Category: Christianity

ONE FLESH, PART I:

On By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Christianity, Jesus, Matthew, Podcast, SermonLeave a comment

One Flesh A

The Pharisees came to Jesus with a question about divorce. He gave them an answer about marriage. This teaching of Jesus is difficult for many people, but it is right here in the bible, so we’ll try and understand what he said and apply it to our lives. This is part I on the text of Matthew 19:1-12.

 

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Matthew #65. Matthew 19:1-12 Part I

This is one of those passages I would prefer not to teach on. However, I do my best to submit myself to the word of God, and so I will do my best to help us understand and apply this passage, no matter how hard it might be.

Actually, of course, this passage is not particularly difficult understand. What is difficult is that many Christians have either ignored it or disobeyed it at some point in their lives, and so simply to repeat what Jesus says here sounds, at first, very harsh judgmental. In fact, this can be a very sensitive subject, and someone like me runs the risk of offending a large number of people in preaching on it. Far too many preachers simply avoid the subject.

In addition, there are some Christians and churches who have applied this passage without also giving people the bigger context of God’s grace and forgiveness; and so they have erred in the opposite direction, making people feel condemned without hope.

This subject is so important, and so prone to misunderstanding, I want to take it slowly, so we’ll spend two weeks on Jesus’ words here. Just to make sure we know exactly what Jesus said, here it is:

1When Jesus had finished this instruction, He departed from Galilee and went to the region of Judea across the Jordan.2Large crowds followed Him, and He healed them there.3Some Pharisees approached Him to test Him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife on any grounds? ”

4“Haven’t you read,” He replied, “that He who created them in the beginning made them male and female,”5and He also said: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh?6So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, man must not separate.”

7“Why then,” they asked Him, “did Moses command us to give divorce papers and to send her away? ”

8He told them, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of the hardness of your hearts. But it was not like that from the beginning.9And I tell you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

10His disciples said to Him, “If the relationship of a man with his wife is like this, it’s better not to marry! ”

11But He told them, “Not everyone can accept this saying, but only those it has been given to.12For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb, there are eunuchs who were made by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves that way because of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.” (Matt 19:1-12, HCSB)

During the time of Jesus there was a debate among the Pharisees about how much latitude was allowed for divorce. One group held the you could get divorced for any reason, even if it was simply that you didn’t like your wife’s cooking. A smaller group of Pharisees believed that the only reason for divorce was sexual unfaithfulness. I think here the Pharisees are trying to place Jesus into their categories. They want to know which “camp” Jesus belongs to.

As he does so often, Jesus avoids their categories. Instead of talking about Moses’ command concerning divorce, he talks about the intention of God himself at creation (which of course was also the intention of Jesus, being God). This is a clear, definitive statement from Jesus about marriage; if you want to know what he thought about marriage here it is, in verses four through six. First, marriage was part of God’s original plan and intention at creation. To put it plainly: God created marriage. Second, marriage is made for “male and female.” If ever Jesus had the opportunity to affirm gay marriage here it was, but instead he affirms marriage is for “male and female,” and “man and wife.” If you don’t like it, don’t get angry at me – these are Jesus’ words, not mine. Third, Jesus says that in marriage, God somehow mystically joins the man and the woman into one entity. The book of Genesis calls this “one flesh,” and so does Jesus. Finally, Jesus says that since God created marriage, and somehow joins the man and woman together into this one-flesh entity, that human beings should not undo it.

Now, I want to unpack all this, but first we have to deal with the elephant in the room: divorce. The Pharisees came to Jesus with a question about divorce, and his answer was really more about marriage. Even so, of course he made statements about divorce as well.

Clearly, Jesus tells us that there is a very narrow set of circumstances where divorce followed by remarriage is no problem with God. In other words, in general, divorce is not what God wants for followers of Jesus. Some people from ultra-conservative backgrounds may have heard about the sin of divorce endlessly. I think more often, people are surprised to learn that Jesus generally calls it a sin, at least under most circumstances. Even so, divorce is no different than any other sin; it is no worse than anything I have ever done. It usually does have deep and long term consequences for those involved, but it is not, in any sense “the unforgivable sin.” In addition, I do not see anything here that tells us a person is sinning every day that they remain divorced from their first spouse. In other words, “the state of being divorced” is not one long ongoing sin. Like with any sin, we need to repent, receive forgiveness, and move on as we follow Jesus.

Jesus says that it is a sin to get remarried unless your spouse was sexually unfaithful to you (the word for “unfaithful” is specifically about sexual immorality). What if you have been divorced, got remarried, and you do not know that your first spouse was sexually unfaithful? It may indeed have been a sin initially to get remarried, but now that you are, I do not believe that you are sinning every day that you remain in your second marriage. In fact, I think if we would take Jesus seriously, we need to apply his words to whatever marriage we are in right now. If this is your second or third marriage, understand that today, this is your marriage. Don’t sin again by getting divorced a second or third or fourth time. Your present marriage is holy and special in God’s eyes. Make this one work.

What if you are divorced, but are presently single, and wish to get married to someone else someday? Can you get remarried even if your spouse has not been sexually unfaithful to you? It seems pretty clear to me that Jesus is saying here, “no.” God views marriage is something permanent, and he calls it “one flesh.” That one flesh entity is only broken by sexual unfaithfulness. However, even in the case of sexual unfaithfulness, it is possible for couples to reconcile and once more enter into a one flesh union; in other words, you do not have to get divorced if your spouse had an affair, but in that situation, if you would like to do so, and remarry, you are free to do so without sinning.

As a note, of course, if your spouse remarries, your one-flesh union is broken; I think the same would be true if your spouse has sex with someone else after your divorce.

I have known of several couples (friends of friends) who got divorced, but took the words of Jesus here seriously; both members of the couple remained single after their divorce. Over the years, as they sought personal healing for themselves, and continued to see each other regularly in the process of raising their kids between two separate homes, these couples eventually reconciled and married each other once more. That was only made possible because they took Jesus’ command seriously, and did not look for remarriage. That approach honors the way God sees marriage.

That is the ideal. However, we live in a broken world, and things do not always work out ideally. Perhaps you just cannot stand to be alone for the rest of your life, and you are absolutely opposed to reconciling with your spouse. You get remarried, even though you know Jesus said you are not free to do so. There is forgiveness for you anyway, grace in abundance. Pretty much anytime I sin, I know beforehand that what I am about to do is wrong, and yet I go ahead and do it anyway: that is the nature of sin. So if you happen to fail and sin in this matter of remarriage, you are not beyond redemption and forgiveness. You can receive God’s grace and move on, and know that his death at the cross was enough for that too; you can know, even if you do this with your eyes wide open, that his love for you will not change and you can receive his grace if you want it, and if you trust it. I am not suggesting that you do this. It would be a sin for you to do it. I am merely reiterating what Paul said in Romans 8:1

1Therefore, no condemnation now exists for those in Christ Jesus,2because the Spirit’s law of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.3What the law could not do since it was limited by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending His own Son in flesh like ours under sin’s domain, and as a sin offering,4in order that the law’s requirement would be accomplished in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Rom 8:1-4, HCSB)

No matter how weak your flesh is, his grace is stronger.

I want to say one more thing about this, not by way of condemnation but by way of advice. Whatever the situation was, if you are divorced, you need to walk through some kind of process of healing. No matter how bad your marriage was, its breakup will leave scars. And not only that, but no matter how bad your spouse was, you had at least some involvement in the falling apart of your marriage. If nothing else, you need to understand why you ever married such a horrible person in the first place, and get healing for the things that caused you to do so.

I am not saying this to assign blame, I’m only saying that divorce leaves people in a situation where emotional healing is important and necessary. If you do not walk through the sometimes-long and sometimes-difficult process of emotional healing after divorce, your next marriage will suffer greatly. We have all heard many times that the divorce rate is roughly 50%. In terms of strict numbers of marriages, this is true. However, the true divorce rate is much higher among second marriages and later. In other words, the divorce rate for second marriages is something like 75%, in large part, because people usually do not work through their issues before getting remarried. What I am about to say next is not a rule, and I’m not getting it from the bible, but practically speaking, I doubt you can really have new relationship that is truly healthy until at least a year after your divorce is final, and that would be only if you are making a conscious effort to seek healing and wholeness. If you don’t want your second marriage to end like your first, I strongly advise you to pay attention to this.

Now, the Pharisees were shocked by Jesus’ response, and they had an argument against it. Moses said they could do it, and Moses was inspired by God. Jesus’ response does two things: first, he is literally claiming that he knows better than Moses, which was a staggering claim for any Jew to make. It is one more place where he is subtly claiming to be God. Second, he lays out the reason for the divorce-regulation given by Moses: he said it was because they were hard-hearted. Both the Old and New Testaments talk about how some people are hard-hearted toward the Lord. The Pharaoh of Egypt during the time of Moses was one of those. No matter that God’s will was to set the people free, Pharaoh wasn’t having it. Some of the people of Israel became hard-hearted, and rejected God in the wilderness. Being hard-hearted means you are determined to go your own way and do what you want to do, regardless of what God wants for you.

So, some of the ancient Israelite men were hard-hearted in the matter of divorce. They were determined to divorce their wives, no matter what God said about marriage. Remember, Jesus quotes from Genesis chapters one and two in talking about God’s view of marriage – and the ancient Israelites had those scriptures also, at least orally; in fact they were probably first written down by Moses himself. So they knew how God felt about marriage, but they were hard-hearted.

In the surrounding cultures at the time of Moses, if a man didn’t want his wife, he would simply kick her out. In those cultures, there would be no place for such a woman in society. Her parents would not take her back, nor any of her family. She would become a beggar and a target for sexual abuse; she would have no provision nor protection in society. So, God said, “Look, if you are going to be hard-hearted about this, and dissolve your marriages, at least you must give your wife a certificate of divorce.” This certificate of divorce had the effect of giving a divorced woman standing in the community. She remained respectable. She was eligible to remarry. Her family could take her in with no dishonor. She could not be mistreated or turned into a prostitute. To put it another way, the Old Testament regulation about divorce protected women in a society where many men were determined to dissolve their marriages no matter what God thought. The intention was not to endorse divorce, but to protect vulnerable women when men were hard-hearted.

This is a statement of God’s great grace. He didn’t want them to divorce. They determined to do it anyway, so he said, “OK, this is how we can minimize the damage.”

As Jesus said, it was not God’s original intention. It is not his desire. But when it happens, he finds a way to bring some grace into the situation. Let him speak to you about that right now.

Thanks again for making use of Clear Bible.

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FORGIVING OTHERS: IT MAY NOT BE WHAT YOU THINK

On By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Christianity, Jesus, Matthew, Podcast, Religion, SermonLeave a comment

 last_supper da vinci

Forgiveness is not pretending that nothing is wrong, or that you weren’t hurt. Forgiveness is saying, “yes, I am hurt. I have been wronged. But I choose not to hold that against the person who wronged me. That person owes me nothing.” The essence of forgiveness is releasing someone else from the “debt” they owe you because of what they did.

 

 

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Matthew #64. Matthew 18:21-35

When Leonardo da Vinci was painting the Last Supper, he had an intense, bitter argument with a fellow painter. Da Vinci was so enraged that he decided to paint the face of his enemy into the face of Judas. That way the hated painter’s face would be preserved in the face of the betraying disciple. When the great artist finished Judas, everyone easily recognized the face of the painter with whom da Vinci had quarreled.

Leonardo da Vinci continued to work on the painting. But as much as he tried, he could not paint the face of Christ. Something was holding him back. He finally decided his hatred toward his fellow painter was getting in the way. So he worked through his hatred by repainting Judas’ face, replacing the image of his fellow painter with another face. Only then was he able to paint Jesus’ face and complete the masterpiece.

Let’s set our text in context this week. It began with a discussion of who was the greatest. Jesus encouraged child-like trust, and said greatness was found in that, and in childlike humility. Speaking of childlike humility and trust, Jesus mentions how much he values those who trust him in this way, and warns against making them fall away. Speaking of falling away, he talks about how much he cares for lost sheep and pursues them. Speaking of lost sheep, he describes one way to bring back lost sheep, through what we call “church discipline.” Speaking of church discipline, Peter asks, “how many times should we forgive someone who repents? So now Jesus says: “Let me tell you about forgiving each other when someone wrongs you.”

He uses a parable, describing a servant to a King, who was forgiven an enormous debt – on the order of millions of dollars. The man was not required to pay one cent. This servant then went out, and sought out a fellow servant who owed him maybe five-hundred bucks, and demanded payment. When the second servant could not pay, the first, the one who had been forgiven so much, refused to release the man from his obligation, and had him thrown in jail.

In my mind, this parable begs a question: how could the first servant have been so unmerciful? Seeing what great mercy he has just experienced, how could he be so hard-heated? There are only two possibilities that make any sense to me. The first is that he really didn’t feel obligated for the millions of dollars, and so it was no big deal to have that debt canceled. In other words, he didn’t really believe he owed the debt, so when it was forgiven him, it didn’t touch his heart at all.

The other possibility is that he didn’t really believe in the forgiveness. Somehow, he felt like he was still deep in debt, and so needed the money the other man owed him. Either way, for all practical purposes, he never really received the forgiveness the King offered him. Otherwise his miserliness is almost inconceivable. It is here that we find the key to Jesus’ troubling words in 18:35,

So My heavenly Father will also do to you if each of you does not forgive his brother from his heart.” (Matt 18:35, HCSB)

I think what Jesus is saying is that if you don’t forgive others, that is an indication that you yourself have not really received God’s forgiveness. Anyone who holds on to a grudge, who is clenching bitterness in their heart, cannot at the same time have a heart that is open to receive God’s forgiveness. Thus, as Jesus says, if you don’t forgive, you won’t be forgiven – you can’t be. Your own un-forgiveness blocks out the forgiveness God offers you. Forgiveness and un-forgiveness cannot reside in the same heart at the same time. Lest we soften the intent of scripture, I think it is also important to realize that our un-forgiveness is offensive to God. When we read that parable and “get into it” there is a sense of outrage at the actions of the unmerciful servant. I think God feels this same outrage when we refuse to forgive those who have wronged us.

