William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, said, “We are not such fools as to refuse good bank notes because there are false ones in circulation; and although we see here and there manifestations of what appears to us to be nothing more than mere earthly fire, we none the less prize and value, and seek for the genuine fire which comes from the altar of the Lord.” 3
Cymbala, Jim (2012-02-21). Spirit Rising: Tapping into the Power of the Holy Spirit (Kindle Locations 435-438). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
Showing posts with label Jim Cymbala. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jim Cymbala. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Renouncing Our Rights to Live in Freedom!
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
We Americans are firm believers in our rights. The Declaration of Independence says that we are endowed by our Creator with “certain unalienable rights.” That may be true.
But let me ask you a question: If God had a task for you that entailed giving up one or all of your rights, your freedom to do what you wanted to do, what would you do?
This is not an abstract question. It’s the question that every Christian, especially we American Christians where we have what I call "a glut of options," must face every day.
Are we willing to renounce our rights in order to be servants of Jesus Christ alone? Are we willing to to live lives designed by God and not by us?
In his book, You Were Made for More, Pastor Jim Cymbala tells the true story of Mark Hill, an architect who graduated from an Ivy League school, Cornell, and later went to work for the great architect, I. M. Pei.
But in the midst of a career that provided him with a high six-figure income, Mark began attending the church of which Cymbala is senior pastor, the Brooklyn Tabernacle. It was then that God grabbed hold of Mark and gave him his life mission.
When a call went out for volunteers to teach Sunday School, he decided to teach elementary-age Children’s Church. “I loved it!” he later remembered. “I had such a feeling of being in God’s will. And the kids responded energetically.”
One thing led to another and today, Mark Hill works full time, alongside his wife, with youth programs at the church. Being a church youth worker has meant giving up on the income that his hard work, education, and experience would have otherwise given him every right to expect. But he’s renounced those rights in order to voluntarily perform the mission Christ has given to him.
Of course, you don’t have to give up your day job in order to fulfill the mission Jesus Christ has for you.
Take the apostle Paul, for example. Paul traveled thousands of miles to share the gospel of Jesus Christ: the good news that we human beings, born slaves to sin and bound for death and hell, can be saved from sin, death, and futility when we respond to the gracious love of God by turning from sin and believing in Jesus, Who shared death with us and wants to share His resurrection with all who trust in Him.
Paul wrote most of the books in our New Testament. He started churches, counseled new Christians, developed leaders. He was an apostle, a word meaning sent one, sent by Christ Himself to take the Good News of Jesus into far and often hostile places.
For his efforts, Paul suffered beatings, imprisonments, stoning, shipwrecks, and false accusations. But, in spite of all he gave to the mission entrusted to him by Christ and all that he endured to fulfill it, "apostle-ing" wasn’t even Paul’s day job.
He was a tentmaker.
As Paul saw it, his profession made it possible for him to do his real job, the same job you and I have as baptized believers in Jesus Christ: Changing the world by sharing Christ with others.
Martin Luther once said that there are two conversions that must happen in the life of every Christian. First, there must be the conversion to faith in Jesus Christ. Second, there must be a conversion of our pocketbooks. It takes time for new Christians to realize that, in grateful response for all that God has given to us, how we give and spend our money (along with how we spend our lives) should put God first. Paul understood that this second conversion may take longer even than the first.
So, although he had every right to expect a pay package that would allow him to do his work without worrying about how to fill his belly or pay his bills, Paul didn’t demand this of the new Christians who made up the new congregations he started. Paul said that, while he would never brag, if he wanted to, he could brag that he had shared the Gospel with those converted to Christ by his preaching and teaching, without asking for a penny.
In the verse that comes just before our second lesson, Paul says to the people of one of the churches he founded, in the Greek city of Corinth: “I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing this so that they may be applied in this case. Indeed, I would rather die than that—no one will deprive me of my ground for boasting.”
But take a look at what he says next, in our second lesson, printed on the Celebrate insert: “If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel!” Then, slip down to verse 18, where he writes: “What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.”
God, Paul is saying, has given me a responsibility to share the Gospel, free of charge, with others. When I do that, I’m only doing my job and shame on me if I don’t do it, whether I get paid for it or not.
Christ had set Paul free of sin and death. So, he chose to use his freedom to make himself a servant of Christ alone.
In connection with Paul's sentiments, speaking personally, I know that I've always seen what's referred to as my "pay package" as an allowance. God has called me to be a pastor and whether God intended me to do it full time in a congregation like Saint Matthew or, for no pay, with a church that couldn't afford a pastor while I worked another job, I would feel bound to take up the mission Christ has given to me. And shame on me if I don't do just that, "pay package" or not! After Christ has set me free, why would turn around and enslave myself to a "pay package"? There is nothing more disgraceful than "pastors for hire," who seem to always be angling for more money!
In his essay, On Christian Liberty, Martin Luther wrote:
He renounced his rights to pursue the mission Christ had for him.
So, what has this all got to do with you and me?
Everyone, it seems, wants the world to recognize their rights.
Everyone seems to want what they see as belonging to them: attention, comfort, respect, money.
Selfishness, self-absorption, demanding our rights, and carving out what some people call “me time,” are common themes of the day.
People think that by diving deeper into themselves, they’ll find peace.
But that’s a lie!
Life, joy, purpose, and peace: These things only belong to those who recognize that none of them are our rights. They are gifts from the God we meet in Jesus Christ.
And it is only those who renounce the idea that they’re entitled to anything and instead, recognize that every good and perfect gift comes from the God we know in Jesus Christ alone, who experience life, joy, purpose, and peace.
Whether you’re a plumber or a preacher, a teacher or a doctor, a farmer, a student, a repairperson, a nurse, a retiree, or a millionaire, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you have the same privilege and the same mission.
The privilege is knowing that because of Christ and your faith in Christ, nothing can separate you from the love of God. You belong to God for all eternity and nothing—not disease nor death, not unemployment nor the unkindness of other people—can separate you from God's love. You can live your life with complete boldness, knowing that you are in the palm of God’s hand always.
The mission is to share the liberating good news of new life through faith in Jesus Christ with everyone you meet, even organizing your life so that you can meet more people and share Christ with them.
A woman, writing in Decision magazine years ago, told about sensing that God wanted her to take her family overseas so that she could be a missionary.
She excitedly told her husband about this “call.” He wasn’t sure his wife had been called to go overseas at all. He suggested that she test this call first.
Why not try reaching others with the Good News of Jesus in their neighborhood, something she had never previously attempted, he said, and see where that led?
Disappointed, she nonetheless agreed to this plan. She wracked her brain for awhile to come up with some ways she could be a neighborhood missionary, then hit on an idea.
She and her husband lived in a community that was growing. Lots of people were moving in all the time. She would bake bread and welcome newcomers to their community. No Bible tracts. No religious jaw. Just a welcome from a neighbor.
At first, the woman thought that she was wasting her time on some insignificant activity. But over time, as she organized her life around pursuing this mission outreach, she became friends with a number of the newcomers.
When a crisis developed in their lives, they would call her for help or ask her for prayers.
Many asked her the reasons for her joy and helpfulness to others and she was able to tell them about Christ.
Over the decades, this woman saw hundreds of people who previously had no connection with Christ come to believe in Him, in part because she organized her life around sharing Christ in a simple, practical way.
Living out our mission for Christ may entail renouncing the attention, comfort, and respect the world gives to its movers and shakers and its success stories.
It may cause us discomfort or even suffering.
That’s OK. As Paul writes elsewhere: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory…to be revealed to us…”
When Christ returns, the dead in Christ rise again, and we begin to reign over a new heaven and a new earth alongside Christ in eternity, the mad scramble to assert and maintain our rights will be shown for the sham and the shame and the waste that it is.
In the end, when we see Christ, the only thing that will matter is whether we have held onto Jesus Christ, because anything else we may hold onto—anything we may think we have the right to hold onto—will slip from our mortal hands.
Only the God we know in Jesus Christ is immortal.
