Category: House Church

PHILIPPIANS #3: A BUFFET OF THANKSGIVING

On By Pastor TomIn apostle paul, Bible, Bible Teaching, House Church, Jesus, Philippians, Podcast, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Today we will consider Paul’s introductory prayer, offered right after his first greeting to the Philippians. These nine verses are filled with important ideas and rich food for our souls. Think of it as a kind of buffet. You may feel more hungry for the steak than the salad, and that’s fine. Maybe not every part of this passage will be equally meaningful for you. But let’s dig in and see what is on offer here.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

You can also find us on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/show/6KKzSHPFT466aXfNT2r9OD

(This will open to the latest sermon. You can search from there if you are looking for a previous one)

PHILIPPIANS 1:3-11

3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. 6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. 7 It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. 8 For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. 9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 1:3-11, ESV)

As I said in the introduction, the Philippians were a church with which Paul had few, if any, theological issues. He had deep, affectionate relationships with many in the church. So, he begins by mentioning that whenever he prays for them, he thanks the Lord, and prays with joy. Later in the letter, he will remind them explicitly that when they pray, they should do so with thanksgiving and joy.

I’ll say more about joy and thanksgiving in prayer when we get to that passage, but I do want to say something here, because it’s worth saying more than once. Sometimes, I pray about something, and when I’m done, I feel just as worried and bothered by it as I did before I prayed. But at other times, when I pray, I feel so much better afterwards. I think the difference is that during the times I don’t feel at peace, I have forgotten to thank the Lord when I pray.

When we give thanks as we pray, we are encouraging our hearts to trust the Lord. When I ask for the Lord’s help, adding “thank you,” is like saying, “I trust you to deal with this, Lord. I’ve asked you to do something, and I’m thanking you, because I trust that you have heard me, you understand my concerns, and you will do what is best.” When we thank him, we are putting the matter in the Lord’s hands, and leaving it with him. Just to be perfectly clear: saying “Thank you,” does not mean that I think the Lord will respond exactly how I want him to. It means I trust him to work in the best way, even if I don’t recognize it as the best way at this point in time. Thanking the Lord is a concrete way of releasing our concerns into the hands of the Lord.

Paul says he is thankful for the Philippians’ partnership in the gospel. The word for “partnership” is a pretty flexible word. In general it describes a close fellowship, an involvement with one another’s lives. I think Paul means a number of things by this word.

The first Philippian to become a Christian was a businesswoman called Lydia. As soon as she received Jesus, she invited Paul and his companions to stay with her. She said: “If you consider me a believer in the Lord, come and stay at my house” (Acts 16:15, HCSB). Her newfound faith immediately led her to reach out to Paul and the missionaries and partner with them by giving them a place to stay. So, from the very first day, Lydia became a partner in the gospel. Apparently the other Philippians responded in a similar way.

The partnership undoubtedly included fellowship and friendship as well. The long, ongoing connection between Paul and the Philippians testifies to genuine love and concern for one another. And, for these Philippians, the partnership also included financial giving to enable Paul to continue to preach the gospel. If you remember, one of the reasons Paul  is writing this letter is because the Philippians sent  him a financial gift, and he wants to thank them. This was not the first time they gave him financial support. At the end of the letter, Paul again thanks them, explicitly, for their financial gift. He says:

5 And you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving, except you only. 16 Even in Thessalonica you sent me help for my needs once and again. (Philippians 4:15-16, ESV)

We’ll talk about all this more when we get to those verses, but I want to make a few quick observations. In Paul’s mind, one way to be “a partner in the gospel” is to give financially, and one of the reasons he thanks the Lord for the Philippians is because they have partnered with him in that way from the very beginning of their Christian lives. This partnership of financial giving is not something that Paul demanded, but rather, the Philippians freely chose to enter into it. We’ll unpack more about this when we get to the end of the letter.