Now we need to be very clear about the nature of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not saying “Oh, that’s OK.” The reason there needs to be forgiveness at all is because whatever happened was not OK.  Forgiveness is not pretending that nothing is wrong, or that you weren’t hurt. Forgiveness is saying, “yes, I am hurt. I have been wronged. But I choose not to hold that against the person who wronged me. That person owes me nothing.” The essence of forgiveness is releasing someone else from the “debt” they owe you because of what they did. If you forgive someone, you no longer expect them to make up for what they did. You no longer hold their actions against them. You aren’t saying that what they did was OK, but you are saying that you will no longer require anything from them because of that wrong.

In contrast, un-forgiveness retains the right to some sort of payment. If you are refusing to forgive someone, you probably feel like that person owes you something. Haven’t we all heard the phrase “you owe me an apology!”? That is un-forgiveness in action. You may feel that the person who hurt you has to make it better. You may feel that you have a right to be angry. You may continue trying to get something out the person. The irony is, when we continue to try and get something out of someone, we remain bound to them. In other words, when we don’t forgive, we keep ourselves in bondage to the person we won’t forgive. As long as you are trying to get something from another person, you are bound to them. You can’t let them go, and at the same time, demand something from them. We can’t be free until we let go.

If anyone is in your “doghouse” you can be sure you are harboring un-forgiveness. Now you may indeed be entitled to payment of some sort. But if you want to get what you rightly deserve, then keep in mind that we all rightly deserve to go to hell. If you want to get what’s rightly yours, then be sure to remember everything you’ve got rightfully coming to you.

A lot of people have questions about the differences between forgiving on the one hand, and forgetting or trusting on the other. Jesus did not actually say “forgive and forget.” He said, “forgive.” So in his parable, I doubt the King would have loaned the servant millions of dollars again. He forgave him; that didn’t mean he was going to forget that the servant wasn’t able to handle a debt of millions. The king was not likely to trust him with that kind of money again, not because of unforgiveness, but simply out of common sense. When someone hurts you deeply, Jesus teaches that you must forgive that person and that if you don’t, it will interfere in your relationship with Him. But he does not command that you trust the one who hurt you at the same level you trusted before. You can release someone from his debt, and let him go, and still be wise in the future about how much interaction you have with him. You can do this without demanding something from the person, or holding something against him.

Now, sometimes we bury our un-forgiveness deep, out of our own awareness. A few years ago, there was someone in my life that I had not forgiven. But in my conscious world, I was not holding anything against that person. I wasn’t trying to get anything from that person. Instead, I was trying to get what that person owed me, from other people. At some level, I still felt someone owed me something. And so I was relating to other people as if they had treated me like the very first person. When the Lord showed me this, I forgave the original person who hurt me – even though I had no particular feelings of bitterness or anger against them – and my behavior towards others was radically changed for the better.

Another time, as I struggled to forgive someone else, I said to the Lord, “But he ought to pay for what he did. There needs to be a just punishment for this wrong action.” And in a flash, I saw a picture of Jesus on the cross, nails being driven into his wrists. The sin has been punished. It did not go unnoticed. It was punished on the cross, and the punishment was borne not by the one who wronged me, but by Jesus. If I declare that what satisfied God for that sin does not satisfy me, then I am saying I know better than God! In fact, I am saying that Jesus’ death was not enough! And now we get to the heart of the matter. If I say Jesus’ death was not enough punishment for the one who hurt me, then I cannot seriously believe that Jesus’ death was enough for my own sin. If I want the one who wronged me to pay for his own sin, then surely I also ought to pay for mine! But scripture says: “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘it is mine to avenge; I will repay, says the Lord.’”(Romans 12:19). So let God be the judge, and release the hurt and anger to him.

Often the thing we hold against others is an admission of guilt. I don’t want to forgive until the other person admits that he was wrong and I was right. In other words, I am still demanding something of this person for his offenses – I am still holding something against him. This is not the way Jesus forgave us. Romans 5:6-11 says that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. He did not wait for us to admit our sins or to repent and come to him. He sought us out with his forgiveness long before we ever admitted we were wrong. Since scripture tells us we are to forgive as Christ forgave us (Ephesians 4:32, among other verses), we also need to be prepared to forgive someone who never ever admits they are wrong or says sorry.

In Matthew 5:23-24, Jesus says:

“So if you are standing before the altar in the Temple, offering a sacrifice to God, and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there beside the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God. (New Living Translation)

The concepts of forgiveness and reconciliation are so important that you may interrupt your worship of God to get things straight with your neighbors. In fact, where there is unforgiveness, it will interrupt your worship anyway, whether or not you acknowledge that fact.

Corrie Ten Boom, a veteran of the terrible internment camps in WWII, shares this true story in her book, The Hiding Place. It was after the war, and she had begun to have a ministry traveling and speaking about her experiences, and the grace of God that she found, even in the horror. Then, this happened:

It was a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there — the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face.

He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. “How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein,” he said. “To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!”

His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.

Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.

I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.

As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.

Corrie Ten Boom’s point is extremely important. We can’t forgive without God’s help. Sometimes the hurt we have received is so deep and terrible that it seems we simply cannot release the person who hurt us without trying to get something back from them. But when we ask for God’s help, he can give us what we need to forgive those who hurt us and he will. He is not giving us an impossible command – he will give us his own love and forgiveness with which to love and forgive those who hurt us. All we have to do is ask.

~

Thanks again for making use of Clear Bible.

I want to remind you again that we are a listener-supported ministry, and that means, first and foremost, that we are supported by your prayers. We need and value your prayers for us.

Please pray that this ministry will continue to be a blessing to those who hear it. Ask God, if it is his will, to touch even more lives with these messages. Ask him to use this ministry in making disciples of Jesus Christ.

Please also pray for our finances. Pray for us to receive what we need. Please pray for us in this way before you give anything. And then, as you pray, if the Lord leads you to give us a gift, please go ahead and do that. But if he doesn’t want you to give to us, that is absolutely fine. We don’t want you to feel bad about it. We want you to follow Jesus in this matter. But do continue to pray for our finances.

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TOUGH LOVE

On By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Christianity, Church, House Church, Jesus, Matthew, Podcast, Religion, Sermon2 Comments

 loving discipline

Church discipline is not about demanding perfect behavior. It is about rescuing sheep who are straying. In New Testament times, it was not done by some barely-known official showing up at your door in a suit and tie to tell you that you were a sinner. It was done by your good friends, maybe even some family members, or co-workers. People who loved you and knew you would come to you, because they were motivated by love.

 

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Matthew #63 Matthew 18:15-35

Let’s remember where we are in Matthew 18. Jesus has said that we must become humble and trusting like children to enter the kingdom of heaven. He has said he has a special anger against those who lead “little ones” astray. Little ones means both children, and also those who trust Jesus with this childlike humility and trust. He also tells about how his heart is to seek the lost sheep. In is in this context, with the understanding that those who trust God are precious to Him, and that he pursues those who wander, that Jesus talks about what we like to call “church discipline.” Jesus gives us a kind of procedure for trying to bring back a lost sheep who is caught in sin. He has already predicted his death and resurrection before this point. He knows that he will not always be there in the flesh to bring back a lost sheep. So, he tells his followers how to go about bringing back those who are straying.

Jesus gives us a simple procedure. First, talk to the person alone. Appeal to your Christian friend to acknowledge his sin, and try to give it up. If that doesn’t work, bring along one or two trusted friends, and appeal again, along with them. Let them give their perspective, and also help you evaluate if your friend is really not repentant. If that that doesn’t work, bring the matter to the church at large. The whole community can appeal to your friend. And if that does not work, the person must be excluded from the church. During the Middle Ages, this last step became known as excommunication – exclusion from the Christian community. By the way, it doesn’t have to end there. Paul’s letters to the Corinthians give us a picture where a believer had to be excommunicated, but was later restored to the church community after he repented.

I think it is fascinating to realize that modern psychology has adopted Jesus’ approach for tough cases of addiction. When the community comes around a person to appeal to her to give up an addiction, we call it an intervention – but it is essentially what Jesus said to do in Matthew 18.

I think it is good to get the big picture. First of all, this is generally for cases when someone who calls herself or himself a Christian is living in a persistent pattern of sin and will not repent. This is not something we need to do every time any Christian commits a sin. Someone who is sorry for her sin, who keeps seeking to live for Jesus even though she knows she fails, is not really a lost sheep. I have spoken before of repentance as a road, or a direction. You may fall down while you are on the road, going the direction of Jesus. But when you do, you get back up, still on the same road, still headed in the direction of Jesus. In other words, we don’t need to go around confronting church members every time they inadvertently say the s-word, or, whenever they have a bad day, and happen to speak unlovingly to someone else.

If you are not repentant, however, you are not even on that road. You are headed away from the kind of life Jesus wants to live through you. You are distancing yourself from God and other Christians. When you fall down, you don’t turn around and head toward Jesus, you keep going away. It is for that situation that Jesus tells us to use the procedure in Matthew 18. This is not about demanding perfect behavior. This is about rescuing sheep who are straying.

We have an example of all this from the church in Corinth, along with Paul’s instructions about how to handle it:

1It is widely reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and the kind of sexual immorality that is not even tolerated among the Gentiles — a man is living with his father’s wife.2And you are inflated with pride, instead of filled with grief so that he who has committed this act might be removed from your congregation.3For though I am absent in body but present in spirit, I have already decided about the one who has done this thing as though I were present.4When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus with my spirit and with the power of our Lord Jesus,5turn that one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the Day of the Lord.

6Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast permeates the whole batch of dough?7Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch. You are indeed unleavened, for Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.8Therefore, let us observe the feast, not with old yeast or with the yeast of malice and evil but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

By the way, the words of Jesus in Matthew 18 are not talking only about times when someone personally sins against you. In verse 15, many English translations read “if your brother sins against you, go and rebuke him in private.” However the words “against you,” are missing from several generally reliable ancient copies of the Greek New Testament. My favorite translation has those words in brackets, in order to show this fact. Certainly, what Jesus says here applies in the case where someone has committed a personal sin against someone else; however I think both the textual evidence, and Luke’s gospel (which omits “against you” in Luke’s description of this conversation) and other relevant verses in the rest of the New Testament, all point to the fact that this procedure also applies more generally towards a Christian brother or sister who is caught in a consistent pattern of any sort of sin.

In case you missed it, I have been saying it applies to a Christian brother or sister who is caught in sin. The New Testament does not teach us to go to people who do not claim to be Christian, and explain how they are sinning. The idea itself is illogical. It is like telling me I’m violating the dress code for a prestigious New York preparatory school. So what if I am? I have nothing to do with the school, so why should I try to abide by their dress code, or indeed, even care what the dress code is? In fact, the way my biases run, I might find out more about the dress code there just so I could be sure and violate it. In the same way, if a person is not a follower of Jesus in the first place, why should he or she live according to the standards of Jesus?

Paul, implementing church discipline in Corinth, writes this:

9I wrote to you in a letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.10I did not mean the immoral people of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters; otherwise you would have to leave the world.11But now I am writing you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a believer who is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or verbally abusive, a drunkard or a swindler. Do not even eat with such a person.12For what business is it of mine to judge outsiders? Don’t you judge those who are inside?13But God judges outsiders. Put away the evil person from among yourselves. (1Cor 5:1-13, HCSB; I italicized one part for emphasis)

So we see very clearly, we do not waste time and energy imposing our moral standards on those who do not claim to be Christian. At the same time, when someone claims to be a Christian, and yet engages in a persistent, ongoing pattern of sin, we most definitely have a responsibility to the straying sheep to bring him or her back; if necessary through this pattern of “discipline.”

I want to make sure we understand the cultural and church context for all this. Churches in the New Testament met in homes, and they ranged in size from about four to about fifteen adults. Some cities had multiple churches of this size, and all the groups also considered themselves as “belonging” to the others in one big “church,” but their regular fellowship and worship took place in those small group gatherings. This is important, because it means there was a relational context for this kind of church discipline. These were people who had grown to know and love each other in small-group communities. Church discipline was not done by some barely-known official showing up at your door in a suit and tie to tell you that you were a sinner. It was done by your good friends, maybe even some family members, or co-workers. People who loved you and knew you a little bit would come to you, because they were motivated by love.

Now, I want to be honest. I have had to engage in this kind of church discipline a handful of times during my ministry as a pastor. I have never enjoyed one minute of it. And unfortunately, it does not always lead to repentance. I have known two different men, who, caught in an affair, claimed that the real sin was that his wife “gossiped” to me about the affair. Sadly, in those cases, the men chose to leave the church themselves even before the process had come to bringing in more of the community. Though I believe we approached them in real love and urged them to receive grace in repentance, they chose differently. Even worse, they went to churches elsewhere in town and pretended to be walking with the Lord. It is very discouraging when things like this happen. However, I am reminded of the Lord’s words to Ezekiel.

4The children [of Israel] are obstinate and hardhearted. I am sending you to them, and you must say to them, ‘This is what the Lord GOD says.’5Whether they listen or refuse to listen — for they are a rebellious house — they will know that a prophet has been among them.6“But you, son of man, do not be afraid of them or their words, though briers and thorns are beside you and you live among scorpions. Don’t be afraid of their words or be discouraged by the look on their faces, for they are a rebellious house.7But speak My words to them whether they listen or refuse to listen, for they are rebellious. (Ezek 2:4-7, HCSB)

Results are God’s business. He says “but speak my words to them whether they listen or refuse to listen.” Our business is to be obedient to what we know to do, and speak what he has told us to speak, and do what he has told us to do. Though I am sad about what happened on some occasions of church discipline, my conscience is clear, and I know that at least my friends were given the opportunity to repent and do something differently.