And only Jesus Christ, the conqueror of death and sin and futile living, is worth living and dying for.
Only Jesus Christ can give us the eternity of forgiveness and fellowship that none of us has any right to expect!
So, what about it? Are you willing to renounce your worldly rights in order to live for Christ alone?
Are you willing to live the mission of sharing Christ with others, whatever your job?
If you are, let God know it…and then seek, however imperfectly, however inconsistently, however constantly you (and I) will need to repent and to be renewed by God’s Holy Spirit…live it!
Live it!
Amen!
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
We Americans are firm believers in our rights. The Declaration of Independence says that we are endowed by our Creator with “certain unalienable rights.” That may be true.
But let me ask you a question: If God had a task for you that entailed giving up one or all of your rights, your freedom to do what you wanted to do, what would you do?
This is not an abstract question. It’s the question that every Christian, especially we American Christians where we have what I call "a glut of options," must face every day.
Are we willing to renounce our rights in order to be servants of Jesus Christ alone? Are we willing to to live lives designed by God and not by us?
In his book, You Were Made for More, Pastor Jim Cymbala tells the true story of Mark Hill, an architect who graduated from an Ivy League school, Cornell, and later went to work for the great architect, I. M. Pei.
But in the midst of a career that provided him with a high six-figure income, Mark began attending the church of which Cymbala is senior pastor, the Brooklyn Tabernacle. It was then that God grabbed hold of Mark and gave him his life mission.
When a call went out for volunteers to teach Sunday School, he decided to teach elementary-age Children’s Church. “I loved it!” he later remembered. “I had such a feeling of being in God’s will. And the kids responded energetically.”
One thing led to another and today, Mark Hill works full time, alongside his wife, with youth programs at the church. Being a church youth worker has meant giving up on the income that his hard work, education, and experience would have otherwise given him every right to expect. But he’s renounced those rights in order to voluntarily perform the mission Christ has given to him.
Of course, you don’t have to give up your day job in order to fulfill the mission Jesus Christ has for you.
Take the apostle Paul, for example. Paul traveled thousands of miles to share the gospel of Jesus Christ: the good news that we human beings, born slaves to sin and bound for death and hell, can be saved from sin, death, and futility when we respond to the gracious love of God by turning from sin and believing in Jesus, Who shared death with us and wants to share His resurrection with all who trust in Him.
Paul wrote most of the books in our New Testament. He started churches, counseled new Christians, developed leaders. He was an apostle, a word meaning sent one, sent by Christ Himself to take the Good News of Jesus into far and often hostile places.
For his efforts, Paul suffered beatings, imprisonments, stoning, shipwrecks, and false accusations. But, in spite of all he gave to the mission entrusted to him by Christ and all that he endured to fulfill it, "apostle-ing" wasn’t even Paul’s day job.
He was a tentmaker.
As Paul saw it, his profession made it possible for him to do his real job, the same job you and I have as baptized believers in Jesus Christ: Changing the world by sharing Christ with others.
Martin Luther once said that there are two conversions that must happen in the life of every Christian. First, there must be the conversion to faith in Jesus Christ. Second, there must be a conversion of our pocketbooks. It takes time for new Christians to realize that, in grateful response for all that God has given to us, how we give and spend our money (along with how we spend our lives) should put God first. Paul understood that this second conversion may take longer even than the first.
So, although he had every right to expect a pay package that would allow him to do his work without worrying about how to fill his belly or pay his bills, Paul didn’t demand this of the new Christians who made up the new congregations he started. Paul said that, while he would never brag, if he wanted to, he could brag that he had shared the Gospel with those converted to Christ by his preaching and teaching, without asking for a penny.
In the verse that comes just before our second lesson, Paul says to the people of one of the churches he founded, in the Greek city of Corinth: “I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing this so that they may be applied in this case. Indeed, I would rather die than that—no one will deprive me of my ground for boasting.”
But take a look at what he says next, in our second lesson, printed on the Celebrate insert: “If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel!” Then, slip down to verse 18, where he writes: “What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.”
God, Paul is saying, has given me a responsibility to share the Gospel, free of charge, with others. When I do that, I’m only doing my job and shame on me if I don’t do it, whether I get paid for it or not.
Christ had set Paul free of sin and death. So, he chose to use his freedom to make himself a servant of Christ alone.
In connection with Paul's sentiments, speaking personally, I know that I've always seen what's referred to as my "pay package" as an allowance. God has called me to be a pastor and whether God intended me to do it full time in a congregation like Saint Matthew or, for no pay, with a church that couldn't afford a pastor while I worked another job, I would feel bound to take up the mission Christ has given to me. And shame on me if I don't do just that, "pay package" or not! After Christ has set me free, why would turn around and enslave myself to a "pay package"? There is nothing more disgraceful than "pastors for hire," who seem to always be angling for more money!
In his essay, On Christian Liberty, Martin Luther wrote:
A Christian…is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian…is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one.This is exactly what Paul is talking about when he writes what he does in the last five verses of our second lesson. They’re worth reading. Take a look at them with me:
For though I am free with respect to all [that is, I have no obligations to nobody but to Christ Who, alone, has freed me from the power of sin, death, and futility], I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. [I have voluntarily made myself the servant of everyone so that I can introduce them to Jesus Christ.] To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. [This doesn’t mean that Paul got along to get along. He wasn't playing the game of political correctness, telling the cultures in which he served what they wanted to hear, as both liberal and conservative churches do for their preferred constituencies in North America in 2012. It means, rather, that he lived alongside Jews, Gentiles, and the weakest of the world in order to credibly share Christ with them. He disavowed whatever rights he had as a Jewish scholar or a Roman citizen or a noted intellect or a free male in order to win a hearing for Jesus Christ.] I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.”In setting aside whatever rights or glory the societies of his world might have had to offer, Paul, like his Savior and our Savior Jesus, chose to use his Christian freedom to serve God and others.
He renounced his rights to pursue the mission Christ had for him.
So, what has this all got to do with you and me?
Everyone, it seems, wants the world to recognize their rights.
Everyone seems to want what they see as belonging to them: attention, comfort, respect, money.
Selfishness, self-absorption, demanding our rights, and carving out what some people call “me time,” are common themes of the day.
People think that by diving deeper into themselves, they’ll find peace.
But that’s a lie!
Life, joy, purpose, and peace: These things only belong to those who recognize that none of them are our rights. They are gifts from the God we meet in Jesus Christ.
And it is only those who renounce the idea that they’re entitled to anything and instead, recognize that every good and perfect gift comes from the God we know in Jesus Christ alone, who experience life, joy, purpose, and peace.
Whether you’re a plumber or a preacher, a teacher or a doctor, a farmer, a student, a repairperson, a nurse, a retiree, or a millionaire, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you have the same privilege and the same mission.
The privilege is knowing that because of Christ and your faith in Christ, nothing can separate you from the love of God. You belong to God for all eternity and nothing—not disease nor death, not unemployment nor the unkindness of other people—can separate you from God's love. You can live your life with complete boldness, knowing that you are in the palm of God’s hand always.
The mission is to share the liberating good news of new life through faith in Jesus Christ with everyone you meet, even organizing your life so that you can meet more people and share Christ with them.
A woman, writing in Decision magazine years ago, told about sensing that God wanted her to take her family overseas so that she could be a missionary.
She excitedly told her husband about this “call.” He wasn’t sure his wife had been called to go overseas at all. He suggested that she test this call first.
Why not try reaching others with the Good News of Jesus in their neighborhood, something she had never previously attempted, he said, and see where that led?
Disappointed, she nonetheless agreed to this plan. She wracked her brain for awhile to come up with some ways she could be a neighborhood missionary, then hit on an idea.
She and her husband lived in a community that was growing. Lots of people were moving in all the time. She would bake bread and welcome newcomers to their community. No Bible tracts. No religious jaw. Just a welcome from a neighbor.