Next Paul writes one of the most comforting verses in the New Testament:

“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

Their partnership in the gospel (and Paul’s too) began with God’s work in them. It continues until Jesus returns, and it continues as the work of the Lord. In other words, Paul is not saying, “I’m sure you will all be good Christians until Jesus returns. No, he says: “The Lord (not you), began the work within you, and it will be the Lord himself who brings it to completion.”

Sometimes we Christians get messed up in our theology. We think “Jesus forgave all of my sins by dying on the cross. Now, it’s up to me to live a good life to honor what Jesus did for me.” But that’s not the Biblical picture at all. Jesus did all that was needed to save us, and he also provides all that is needed for us to live as his people for the rest of our lives. We do not “complete” the work of Jesus by being good people after we’re saved. Jesus himself is the one who completes the work in us. From start to finish, the work is His.

Now, this is all a bit tricky. I’ve mentioned before that there are many tensions in the teaching of the Bible. This is one of them. We are saved entirely by grace. Not only that, but we live as Jesus wants us to live entirely by grace. Jesus is the one who does it within us. At the same time, we have the ability to either allow Jesus to complete his work, or to hinder him from doing the work within us. Our main job is to allow Jesus to do within us what he wants to. Sometimes, that means saying “no” to things we’d like to do, but which will hinder his work in us. Sometimes, that means saying “yes” to things we feel like we’d rather not do. It is all the work of Jesus, a work of grace. But we do have to be diligent about allowing Jesus to do what he wants to do in us and through us. And yet, don’t let this sound like a law you must follow. It is the Lord who provides the power and energy for us to be the people he wants us to be. Our part is to allow him to be at work in us. Our part is not so much to be good people, as it is just to not hinder him from making us into his people. Maybe what I’m trying to say is this: if you belong to Jesus, you will want him to guide you, and empower you to follow him. If you are consistently going your own way, and not too concerned about it, there is something wrong. On the other hand, if you belong to Jesus, he himself will empower you through the Holy Spirit to become more and more the person he wants you to be. You can allow your soul to rest as you trust him to do what you cannot do anyway.

Paul continues on in his gratefulness for the Philippians:

7 It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. 8 For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

Paul reaffirms the sense of fellowship and partnership he feels with them in the gospel. This is important. Christians are supposed to live in fellowship and partnership with other Christians. The idea of someone who is a Christian but does not belong to a church is wildly unbiblical. Even the idea of belonging to a church, but not really knowing or being involved in the lives of your fellow believers is completely against the Biblical view. When you become a Christian, you become part of the family of God, and you are supposed to become anchored to some specific part of that (i.e., a local church, and/or a small group in that church). Being a follower of Jesus involves being a partaker in the lives of other believers. This is not optional. If we don’t love others who belong to Jesus, then we need to seriously wonder if we even love Jesus.

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His One and Only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us. (1 John 4:7-12, HCSB)

…20 If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother he has seen cannot love the God he has not seen. 21 And we have this command from Him: The one who loves God must also love his brother. (1 John 4:20-21, HCSB)

Paul’s words demonstrate his love for the Philippians. A bit later in the letter we will see that the Philippian church is not perfect, by any means, and there are struggles in the way they love one another. Even so, they kept at it, and Paul reveals his own love for Jesus by showing us that he loves his fellow-believers.

Paul adds this to his prayer for the Philippians:

9And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

The first part of the prayer is about this business of loving other believers. Love should abound (that is, be plentiful, and even increase). Love should also be accompanied by knowledge and discernment. In other words, there is a time and place to discern whom we love, and how, and whether or not our fellowship with them is based upon truth and excellence. Our love should grow, and so should our discernment about who we welcome as fellow followers of Jesus. To make it clear: love does not mean that we should accept the corruption of the truth. It does not mean that we should never try to discern with whom we should fellowship. In fact, in addition to love, we need knowledge and discernment.