Paul writes to the Galatians about church discipline:

1Brothers, if someone is caught in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual should restore such a person with a gentle spirit, watching out for yourselves so you also won’t be tempted.2Carry one another’s burdens; in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. (Gal 6:1-2, HCSB)

Here, the Holy Spirit, through Paul, reminds us that we need to approach this task with extreme humility, not setting ourselves up as better than anyone else. Another important part of the task is to try to help the lost sheep bear their burdens as they travel down the road of repentance. In other words, we aren’t just laying down the law on someone, and leaving him to feel awful – we are also coming alongside him, helping him however we can as he travels back to a place of restoration.

In 1 Corinthians chapter five, which I quoted earlier, Paul reminds them of their duty to follow this procedure of discipline given to us by Jesus. By the time he wrote the letter we know as 2 Corinthians, the individual had apparently repented as a result of their actions. So Paul writes to remind them that the goal of all of this is restoration and forgiveness:

5Now if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure—not to put it too severely—to all of you.6For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough,7so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.8So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him. (2Cor 2:5-8, ESV2011)

That is the joyful goal of church discipline. It isn’t about controlling. It isn’t about making someone conform. It is about love. Suppose I see a family with small children floating down a river in an open canoe. I happen to know that not far away are some vicious, killing, unnavigable class V rapids. Not even the world’s best kayakers would attempt them. The most hateful thing I could do would be to say nothing. The most kind, compassionate thing to do is to call out and warn them. That is all Jesus is asking us to do: Warn those who are headed for spiritual disaster, and help them get out of the river in time.

Jesus ends his instructions with some encouragement:

18I assure you: Whatever you bind on earth is already bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth is already loosed in heaven.19Again, I assure you: If two of you on earth agree about any matter that you pray for, it will be done for you by My Father in heaven.20For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there among them.” (Matt 18:18-20, HCSB)

He is assuring us that we do have the authority to engage in this sort of church discipline, and that it does accomplish real things, spiritually speaking. Also, he promises that when two or more of his followers are gathered in his name, he is there in a special way. We already know that the Holy Spirit lives in our hearts as we trust Jesus (Titus 3:6-7; Ephesians 1:13-14; Romans 5:5), so the Lord is always with each individual believer. However, Jesus seems to be saying here that he does something special when believers come together; that he is present in a special way that does not occur when believers are alone. Certainly, in regard to church discipline, he is encouraging us to do this together as a group, to present a united front as a loving community.

Let the Holy Spirit speak to you right now.

~

Thanks again for making use of Clear Bible.

I want to remind you again that we are a listener-supported ministry, and that means, first and foremost, that we are supported by your prayers. We need and value your prayers for us.

Please pray that this ministry will continue to be a blessing to those who hear it. Ask God, if it is his will, to touch even more lives with these messages. Ask him to use this ministry in making disciples of Jesus Christ.

Please also pray for our finances. Pray for us to receive what we need. Please pray for us in this way before you give anything. And then, as you pray, if the Lord leads you to give us a gift, please go ahead and do that. But if he doesn’t want you to give to us, that is absolutely fine. We don’t want you to feel bad about it. We want you to follow Jesus in this matter. But do continue to pray for our finances.

If the Lord does lead you to give, just use the Paypal Donate button on the right hand side of the page. You don’t have to have a Paypal account – you can use a credit card, if you prefer. You can also set up a recurring donation through Paypal. We can make this tax-deductible if you just mention that it want it to be so in the “note” part of the transaction.

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Lebanon, TN 37087

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Thank for your prayers, and your support!

GOOD SHEPHERD SEEKING STUPID SHEEP. NO EXPERIENCE REQUIRED.

On By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Christianity, House Church, Jesus, Matthew, Podcast, Religion, SermonLeave a comment

lostsheepboulder

Some people view God as a harsh old man waiting in heaven to smite them. Others view him as a sort of hipster-dad who is cool with whatever you choose to do, as long as you are ‘true to yourself.’ Jesus portrays him as neither one. What you do actually matters. Sin separates you from God, it gets you lost. But rather than endorsing your actions, or cutting you off with no hope, the Father comes looking for you.

 

 

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Matthew Part 62

 

 

 

Matthew #62 Matthew 18:10-14

If you simply sit down and read it, it becomes obvious that the whole of Matthew chapter 18 goes together. Actually, I encourage you to do that, right now: read the whole chapter at one sitting; it’s not long. Starting with the issue of greatness, Jesus’ teaching flows from one thing to the other, and all of them are connected. So he moves from the issue of greatness to the value of smallness, including how valuable “little ones” are in heaven; so valuable that the good Shepherd will leave 99 sheep to find the one lost little one. Speaking of finding lost ones, Jesus goes on to talk about the best ways to actually bring back a straying sheep. But there’s more to it than simply a procedure for bringing someone back; there is also forgiveness involved, and so Jesus tells the story of the forgiven and unforgiving servant.

Matthew shows Jesus covering all of this in just one discourse. I have to assume that Matthew was summarizing, but even if he wasn’t, the words of Jesus are so profound that there is far too much in Matthew chapter 18 to cover in just one message. For this reason, I have broken it up into three or four different sermons, but I want us to keep in mind that all of these subjects are closely connected to one another.

Last time, we considered Jesus’ comments about greatness, and his special contempt for those who lead others astray or corrupt them. In contrast to the disciples’ focus on greatness, Jesus now focuses on “little ones.” As I mentioned last time, I do think Jesus had children in mind when he used this term. However, I think he is also using it more generally, as a gentle reminder to his disciples who wanted to be great. Thus, “little ones” also means, in general, everyone who has that childlike trust in Jesus, that trust that he himself said was so necessary for anyone who wants to enter the kingdom of heaven. He is serious about what he said in verses one through ten: he really does want us to think of ourselves like little children of our heavenly father.

He says that not only should we not look down on little ones, but that “their angels continually view the face” of the Heavenly Father. I want to pause on this thought for a second. This is probably one of the main places where we get the idea of a “guardian angel.” It sounds like Jesus is saying that each person has an angel associated with her or him. The first Christians apparently had this idea also. Some time after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the apostle Peter was put in prison. When he was miraculously released, he showed up at a house church meeting in Jerusalem. At first, the people did not believe it was him, and said that it must be “his angel” instead (Acts 12:15).

The writer of Hebrews tells us about angels:

14Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve those who are going to inherit salvation? (Heb 1:14, HCSB)

This also sounds a little bit like what we think of as guardian angels. However, we should keep in mind, there are more than 170 verses in the New Testament alone which talk about angels, and most of them do not describe angels doing “guardian duty” for individual believers. Certainly, angels do a lot more than take care of individuals.

For myself, I tend to think that perhaps each of us believers does have an angel helping us out; perhaps it is always the same one, perhaps not. I find it a comfort to think that God has assigned real spiritual resources to help us, and there is the evidence I have just shared with you. However, the doctrine of guardian angels is not so significant that it matters much if I am wrong. Also, we should make sure to not make angels more important than they are. Paul writes:

18Let no one disqualify you, insisting on ascetic practices and the worship of angels, claiming access to a visionary realm and inflated without cause by his unspiritual mind. (Col 2:18, HCSB)

Now, let’s look at what we call “the parable of the lost sheep.” It’s really more of analogy than a parable (parables are usually stories). Our family has kept goats for about twelve years, and I really relate to this idea. Our goats roam the pastures during the day, and at night, they return to our barn. More than once, when we go out to feed them in evening, we have found that one is missing. When this happens, we don’t simply shrug and say, “Oh well, those are the breaks. I guess we’ve lost one. Farming is tough.” No, a missing goat means the whole family turns out with flashlights to go look for it. Usually, in this scenario, a goat has stuck her head through a fence, and can’t get loose again. What kind of person would leave the goat trapped out there, to be torn apart by coyotes while she is stuck helplessly? We search until we find the animal, free her, and escort her back to the barn where the others are waiting.

We used to keep goats with horns. Often, they got caught in the fences through their own stupidity, and many times, the same goat would get caught, over and over. Freeing a goat with horns caught in a fence is a tricky thing. The stupid animal fights you, because it doesn’t understand what is going on. Most of us have had our fingers pinched, our feet stomped on, and even been knocked over by animals we were trying to help. We never said, “This is a stupid animal. It doesn’t even act like it wants my help. Forget it.” No, we patiently worked to get it free, even when it cost us some bruises and scratches.

So, Jesus says, our heavenly Father, seeing that we stray, does not simply shrug and say “Oh well.” He comes after us, he seeks us, he doesn’t stop until we are found. We are usually lost because of our own stupidity. Sometimes, in our foolishness, we even fight the One who is trying to set us free and bring us to safety. But he frees us anyway, at great cost to Himself.

Jesus is reflecting the same heart of God that spoke through the Prophet Isaiah:

3For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you.

4Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored,

and I love you,

I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life.

5​Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east,

and from the west I will gather you.6

I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Do not withhold;

bring my sons from afar

and my daughters from the end of the earth,

7everyone who is called by my name,

whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” (Isa 43:3-7, ESV2011)

Some people view God as a harsh old man waiting in heaven to smite them. Others view him as a sort of hipster-dad who is cool with whatever you choose to do, as long as you are ‘true to yourself.’ Jesus portrays him as neither one. What you do actually matters. Sin separates you from God, it gets you lost. But rather than endorsing your actions, or cutting you off with no hope, the Father comes looking for you.

Now, I used to be bothered by Jesus’ words in verse 13:

And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. (Matt 18:13, ESV2011)

I used to feel like maybe that meant God loved people who rebelled against him more than he loved someone who tried their best to trust him and follow him always. But I don’t think that’s what Jesus means. He loves us each just as much as the other. But it is a special cause for joy when someone who was lost becomes found, and learns to trust Jesus. Those who have already learned to trust him should be rejoicing right along with Jesus.

Jesus adds:

14So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. (Matt 18:14, ESV2011)

We talk of people who are seeking God, but the truth is, this parable of the lost sheep means that long before anyone thought to do so, God has been seeking us. So Paul writes:

7For rarely will someone die for a just person — though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die.8But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us! (Rom 5:7-8, HCSB)

Francis Thompson was a man who lived in the 19th Century. For most of his life, he was a lost sheep. In fact, he was not just wandering, but was actively running away from God. At last, he surrendered to the Love who pursued him. He wrote a poem about this experience that has become a classic work of English literature from that time. The poem is called “The Hound of Heaven.” The language might be difficult for some today, but someone has created a fabulous illustrated, modernized adaption of the poem including music and drawings. In spite of modernization, it retains a lot of the feeling of the original. You can find it here: The Hound of Heaven: A Modern Adaption: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXlgz4aBKt8 It is well worth the twenty minutes to watch. If you are braver (or want something only 8 minutes long) you can hear actor Richard Burton read the original poem here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gToj6SLWz8Q. One of the great things about the poem is the way it portrays God as both tender and relentless. Thompson came to realize that everything he was seeking was fulfilled only in the One who sought him.

God does not automatically approve of everything you do, or every choice you make. But he seeks you, relentlessly. He doesn’t say, “Oh well, I guess, I’ve lost that one.” He comes after the lost sheep. Maybe today you need to stop and realize that it is the Lord who has been pursuing you all these years, frustrating you, haunting you with desires that can’t be fulfilled. Or perhaps, you need to remember that this is true for one of your loved ones. He doesn’t just leave them out there, lost. He does everything in his power to bring them back to Himself.

Pause and listen to the Holy spirit today.

Thanks again for making use of Clear Bible.

I want to remind you again that we are a listener-supported ministry, and that means, first and foremost, that we are supported by your prayers. We need and value your prayers for us.

Please pray that this ministry will continue to be a blessing to those who hear it. Ask God, if it is his will, to touch even more lives with these messages. Ask him to use this ministry in making disciples of Jesus Christ.

Please also pray for our finances. Pray for us to receive what we need. Please pray for us in this way before you give anything. And then, as you pray, if the Lord leads you to give us a gift, please go ahead and do that. But if he doesn’t want you to give to us, that is absolutely fine. We don’t want you to feel bad about it. We want you to follow Jesus in this matter. But do continue to pray for our finances.

If the Lord does lead you to give, just use the Paypal Donate button on the right hand side of the page. You don’t have to have a Paypal account – you can use a credit card, if you prefer. You can also set up a recurring donation through Paypal. We can make this tax-deductible if you just mention that it want it to be so in the “note” part of the transaction.

You could also send a check to:

New Joy Fellowship

917 Canyon Creek Drive

Lebanon, TN 37087

Just put “Clear Bible” in the memo. Your check will be tax-deductible.

Thank for your prayers, and your support!

CHILD-LIKE GREATNESS

On By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Christianity, Jesus, Matthew, Podcast, Religion, SermonLeave a comment

toddler wide eyed

 

Only those who abandon control and learn to trust can truly let Jesus give them his grace. To the extent you do not trust, you cannot receive.

There is something else we need to get from all this. Jesus’ main point to his disciples about being great is that great Christians don’t look like “great Christians.”

 

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Matthew Part 61

 

 

Matthew #61. Matthew 18:1-14

Thanks for making use of Clear Bible. We’ll be talking this time about true greatness, and the willingness to give up whatever we need to in order to enter the life that Jesus offers us. Before we get into all that, however, I’d like to remind you that we deeply appreciate your prayers for this ministry. Please pray that this ministry will continue to be a blessing to those who hear it. Ask God, if it is his will, to touch even more lives with these messages. Ask him to use this ministry in making disciples of Jesus Christ.

Please also pray for our finances. Pray for us to receive everything we need. Please pray for us in this way before you give anything. And then, as you pray, if the Lord leads you to give us a gift, please go ahead and do that. Click on the “Donate” at the top of the page for more information about how to give. But if the Lord doesn’t want you to give financially to us, that is absolutely fine. We don’t want you to feel bad about it. We want you to follow Jesus in this matter. But do continue to pray for our finances and the ministry as a whole.

Now, on to the main message.

This teaching of Jesus begins, as so many of his teaching do, with the disciples messing up. That’s a happy thought for me. I think when I mess up that I have, well, you know, messed things up. But Jesus sees the mistakes of his followers as opportunities to help them grow.