At first, the woman thought that she was wasting her time on some insignificant activity. But over time, as she organized her life around pursuing this mission outreach, she became friends with a number of the newcomers.
When a crisis developed in their lives, they would call her for help or ask her for prayers.
Many asked her the reasons for her joy and helpfulness to others and she was able to tell them about Christ.
Over the decades, this woman saw hundreds of people who previously had no connection with Christ come to believe in Him, in part because she organized her life around sharing Christ in a simple, practical way.
Living out our mission for Christ may entail renouncing the attention, comfort, and respect the world gives to its movers and shakers and its success stories.
It may cause us discomfort or even suffering.
That’s OK. As Paul writes elsewhere: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory…to be revealed to us…”
When Christ returns, the dead in Christ rise again, and we begin to reign over a new heaven and a new earth alongside Christ in eternity, the mad scramble to assert and maintain our rights will be shown for the sham and the shame and the waste that it is.
In the end, when we see Christ, the only thing that will matter is whether we have held onto Jesus Christ, because anything else we may hold onto—anything we may think we have the right to hold onto—will slip from our mortal hands.
Only the God we know in Jesus Christ is immortal.
And only Jesus Christ, the conqueror of death and sin and futile living, is worth living and dying for.
Only Jesus Christ can give us the eternity of forgiveness and fellowship that none of us has any right to expect!
So, what about it? Are you willing to renounce your worldly rights in order to live for Christ alone?
Are you willing to live the mission of sharing Christ with others, whatever your job?
If you are, let God know it…and then seek, however imperfectly, however inconsistently, however constantly you (and I) will need to repent and to be renewed by God’s Holy Spirit…live it!
Live it!
Amen!
Monday, April 04, 2011
Don't Judge a Book By Its Cover
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, on Sunday, April 3, 2011.]
John 9:1-41
“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” We’ve all heard that advice. It warns us to avoid making judgments based on outward appearances and to instead, see life and people at deeper levels.
This theme is seen in our first lesson for today, 1 Samuel 16:1-13, which tells the story of when a shepherd boy, David, was anointed to be king of Israel.
The theme is carried forward in the Gospel lesson. In it, we catch up with Jesus nearly midway through John’s gospel account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Already, by this point in John’s narrative, there have been groups of people laying in wait for the chance to have Jesus executed.
Then, on a Sabbath day, Jesus’ disciples make a mistake. They judge a book by its cover. They see a blind man and decide that somebody has to be to blame. “Rabbi,” they ask, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus tells the disciples that they’re looking at things wrongly. The sins of neither this man nor his parents were responsible for the man’s blindness.
Aren’t we prone to think as superficially as the disciples, though? We look at the cover and don’t bother to take a look inside.
Jesus repeats something He’d already said. It's something that John wrote about at the beginning of his gospel. “I am the light of the world,” Jesus says. Jesus here is pointing to the fact that He’s not only about to help a blind man see, but also has the power to offer all who repent and believe in Him, new life.
Mixing His spittle with some dust from the ground, Jesus spread mud on the blind man’s eyes. He then told the blind man to wash his eyes in a nearby pool. The first miracle in our lesson took place: Jesus gave sight to the blind man.
But another miracle is in the offing.
Other people in the rest of our lesson will prove to be the real blind ones. Not only don’t they see the blind man for who he is and the miracle of his recovered sight for what it is, they also, most tragically, can’t see Who Jesus is. They refuse to see Jesus for Who He is!
The reason for their blindness is that they’ve turned the faith revealed to Israel and chronicled in the Old Testament into a legal system they could control.
Those of you who have been participating in Read the Bible in a Year know that in Old Testament times, God laid down a lot of laws for His people. As I pointed out last week, only the moral law—or the Ten Commandments—and the laws that issue from them, like Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount or the apostle Paul’s explanation of the commandments in 1 Timothy 1:8-11, remains valid today.
But there are limits to what God’s moral law can do. In the book of Romans, Paul says, “The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good” (Romans 7:12). But the most that God's holy, just, and good law can do is show us our need of the forgiveness and new life that comes only to those who repent (turn from sin) and believe in (that means, entrust their lives to) Jesus Christ. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” Paul writes later in Romans 8:1. No condemnation! That’s good news! When you and I surrender to Jesus Christ, our sins are covered over, Christ has paid our debt for sin, and we belong to God for all eternity!
But there are always people who want to turn the gospel of new life for those who rely completely on Christ into some religious or political system they can control. This was true of some of Jesus’ fellow Jews whose reaction to the blind man’s returned sight wasn’t happiness or celebration.
They became upset because Jesus, Who had restored the blind man’s sight, had, according to their rules, worked on the Sabbath day. Kneading (k-n-e-a-d-i-n-g), which Jesus had done when He mixed His saliva with dust, was one of thirty-nine activities which Pharisaic Jews saw as a violation of the Sabbath day.
Never mind that a man born blind could now see. Never mind that, as the newly-sighted man said, such a sign could only have been done by someone sent by God. Jesus wasn’t playing His culture’s religious games. That’s why His opponents couldn’t see Jesus for Who He was (and is) and why a blind man, open to the promptings of God could see Jesus for exactly Who He was (and is).
Toward the end of our lesson, Jesus asks the man to whom He'd given sight, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” This is a consequential question, the most important question any of us will ever be asked.
The term “Son of Man,” first appears in the Old Testament book of Daniel. In Daniel 7:13-14, for example, Daniel records a vision he had of a Son of Man Who would one day come to set things right in the world:
“Do you believe in Me?” Jesus is asking the man. “Do you entrust your whole life to Me: all your past sins, all your dreams for the future, your whole destiny in this life and in the next? Are you utterly surrendered to Me? Will you live each day in repentance and renewal as you follow Me to eternity? Will you let My Holy Spirit empower you to confess and live out your faith in Me? Do you believe in Me?”
Jesus had already made it abundantly clear in His conversation with Nicodemus, which we talked about a few weeks ago, just how much is at stake when anyone is asked if they believe in Jesus: “For God so loved the world,” Jesus said, “that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
When asked if he believed in Jesus, the newly-sighted man had just one question, “And who is he, sir?” That's when we read about the second miracle in our lesson. When Jesus said that the One he was looking at was the Son of Man, the blind man worshiped Jesus. He saw what others—what many today—refuse to see: that Jesus is God the Son, the only way to forgiveness and reconciliation with God, the only means by Whom you and I can become all that we were made to be by our loving God.
If we only look at the humanity of Jesus, we need to ask Him to open our eyes and see Him as the only God and Lord we need to believe in and worship. The miracle of faith in Christ can happen in us…and in anybody!
We who have been called and commanded by Jesus to share the Good News of new life for all who repent and believe in Him must ask God to use us as His agents in helping to dispel the blindness that keeps so many of our neighbors from knowing and following Jesus.
We must share Jesus’ call to repent and believe in Him lovingly and unapologetically. Otherwise, people with whom we live, work, and play—people we like and people we love—will be separated from the life Jesus so desperately wants to give to all people.
I’ve cited it often, but it’s worth mentioning again that Jesus has made it as clear as possible, when He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).
If our neighbors, family members, or friends see Jesus as anything less than the God Who has conquered sin and death for all who believe in Him, we must pray that God will help them see…and that the Lord Who gave sight to a blind man will use us to share a true vision of all that Jesus is and all He can be for those who call Him Lord and God.
But this means that we also must ask the God we know in Christ to help us see others not by their “covers,” but for who they are as children of God.
At the end of an Easter evening service at the Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York, Pastor Jim Cymbala sat exhausted close to the altar area. He wanted to relax and unwind a bit. But then he caught sight of a man dressed in shabby clothes. His hair was matted. He looked awful.
He stood about four rows from Cymbala, awaiting permission to approach. Cymbala nodded, but thought how horrible that this was how his festive, if tiring, Easter was going to end. “He’s going to hit me up for money,” Cymbala thought.
As the man approached, the odor—a mixture of alcohol, sweat, urine, and garbage—took Cymbala’s breath away. It was so bad that he instinctively turned his head to inhale while he spoke with the man.