So, for instance, there are people who call themselves Christians who do not believe that Jesus is the only way to God. There are some who flatly deny parts of what the bible teaches: for instance, the teachings about sexuality which are so out of step with our current culture. But they have no reason for denying the Bible’s teaching on sexuality, while not denying what it says about God’s love. We can and should exercise discernment in our fellowship. I don’t have to judge the status of their salvation, but I can say that through knowledge and discernment, it is appropriate that I don’t have a great deal of fellowship with such people.

Paul ends his prayer with the hope that they will be “pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

Once again we return to the comfort of verse six. The fruit of righteousness comes through Christ Jesus, not through our own efforts. The very last phrase is important as well: “to the glory and praise of God.” This is also a comfort: God’s ultimate design is that we glorify him. And he has made it so that when we are glorifying him, it is also the best thing possible for us. Because it is about God’s glory, we can be sure that God himself will complete his work in us. And because it is about God’s glory, we can trust that God’s will is good for us.

So what is the Lord speaking to you about today? Do you need to be reminded to pray with thanksgiving? Again, if you find that your prayers are not bringing you to the peace you hope for, it might be because you need to thank the Lord as you pray?

Maybe you need to be reminded about partnership in the gospel. When we become believers, we join a family, and that ultimately leads to a deep fellowship and partnership with a small group of other followers of Jesus. That partnership shares in joy and pain, in plenty and in times of need. It involves the sharing of all of our lives with one another in the cause of the gospel. Do you hear the gracious invitation of Jesus to “plug-in,” to go all in with other believers? The idea of following Jesus mostly on your own, apart from other believers, is not a Biblical idea. It is directly contrary to scripture.

I think sooner or later we all need to hear the deep comfort of verse six: It is Jesus himself who began his good work in us, and it is Jesus himself who will complete it. God’s love for us, and our future as his people, rest upon Jesus Christ, not upon our own efforts. We trust Jesus to do what needs doing in us. Our main task is to not hinder him; that is to say yes to him.

Maybe we are eager to  partner with other Christians, but we need to be reminded that discernment and knowledge are also important. There is such a thing as truth, and it matters, and even at times, knowledge and discernment should lead us into deep fellowship with some believers, and not with others who claim to be Christian.

Finally, do you need to be reminded that you were created to show a piece of God’s glory? It is a wonderful thing to remember, because it means that your whole life is God’s own project, for God’s own purposes, and those are good and wonderful.

PHILIPPIANS #1: INTRODUCTION

On By Pastor TomIn Church, House Church, Philippians, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Paul and his companions were a part of some very eventful happenings in the Roman Colony of Philippi.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

You can also find us on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/show/6KKzSHPFT466aXfNT2r9OD (This will open to the latest sermon. You can search from there if you are looking for others)

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Philippians Part 1

PHILIPPIANS #1: BACKGROUND, INTRODUCTION AND THE ENTIRE BOOK

We are going to begin a new series on the book of Philippians. I am excited for this. Philippians is one of my favorite books. It is a letter, written by the apostle Paul, to the Christians in the city of Philippi. Clearly, Paul had a warm relationship with the Philippian Christians, and the whole book is suffused with affection and joy.

Let’s start with a little bit of background on the city of Philippi, and some of the people and events associated with it.

In the book of Acts, we first hear about the city of Philippi shortly after Luke joins Paul and his companions. Luke was in a city named Troas on the western coast of Asia minor, not extremely far, as the crow flies, from Philippi. This is the first time that Luke, in his book of Acts, starts to write as if he himself were part of the events. Instead of writing: “they went and did this,” as he did for the first fifteen or so chapters of the book of Acts, Luke writes: “we went and did this.”

Luke traveled with Paul and his companions to Macedonia, after Paul had a vision in a dream that he was supposed to proclaim the gospel in that region. They landed at a Macedonian port (Neapolis), and then the companions traveled together to Philippi, which Luke describes as “a leading city of Macedonia.” After the events which took place in Philippi, it reads as if Luke is no longer accompanying Paul and his companions. In Acts chapter 20, Luke once again rejoins Paul—at Philippi—as he travels towards Jerusalem. The best guess is that this is after a period of about eight years. It seems clear that Luke made Philippi his home for that eight year period.