In this case, their way of messing up was to seek greatness for themselves. It is just possible that Matthew was slightly ashamed of this incident: he merely records that the disciples raised the issue with Jesus. Mark and Luke both record that in fact, the disciples were arguing about it while away from the presence Jesus, and Jesus, finding out, spoke with them.

It is also encouraging to see how gentle Jesus is with them in this particular instance. He brings a child into their midst, and says basically, “turn from your ambitions and become like this child.”

Now, like any of Jesus’ parables or analogies, he has just a few main points in mind. If you can remember your own childhood, or if you can remember being the parent of young children, you know that children come with their own sets of issues. They can be selfish, angry, easily upset, stubborn, rebellious and so on. But Jesus didn’t mean that his followers should become like children in every possible way. Other places in the New Testament tell Jesus-followers not to be like children – at least not in our thinking:

Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit. Ephesians 4:14 (HCSB)

I think probably Jesus had three or four characteristics of children in mind. First, I believe, is humility. A young child does not usually have ambitions to rule the world, or to be greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. Particularly in the presence of adults, a child knows his limitations and accepts them humbly. Jesus is telling these men who are jockeying for position in the kingdom of heaven: “Forget all that. Instead, be humble, like a child.” In fact, he mentions humility specifically in verse 4. Psalm 131 portrays this childlike humility:

1LORD, my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty. I do not get involved with things too great or too difficult for me.2Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself like a little weaned child with its mother; I am like a little child.3Israel, put your hope in the LORD, both now and forever. (Ps 131:1-3, HCSB)

Another characteristic of children that Jesus might have had in mind is innocence. I don’t mean children don’t sin – obviously, they do. But they usually haven’t been exposed to the full depth of evil in the world. So Paul writes:

Brothers, don’t be childish in your thinking, but be infants in regard to evil and adult in your thinking. 1 Corinthians 14:20 (HCSB)

A third possibility that Jesus might have meant us to understand is that a child’s main job is to learn. A child has not mastered any subject, but humbly learns from others, and in fact, at least until we ruin it with school, most children are naturally inclined to learn. Peter puts it this way:

Like newborn infants, desire the pure spiritual milk, so that you may grow by it for your salvation, 1 Peter 2:2 (HCSB)

So, the followers of Jesus should regard themselves as learners.

Finally, I think one thing Jesus definitely meant by “become like children” was to learn to trust. Children know how to trust – they have to. Unless a child has been very unfortunate, trusting is the one thing that very young children are better at than anyone else. They are dependent upon adults for their entire survival. I think this is precisely what Jesus means when he says, “unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Only those who abandon control and learn to trust can truly let Jesus give them his grace. To the extent you do not trust, you cannot receive. Psalm 131(quoted above) connects childlike humility to trust.

There is something very important we need to get from all this. Jesus’ main point to his disciples about being great is that great Christians don’t look like “great Christians.” I don’t mean they look like bad Christians, but what Jesus does mean is that He judges greatness based upon entirely different criteria than the world.

I think this is very relevant. We live in a culture that is obsessed with celebrity. The world reveres people who have managed to become famous, no matter how they achieved it. A large number of famous people today, regardless of their notoriety, have achieved almost nothing worthwhile. Think about it: the people we most admire and talk about either play games for a living (athletes), or pretend to be other people for a living (actors). Their lasting contributions to the human race are almost worthless. It would be hard to argue that the world will be a better place one-hundred years from now because of Leonardo DiCaprio or Anne Hathaway or Jennifer Anniston.

It’s almost impossible to over-emphasize how backwards our culture’s view of greatness has become. Recently Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner won an award for courage. What did he to do to merit the award? Rather than face his own brokenness with the courage to pursue healing, instead of learning to accept himself how he was, he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to physically change the body he was born with, all the while knowing that the media would be eager to praise him for it. That’s not courage. That’s not greatness – but we have called it such.

Unfortunately, many Christians have bought into society’s model for greatness. We don’t necessarily honor the same people as great, but we honor “Christian Celebrities” as great, and often they have done just as little or less than secular celebrities. We merely replace the Kardashians with the Robertsons (of Duck Dynasty fame). Or instead of admiring One Direction, we admire Hillsong (or, more probably, both). In fact, recently I saw an ad for a movie about the success and fame of the musicians at Hillsong. It looked like any other movie about a bunch of celebrities; these just happen to be Christian ones.

You know what I am talking about. You know that the Christian celebrity culture is alive and well. Chris Tomlin and Matt Redmond are celebrity worship leaders. Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer are celebrity preachers. David Platt is a celebrity author. Christian culture in America thrives on this stuff, because “Christian culture” is not very different from secular culture in how it judges greatness.

But Jesus said, “this is not how greatness looks in the kingdom of heaven.” In heaven, greatness looks like a child: humble, willing to learn, not caught up in the entanglements of what the world has to offer, and above all, trusting the Lord for everything. I doubt we will know who the real celebrities in God’s kingdom are until we are resurrected in the new heavens and new earth. If we could somehow see it truly, I think we would be surprised at who the great ones are in our present generation. I doubt it is anyone we have heard about from our Christian Celebrity culture.

I am not judging the ministries of the people I have named. I am merely saying that even we Christians have lost sight of how Jesus defines true greatness.

After this, Jesus turns the conversation slightly. He was telling the disciples to be like children, and now he goes on to talk about “little ones.” I think Jesus is probably referring both to actual children, and also to those who enter the Kingdom of Heaven like a child.

First he warns against causing the downfall of one of the little ones. I have said before that all sins are equal in that no matter what sin we commit, it separates us from God. However, not all sins have the same earthly consequences. Jesus now says something that is as close as he ever gets to “There is a special place in hell for sinners like that.”

6 “But whoever causes the downfall of one of these little ones who believe in Me — it would be better for him if a heavy millstone4 were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea!

It seems that when someone corrupts a child, or a naïve disciple, this makes Jesus especially angry. People are going to sin, but if you are the one who leads another person into sin, you have done something particularly contemptible. That sin – corrupting others, seducing them into sin – can be forgiven, of course. It isn’t the unforgiveable sin. If you think you have done this, repent now, quit corrupting others and trust that Jesus has forgiven and changed you. If not, you’d be better off swimming with the giant stone necklace than facing the wrath of Jesus.

Next, Jesus reiterates something he said earlier in his ministry, during the sermon on the mount:

8 If your hand or your foot causes your downfall, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into the eternal fire. 9 And if your eye causes your downfall, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, rather than to have two eyes and be thrown into hellfire!

I think there are two helpful thoughts here. First, sin is serious. Jesus isn’t messing around here. Sin is the cancer of the soul. If your foot has cancer in it, you have an operation to get the cancer removed. If you can’t remove the cancer without amputating, you amputate, because otherwise the cancer will spread, and your whole body will eventually die. When dealing with cancer, we understand, this is life or death. We do what is necessary to get rid of the cancer, including removing major body parts.

Jesus is telling us that sin is just as serious as cancer. If alcohol is causing you to sin, quit drinking. If watching certain TV shows or movies is getting your head into a bad place, quit watching. If friends are influencing you to sin, maybe you aren’t strong enough to keep those friendships at this time. I don’t mean you should never have non-Christian friends. But I do mean that if it becomes a choice between following Jesus faithfully, or having a certain person in your life, you would be better off to choose Jesus. Jesus is telling us that this is serious business. Do what it takes to keep on following him.

There is a second piece to what Jesus is saying here. He says: “It is better for you to enter life maimed or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into the eternal fire.” The eternal fire is the serious, scary thing. But there is a serious, good thing too: Life. The promise is that we can indeed enter life. There is something good up ahead – a life waiting for us. This life now is temporary. What’s ahead is the real thing.

Would you give up a thousand dollars right now if you knew it would get you a million dollars when you retire? Of course. A temporary sacrifice is worth a long-term reward.

So, what if you’re never allowed to get drunk and party again in this temporary life – the life is coming that will be better than any party you’ve been to, and you can enjoy it fully without the aid of alcohol, and remember the whole thing clearly, too.

Is it worth giving up a few temporary pleasures (which don’t bring lasting fulfilment anyway) in order to enter eternal life? The answer should be obvious.

There’s an old song written by Rich Mullins, that wasn’t well known, called Heaven is waiting. Perhaps fittingly considering the message today, it is one of his least-known songs, and was only ever recorded once. I strongly encourage you to go listen to the song, and reflect on all these things as you do. Unfortunately the best recording I could find was here, and there is a little bit of distortion; even so, it’s a great song:

Heaven is Waiting (You Tube Music Video)

HEAVEN IS WAITING

By Rich Mullins and Mitch McVicker

“I don’t need no woman to kiss me
And I don’t need no man to stand by my side
I don’t need to slake my thirst with whiskey
Don’t need to shuffle cards to pass the time
‘Cause the stars are bright and silvery
And with the dry ache of a lone coyote’s whine
My Savior’s calling and I’m listening
Time to saddle up my pony and ride
‘Cause heaven is waiting
Just past the horizon
Just over the mesas
Across the great divide
And faith is blazing
This trail that I ride on up this mountain
I’m prayin’ I have the strength to climb
I ain’t looking for no seven golden cities
But I know there’s a fortune somewhere to find
There’s a peace that I hear whisperin’ through the
pinyons
And a love that’s taller than the ponderosa pines
And heaven is waiting
Just past the horizon
Just over the mesas
Across the great divide
And faith is blazing
This trail that I ride on up this mountain
I’m prayin’ I have the strength to climb
So don’t ask for no lengthy explanation
When there ain’t no reason quite wild enough
No words could be as tender
It’s greater than the fears that we imagine
More than the warmth that we remember
It’s always just beyond the pass
And I must go
‘Cause heaven is waiting
Just past the horizon
Just over the mesas
Across the great divide
And faith is blazing
This trail that I ride on up this mountain
I’m prayin’ I have the strength to climb
Oh heaven is waiting
Oh heaven is waiting
Heaven is waiting”

GO FISH

On By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Christianity, Jesus, Matthew, Podcast, Religion, SermonLeave a comment

Money in Fish mouth

 

Jesus is like this sometimes. Sometimes, he really does want you to do something that seems stupid and unnecessary and difficult (like paying the temple tax). Sometimes he really does invite us to just go fishing, (or whatever your personal equivalent of that is) and trust him to deal with a situation. And especially, he is like this: he was willing to pay the debt you owed, though he did not have to.

 

 

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Matthew Part 60

 

Matthew #60. Matthew 17:22-27

In Matthew 17:22, Jesus predicts his own death once more. We don’t need to spend a great deal of time on this verse, other than to note that Peter has learned his lesson, and this time, the disciples don’t argue, but instead, are deeply distressed. I do want to mention something interesting, however. Jesus predicts not only his own death, but also his resurrection. However, the disciples appear to only pay attention to the part about his death. Although his warning is of hardship and suffering and fear, he is also giving them something for which to have joyful hope. Even so, the disciples focus only on the bad. There is no evidence that they rejoiced in his talk of resurrection to the same degree that they were distressed about his talk of crucifixion.

Obviously, the crucifixion was horrible for Jesus, and very traumatic even for his disciples. However, even that horror turned out to be the means by which grace and salvation were brought to the world. Through this horrible thing that Jesus predicted, God conquered sin and made it possible for love to thrive. Not only that, but after the crucifixion came the resurrection, and Jesus told his disciples about that also. The resurrection was to be proof of victory, the power of God revealed. Yet the disciples, hearing about all this, were distressed.

I wonder how often I am like them. I face something difficult, utterly failing to see that God uses such things to accomplish his purposes in the world and in me. I hear the good news about what will come after the trouble, but I pay no attention to it, or I don’t even believe it. Lucky for them (and for us) human doubt does not stop God from doing what he plans to do; even so I wonder if we could have more peace and joy in the moment if we paid as much attention to the good promises of God about the resurrection as we do to the warnings of hardship and trouble.

Next, comes this little incident concerning a particular tax. Jewish men were required to pay a tax that was used to maintain the temple in Jerusalem, and keep it running; in Jesus’ day it was known as the double-drachma tax (some bible translations might simply call it the “temple tax”). The amount collected was equal to about two-days’ wages for a manual laborer. During the time of Jesus, there was a certain amount of wiggle-room in paying this tax. It was a religious tax, not a civil one, and so the Roman rulers did not require it, or enforce its collection. It was an internal matter between Jews, and a Jewish man would be safe from any official penalty if he chose not to pay it. Jewish groups like the Sadducees, who were fairly secular, typically did not pay it. On the other hand, many Jews felt it was the patriotic Jewish thing to do. After all, the temple was the heart of Judaism at the time.

Before we get into the text itself, I want to make a note about what this passage means for history. It means that when Matthew wrote his gospel, he expected that the temple-tax, and also the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, would have been of interest and concern for his readers. In addition, he makes no attempt to explain these customs, so he assumes that readers were quite familiar with all of this background. This makes it virtually certain that the gospel of Matthew was written before the temple was destroyed permanently in 70 AD. Once more, this is very strong evidence that contradicts the popular (and ignorant) idea that the bible was made up or changed long after the time of Jesus.

Now, let’s look at the passage itself.

When they came to Capernaum, those who collected the double-drachma tax approached Peter and said, “Doesn’t your Teacher pay the double-drachma tax? ”

“Yes,” he said.

When he went into the house, Jesus spoke to him first, “What do you think, Simon? Who do earthly kings collect tariffs or taxes from? From their sons or from strangers? ”

“From strangers,” he said.

“Then the sons are free,” Jesus told him. “But, so we won’t offend them, go to the sea, cast in a fishhook, and take the first fish that you catch. When you open its mouth you’ll find a coin. Take it and give it to them for Me and you.” (Matt 17:24-27, HCSB)

In the first place the tax collectors were looking for money to keep the temple running. They ask for it from Peter, but also specifically, they ask if Jesus pays the tax. Not only that, but I suspect that their question was a kind of political litmus test. The Sadducees were faithless and arrogant, and their lack of support for the temple was a symptom of those things. However, if you were Jewish, but not a Sadducee, people were quite likely to regard you with suspicion if you did not pay the temple tax. The question behind the actual words was “What kind of Jew are you? Are you a real Jew?”