"What’s your name?" Cymbala asked. “David,” he said. “How long have you been homeless?” “Six years.” “Where did you sleep last night?” “In an abandoned truck.”
Cymbala said that he’d heard this story many times before. He reached into his pocket for some money he could give to David and send him on his way.
“No, you don’t understand,” David said. “I don’t want your money. I want the Jesus that red-haired girl talked about [during the service].”
Cymbala says that he felt “soiled and cheap.” He silently asked for God’s forgiveness. “I had wanted…to get rid of [David],” Cymbala writes, “when he was crying out for the help of Christ I had just preached about. I swallowed hard as God’s love flooded my soul.”
David seemed to sense this change in Cymbala's view of him. He moved forward and fell on Cymbala’s chest, burying his grimy head against the repentant pastor's clean clothes.
Holding David close, Cymbala told him about Jesus’ love, how Jesus had died and risen to give David new life. “I felt love for this pitiful young man,” he says. And the foul odor? “I don’t know how to explain it,” Cymbala writes, “It had almost made me sick, but now it became the most beautiful fragrance to me.”
In this moment, he sensed Jesus telling him, “Jim, if you and your wife have any value to Me, if you have any purpose in My work—it has to do with this odor: This is the smell of the world I died for.”
When Jesus looks at us, He doesn’t see us as the world does. He sees prodigal children worthy of the sacrifice of Himself on the cross.
May we see Jesus as our Lord and God and, seeing others with the same love, passion, and concern He has for us, may we tell the whole world about Jesus. Amen!
John 9:1-41
“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” We’ve all heard that advice. It warns us to avoid making judgments based on outward appearances and to instead, see life and people at deeper levels.
This theme is seen in our first lesson for today, 1 Samuel 16:1-13, which tells the story of when a shepherd boy, David, was anointed to be king of Israel.
The theme is carried forward in the Gospel lesson. In it, we catch up with Jesus nearly midway through John’s gospel account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Already, by this point in John’s narrative, there have been groups of people laying in wait for the chance to have Jesus executed.
Then, on a Sabbath day, Jesus’ disciples make a mistake. They judge a book by its cover. They see a blind man and decide that somebody has to be to blame. “Rabbi,” they ask, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus tells the disciples that they’re looking at things wrongly. The sins of neither this man nor his parents were responsible for the man’s blindness.
Aren’t we prone to think as superficially as the disciples, though? We look at the cover and don’t bother to take a look inside.
Jesus repeats something He’d already said. It's something that John wrote about at the beginning of his gospel. “I am the light of the world,” Jesus says. Jesus here is pointing to the fact that He’s not only about to help a blind man see, but also has the power to offer all who repent and believe in Him, new life.
Mixing His spittle with some dust from the ground, Jesus spread mud on the blind man’s eyes. He then told the blind man to wash his eyes in a nearby pool. The first miracle in our lesson took place: Jesus gave sight to the blind man.
But another miracle is in the offing.
Other people in the rest of our lesson will prove to be the real blind ones. Not only don’t they see the blind man for who he is and the miracle of his recovered sight for what it is, they also, most tragically, can’t see Who Jesus is. They refuse to see Jesus for Who He is!
The reason for their blindness is that they’ve turned the faith revealed to Israel and chronicled in the Old Testament into a legal system they could control.
Those of you who have been participating in Read the Bible in a Year know that in Old Testament times, God laid down a lot of laws for His people. As I pointed out last week, only the moral law—or the Ten Commandments—and the laws that issue from them, like Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount or the apostle Paul’s explanation of the commandments in 1 Timothy 1:8-11, remains valid today.
But there are limits to what God’s moral law can do. In the book of Romans, Paul says, “The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good” (Romans 7:12). But the most that God's holy, just, and good law can do is show us our need of the forgiveness and new life that comes only to those who repent (turn from sin) and believe in (that means, entrust their lives to) Jesus Christ. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” Paul writes later in Romans 8:1. No condemnation! That’s good news! When you and I surrender to Jesus Christ, our sins are covered over, Christ has paid our debt for sin, and we belong to God for all eternity!
But there are always people who want to turn the gospel of new life for those who rely completely on Christ into some religious or political system they can control. This was true of some of Jesus’ fellow Jews whose reaction to the blind man’s returned sight wasn’t happiness or celebration.
They became upset because Jesus, Who had restored the blind man’s sight, had, according to their rules, worked on the Sabbath day. Kneading (k-n-e-a-d-i-n-g), which Jesus had done when He mixed His saliva with dust, was one of thirty-nine activities which Pharisaic Jews saw as a violation of the Sabbath day.
Never mind that a man born blind could now see. Never mind that, as the newly-sighted man said, such a sign could only have been done by someone sent by God. Jesus wasn’t playing His culture’s religious games. That’s why His opponents couldn’t see Jesus for Who He was (and is) and why a blind man, open to the promptings of God could see Jesus for exactly Who He was (and is).
Toward the end of our lesson, Jesus asks the man to whom He'd given sight, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” This is a consequential question, the most important question any of us will ever be asked.
The term “Son of Man,” first appears in the Old Testament book of Daniel. In Daniel 7:13-14, for example, Daniel records a vision he had of a Son of Man Who would one day come to set things right in the world:
I was watching in the night visions,Son of Man is a designation Jesus uses of Himself 84 times in the New Testament's four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Jesus clearly saw Himself as the fulfillment of Daniel's vision of the Savior sent from God.
And behold, One like the Son of Man,
Coming with the clouds of heaven!
He came to the Ancient of Days,
And they brought Him near before Him.
Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom,
That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion,
Which shall not pass away,
And His kingdom the one
Which shall not be destroyed.
“Do you believe in Me?” Jesus is asking the man. “Do you entrust your whole life to Me: all your past sins, all your dreams for the future, your whole destiny in this life and in the next? Are you utterly surrendered to Me? Will you live each day in repentance and renewal as you follow Me to eternity? Will you let My Holy Spirit empower you to confess and live out your faith in Me? Do you believe in Me?”
Jesus had already made it abundantly clear in His conversation with Nicodemus, which we talked about a few weeks ago, just how much is at stake when anyone is asked if they believe in Jesus: “For God so loved the world,” Jesus said, “that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
When asked if he believed in Jesus, the newly-sighted man had just one question, “And who is he, sir?” That's when we read about the second miracle in our lesson. When Jesus said that the One he was looking at was the Son of Man, the blind man worshiped Jesus. He saw what others—what many today—refuse to see: that Jesus is God the Son, the only way to forgiveness and reconciliation with God, the only means by Whom you and I can become all that we were made to be by our loving God.
If we only look at the humanity of Jesus, we need to ask Him to open our eyes and see Him as the only God and Lord we need to believe in and worship. The miracle of faith in Christ can happen in us…and in anybody!
We who have been called and commanded by Jesus to share the Good News of new life for all who repent and believe in Him must ask God to use us as His agents in helping to dispel the blindness that keeps so many of our neighbors from knowing and following Jesus.
We must share Jesus’ call to repent and believe in Him lovingly and unapologetically. Otherwise, people with whom we live, work, and play—people we like and people we love—will be separated from the life Jesus so desperately wants to give to all people.
I’ve cited it often, but it’s worth mentioning again that Jesus has made it as clear as possible, when He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).
If our neighbors, family members, or friends see Jesus as anything less than the God Who has conquered sin and death for all who believe in Him, we must pray that God will help them see…and that the Lord Who gave sight to a blind man will use us to share a true vision of all that Jesus is and all He can be for those who call Him Lord and God.
But this means that we also must ask the God we know in Christ to help us see others not by their “covers,” but for who they are as children of God.
At the end of an Easter evening service at the Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York, Pastor Jim Cymbala sat exhausted close to the altar area. He wanted to relax and unwind a bit. But then he caught sight of a man dressed in shabby clothes. His hair was matted. He looked awful.
