covenant makes it possible for us to keep the commandment that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus taught in the twenty second chapter of Matthew, when asked which is the greatest commandment of the Law, that the greatest commandment is that we shall love the lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our strength. This is the first and greatest commandment. And a second like is like it Jesus continued: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Now, for me it has always been confusing as to how the second commandment is like the first but here in our scripture Paul begins to make it very clear just how this is so. Paul is teaching that in order to be able to love our neighbor as ourselves we have to begin in our hearts at the very control center of ourselves. And we begin with our hope, the very anchor of our soul which is that we long to be at home with God which seems like an unusual place to begin when we we are trying to love others. But this hope leads us to have faith because it is faith which makes what we hope for a reality in the here and now. 

         So it is faith that opens the door to us living a life where we make our home with God. Now, what we may not realize is that in the Jewish thought of which Paul was a part of there were two different levels of faith. The first level of faith was called emunah. This was a faith in God’s word, a statement of belief. It is where you read in God’s word that God is love and you believe this is true. The second type of faith is called bitachon. This is the faith that results in confidence. Because I know that God is love I know that God loves me, personally, and because I know and have experienced this love I now trust and have confidence in God. Emunah faith opens the door for us to make our home with God and once we make our home with God and live day by day with God, the truth about God that we have faith in becomes experienced by us and we grow in our confidence of God. This is what Paul is speaking of when he write that he is always of good courage not just once but twice in this brief passage of scripture. Paul is saying that his faith is bitachon faith an experienced faith, a confident faith.

         The result of this bitachon faith is that we come to love and cherish our relationship with God. When what Paul writes is translated to us that we make our aim to please God, much is lost as to what Paul is trying to tell us. In the original Greek the word Paul uses is one that says that we are to honor the one we love which reveals that these actions are to flow out of our heart not our mind. So when Paul speaks of the last judgment where everyone will receive what is due for what they have done in the body and how this is the ground of our fear of the Lord what we have to remember this fear is not the fear that we won’t measure up when we appear before the Judge but rather this fear is the awe and worship of the God we love this is what propels our every thought and action. It is our worship of God which insures our eternal security when we at least see the one we love face to face.

         So just as loving God begins by our loving God with our heart, so our loving our neighbor begins by loving God with our heart because when we love God we will want to do what honors God, what pleases God. We live with the understanding that there is a day of judgment which tells us that God has a standard by which we will be judged and that standard is the love of our neighbor. In our hearts then we have a desire to honor and worship God with the way we live by loving others. This desire we have  comes from our making our home with God and daily experiencing life with him.

         Now just as the great commandment began with loving God with all of our heart and then is followed by loving God with our soul or life this is what we find Paul begins to write about next is loving God and others with our life. Paul writes that the love of Christ controls us and why this is so is that when Christ died all have died.We have to stop here and really think about what Paul is saying here. The death of Christ was the end of something, the end of the way life is defined. What happened on the cross is that Christ condemned sin in the flesh. In other words, in our natural life apart from God we live by the power of flesh listening to our desires and lusts instead of listening to the word of God. The result is that the flesh comes under the power of sin and the wages of sin is death. This is what was realized that day when Jesus died upon the cross because in Jesus we saw one who did not live by the power of the flesh but instead lived through the power of God’s Holy Spirit. Instead of desiring to preserve his flesh he laid down his life as an act of the greatest love of all. And as Paul continues in the fifth chapter of second Corinthians, this act of love for us by Christ upon the cross is to change the way we live. This is why Paul goes on to say that now, we are to no longer regard anyone according to the flesh because living according to the flesh is a dead end way of life. Paul said at one time he regarded Jesus according to the flesh because this is the only life that Paul knew until he met Jesus. When Paul met the risen Christ on that road to Damascus, he met one who was alive through the power of God’s Holy Spirit.  What Paul discovered in the risen Christ was one who had been set free from the body of death, a body under the control of sin. The question then becomes how does this life of Christ come to live in us? The answer is that the life of Christ lives in us by faith. Do you remember how Paul described this faith of Jesus, he tells us that it is a faith in a God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence that which does not exist. It is one thing though to believe this about God with an emunah faith as something we hold as true and it is another to experience the truth of this statement of belief personally, to know this truth with a bitachon faith. This is what Paul is telling us must happen when he says that in Christ we become a new creation. When Paul states that the new has come the wording in Greek is that something has been brought into existence, a new being has been created. This wording Paul uses is the almost exact wording of what we have faith in God to do. So by placing our faith in God he creates us anew, a new birth where now we our life is a life empowered by the Holy Spirit.

         It is amazing that in order to love our neighbor we must first love God with our heart, to keep his word to have faith in his word. When we have faith in the truth of what God says about himself we come to make our home with God and in doing so we experience for ourselves those very same truths we believe in. Through our life with God we come to love God because we have experienced his great love for us and our desire is to honor him and worship him through all we say and do. In our remembrance that one day we will have to answer for our life in this body God has given us, we realize God has standards for the way we treat each other and that standard is love that same love we have experienced in our life with him. It is when we realize that we are to love in the same manner as God that we also realize that our body is under control of sin, it is a body of death. It is in this moment that we like Paul cry out, “Who can save us from this body of death? The answer as to who can save us is Jesus. It is Jesus upon the cross who revealed to us that our life in the flesh is death. It is Jesus risen from the grave that reveals to us that a life in the power of the Holy Spirit is the life that is eternal. In order to experience this life we have to take what we believe to be true, that our God is a God who gives life to the dead and brings into existence that which does not exist and experience this for ourselves, to be a new creation who lives by the power of the Spirit. Only as we live by the Spirit are we able to fulfill our desire to live a life that honors the one who loves us and the one we love.

         Paul goes on to describe the kind of life that honors God and the word he uses to describe it is reconciliation. The word in its root form means to come together in order to be friends. God in Christ, Paul tells us was making us his friends and we now have this same ministry, to go and help people become friends with God. This is what Paul writes, that God is counting on us to make his desire to be friends with everyone become a reality through us. You see, it is God, the one who at one time we were opposed to because of our life lived by the power of the flesh, he is the one who reached out to us in love at the great cost to him, the death of his Son Jesus.He did this all just to be our friend and not only our friend but the friend of the whole world. This is what Paul meant when he wrote that it was for us, God made Jesus to die upon the cross, the tree believed to be under the curse of God, even though Jesus was without sin, all so that in doing so we might at long last become righteous. This term “righteous” points us back to Paul’s statement about the day of judgment because it is righteousness is the standard God is expecting. So we have to ask just what does righteousness look like? Well, in the twenty fifth chapter of Matthew, Jesus tells us of the judgment day. There he tells us that righteousness looks like feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, it is welcoming the stranger and clothing the naked. It is taking the time to visit those who are sick and those who are in prison. Do you see how we began our journey of loving our neighbor by loving God with all of out heart, believing in the word of God and then we continued by loving God with our life, a new life God created for us which is able to love as God loves us, and we end by loving God with all of our resources, taking what God has given to us and using those resources as a tangible expression of God’s desire to be friends with all people and an expression of God’s desire for all people to be friends with one another. This is how God’s new covenant ratified by the blood of Christ empowers us to be people capable of loving others as God has first loved us. This is the good news we have to share.To God be the glory!