It would be as if you were running for public office in America in 2015, and someone asked you, “Are you in favor of helping the poor?” Poverty in America today is a complex subject, and often the reasons for it are not strictly about economics. But the only possible answer a politician could give in such a situation is “Of course I am in favor of helping the poor.” A politician who tries to go into detail, or to tries to actually explain what that might involve, is likely to be misunderstood and attacked by large numbers of people who prefer not to think too hard. In the same way, the only possible answer Peter could give the tax collectors is “Of course we support the temple.”

Jesus knows what Peter has just encountered. Before Peter can even broach the subject, Jesus brings it up himself. His first question to Peter is one more place where Jesus reveals that he thought he was in fact, the Son of God, divine in nature. He clearly means that he himself is the Son, and should not be required to pay tax for the temple built for the glory of his Father and Himself. I want us to get the irony here: When God came to earth in human flesh, they wanted to tax him to pay for the temple that they built in his honor. But there is even more. The temple always pointed toward the nature of God. The layout, and the sacrifices, told the story of Holy God who is gracious, and yet whom cannot be approached by sinful people. The tabernacle and the temples built on its pattern were put in place to point people to Jesus Christ. The meaning of the temple, all of its symbolism, was fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

But they wanted to tax Jesus Christ himself to keep it going, even though he came to make it irrelevant.

I find Jesus’ response quite interesting. Basically he says, “Look, I don’t have to pay the tax. In fact, the tax is collected more or less on my behalf. But let’s pay it, anyway.”

In a way, this exemplifies the entire mission of Jesus on earth. He came to pay a debt that he didn’t owe. In fact, he paid the debt that was owed to himself by all people on earth. But where we should have, and yet couldn’t, atone for our own sins, he did.

There is a practical aspect to all this, also. This wasn’t a small tax. This was two days’ wages for Peter, and another two days’ worth for Jesus. But Jesus, Peter and the other disciples did not have paying jobs. Luke 8:1-3 records that Jesus and the twelve were living on what other people gave to support their ministry. Two days’ wages were tough to give up for a poor working stiff, but what about for two people who had no regular income?

So, to summarize, and put ourselves into Peter’s shoes: we do not have the money sitting around to pay for this tax. Even if we did, we don’t have to pay it, and it is almost silly to do so…and Jesus says, “Let’s pay it anyway.”

Next, comes the fun part. Jesus tells Peter to go fishing, and get the money out of the mouth of the first fish he catches. I used to read this and nod my head wisely. I am a fisherman, and I know that larger species of fish often strike at flashing pieces of metal, thinking they are struggling minnows. So, if a bright coin fell into the water, it wouldn’t be so crazy to think of a fish swallowing it.

Recently, I realized how stupid this really is. I have been fishing whenever possible for roughly forty years, and I have never caught a single fish with any amount of money its mouth, let alone four days’ wages. This isn’t a likely occurrence – it is a miracle.

As a fisherman, bear with me as we consider this in more detail; I think we might learn some interesting things. In the first place, skeptics sometimes scoff at the idea that anyone fished with a hook and line in those days. However, long before the time of Jesus, both Isaiah and Amos referred to fishing with a line and hook (Isaiah 19:8, Amos 4:2). In addition, actual fishhooks dating from ancient times have been discovered in archaeological digs in Israel. Once more, bible-skeptics seems to be lacking knowledge of the actual facts.

However, (and I think this is the important part) it would have been unusual for Peter to fish with a hook and line. Peter was a commercial fisherman before he met Jesus. The easiest way for him to catch large numbers of fish (and thus to make enough money to support himself) was with nets. Fishing with lines is pretty inefficient compared to netting. On the other hand, if you fished with a line and hook, you could choose your bait, and be more selective about what you caught. If your goal was to catch a big fish, you could improve your odds by using a hook and line. What it amounts to is this: In general, Peter would only fish with a hook and line for the fun of it. Therefore, Jesus was not telling Peter to go back to work and find the money by running the fishing business again for a while. He was telling him to take the day off and go fishing – to go do something fun. And while he relaxed in this way, the Lord would provide what they needed.

I have a friend who is a scholar. He reads a lot for his work. But he also enjoys reading “for the fun of it.” It would be like Jesus telling my friend, “Go the library and pick out a book you want to read for fun. Go ahead and read it. In the pages of that book you’ll find six $100 bills.”

So, Peter got to relax and do something fun, his taxes were paid by doing it, plus he brought dinner home for his family and Jesus.

Now, I love this story because of these things. However, we need to be careful in application. Does this mean that we should just relax and go do something fun, and God will provide for us while we do it? I bet I could build a pretty big church preaching something like that. But let’s look at this carefully. Right now, that’s what Jesus told Peter to do. This was a particular day in Peter’s life. On another day, Jesus told him to deny himself, take up his cross and follow him. On another day, Peter went to prison for the sake of Jesus. On one other day, Peter gave up his life rather than deny Jesus. In other words, Jesus did this thing for Peter. He said, go fishing, don’t worry about it. Enjoy yourself. But it was not a life direction – it was a wonderful moment, but we should not get the idea that point of following Jesus is to have only moments like this. Once more, I quote C.S. Lewis:

“The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and pose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.” — CS Lewis, the Problem of Pain

This was a refreshing, joyful time for Peter. As Lewis’ says, the Lord scatters these throughout life, and we do well to enjoy them and thank Him for them. But they are not meant to constitute all of life. We aren’t meant to forget that our real home is heaven.

You might ask, how do I know when Jesus is inviting me to relax, or when he’s calling me to do something I don’t want to do. I could give you seven steps for knowing this, but it would be a waste of everyone’s time. There isn’t  a manual. We need to follow Jesus, we need to let him tell us these things. These days, we start with reading the bible, praying conversationally, and hanging out and worshiping with other Christians who are trying to the same. Add some solid bible teaching, and then be consciously listening for what Jesus is telling you. There is no formula – it’s about following in faith.

I think the real message here is this: Jesus is like this sometimes. Sometimes, he really does want you to do something that seems stupid and unnecessary and difficult (like paying the temple tax). Sometimes he really does want us to just go fishing, (or whatever your personal equivalent of that is) and trust him to deal with a situation. And especially, he is like this: he was willing to pay the debt you owed, though he did not have to.

~

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FAITH IN THE REAL WORLD

On By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Christianity, Podcast, Religion, SermonLeave a comment

faith1

Faith isn’t a magic pill that gives us the power or right to accomplish whatever we want. But the faith of Jesus-followers is a wonderful means through which God wants to act in this world, and has acted in this world for two-thousand years. Having faith does not enable you to do whatever you want – it enables God to do whatever He wants, in and through you.

 

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Matthew Part 59

 

There is a persistent, widespread belief that the New Testament was written, or edited, by people who had an agenda, people who wanted to use it to manipulate others. Therefore, before we dive in to the main text today, I want to mention verse 21, because it is the kind of thing that more or less takes all the air out of that silly notion. When we see the actual facts, we know that we can have confidence that the New Testament we have today really is what the apostles – those who actually knew Jesus – wrote.

The Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) puts brackets around verse 21, and makes a footnote about it, which reads: “other mss omit bracketed text.” The NIV has it only as a footnote. The English Standard Version (ESV) also has it as a footnote. Their footnotes read something like this: “some manuscripts insert verse 21: But this kind never comes out except by prayer and fasting.”

This is what we in the exciting business of Bible Teaching call “a major textual variant.” I have mentioned before that there are almost six thousand ancient manuscripts and partial manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. Scholars have been comparing them to one another for many years now, and have found very few variations between them. What this means is that long before Christianity was legal in the Roman Empire, all Christians were using the same New Testament we use today. It wasn’t changed to suit the purposes of people in power. It wasn’t shaped by various faith communities to suit their particular agendas. All Christians have been working from the same text for almost two-thousand years, from a time hundreds of years before following the words of Jesus provided anyone any sort of prestige or power.

But there are some variations. This is an example of what is considered a major variation. The earliest complete manuscript of the New Testament does not have the words “But this kind never comes out except by prayer and fasting,” in the book of Matthew. A large number of later manuscripts do have those words in Matthew.

Mark records the same incident in chapter nine of his gospel. Every text of Mark 9:29 has this:“This kind can come out by nothing but prayer.” Some variants of Mark 9:29 add “and fasting.”

So first, let’s look at the big picture. The use of prayer and fasting while performing exorcisms is not a major Christian doctrine. If we take this out altogether, we have not really changed Christianity in any significant way.

Second, it is clear that Jesus did actually say, “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer,” – it’s just that it is unlikely that Matthew recorded those words – probably only Mark did. So, actually, the only thing we aren’t sure Jesus said was “and fasting.”

Do you see what’s going on here? Nothing. This is considered a major textual variant and yet it doesn’t affect any significant Christian belief. The only real question we are left with is whether Matthew wrote it (we know Mark did) and whether Jesus says it is helpful, in addition to praying, to also fast while driving out demons.

All right, on to the main text today:

14 When they reached the crowd, a man approached and knelt down before Him. 15 “Lord,” he said, “have mercy on my son, because he has seizures and suffers severely. He often falls into the fire and often into the water. 16 I brought him to Your disciples, but they couldn’t heal him.”

17 Jesus replied, “You unbelieving and rebellious generation! How long will I be with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring him here to Me.” 18 Then Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and from that moment the boy was healed.

19 Then the disciples approached Jesus privately and said, “Why couldn’t we drive it out? ”

20 “Because of your little faith,” He told them. “For I assure you: If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.

Mark records that the failure of the disciples to drive out the demon led to a dispute between them and some of the religious leaders (Mark 9:14-16).

14 When they came to the disciples, they saw a large crowd around them and scribes disputing with them. 15 All of a sudden, when the whole crowd saw Him, they were amazed and ran to greet Him. 16 Then He asked them, “What are you arguing with them about? ”

Let’s use our imagination here, and I think we might find a familiar scenario. Imagine this: John Smith is a skeptic. He doesn’t know if he really believes in God, and is not sure at all that God will help when someone asks. John has a friend named Fred Jones, who gets very sick. John asks his Christian friends to pray for Fred, and then when Fred isn’t immediately healed in the way John wants, John gets mad at God for not doing anything. I’ve been involved in several scenarios like that, and I think there is a little bit of something I might call “perversity” in that. If you really don’t believe, why do you ask for, much less expect, any help? How can you seek help from a place of faithlessness, and then turn around and hold God responsible for not doing what you never trusted him to do in the first place? How can you blame him if you don’t believe in him?

I suspect that this is what was going on between the disciples and the religious leaders, and this is what Jesus ran into when he came down the mountain. I think it is this attitude that he called “unbelieving and rebellious.” The translation above (HCSB) translates the Greek word “rebellious,” while others use “perverse,” but the root word means “to distort.” That is exactly what is going on. The people were using the failure of the disciples as an occasion to distort the truth about Jesus.

I think the disciples provide an admirable example to us when they go to Jesus and humbly admit that they failed, and seek the reason why. The world is already generally inclined to reject Jesus and persecute his followers, but we don’t need to give them unnecessary reasons. A little humility, and some genuine honesty about our failures doesn’t hurt, and may help at least a few people to be more open to the message of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. At the very least, it is helpful to us spiritually both to admit that we have failed, and also to bring those failures to Jesus.

Jesus’ reply to them is one of the few places where I think the HCSB really misses the obvious meaning of the Greek. It says “Because of your little faith.” Little faith doesn’t capture it at all. This is not the same word Jesus used during the calming of the storm when he said “you of little faith, (Matt 8:26),” or when Peter started to sink after walking on water (Matt 14:31), or when the disciples were talking about the yeast of the Pharisees (Matt 16:8).

The Greek word for faith (or trust) is pistis. Here, Jesus uses a single word for the “little faith” of disciples: apistis. In Greek, an “a” in front of a word generally means “the opposite of” or “the absence of” or “the contradiction to.” In other words, Jesus is not saying the disciples had very little faith – he is saying they had none at all (at least in this situation). Everywhere else in the New Testament, the HCSB translates apistis as “unbelief.” I believe it should have been the same here, or maybe, “lack of faith.”

I think this puts things in a different light. It is not that the disciples had some faith, but not quite enough for the healing of the demon-possessed boy. In fact, they had no faith at all. That is why Jesus uses the analogy of the mustard seed. A mustard seed is about one-third the size of a grain of rice. Not much bigger, really, than a grain of sand. In those days before microscopes or magnifying glasses, the mustard seed would be one of the smallest visible objects in the world. Jesus doesn’t mean their faith was even smaller than that – he means they had none.

I don’t know about you, but telling them “it is because you have no faith,” seems a little harsh. Remember, they had left homes and careers to follow Jesus. They had seen some incredible miracles. None of the others objected when Peter said Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, and it seems likely that many, if not all, agreed with him. We know that Andrew (Peter’s brother) thought Jesus was the Messiah from the very first day (John 1:41). Also, Philip told Nathaniel that he believed Jesus was the one predicted by the Old Testament. So how can Jesus say they had no faith?

I think Jesus probably means something like this: “You may believe that I can do miracles when I am present. You may believe that I am the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. But you still do not have faith that this means anything real and practical for you right now, in the situations you face. When it comes to your real life and the problems you face, you have no faith that I am available to you, that I will make an actual difference for you.”

RT France writes about this text:

“It is a striking illustration of the fact that faith is, for Jesus, not a matter of intellectual assent, but of a practical reliance on a living God.”

The disciples were probably willing to give their intellectual assent to the idea that Jesus is the Messiah. But they had not yet learned to practically rely on the Lord in real life situations. Their doctrine is correct, but it doesn’t yet make a difference in how they live or deal with life.