He stood about four rows from Cymbala, awaiting permission to approach. Cymbala nodded, but thought how horrible that this was how his festive, if tiring, Easter was going to end. “He’s going to hit me up for money,” Cymbala thought.
As the man approached, the odor—a mixture of alcohol, sweat, urine, and garbage—took Cymbala’s breath away. It was so bad that he instinctively turned his head to inhale while he spoke with the man.
"What’s your name?" Cymbala asked. “David,” he said. “How long have you been homeless?” “Six years.” “Where did you sleep last night?” “In an abandoned truck.”
Cymbala said that he’d heard this story many times before. He reached into his pocket for some money he could give to David and send him on his way.
“No, you don’t understand,” David said. “I don’t want your money. I want the Jesus that red-haired girl talked about [during the service].”
Cymbala says that he felt “soiled and cheap.” He silently asked for God’s forgiveness. “I had wanted…to get rid of [David],” Cymbala writes, “when he was crying out for the help of Christ I had just preached about. I swallowed hard as God’s love flooded my soul.”
David seemed to sense this change in Cymbala's view of him. He moved forward and fell on Cymbala’s chest, burying his grimy head against the repentant pastor's clean clothes.
Holding David close, Cymbala told him about Jesus’ love, how Jesus had died and risen to give David new life. “I felt love for this pitiful young man,” he says. And the foul odor? “I don’t know how to explain it,” Cymbala writes, “It had almost made me sick, but now it became the most beautiful fragrance to me.”
In this moment, he sensed Jesus telling him, “Jim, if you and your wife have any value to Me, if you have any purpose in My work—it has to do with this odor: This is the smell of the world I died for.”
When Jesus looks at us, He doesn’t see us as the world does. He sees prodigal children worthy of the sacrifice of Himself on the cross.
May we see Jesus as our Lord and God and, seeing others with the same love, passion, and concern He has for us, may we tell the whole world about Jesus. Amen!
Sunday, January 02, 2011
Turn to God...and Live!
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Listen to this little scenario, taken from the main reading book our Catechism students are using right now:
By the time God sent the great prophets whose names give titles to some of the Bible’s most important books, God’s people had settled into life in the promised land. The mortgage was paid on the temple dedicated to worshiping and offering sacrifices to God and, for the most part, things were going well. God’s people were on cruise control.
But the prophets reminded them that even if they sang pretty songs and did everything exactly as the hymnbooks told them when they worshiped, yet still treated others unjustly, things were not going well.
If they celebrated religious holidays, but still ignored the revealed will of God for their relationships, their finances, their possessions, their business dealings, their bodies, or their sex lives, things were not going well.
In the original Hebrew in which most of the Old Testament is written, the root word for prophet means called (by God). Prophets were called by God to remind Israel of uncomfortable truths, truths that people on cruise control would rather not hear.
Most especially, they were to remind God’s people of a truth put well by a contemporary Christian composer, Randy Stonehill. He sings:
When we fail to repent regularly, we give sin and the devil toeholds in our lives, we turn Christ into a doormat, and we risk spending eternity in hell.
Centuries after the Old Testament prophets preached and taught, after God had entered the world in the person of Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul would act on the prophetic impulse when he wrote,
We North American Christians could spend some time in this new year paying special heed to the words of the prophets.
Like ancient Israel, we can be materialistic and selfish.
We too can think the world should revolve around us.
We too can take God for granted.
We too can look, act, and sound more like the world than like people of God.
We too, fall into error, justifying sexual behaviors God calls sin.
Maybe the most challenging of the Old Testament prophets was Jeremiah, the writer of our first lesson. Jeremiah lived about 600 years before the birth of Jesus and had a ministry that lasted some forty years. He told his countrymen that unless they repented, turning away from their injustices to others, their religious hypocrisy, and their unethical behavior, God would cause their Babylonian neighbors to the north to sweep down on them. Babylon would conquer them, destroy their armies and their temple, and turn the citizens into vassals.
God's people refused to heed Jeremiah’s warnings. When Babylon conquered Judah in 587BC, many of God's people were taken prisoner and sent back to Babylon as slaves. The eyes of the king were gouged out and he was sent in utter humiliation to Babylon. Through Babylon, God punished His people for their continued defiance of His will. In the years before these events unfolded, this was precisely what Jeremiah had warned would happen.
You can imagine how welcome Jeremiah’s sermons were! When you’re on cruise control, you don’t want God getting in the way.
But why would God let people who worshiped Him and claimed to be believers be subjected to slavery and exile?
The answer is simple: While you and I are interested in lives of comfort and ease; God is more interested in shaping our characters.
While we’re interested in getting advantages in this fleeting life, God is concerned with righting us for eternal life.
When the pursuit of happiness becomes believers’ primary end, our characters are destroyed and we slog comfortably toward hell, away from God.
But when our lives are turned God-ward, comfort, pleasure, and happiness, along with things like purpose, hope, self-discipline, and joy, are byproducts, even when life in this imperfect world is difficult, challenging, or even, tragic.
Psalm 111 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding.” Would that you and I would build our lives on the wisdom of a fearful respect of God!
Yet in the midst of Jeremiah’s stern prophetic oracles, we find a section of his book called the book of consolation or book of comfort. Our first lesson is drawn from this section of Jeremiah. In it, God reminds His people of His ultimate purpose for them, the reason behind His chastening, behind His orchestration of their humiliation at the hands of the Babylonians. Punishment would not be the end of their story!
Pull out the Celebrate inserts, please, and look at our lesson, Jeremiah 31:7-14. Scholars tell us that the text can be divided into three sections:
Let me assure you that you can believe in God’s good will for you today!
True story: Amalia was a woman who had been through hell and back, from growing up in a violent home in which her father molested her to drug addiction, from alcoholism and poverty to being a negligent parent herself.
Yet God found Amalia! She heard the good news of the Savior Jesus, Who died and rose to set sinners right with God. She repented for her sins and trusted in Christ for His forgiveness and, despite all the temptations and old habits that dogged her, got off to a great start on her Christian life. Then, one Sunday, Amalia didn’t show up for worship. Her pastor, Jim Cymbala, was concerned. He silently prayed, “O God, watch over Amalia.”
The next Sunday, Amalia was back in worship. After the service, Cymbala asked where she had been the previous week. She’d had something to take care of, she said. She had to go to the man who had set her life down its hellish path, her father.
She had found him living in upstate New York. What did she say to this man? Amalia explained that she forced her father to put down his beer and speak seriously with her. She said she’d been thinking about those years when he abused her. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” he tried butting in. “That was a long time ago. We don’t need to talk about that now.” Amalia insisted that they did need to talk about it.
“It really hurt me," she told him, "and I wanted to kill you many times. But I came here this weekend to tell you that I’m a Christian now. I gave my heart to the Lord, and he changed my life…what you did was wrong. But I forgive you! God can change your life and forgive you, too…"
Amalia’s father squirmed in his chair and quickly changed the subject to superficial things. He didn’t want God to make him feel uncomfortable. But for Amalia, the weekend had been a triumph. She had let go of past hurts she didn’t earn or deserve and she was liberated to live!
God wants to liberate you to live, too!
Elsewhere in Jeremiah’s book, God says, “I know the plans I have for you..plans for your welfare and not your harm, to give you a future with hope.” In 2011, take God up on that promise for you!
Live each day in repentance and trust in Jesus Christ and watch how God turns your mourning into joy, your gladness into sorrow, and your doubts into unshakeable faith in the One Who died and rose to make you new and to give you an eternal future with God! Amen!
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Listen to this little scenario, taken from the main reading book our Catechism students are using right now:
Imagine that it is Christmas morning and you are in church. You’ve had a good Christmas Eve and received many presents. The church is beautifully decorated and everyone seems…happy…Suddenly, in the middle of the sermon, a stranger that you have never seen before gets up and starts yelling at the pastor. He runs down the center aisle to the front of the church… The stranger begins to preach. But it is not sweet talk about the baby Jesus. Rather, he points his finger and says we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for spending so much money on Christmas presents when there are people starving to death in our community. He says that God is angry with us because we are concerned only about ourselves. We are phonies and God will not listen to our prayers or songs until we take care of those who are lonely or poor or jobless. His message is, "Repent and return to God.”This, folks, is what life with the prophets of Old Testament times was like for God’s people, the Jews!