Paul’s first visit to Philippi was quite eventful. These events are described in Acts chapter 16:11-40. I will read these verses on the audio version of this sermon. If you are reading my words right now, I encourage you to stop for a moment, and go and read those same verses in your own Bible.

(I’m trusting that you have now read those verses). So, obviously, some major and unusual things took place with the beginnings of Christianity in Philippi. It was a very exciting time for the new Christians there.

Philippi was named after King Philip of Macedonia, father of Alexander the Great. Later it was conquered by the Romans, and was the site of a decisive battle in the Roman civil war that took place as a result of the assassination of Julius Caesar (this was roughly 42 years before the birth of Jesus Christ). Twelve years later (30 BC), when Octavian/Augustus became Caesar, he made Philippi a Roman colony. This meant that citizens of Philippi, which is in Macedonia (north of Greece) had exactly the same rights and privileges as Romans who lived in Rome. City business was conducted in Latin, rather than Greek. Citizens were exempt from Roman taxes, and could own property just like Romans who lived in Rome. This was one reason that Paul’s status as a Roman citizen was such a big deal to the Philippians. They had violated his civil rights as a Roman in a Roman colony. To them, it was a shameful act, and they wanted it forgotten and covered up immediately.

I have done a little bit of ministry that sometimes reminds me of Paul and Silas (or Barnabas). My great friend Peter Churness and I have traveled to meet people we had not met previously, and stayed in strangers’ homes while we did some teaching, and eventually helped organize churches in those places. Some of you listening or reading are among those people. I have to say that staying in someone’s home, there is a closeness of fellowship that develops, especially if you keep in touch over a period of time. When we read Paul’s letter, we can hear the warmth he feels for these people.

So, when did Paul write this? It appears that he wrote it while he was awaiting trial in front of Caesar. In the book of Acts, near the end, we read that Paul, facing charges from local Jewish authorities who wanted him dead, made an appeal for Caesar to hear his case. This was his right as a Roman citizen. It appears that Paul wrote to the Philippians when he was in Rome, waiting for that trial. So, this would have been shortly after the ending of the book of Acts, in about 62 AD. Just from reading between the lines, it seems like the Philippians sent Paul a gift of money to support him while he awaited trial. It was delivered by a messenger named Epaphroditus and others. The others presumably returned to Philippi (about 800 miles away) but Epaphroditus was ill, and had to stay with Paul for some time. After he recovered fully, Paul wrote a letter to send with him back to the Philippians.

Some of you know how important I think it is to read the Bible the way it was written, that is, book, by book. You know that I also think it is vitally important to understand the textual context of any given verse. Happily, Philippians is a short book, which can be read quite quickly. So, I will complete this message by reading the entire book to you, so that we understand the context of the various parts. If you are a reader, more than a listener, please go and read the whole book of Philippians right now. It shouldn’t take much more than 20 minutes. Have some paper and a pen handy and briefly note down the verses that speak to you, and why. Next time, we’ll start in on the text in detail.

GRUMBLING vs LAMENT #5: Where are you God?

On By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, House Church, Lamenting, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Once again, during this series I encourage you to listen to the sermon, rather than simply reading the text. My right arm is in a sling, and I cannot type effectively. I am using voice dictation software to type these words, as well as any other content that I add to pastor Kevin’s message. Sometimes the results are not entirely accurate.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen. You can also find us on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/show/6KKzSHPFT466aXfNT2r9OD

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Lament Part 5

“Where are You, Lord?” The psalmist in Psalm 10, seems to be asking this question.  Have you asked this question or even thought it? You’d be very unusual if you haven’t. Though early in the Christian life we learn that God is omnipresent, or “everywhere present,” it often feels like He is not present to us in our current circumstance, especially if those circumstances are particularly difficult. 