So Jesus tells them, “if you have even a tiny amount of faith (any faith at all) you could move mountains.” By the way, the moving of a mountain is a proverbial saying. It’s like saying, “if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times.” When you say that, you don’t mean that you have literally repeated yourself 1,000,000 times. It’s a common saying that uses exaggeration to make a point. In the same way, in those days in Israel there was a common saying, or proverb, about moving mountain, and that is what Jesus is using here. I do not believe it is meant to be taken at face value. I think the point Jesus is making is that any amount of faith allows us to access the unlimited power of God.

I want to make sure we understand what Jesus is communicating here. Some people take all this as if faith is a means to harness the power of God to do whatever we want done (as long as it isn’t overtly sinful). You hear people say things like “I’m just standing in faith that the Lord will provide a new car for you,” or “I will not receive this diagnosis of cancer.” You may even hear people say “You have to stand in faith. Don’t doubt! Don’t speak doubt. God will act if you just stand in faith.” God may indeed want to give someone a new car, or heal someone of cancer. However, I think these sorts of statements often represent a misunderstanding of faith. Having faith does not enable you to do whatever you want – it enables God to do whatever He wants, in and through you. Through faith, you give God permission (and therefore power) to act as He pleases. Faith begins with the understanding that it isn’t up to you, it’s up to God.

Perhaps you want to move a mountain. Faith doesn’t give you power do that. You will never have that sort of power. That power is God’s. Also, faith doesn’t give you the right to go around re-arranging the landscape. They aren’t your mountains – they are God’s. The mountain is only moved by God’s power, and only if it is God’s desire to move it. Faith is simply opening the door to him. Faith isn’t a means to control God or “harness” his power – it is simply asking him and trusting him to act as he pleases in and through us.

This is one of those things in the Christian life that calls for balance. We don’t control God. We don’t control our circumstances through faith. The Lord never promised us freedom from all trouble, hardship or sickness in this mortal life. And yet, he does want us to rely upon him in practical ways in this mortal life. Though we should not lose our eternal perspective, we should also realize he does often want to act in us and through us while we are alive on earth. He wants to heal people through us. He wants to deliver people from demonic oppression through us. He wants to communicate his grace and love to others through us. He wants to comfort others through us. He also sometimes want to do these same things for us. Sometimes, he wants even to provide for our physical needs. All of these things happen when by faith we open the door for him to act. Faith isn’t a magic pill that gives us the power or right to accomplish whatever we want. But the faith of Jesus-followers is a wonderful means through which God wants to act in this world, and has acted in this world for two-thousand years.

Our faith should make a difference in real life. Jesus wants us to learn to rely upon him practically in all things. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel alone in attempting to really rely upon Jesus. It seems like people either think faith is a way to personally control the power of God, or faith has no practical value here on earth. But there are people who take a balanced approach. Their hope and goal is heaven. And yet, here and now, they live in daily dependence upon the Lord. One group of people who live like this are the missionaries of the World Mission Prayer League. They have been relying on Jesus in practical and balanced ways for almost ninety years. Here are some excerpts from World Mission Prayer League Documents:

We want to communicate our dependence upon God, as well. We want our prayers and communications to demonstrate that we have no hope but heaven, no resource but God, and no guarantee but his faithful promises…

We choose to depend upon Jesus, for all things at all times. Jesus secures our redemption and has become our eternal hope. We may count on him to provide as well everything necessary for life and service (2 Peter 1:3)…

The dependable grace of Jesus frees us from the anxious need to supply ourselves from the limited store of our own abilities….

Dependence upon “the dependable grace of Jesus” is a choice. It is a practice and a lifestyle.

It is something that we learn… And it is, of course, a kind of mystery, too. It is the mystery of faith itself, in a way. It is one of the irreducibly untidy things that I love about the Prayer League…

Dependence on Christ as gracious Lord sustains us in our calling when other ties may fail. Christ makes us heirs of the kingdom of heaven! Now we may face hardship with joy, endure privation with contentment, and suffer loneliness and adversity with the courage of faith. Funds might run short and fail. The Mission may disappoint us, or even cease to exist. Yet the Lord will never fail us (Deuteronomy 31:8). We may put our trust in him above all…

This fundamental relationship of faith will challenge our attitudes and shape our behaviors at every turn.

World Mission Prayer League lives and does business by these principles every day, even now in 2015. To support their work around the world, they need about $70,000 per month. Over more than eight decades, the only person they have ever asked for money is God. If they need more missionaries, they pray. If they need money to support a new missionary, they pray. If they need a new computer system, they ask Jesus for it.

Now, I don’t share this because I think the people of the World Mission Prayer League are perfect. They are flawed human beings like everyone else. But they are human beings whom I know, who really do live their lives in the flesh by faith in Jesus Christ. People really do live in practical dependence upon Jesus. It can be done in a biblical, balanced way. By the grace of God, many people even today are living that way. By the grace of God YOU can live the life of faith well. As the Prayer League said, this approach to faith should challenge our attitudes and shape our behaviors at every turn.

Let the Holy Spirit Speak to you now.

~

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GRACE IN THE STRUGGLE

On By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Christianity, Podcast, Religion, Sermon2 Comments

As Christians we know that we cannot earn our salvation. Resisting sin does not, in and of itself, make you righteous. But I think we are called to resist sin and deny ourselves because in the process of doing so (even when we fail) we truly learn and receive the grace and forgiveness and joy that God offers us in Jesus Christ. There is wonderful grace in admitting that we are sinful and broken.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Homosexuality & the Bible Part 4

 

Homosexuality & the Bible #4.

Matthew 9:10-13; 1 John 1:7-10; Matthew 16:24-25; 1 Corinthians 10:13

I want to take a look at the bigger picture here: Christian living and the struggle against personal sin.

I think there are two big errors in Christianity right now concerning homosexuality, and they reflect the larger issue concerning how we approach sin in the life of a Christian. The first error, widely reported by the news media, is that many Christians single out homosexual acts as the most terrible of sins, and they focus on this, while ignoring “lesser” sins like greed, lying or gossiping. Such Christians make anyone in church who struggles with homosexual temptations feel condemned and unwelcome and beyond redemption. Some Christians in this category say hurtful, even evil things, like “God hates gay people.” People who do this come across as hateful, legalistic and hypocritical. I will not defend such behavior.

There is a second error that many other Christians commit. People in this group either ignore what the bible says about homosexual behavior, or they try to justify it in ways that undermine the bible entirely. The result is that what the bible calls sin, they call “not sin,” and by doing so, they deny gay folks the opportunity to be forgiven and redeemed in their particular struggle. It’s like coming up to a child with a fever and saying, “Don’t worry, some people just feel lightheaded and strange and cold. You don’t need a doctor or medicine. Enjoy it – you are fine just as you are!”

Jesus said something that should be considered one of the scariest statements he ever made:

10 While He was reclining at the table in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came as guests to eat with Jesus and His disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked His disciples, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? ” 12 But when He heard this, He said, “Those who are well don’t need a doctor, but the sick do. 13 Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy and not sacrifice. For I didn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:10-13)

These words cut to the heart of both errors. We get caught up in the fact that the Pharisees were religious and the tax collectors were not. But that isn’t the point at all. The point is that the Pharisees believed that they were well, not sick; they believed that they did not need the grace and forgiveness offered by Jesus Christ.

If you are not gay, or if you believe homosexual behavior is sinful, you still personally need the forgiveness and grace found only in Jesus Christ. Your sins separate you from God just as much as any sin committed by a gay person. Don’t be a Pharisee: understand that you are among those who are sick, and who need the Great Physician, Jesus Christ. You must admit your need to receive it.

If you are gay, you must understand exactly the same thing. Your particular struggle with temptation is no more or less than that of other Jesus followers. You need the forgiveness and grace found only in Jesus Christ, and it is totally available to you if you will only admit your need and receive it.

One of the chief dangers on both sides of the issue is to suggest that sin of a homosexual nature are somehow different than others. On the one hand are people who say they are especially bad; on the other we have people saying they are not sins at all. According to the bible, both are wrong.

I will say once more: being gay is not a sin. Having those desires and temptations is not the same thing as indulging them and acting on them either through fantasy or reality. Now, according to the bible, acting on those impulses is a sin, but it is not an unforgiveable sin, and there is grace and redemption in Jesus Christ for anyone who will receive it.

However, if someone says, “I will not call this a sin. I will not seek forgiveness for this,” he is declaring his own actions righteous, in spite of what the bible says. Such people are acting like the Pharisees, saying, “We don’t need Jesus here. We aren’t sick, we are righteous.”

This is one of the main reasons I am preaching on this subject. Think of the same scenario only with a different sin. Imagine a movement of alcoholics saying: “Stop calling drunkenness a sin. We are alcoholics by disposition and we can’t help it. We promise we don’t drink and drive, so we aren’t hurting anyone. Stop judging us. We don’t want to stop drinking and we don’t want anyone to tell us it is wrong. We struggle enough with shame as it is, and so we want our public drunkenness to be welcomed and accepted by the church.”

There are several places where drunkenness is clearly listed as a sin (among other sins). If we endorsed drunkenness, no matter what the rest of society thought about it, we would be giving alcoholics the idea that they did not need to be forgiven by God when they get drunk. Also, if there was a movement of Christians who wanted to declare drunkenness righteous according to the bible, it would be natural to expect a counter-reaction of Christians explaining why it should still be considered sinful.

All Christians must struggle against sin. To deny this is to deny a large portion of both the Old and New Testaments. The apostle John writes this:

7 But if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say, “We have no sin,” we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say, “We don’t have any sin,” we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.

I don’t know how to be more clear about the problem than that. The one who says “homosexual behavior is not a sin,” is calling God a liar. So is the one who says, “drunkenness is not a big deal,” or the one who says “it isn’t wrong for a Christian to pursue wealth,” or “it’s OK to be dishonest if it doesn’t hurt anyone.”

However, when we accept what the bible says about our own sins, we are in a position to receive grace and forgiveness and wholeness through Jesus Christ. Sometimes it may help to hear a real life example. I don’t want to share things that have been told me in confidence, so I will give you a window into my own struggle with sin. I am not eager to do this, but perhaps it may help someone.

For many, many years, I have had a great struggle with (heterosexual) lust. I don’t believe it is wrong for me to be attracted to women. I don’t believe I have a choice when it comes to that “first look” – noticing women who are attractive to me. But the problem comes in after that. My particular sin is to look again, even after I have a conscious choice to not do so. Then I indulge my imagination and fantasize about what it would be like to be with that person. That is what the bible calls lust, and it is a sin.

For years, no, decades, I felt almost helpless to resist the temptation to lust. If I encountered temptation, I knew I was going to fail, nine times out of ten. In fact, I felt like that was simply who I was – a lustful man. I don’t know for sure, but for years I have believed that I might have a higher “sex drive” than many people. It felt almost impossible to separate Tom from lust. I was very deeply ashamed about this (and even now, I am tempted to feel ashamed as I share this), but no matter how guilty I felt, I did not regularly overcome the temptations.

I certainly did not choose to be this way. I never wanted the temptation and struggle I endured. I tried to change, but even with the help of Jesus, for decades, I could not. Change did not appear to be an option for me. Failure was an option, and I took that option all the time. But two other things were not optional. I never believed I had the right to disagree with what the bible says about lust and sexual immorality. And also, I never believed I had the option to give up on my struggle against sin.

I knew I was forgiven, of course. But at times, it felt kind of shallow. I felt like maybe God was looking at me with disapproval saying, “All right, I’ll let you off the hook one more time, but watch yourself, Buddy. You are not my star pupil. You are skating along on very thin ice; you are barely making it.”

However, at last, two things began to happen. First, I admitted that I was broken. For reasons I still do not understand completely, there was something deep inside me that wasn’t right, and led me back to this sin over and over again. I began to admit my brokenness not only to God, but to a few trusted Christian friends also. It was humbling and difficult for me.

Second, the Lord was finally able to show me how completely and truly he loved me, and how thoroughly he had saved me through the cross. I began to believe that there was nothing I could do that would prevent him from loving and forgiving me – not just “giving me a pass,” but really delighting in me. I knew at last that Jesus had truly and thoroughly already made me holy in my spirit, the place where it mattered most. Because of Jesus, I really am “OK,” even right now. I finally understood that the power and extent of the holiness that Jesus imparted to me through the cross was infinitely greater than my deepest, most depraved sin, imagination or temptation. The Holy Spirit made it clear through the scriptures that the part of me that he has made holy is greater and more enduring than my sinful flesh.

When I finally began to believe and receive all this, I found that temptation began to lose its power. I was still tempted. Even today, I still experience temptation. Sometimes I still fail, but not nearly like I used to. The love of Jesus, and what he has done for me, is much more powerful in my life than those temptations.

Let me make this clear: I struggled for decades with a sin that felt like it was so deeply entrenched it was simply part of who I was. But because I continued to accept that it was a sin, the Lord was able to use that struggle to show me His love and grace in much deeper and more wonderful ways than I had ever known, and eventually, that love and grace began to overcome the sin in my life.

Suppose someone had come to me in the middle in my struggles, and said, “Tom, you were born this way,” (and for all I know, I really was). “God doesn’t want you to be unhappy. You aren’t broken, this is just who you are. It’s time you stopped calling this a sin, and stopped tormenting yourself about it, and just express who you really are.” If I had been given such advice, and taken it, I would never know the grace and joy and love of Jesus the way I do today. God’s word, calling my sin “sin,” is the same word that overcame sin in me. The only way for me to experience grace in my struggle was to first agree with God that I was sinning.

Now, you might argue that I have not struggled as deeply as a gay person. I personally have no way of knowing one way or the other, and frankly, neither do you, nor does anyone else on earth. But I do know this: it never did me any good at all to think that my own struggle was worse or harder than that of others. I don’t know why it would help anyone, gay or straight, to think so.

The fact is, ALL Christians are called to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Jesus.