By the time God sent the great prophets whose names give titles to some of the Bible’s most important books, God’s people had settled into life in the promised land. The mortgage was paid on the temple dedicated to worshiping and offering sacrifices to God and, for the most part, things were going well. God’s people were on cruise control.
But the prophets reminded them that even if they sang pretty songs and did everything exactly as the hymnbooks told them when they worshiped, yet still treated others unjustly, things were not going well.
If they celebrated religious holidays, but still ignored the revealed will of God for their relationships, their finances, their possessions, their business dealings, their bodies, or their sex lives, things were not going well.
In the original Hebrew in which most of the Old Testament is written, the root word for prophet means called (by God). Prophets were called by God to remind Israel of uncomfortable truths, truths that people on cruise control would rather not hear.
Most especially, they were to remind God’s people of a truth put well by a contemporary Christian composer, Randy Stonehill. He sings:
You'll be tempted, tried and testedTo flout or ignore the will of God, as we are prone to do even in the contemporary Church, where we often treat God less as our Lord than as our buddy, is dangerous. We Christians, as Martin Luther reminds us in The Small Catechism, are to drown our sinful selves in daily repentance in Jesus’ Name.
There'll be wars the devil wins
But God's love is not a license to lie there in your sins
He understands the human heart
His mercy is complete
But His grace was not intended
As a place to wipe your feet.
When we fail to repent regularly, we give sin and the devil toeholds in our lives, we turn Christ into a doormat, and we risk spending eternity in hell.
Centuries after the Old Testament prophets preached and taught, after God had entered the world in the person of Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul would act on the prophetic impulse when he wrote,
Don't be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring God!—harvests a crop of weeds. All he'll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God's Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life. So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up, or quit. (Galatians 6:7-9, The Message)The ancient prophets were sent to present God's message to His people, “Don’t quit! Don’t quit turning to me for life. Don’t quit loving God and loving neighbor. Don’t quit living in the truth that only comes from Me.”
We North American Christians could spend some time in this new year paying special heed to the words of the prophets.
Like ancient Israel, we can be materialistic and selfish.
We too can think the world should revolve around us.
We too can take God for granted.
We too can look, act, and sound more like the world than like people of God.
We too, fall into error, justifying sexual behaviors God calls sin.
Maybe the most challenging of the Old Testament prophets was Jeremiah, the writer of our first lesson. Jeremiah lived about 600 years before the birth of Jesus and had a ministry that lasted some forty years. He told his countrymen that unless they repented, turning away from their injustices to others, their religious hypocrisy, and their unethical behavior, God would cause their Babylonian neighbors to the north to sweep down on them. Babylon would conquer them, destroy their armies and their temple, and turn the citizens into vassals.
God's people refused to heed Jeremiah’s warnings. When Babylon conquered Judah in 587BC, many of God's people were taken prisoner and sent back to Babylon as slaves. The eyes of the king were gouged out and he was sent in utter humiliation to Babylon. Through Babylon, God punished His people for their continued defiance of His will. In the years before these events unfolded, this was precisely what Jeremiah had warned would happen.
You can imagine how welcome Jeremiah’s sermons were! When you’re on cruise control, you don’t want God getting in the way.
But why would God let people who worshiped Him and claimed to be believers be subjected to slavery and exile?
The answer is simple: While you and I are interested in lives of comfort and ease; God is more interested in shaping our characters.
While we’re interested in getting advantages in this fleeting life, God is concerned with righting us for eternal life.
When the pursuit of happiness becomes believers’ primary end, our characters are destroyed and we slog comfortably toward hell, away from God.
But when our lives are turned God-ward, comfort, pleasure, and happiness, along with things like purpose, hope, self-discipline, and joy, are byproducts, even when life in this imperfect world is difficult, challenging, or even, tragic.
Psalm 111 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding.” Would that you and I would build our lives on the wisdom of a fearful respect of God!
Yet in the midst of Jeremiah’s stern prophetic oracles, we find a section of his book called the book of consolation or book of comfort. Our first lesson is drawn from this section of Jeremiah. In it, God reminds His people of His ultimate purpose for them, the reason behind His chastening, behind His orchestration of their humiliation at the hands of the Babylonians. Punishment would not be the end of their story!
Pull out the Celebrate inserts, please, and look at our lesson, Jeremiah 31:7-14. Scholars tell us that the text can be divided into three sections:
- Verses 7-9 are addressed to the Israelites who have been scattered by their conquerors. God promises that He will bring them back to the promised land, including the blind, the lame, and pregnant women, those often overlooked by a hurried world. There is nowhere that God’s love, forgiveness, and help cannot reach us! Listen: When we place ourselves in the hands of God, no adversity is too great, no mountain is too steep. God’s love is bigger than anything you and I will confront in this life or the next!
- Verses 10 to 12 are addressed to the nations of the world. The power of God’s Word stretches to the farthest reaches of the universe, from the Pakistani woman imprisoned for her faith in Christ to any member of this congregation confronting illness or uncertainty. God bears favor for those who trust in Him, wherever they may be!
- Verses 13 to 14 describe the rejoicing that will happen when God restores the fallen. For we Christians, it’s a preview of what heaven will be like, when all who have repented and believed in Christ, enduring in faith, as God welcomes us home!
Let me assure you that you can believe in God’s good will for you today!
True story: Amalia was a woman who had been through hell and back, from growing up in a violent home in which her father molested her to drug addiction, from alcoholism and poverty to being a negligent parent herself.
Yet God found Amalia! She heard the good news of the Savior Jesus, Who died and rose to set sinners right with God. She repented for her sins and trusted in Christ for His forgiveness and, despite all the temptations and old habits that dogged her, got off to a great start on her Christian life. Then, one Sunday, Amalia didn’t show up for worship. Her pastor, Jim Cymbala, was concerned. He silently prayed, “O God, watch over Amalia.”
The next Sunday, Amalia was back in worship. After the service, Cymbala asked where she had been the previous week. She’d had something to take care of, she said. She had to go to the man who had set her life down its hellish path, her father.
She had found him living in upstate New York. What did she say to this man? Amalia explained that she forced her father to put down his beer and speak seriously with her. She said she’d been thinking about those years when he abused her. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” he tried butting in. “That was a long time ago. We don’t need to talk about that now.” Amalia insisted that they did need to talk about it.
“It really hurt me," she told him, "and I wanted to kill you many times. But I came here this weekend to tell you that I’m a Christian now. I gave my heart to the Lord, and he changed my life…what you did was wrong. But I forgive you! God can change your life and forgive you, too…"
Amalia’s father squirmed in his chair and quickly changed the subject to superficial things. He didn’t want God to make him feel uncomfortable. But for Amalia, the weekend had been a triumph. She had let go of past hurts she didn’t earn or deserve and she was liberated to live!
God wants to liberate you to live, too!
Elsewhere in Jeremiah’s book, God says, “I know the plans I have for you..plans for your welfare and not your harm, to give you a future with hope.” In 2011, take God up on that promise for you!
Live each day in repentance and trust in Jesus Christ and watch how God turns your mourning into joy, your gladness into sorrow, and your doubts into unshakeable faith in the One Who died and rose to make you new and to give you an eternal future with God! Amen!
Thursday, August 05, 2010
No Automatic Pilot for Living as a Follower of Christ
This is the text of today's daily emailed inspiration from my colleague, Pastor Glen VanderKloot of Faith Lutheran Church in Springfield, Illinois. You can receive Pastor VanderKloot's emails by leaving the requested information here.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Thought for the Day
There is no automatic pilot by which we can run our
lives. We constantly need the Lord's direction as we
face all the decisions of life.