24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wants to come with Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. 25 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of Me will find it. (Matthew 16:24-25)

Denying ourselves the permission to do whatever we want, and certainly denying sin, are part of what that means. I don’t know what it feels like to be gay and a follower of Jesus. But I do know that Jesus asks all of his followers to be willing even to die for His sake. Truthfully, I think all Christians, if they are really Jesus-followers, eventually find that following Him involves real, deep self-denial. I think it is pointless and even counter-productive to dwell upon whether your self-denial is harder than someone else’s, and I believe it arrogant to think you can even know. I understand any given person may feel their struggle is different, but it is not worse (or better). 1 Corinthians 10:12-13 says:

13 No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to humanity. God is faithful, and He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation He will also provide a way of escape so that you are able to bear it.

No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to humanity. Clear enough for you?

One aspect of the self-denial that the Lord asks of gay people particularly, is lifelong celibacy. But he does not ask that of only gay people. In fact, millions upon millions of Christians throughout the ages, both men and women, have been led by Jesus to make the commitment to lifelong singleness with lifelong celibacy, including some of the greatest Christian writers and thinkers in history. Some of them may have been gay, but undoubtedly a great number of them were heterosexual. Singleness and celibacy are not the worst possible fate a person could have. The apostle Paul himself was led to that lifestyle by Jesus, and though at times he was undoubtedly lonely, he also considered it a great gift. He said that he wished all people could have the gift of singleness/celibacy as he did (1 Corinthians 7:1 & 7:7).

As Christians we know that we cannot earn our salvation. Resisting sin does not, in and of itself, make you righteous. But I think we are called to resist sin and deny ourselves because in the process of doing so (even when we fail) we truly learn and receive the grace and forgiveness and joy that God offers us in Jesus Christ. There is wonderful grace in admitting that we are sinful and broken. There is wonderful grace even in the struggle of trying to avoid sin, and yet failing.

Let’s not deny another person that grace by telling them that they should not have to struggle or say “no” to some of their desires or temptations. Instead, let us receive that grace in our struggles, together with all our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Thanks again for making use of Clear Bible.

I want to remind you again that we are a listener-supported ministry, and that means, first and foremost, that we are supported by your prayers. We need and value your prayers for us.

Please pray that this ministry will continue to be a blessing to those who hear it. Ask God, if it is his will, to touch even more lives with these messages. Ask him to use this ministry in making disciples of Jesus Christ.

Please also pray for our finances. Pray for us to receive what we need. Please pray for us in this way before you give anything. And then, as you pray, if the Lord leads you to give us a gift, please go ahead and do that. But if he doesn’t want you to give to us, that is absolutely fine. We don’t want you to feel bad about it. We want you to follow Jesus in this matter. But do continue to pray for our finances.

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THE HOMOSEXUAL MOVEMENT & BIBLE INTERPRETATION

On By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Christianity, Jesus, Podcast, Religion, SermonLeave a comment

Romans 3:23 says all people have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I don’t care what your sexual orientation is, you are a sinner. It also says, all who receive it are justified freely through the grace given to us in Jesus Christ. I don’t care what your sexual orientation is, if you repent of your sins and trust him, you are redeemed and made whole and holy in Jesus.

 

 

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Homosexuality & the Bible Part 3

 

The Bible & Homosexuality Part 3

Once more, if you have not read the first or second sermons on this subject, please go back and do that now. I guarantee, you will not understand what I am saying or where I am coming from if you do not. I really mean it.

I want to reiterate why I am preaching on the subject of homosexuality at this point. It is not because homosexuality is particularly worse than any other sin. It is not because I want people to go around condemning gay folks. I don’t even think it’s a good idea for Christians to be focused on one particular sin. The reason I have been preaching about it is because, plain and simple, the issue of homosexuality is being used these days to undermine the bible. The problem is not homosexuality, or homosexuals. The main problem is that Christians don’t seem to know how to properly understand the bible, and this issue is merely the most prominent example of it today.

So, some people say things like this: “But aren’t there many parts of the bible that we ignore today? Don’t we sort of pick and choose what we want to obey?”

This is one of the great dangers for Christians concerning this issue; this is, in fact, one reason I am preaching about it. There is great confusion about all this in the church today.

Let me put the problem to you this way. Say we agree that we will simply pick and choose parts of the bible, more or less as we please.

You say: I’m going to ignore the parts where it says homosexual behavior is sinful.

I say: I hate you. (I don’t, I’m just using this as an example).

You: But Tom, Jesus told us to love one another. In fact, you just shared a lot of scripture two weeks ago that told us we ought to love and forgive each other.

Me: I’m ignoring those parts of the bible, just as you’re ignoring the parts about homosexual behavior.

Here’s another one:

You: I’m ignoring the parts of the bible where it says homosexual behavior is sinful.

Me: I’m ignoring the parts of the bible where it says murder is sinful.

We could do this all day. But let’s cut to the bottom-line with one more example.

You: I’m ignoring the parts of the bible where it says homosexual behavior is sinful.

Me: I’m ignoring the parts of the bible where it says Jesus is the Messiah and that through him we have forgiveness, grace and salvation.

You see, if this is what we really think about the bible, we have no basis for faith in Jesus Christ, and no reason to be Christians at all. If you really think we can just pick and choose according to our whims, then who is to say that Jesus really died to forgive your sins? Who is to say God really created the world? Who is to say that Jesus really is the Messiah? Can’t we pick and choose whether or not those things are true? If we simply pick and choose what we want to from the bible, we are not Christians in any meaningful sense.

In fact, to decide for ourselves what we will consider right and wrong is to nominate ourselves for the position of God. Listen carefully here, because this has been seriously twisted the other way. You may have heard someone say: “Who are you to say that homosexual acts are sinful? Aren’t you playing God?”

My answer is, “I am nobody. I have no right to say such a thing. In fact, I don’t say such a thing. I am only submitting to what the bible says.” We might properly ask “Who are you to say it is not sinful?”

When I say, “According to the bible homosexual acts are sins,” I am not speaking on my own authority. I am not setting myself in the place of God. I am merely repeating what the bible says. In fact, I am only humbly agreeing that what God said through the bible is correct.

But when someone else says “I don’t believe it is a sin, as long as it is done in love,” that person is actually setting up herself in the place of God. She is saying, “I am going to determine what is right and wrong. The bible says X, but I disagree. I am saying Y.” Now, she may protest, “I am not the only one who thinks that way. Others agree with me.” OK then, she is setting up polytheism – many gods. She and the others who think like her are saying that they have the authority of determining right and wrong; an authority that is held only by God himself.

There is another option, taken by many. You may prefer to just throw your hands up and say, “Man, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s my place to decide these things.” But actually, such a person is making a decision. He is basically saying, “I know what the bible says, but I’m not going to say for sure that I agree with it. I’m not willing to let the bible determine right or wrong in this situation.” In other words, he has the authority to ignore the bible. He is saying, in essence, “the bible doesn’t have the authority to say that.”

Now, when it comes to picking and choosing, let’s be fair, and consider all the angles. It does seem like there are things in the Bible that Christians no longer pay attention to, doesn’t it? The bible says we shouldn’t eat pork, and yet Christians today don’t worry about that. You might say, “Tom, if you eat bacon, aren’t you picking and choosing, and putting yourself in the place of God?”

Actually, no. I’m not the one who decided it was OK to eat pork. In fact, it was Jesus declared all foods clean in Mark 7:18-23. The freedom to eat whatever we want is affirmed in Acts 10:9-16 and also Acts 15:28-29, and 1Corinthians 8:8 and Romans 14:1-3 and other places. In other words, I didn’t pick and choose for myself – I was guided by the New Testament in interpreting the Old Testament. In eating pork, I am still submitted to the bible.

Some people might say, “But isn’t that just your interpretation of the bible, not the bible itself?”

Christians have been studying the bible for two thousand years. Over that time, several simple rules have developed for how to interpret and understand the bible properly. Mostly, they were developed to keep people from twisting the bible to say whatever they would like. I refer you to my sermon series “Understanding the Bible,” where I explain these rules and how to use them. These rules of interpretation are not complicated, but it does take some time and mental effort to apply them consistently and thoroughly. A lot of people simply can’t be bothered to do it.

My interpretation of what the bible says about homosexual behavior was carefully and thoroughly developed in harmony with those basic, well-recognized Christian rules. My interpretation is also in harmony with that of virtually every Christian thinker in history until about the year 2000. Come on, now, let’s be honest: most of the culture, including President Barack Obama, claimed to agree with this straightforward reading of the bible as recently as 2008. In other words, it is not simply my personal opinion about what the bible says. I got there through careful bible study and interpretation, and found that virtually all Christians in history had arrived at the same conclusions before me. I am not just picking and choosing. I am going through a careful, well-established, scholarly process of consistent interpretation.

Frankly, I do not see this from those who disagree with me. For instance, one the arguments against the verses in Leviticus (18:22 and 20:13) goes like this. “Those verses are in the section of the bible known as the holiness codes. It includes things like not eating shellfish, or wearing cloth made of two different kinds of fibers. Christians don’t pay attention to that stuff anymore.”

Actually, the verse about shellfish is in Leviticus chapter 11, nowhere near 18:22 or 20:13. The verse about the blended cloth is Leviticus 19:19, twenty seven verses apart from 18:22 and thirty verses apart from 20:13. You cannot seriously argue the same textual context for blended cloth and homosexual sex.

But let’s slow down a minute and consider: what else is in this section of scripture?

A lot of Leviticus chapter eighteen is spend on forbidding various kinds of incest. 18:20 forbids adultery, 18:21 forbids the burning of children alive, 18:22 forbids homosexual sex and 18:23 forbids sex with animals.

If you argue that homosexual acts should not be considered sinful because these verses are found in the “holiness codes,” you must also argue that it should not be a sin to commit adultery, burn your baby alive, rape your children or mate with animals. I’m sorry for the graphic nature of these words – they are right there in the bible, and I think if you cringe at the thought of making these activities legitimate and “moral” among Christians, you should do the same for the activity in 18:22.

Now, let’s look more carefully at the verse for blended cloth.

15 “You must not act unjustly when deciding a case. Do not be partial to the poor or give preference to the rich; judge your neighbor fairly. 16 You must not go about spreading slander among your people; you must not jeopardize your neighbor’s life; I am Yahweh.

17 “You must not harbor hatred against your brother. Rebuke your neighbor directly, and you will not incur guilt because of him. 18 Do not take revenge or bear a grudge against members of your community, but love your neighbor as yourself; I am Yahweh.

19 “You are to keep My statutes. You must not crossbreed two different kinds of your livestock, sow your fields with two kinds of seed, or put on a garment made of two kinds of material.

Remember, the argument about homosexual sex is: “It’s in the same section as the part about blended cloth, so we don’t have to listen to it.” But these (above) are the verses right next to the part about blended cloth. By that logic, we shouldn’t have to love our neighbor, or be just to the poor. If you do away with the part about homosexual acts, you must surely do away with “love your neighbor,” and “do not hate.”

Now, there are reasons that we wear polyester blends today, and yet still maintain that we must love our neighbor. But we don’t just say, “That thing about blended cloth is outdated.” There is a careful process of interpretation involved in determining why the ancient Israelites were not to blend different types of fibers, and what the principle is behind that verse, and how that principle still applies, even today, though it applies differently to us than to the ancient Israelites. After that careful process, we find something encouraging and instructive from the verse about blended cloth, but also we find that it is now OK to mix cloths. We go through the same process with the verses about not hating, and loving our neighbor, but in those cases, once we have done the work, we find that the underlying principles apply to us in exactly the same way they applied to the ancient Israelites.

Once more, I refer you to my series “Understanding the Bible.” Virtually anyone can do this work of responsible bible interpretation, but it does take time and effort. I want to say, as kindly as possible, if you are not willing to go through the effort of first learning how to do, and then engaging in, careful, consistent bible interpretation, you ought not to go around throwing out scraps of verses and poorly-thought theological-sounding arguments.

Of course, the verses from the New Testament which I shared last time are just as clear. If we wanted to eliminate homosexual activity from those lists of sins, we would have no choice but to also eliminate adultery, murder, slave-trading, lying, stealing, greed, drunkenness and more.

It is true, some Christians focus on homosexual behavior, and ignore some of the other things, like greed, for instance. I say, “shame on those Christians!” Neither one is worse than the other, but according to the bible, both are sins in the eyes of God, and it is wrong to give one a “pass” while condemning the other.  This is not a legitimate approach to the bible either. However, the fact that some people do this does not change what the bible actually says.

Once again I want to close with a reminder of God’s incredible grace to all sinners. Romans 3:23 says all people have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I don’t care what your sexual orientation is, you are a sinner. It also says, all who receive it are justified freely through the grace given to us in Jesus Christ. I don’t care what your sexual orientation is, if you repent of your sins and trust him, you are redeemed and made whole and holy in Jesus.

Next time, we will close this subject with some final thoughts about grace particularly for gay Christians.

Thanks again for making use of Clear Bible.

I want to remind you again that we are a listener-supported ministry, and that means, first and foremost, that we are supported by your prayers. We need and value your prayers for us.

Please pray that this ministry will continue to be a blessing to those who hear it. Ask God, if it is his will, to touch even more lives with these messages. Ask him to use this ministry in making disciples of Jesus Christ.

Please also pray for our finances. Pray for us to receive what we need. Please pray for us in this way before you give anything. And then, as you pray, if the Lord leads you to give us a gift, please go ahead and do that. But if he doesn’t want you to give to us, that is absolutely fine. We don’t want you to feel bad about it. We want you to follow Jesus in this matter. But do continue to pray for our finances.

If the Lord does lead you to give, just use the Paypal Donate button on the right hand side of the page. You don’t have to have a Paypal account – you can use a credit card, if you prefer. You can also set up a recurring donation through Paypal. We can make this tax-deductible if you just mention that it want it to be so in the “note” part of the transaction.

You could also send a check to:

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Thank for your prayers, and your support!

WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY?

On By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Christianity, Podcast, Religion, SermonLeave a comment

 To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Homosexuality & the Bible Part 2

Homosexuality and the Bible #2: What does the Bible say?

Even if you normally read these notes, you may want to listen to the podcast. Particularly with a sensitive issue, it may help if you can hear tone of voice and expression.

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Last time we considered some ground rules for our topic. I want to reiterate: there is no room for hate, violence, slander or anything like that in this Christian discussion. It is also worth remembering that not everything that hurts was necessarily said with hateful intent; and the fact that someone disagrees with you does not mean they hate you. In addition, a person can love you without endorsing every activity you engage in. I have many friends and family who feel differently than me about homosexual behavior, and I truly do love them, and wish for the best for them. I have no desire to see them come to harm in any way, and though I wish they might choose differently, I have no desire to take away their right to choose the life they want.

If you are reading this, and you have not yet read the first message in this series, I plead with you to go back and read it. I do not think you can fully understand all that I am saying on this subject until you have read this entire series. We are not operating in “sound-bytes” or catchy phrases here.

I apologize to parents, but there will be some “plain talk” in this message. If you aren’t ready to talk with your children about sexuality, you might not want them to listen to this sermon. On the other hand, I think kids need to learn about this subject sometime. They will hear it from their friends, probably sooner than you might think. In many places, they’ll even hear about it in school. I think the ideal way for children to learn about sexuality, and God’s plan for it, is by talking with their parents and considering what the bible says. Obviously, however, you as the parent need to make the call as to where and when that might happen.

This week I want to look at what the Bible actually says about homosexual behavior. My goal is to treat the relevant verses same way I treat the rest of the bible, and to use the common sense approach to biblical interpretation that I have been using for years in my teaching. In other words, this subject is no different than other subject I have taught about – it just happens to be politically charged at the moment, but I will not let politics change the way I teach on the bible.

I want to make one more note before I start. I am the messenger, not the message. The verses I am going to quote are really in the bible. We will find that the bible has no ambiguity about the subject of homosexual sex. The message is easy to see, and it is clear. In addition, where I share interpretations or add comments, those interpretations and comments are consistent with what Christians have taught for two-thousand years. They are not unusual or different. They are not popular at the moment, but this isn’t my message – it is the testimony of the bible and the church has affirmed it for millennia. It was not even controversial until the past few years.

Again, I share all this because it is my responsibility before God to teach sound biblical doctrine, and because for me, the true teaching of the bible is an act of love. It brings people closer to the truth, love and forgiveness that are found in Jesus Christ.

The bible always distinguishes between sins, and the people who commit them. God hates sin. But he loves sinners. Also, having homosexual feelings is different than having homosexual sex. No one is condemned for how they feel, or the temptations they struggle with. What the bible condemns is not homosexual people, but homosexual behavior. We can, and we should, accept and love people who identify themselves as homosexuals. In the church, this should be exactly like loving and accepting alcoholics, or convicts or single mothers, or me, a “normal sinner,” for that matter.

But acceptance and love are not the same as endorsement. Jesus and accepted and loved at least one prostitute. He accepted and loved a woman caught in adultery. Does that mean he endorsed prostitution and adultery? Of course not. He accepted and loved the people. But he told the woman who was caught in adultery, “Go, and sin no more.” He gave the prostitute a new life that did not involve prostitution any more. He said very clearly, in several places that “sexual immorality” is sinful – and that includes adultery and prostitution.

There is a distinction between the behavior, and the person. This is true, even though homosexuals themselves often refuse to make this distinction. “Being gay,” is not a behavior. Most gay people feel it is integral to who they are as people. We need to be clear that this – being gay, identifying yourself as homosexual – is not a sin. We do not reject people for who they are.

Now, let’s get to what the bible says.

Genesis chapter 19 tells about a city named Sodom. The male residents of Sodom wanted to have sex with some male travelers who had come into town. Shortly after this, the city was destroyed in judgment. Other bible passages tell us that the people of the town were guilty of many sins, but among them was sexual perversion – meaning, in this case, homosexual behavior. (Jude 7).

In the same way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them committed sexual immorality and practiced perversions, just as angels did, and serve as an example by undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. (Jude 1:7, HCSB)

The only type of sexual immorality that we know for sure was in Sodom, was homosexual sex.

Leviticus chapter 18:22 says:

“You are not to sleep with a man as with a woman; it is detestable.”

Leviticus 20:13 says,

“If a man sleeps with a man as with a woman, they have both committed a detestable thing. They must be put to death; their blood is on their own hands.”

These verses are pretty clear, but pause here for a moment. Why do Christians think today that homosexual behavior is wrong, but we don’t think people should be put to death for it?

The punishments listed in the first part of the Old Testament were specifically given for life in ancient Israel. They were, in effect, the civil and criminal laws of the land. We don’t live in ancient Israel anymore. The moral law (the act that is called sinful) remains in effect, but we don’t live under the same civil or criminal laws.

The same section of scripture (the latter part of Leviticus) also says that adultery is wrong, and those who do it should be put to death. In Jesus’ day, under the Roman law, Jews were not allowed to execute someone for committing adultery, and in fact, the practice had fallen into disuse even before that. However, in spite of a change in the punishment, there continued to be a clear understanding that adultery was wrong. In fact, in John chapter eight, Jesus condemned adulterous behavior, but refused to let people kill the adulterer. Likewise today, any serious Biblical ethicist must condemn the act of adultery as morally wrong – even Jesus did! (Matthew 5:27-30). Most people, in fact, still believe adultery is wrong. But virtually no one thinks we should have a law by which adulterers are punished by death. In the same way, we may certainly maintain a Biblical morality, while adapting the legal consequences to the society we live in today.

The New Testament also talks about homosexual behavior. Romans 1:29:

24 Therefore God delivered them over in the cravings of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served something created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen. 26 This is why God delivered them over to degrading passions. For even their females exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 The males in the same way also left natural relations with females and were inflamed in their lust for one another. Males committed shameless acts with males and received in their own persons the appropriate penalty of their error. (Rom 1:24-27, HCSB)

This is pretty clear. Homosexual behavior is called sexual impurity and a perversion. In other words, it is regarded as a sin.

I have already mentioned the Jude passage in the explanation of Genesis 19:

In the same way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them committed sexual immorality and practiced perversions, just as angels did, and serve as an example by undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. (Jude 1:7, HCSB)

I mention it again here because the verse is in the New Testament, and also because it tells us something very important about a particular Greek word. The root word is “porneia” and is used in various forms dozens of times throughout the New Testament. Most often it is translated as “sexual immorality.” Jude (who, incidentally, was the half-brother of Jesus) is using this word to refer specifically to homosexual sex (the only sexual sin recorded in Sodom was homosexual in nature). In Matthew 5:32 and 19:9, Jesus uses a form of the word when he is clearly talking about adultery. So, although there are specific terms for adultery, homosexual sex and other sexual sins, “sexual immorality” includes them all. In other words, “sexual immorality” means: “any sexual activity except that between a married man and woman.” Therefore, whenever the New Testament says “sexual immorality,” homosexual sex is included in that phrase, along with any other sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriage. The New Testament is relentlessly consistent in calling sexual immorality of any sort a sin. Verses which do that include (but are not limited to): Ephesians 5:1-5; Galatians 5:19-21; Colossians 3:5-7; 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8.

But just so we are absolutely sure, let’s consider a few more verses:

We know that the law is not meant for a righteous person, but for the lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinful, for the unholy and irreverent, for those who kill their fathers and mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral and homosexuals, for kidnappers, liars, perjurers, and for whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching (1Tim 1:9-10, HCSB)

I want us to note two things: first that homosexual behavior is specifically mentioned, and second, that it is not singled out as any worse or better than thirteen other sins. All these things are “contrary to sound teaching.”

In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul breaks mentions several types of sins, specifically naming homosexual sex among them.

Don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s kingdom? Do not be deceived: No sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, or anyone practicing homosexuality, no thieves, greedy people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, or swindlers will inherit God’s kingdom. And some of you used to be like this. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1Cor 6:9-11, HCSB)

Many English translations don’t show it, but Paul actually lists homosexual behavior twice in this list. He uses a Greek slang word which should be literally translated as “soft” (malakoi). This is probably equivalent to our English use of “gay.” Paul also uses a more specific technical word that means “homosexual.” I think most translators simply use one word to avoid redundancy, but a properly nuanced translation of this might read: “…neither gay, nor any kind practicing homosexual…”

We’ve already seen several clear passages. It’s hard to be more clear than right here in 1 Corinthians 6:9.

Again, in 1 Corinthians 6:9 homosexual behavior is called sinful along with eight other behaviors: sex between unmarried people, adultery, idolatry, theft, greed, drunkenness, slander and swindling. Let’s get this straight. Greed is as sinful as homosexual behavior. So is petty theft (the Greek word for “thieves” is the same root where we get “kleptomaniac”). Habitual drunkenness is as sinful as homosexual behavior, and so is adultery, and promiscuity and telling lies about others. So it would be wrong to suggest that homosexual behavior is particularly singled out as something more evil than other sins. But it would also be wrong to suggest that the Bible approves of “committed homosexual relationships.” It is a sin. There is no ambiguity. But it is not a special sin.

I have talked with gay people who told me that they’ve heard Christians say that homosexuals automatically go to hell. I’ve never actually heard a real Christian say that, though I’m sure that some people, somewhere, do. However, that would be a misunderstanding of this passage. If that were true, then it would also be true of alcoholics, petty thieves, any greedy person, and all those who have had a sexual relationship at any time in their lives with anyone other than their spouse. The real and main point of this passage is what Paul says in verse 11:

And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

In other words, whatever our particular sinful struggle, Jesus can put an end to it, and he has done so for billions of people around the world throughout history. So obviously, people who struggle with homosexual feelings can be saved and go to heaven – some of the Corinthians had those very struggles before they came to Jesus. People who struggle with drunkenness can be saved. So can thieves and those who are greedy. It all comes back to putting our faith in Jesus. Usually people who struggle with sins like homosexual behavior and addictions need help, support and understanding from fellow Christians as they open their lives to the Holy Spirit, but the Lord can change them. I have personally known several people who used to call themselves homosexuals, who even lived the gay lifestyle, who are now happily married (to the opposite gender) and call themselves heterosexual. Their testimony was that the Power of the Holy Spirit changed them. One them is the wife of a seminary classmate of mine. It can happen. It does happen.

In the interest of honesty, I will say that another one of my gay friends is completely committed to Jesus, and to healing and wholeness, but he has not lost his attraction to men, and at this point, he believes he never will. Even so, he is committed to a life of celibacy, and is trusting Jesus for all of emotional needs.

We need to remember: Jesus is a game-changer.

Speaking of that, what about Jesus? What did he say about gay sex? If you have spent any time on social media sites, you have probably seen claims that Jesus said nothing at all about it. In a narrow, technical sense, that is true. But we should also note that in a narrow technical sense, Jesus said nothing about incest, child-abuse, the oppression of women, slavery, or drugs. In a narrow, technical sense, Jesus never condemned war or racism or human trafficking.

Let us remember that all that we know about Jesus was handed down to us by the apostles, who are also the writers of the New Testament. In other words, we only know what Jesus taught because the apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote it down. These apostles, and others, also expounded upon the teachings of Jesus in the other books of the New Testament. If you believe that the apostles correctly preserved the words of Jesus, you must also believe that their other teachings reflected the true teachings of Jesus. There is simply no reason to believe one and not the other.

In other words, if you think that apostles were correct to recall Jesus saying that we should love our neighbor, you should also think that they were correct to say that following Jesus means we should forsake our sins, including the sins of homosexual sex. If they were wrong about the latter they were also wrong about the former.

In addition, Jesus did frequently talk about marriage and sex in general. He clearly taught that sex is good when shared in heterosexual marriage, and sinful in any form outside of that. He very specifically said that sexual immorality (which we know includes homosexual sex, among other things) is evil (Mark 7:21 Matthew 15:19).

Homosexuals are not the worst sinners imaginable. In fact, I don’t see any evidence that simply being homosexual (that is, having homosexual feelings or attractions) is a sin at all. However, the bible does call it a sin to act on those feelings, in the same way that it is a sin to act on heterosexual feelings outside of marriage.

Sin does not disqualify you from the kingdom of heaven, because Jesus died to forgive us and free us from all sins. ALL sins. A gay person has never done any worse sin than I myself have done. In terms of biblical morality and righteousness, there is no room for any person to think of himself or herself as better than any other person. I think the failure of the church to make this crystal-clear is part of the reason that today there is so much confusion about homosexuality.

The message of Christianity has always been that the only answer to sin is Jesus. People who engage in sex outside of marriage are forgiven the same way as people who engage in homosexual sex: by admitting their sin, admitting their need for Jesus, and putting their trust in Him to forgive them and change them.

There is much more to discuss. Next time we will look at some common objections to the verses and interpretations I have shared here.

Thanks again for making use of Clear Bible.

I want to remind you again that we are a listener-supported ministry, and that means, first and foremost, that we are supported by your prayers. We need and value your prayers for us.

Please pray that this ministry will continue to be a blessing to those who hear it. Ask God, if it is his will, to touch even more lives with these messages. Ask him to use this ministry in making disciples of Jesus Christ.

Please also pray for our finances. Pray for us to receive what we need. Please pray for us in this way before you give anything. And then, as you pray, if the Lord leads you to give us a gift, please go ahead and do that. But if he doesn’t want you to give to us, that is absolutely fine. We don’t want you to feel bad about it. We want you to follow Jesus in this matter. But do continue to pray for our finances.

If the Lord does lead you to give, just use the Paypal Donate button on the right hand side of the page. You don’t have to have a Paypal account – you can use a credit card, if you prefer. You can also set up a recurring donation through Paypal. We can make this tax-deductible if you just mention that it want it to be so in the “note” part of the transaction.

You could also send a check to:

New Joy Fellowship

917 Canyon Creek Drive

Lebanon, TN 37087

Just put “Clear Bible” in the memo. Your check will be tax-deductible.

Thank for your prayers, and your support!