Somehow, in some way, the Lord will guide our steps
in the way we should go. He will honor our desire to
seek his will and blessing.
Jim Cymbala
The Church God Blesses p. 140-141
Scripture
Psalm 25:9 NIV
He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way.
Prayer
Lord, I seek your direction for my life and in every
important decision. Guide my steps in your pathway.
Amen
*************************************************
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Priorities?
This is today's emailed inspiration from my colleague and friend, Pastor Glen VanderKloot:
I don't agree with every jot and tittle of Cymbala's theology. But he is a person of strong faith in the gracious God we know in Jesus Christ.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +If you've never read any of Jim Cymbala's books, by the way, I recommend them highly.
A THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
“What a shame that many Christians get more excited and vocal about football games or an ocean cruise than about Jesus Christ, the Lord of heaven and earth.”
Jim Cymbala "The Church God Blesses" p. 46-47
Scripture:
Psalm 63:5 TNIV: I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you.
Prayer:
Lord, help me to be as excited about my faith in you as I am about so many lesser important things in life. Amen
*************************************************
I don't agree with every jot and tittle of Cymbala's theology. But he is a person of strong faith in the gracious God we know in Jesus Christ.
Sunday, May 02, 2010
Understanding Revelation, Part 4 (Revelation 21:1-6)
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church earlier today.]
Revelation 21:1-6
Have you ever noticed how much we like new things? We buy a car and for the first few weeks after we drive it off the lot, we savor that “new car smell.” We pick the first strawberries of the season and can’t wait to clean them, layer on the sugar, and put them on top of freshly-baked shortcake. And when friends share our enthusiasms, we might invite them to drop by to see our new flat screen TV, our new computer, our new game system.
Advertisers know all about our love for new things. TV commercials are often filled with phrases like, “new and improved.” They know that will get our attention. And politicians know how much we love new things, too: Woodrow Wilson campaigned to bring what he called the New Freedom; Franklin Roosevelt had the New Deal; John Kennedy had the New Frontier; Richard Nixon touted the New Federalism; and Bill Clinton talked about the New Covenant.
I think that one of the reasons we so love new things is that, after a time, we become aware of the flaws of the old things. New things grow old. Fuel pumps and transmissions go out on the new car or it gets dinged on the grocery store parking lot and the car isn’t new anymore. We pick the last strawberries of the season, forget all about them, and they go bad before we even think about eating them; we’ve grown tired of them. Presidents’ new programs go well until they run into things like Congress, interest groups, unforeseen circumstances, and sometimes, their own faults.
The result is that after awhile, as much as we want things to be new, we grow skeptical, even cynical about claims that anything can truly be new or improved. That’s why the Who sang, “Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss.” It’s why Paul Simon sang, “Everything put together, sooner or later, falls apart.”
Maybe the biggest reason we like new things so much is that, deep in our hearts, we know that this world is not as it was meant to be. We know that we ourselves don’t live as we were meant to live. When we’re honest, I think, we even grow frustrated with ourselves, we tire of our old resentments, our old unfairness to others, our old failure to love—maybe even to love God--as we want to. We want to be “new and improved” people.
That yearning on our part is understandable. We were made in the image of God. Death, decay, our sin, growing old: None of these things were part of God’s original plan for you and me. God made us for an everlasting fellowship with Him. God made us to stand upright in His presence, with no need to hide from God, as the first human beings tried to do, after they had disobeyed God the first time. God made us to walk in what the Bible calls “newness of life.” The Bible says that God “has put eternity in [our] hearts.” But, you and I are born into a world alienated from God, all of us born with a predisposition to go our own ways, to sin. It’s our inheritance and we start spending that inheritance the moment we’re born; no one is more self-centered than a baby and if their parents don’t “hop to” at the first cry, a lot more crying is apt to follow! Even newborns need to be made new.
As our lives go on, we become more and more aware of our desire for what the Bible calls “a new thing.” But because we, as we grow older, are as self-driven as babies—though maybe a little more polite about it—we go "lookin’ for love [newness, life, hope, a sense of wholeness, happiness] in all the wrong places.”
Marriages hit snags and instead of recommitting themselves to doing the hard work of loving one another till death parts them, husbands and wives give up or take up with someone else or a string of someone elses.
People become frustrated with their lives or become bored by lives that seem to offer them little opportunity and, anxious for something new, dive deeply into things like alcohol, food, personal pleasure, money heroin, or oxycontin.
Preachers aren’t immune from looking for newness and eternity in bogus places, either. I once heard about a respected older pastor who told a bunch of younger ones who were wrestling with discouragement, “There’s nothing wrong with you that can’t be made right with a new suit and a new book.” I like books, but there’s only one book that can make us new!
Look! There is something is wrong in our lives, something that evidences itself in the lives of every one of us. We long for the newness of life that can only come from the perfect, sinless creator of the world, from God. The holes in our souls can only be filled by God, not by the junk with which we try to fill them. We can only be made new by God!
That’s why the words in our lesson from Revelation for this morning are worth our attention. Listen to them again:
Today, I suppose, most people would see such beliefs as unexceptional. Or silly. Or meaningless. Or, because he insisted as Jesus taught, that Jesus is the only way to God, even bigoted. But for those of us who agree with all that John believed and have experienced the living love and power of Jesus Christ, the beliefs John confessed are the most important truths that any of us can ever know. God offers us, as a free gift, the newness of life for which we all yearn. But God doesn’t force it on us. God respects our capacity to say no to Him. Yet with every fiber of God’s infinite being, God wants us to say yes to Jesus, yes to newness of life.
The vision that the risen Jesus gave to John was of a new heaven and a new earth, a place inhabited for all eternity by believers in Jesus, drawn from all the peoples of the old earth.
But God even gives tastes of the newness that comes to those who turn from sin and believe in Him in this world. He comes and frees us from our sins so that we can experience newness of life here and now.
Pastor Jim Cymbala tells the true story of a couple who came up to him after worship at his New York City church. They were moved by worship and asked him to bless their relationship. Before he did that, he said, he wanted to know a bit more about them. They explained that they had been seeing each other for two years. Cymbala asked, “Are you living together?” The woman blinked hard and the man stepped back. “Yes,” she said. “You’re putting me in a bind,” Cymbala explained to them. “You’re asking me to bless what God has expressed a strong opinion about.”
Sexual intimacy, God says, is for marriage alone. Those who have sexual relations outside of marriage are stealing a gift that God intended as a sign and seal of love between husbands and wives who have committed themselves, before God and the world, to one another.
Cymbala suggested that the man move to another place in order to avoid temptation. The couple reluctantly agreed. Over the period of the next several months, they received counseling. They learned more about God and God’s will for their lives. They wanted their relationship to be blessed by God. They repented for their sins and committed themselves to living in the newness of life that comes from Jesus.
Several months later, at the end of a midweek worship, Cymbala told the large congregation that something special was coming. The organist began the opening notes of the wedding march and this couple, committed now to coming to Jesus in total submission to Him, confident that he gives new hope and fresh starts to those who seek to do things God’s way, was married. Cymbala says that their occasional sobs of joy could be heard by all in that cavernous sanctuary.
The only bumper sticker I think that I would ever put on my car says simply, “Christians aren’t perfect; just forgiven.” And as long as we live amid the old heaven and the old earth, we’ll need to come to God in the Name of Jesus to seek forgiveness. I do it every day, many times a day. I call my frequent prayers of confession, “midcourse corrections.” And I need them because the old sinful Mark is still around causing trouble, prone to throwing me off course all the time!
But, no matter how many times we fall, God is willing to pick us up again. In Jesus Christ, we are made new, forever new, forever with God, forever living more of the life for which God made us.
If that’s a gift you want, it’s a very simple thing to claim. Tell God that you want to turn from all the false trails to newness, that you want to repudiate all your sins, that you want to be made truly new, and then let the outreached arms of Jesus save you to live a better life today and a life with God for eternity.
Surrender to Jesus and He will make you forever new! Amen!
[Thanks to Pastor Brian Stoffregen for suggesting this general approach to the text, to Pastor Heath Pukallus for his inspiring sermon, and to all those who prayed for me yesterday when I felt that my first go at the text this week was inadequate.]
Revelation 21:1-6
Have you ever noticed how much we like new things? We buy a car and for the first few weeks after we drive it off the lot, we savor that “new car smell.” We pick the first strawberries of the season and can’t wait to clean them, layer on the sugar, and put them on top of freshly-baked shortcake. And when friends share our enthusiasms, we might invite them to drop by to see our new flat screen TV, our new computer, our new game system.
Advertisers know all about our love for new things. TV commercials are often filled with phrases like, “new and improved.” They know that will get our attention. And politicians know how much we love new things, too: Woodrow Wilson campaigned to bring what he called the New Freedom; Franklin Roosevelt had the New Deal; John Kennedy had the New Frontier; Richard Nixon touted the New Federalism; and Bill Clinton talked about the New Covenant.
I think that one of the reasons we so love new things is that, after a time, we become aware of the flaws of the old things. New things grow old. Fuel pumps and transmissions go out on the new car or it gets dinged on the grocery store parking lot and the car isn’t new anymore. We pick the last strawberries of the season, forget all about them, and they go bad before we even think about eating them; we’ve grown tired of them. Presidents’ new programs go well until they run into things like Congress, interest groups, unforeseen circumstances, and sometimes, their own faults.
The result is that after awhile, as much as we want things to be new, we grow skeptical, even cynical about claims that anything can truly be new or improved. That’s why the Who sang, “Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss.” It’s why Paul Simon sang, “Everything put together, sooner or later, falls apart.”
Maybe the biggest reason we like new things so much is that, deep in our hearts, we know that this world is not as it was meant to be. We know that we ourselves don’t live as we were meant to live. When we’re honest, I think, we even grow frustrated with ourselves, we tire of our old resentments, our old unfairness to others, our old failure to love—maybe even to love God--as we want to. We want to be “new and improved” people.
That yearning on our part is understandable. We were made in the image of God. Death, decay, our sin, growing old: None of these things were part of God’s original plan for you and me. God made us for an everlasting fellowship with Him. God made us to stand upright in His presence, with no need to hide from God, as the first human beings tried to do, after they had disobeyed God the first time. God made us to walk in what the Bible calls “newness of life.” The Bible says that God “has put eternity in [our] hearts.” But, you and I are born into a world alienated from God, all of us born with a predisposition to go our own ways, to sin. It’s our inheritance and we start spending that inheritance the moment we’re born; no one is more self-centered than a baby and if their parents don’t “hop to” at the first cry, a lot more crying is apt to follow! Even newborns need to be made new.
As our lives go on, we become more and more aware of our desire for what the Bible calls “a new thing.” But because we, as we grow older, are as self-driven as babies—though maybe a little more polite about it—we go "lookin’ for love [newness, life, hope, a sense of wholeness, happiness] in all the wrong places.”
Marriages hit snags and instead of recommitting themselves to doing the hard work of loving one another till death parts them, husbands and wives give up or take up with someone else or a string of someone elses.
People become frustrated with their lives or become bored by lives that seem to offer them little opportunity and, anxious for something new, dive deeply into things like alcohol, food, personal pleasure, money heroin, or oxycontin.
Preachers aren’t immune from looking for newness and eternity in bogus places, either. I once heard about a respected older pastor who told a bunch of younger ones who were wrestling with discouragement, “There’s nothing wrong with you that can’t be made right with a new suit and a new book.” I like books, but there’s only one book that can make us new!
Look! There is something is wrong in our lives, something that evidences itself in the lives of every one of us. We long for the newness of life that can only come from the perfect, sinless creator of the world, from God. The holes in our souls can only be filled by God, not by the junk with which we try to fill them. We can only be made new by God!
That’s why the words in our lesson from Revelation for this morning are worth our attention. Listen to them again:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away." And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new." Also he said, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life."The lesson presents a vision revealed to a man called John the Evangelist, literally, John the Sharer of Good News. John, at this point, some time between 81 and 96AD, was living in an exile imposed on him by the Roman Empire. John had gotten into trouble because of his beliefs.
- He believed that God had come to the earth and that His Name was Jesus, a carpenter from Nazareth.
- John believed that because of God’s desire to give us new lives, Jesus died on a cross, willingly taking the punishment for sin that we deserve, a perfect sacrifice made for all of us.
- John also believed Jesus, not the Roman emperor of his day, was the ultimate authority and Lord of the world.
- John believed that all who turn away from their sin and entrust their whole lives to Jesus Christ have eternal newness of life.
- And John believed that Jesus rose from the dead as a sign that His promises to those who believe in Him are on solid ground.
Today, I suppose, most people would see such beliefs as unexceptional. Or silly. Or meaningless. Or, because he insisted as Jesus taught, that Jesus is the only way to God, even bigoted. But for those of us who agree with all that John believed and have experienced the living love and power of Jesus Christ, the beliefs John confessed are the most important truths that any of us can ever know. God offers us, as a free gift, the newness of life for which we all yearn. But God doesn’t force it on us. God respects our capacity to say no to Him. Yet with every fiber of God’s infinite being, God wants us to say yes to Jesus, yes to newness of life.
The vision that the risen Jesus gave to John was of a new heaven and a new earth, a place inhabited for all eternity by believers in Jesus, drawn from all the peoples of the old earth.
But God even gives tastes of the newness that comes to those who turn from sin and believe in Him in this world. He comes and frees us from our sins so that we can experience newness of life here and now.
Pastor Jim Cymbala tells the true story of a couple who came up to him after worship at his New York City church. They were moved by worship and asked him to bless their relationship. Before he did that, he said, he wanted to know a bit more about them. They explained that they had been seeing each other for two years. Cymbala asked, “Are you living together?” The woman blinked hard and the man stepped back. “Yes,” she said. “You’re putting me in a bind,” Cymbala explained to them. “You’re asking me to bless what God has expressed a strong opinion about.”
Sexual intimacy, God says, is for marriage alone. Those who have sexual relations outside of marriage are stealing a gift that God intended as a sign and seal of love between husbands and wives who have committed themselves, before God and the world, to one another.
Cymbala suggested that the man move to another place in order to avoid temptation. The couple reluctantly agreed. Over the period of the next several months, they received counseling. They learned more about God and God’s will for their lives. They wanted their relationship to be blessed by God. They repented for their sins and committed themselves to living in the newness of life that comes from Jesus.
Several months later, at the end of a midweek worship, Cymbala told the large congregation that something special was coming. The organist began the opening notes of the wedding march and this couple, committed now to coming to Jesus in total submission to Him, confident that he gives new hope and fresh starts to those who seek to do things God’s way, was married. Cymbala says that their occasional sobs of joy could be heard by all in that cavernous sanctuary.
The only bumper sticker I think that I would ever put on my car says simply, “Christians aren’t perfect; just forgiven.” And as long as we live amid the old heaven and the old earth, we’ll need to come to God in the Name of Jesus to seek forgiveness. I do it every day, many times a day. I call my frequent prayers of confession, “midcourse corrections.” And I need them because the old sinful Mark is still around causing trouble, prone to throwing me off course all the time!
But, no matter how many times we fall, God is willing to pick us up again. In Jesus Christ, we are made new, forever new, forever with God, forever living more of the life for which God made us.
If that’s a gift you want, it’s a very simple thing to claim. Tell God that you want to turn from all the false trails to newness, that you want to repudiate all your sins, that you want to be made truly new, and then let the outreached arms of Jesus save you to live a better life today and a life with God for eternity.
Surrender to Jesus and He will make you forever new! Amen!
[Thanks to Pastor Brian Stoffregen for suggesting this general approach to the text, to Pastor Heath Pukallus for his inspiring sermon, and to all those who prayed for me yesterday when I felt that my first go at the text this week was inadequate.]
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