     Technically speaking God is simultaneously present everywhere. How? He doesn’t explain that to us. It’s part and parcel of His “Godhood.” It’s one of His attributes, spoken about in Psalm 139. Note the following verses from this psalm.

7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. 11  If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

and the light become night around me,” 12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

     God is everywhere. Jonah experienced God even in the depths of the sea. While God is actually present everywhere, He is usually only manifestly present, or present in a way that we can experience Him, at certain times and locations. Almost unpredictably. People who have journeyed with God and are known to know Him well will tell you that you cannot manipulate or manufacture His presence. Either God will or won’t be present in a way that is obvious. And, when that happens, you know it. There’s nothing quite like His presence. David testified that in God’s presence, “there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11). When I have experienced the manifest presence of God on an individual level (as opposed to a congregational setting), and I can count on one hand the times that has happened in my 53 year relationship with Him, His presence satisfies every longing and infuses me with peace. It convinces me that there is no pleasure, no achievement and no material thing that can come remotely close to giving me what I have in Him. Asaph was a psalmist and he knew from his encounter with God’s manifest presence that there was nothing on the entire earth that could compete with it (Psalm 73:25,28– read this in a variety of translations).

     Even though you can’t have this variety of God’s presence on demand– in fact, demanding it is a sure way to guarantee you won’t get it— God doesn’t respond to our impertinence– it is still good to ask the question, “Lord, where are you?” It’s a way of saying, “Lord, I need your comfort. I need your embrace. I am aching for a hug from you. I need to know that You are near. Please, please don’t delay.”

(Tom here now, almost until the end). The Lord does come to us through our feelings and our thoughts. He sometimes comes in a way that is hard to describe. We might call his speaking to us as a “spiritual” experience. But sometimes all that can be a little bit vague. We can find ourselves chasing a certain set of feelings, or experiences, but not actually getting them. However, as Kevin said, God does not show up for us in an experiential way simply because we demand it. Perhaps we aren’t even being demanding, but we desperately want some kind of experience with God, and it doesn’t happen. As Kevin has been pointing out this can be extremely difficult.

Thankfully, we do not have to rely on only our feelings or experiences. The Lord has given us three objective ways of experiencing his presence. These three ways do not require any particular feeling on our part. The first way is through reading the Bible. I’ve preached extensively on the remarkable text that we call the Bible. I’ve even written a book about it (Who Cares About the Bible?). We can have confidence that when we read the Bible (which we also refer to as “God’s Word”) we are, in fact, hearing from God. When we read the Bible, we are not making something up in our own heads. The text is there for any human being to see. Thousands of generations before us have read these same words. But when we feel abandoned by God, it is especially important that we continue to read the Bible.

When I teach and preach on a passage of Scripture, one of my goals is to help us understand the original, objective meaning, that the Holy Spirit intended through the human authors of the text. Preachers should do that. But there is another, more personal way, of reading the Bible. And that is to pray before you read, asking God to speak to you through his word. And then read the text as if God is speaking it directly to you. It may have been something that God originally wanted Isaiah to say to the people of Israel twenty-seven hundred years ago. But Hebrews 4:12 tells us that the word of God is living and active. That means that we can receive what God is saying to us through the Scripture as intended directly for us. We shouldn’t build doctrines on reading the Bible this way, but it can be tremendously helpful in our sense of God’s presence and love in our lives.

I want to give you a quick example of what I’m talking about. When I was in college I went through a time of dark depression. During this time I went on a spiritual retreat. The leaders gave us a list of Bible verses to read. They told us to listen for the voice of God speaking through those verses. I went off by myself. I prayed before reading the first assigned passage. I asked the Lord to speak to me through the Bible. And then I read this verse:

1 “Comfort, comfort my people,”
says your God.
2 “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.
Tell her that her sad days are gone
and her sins are pardoned.
Yes, the LORD has punished her twice over
for all her sins.” Isaiah 40:1-2

This is a prophecy given by the prophet Isaiah. It speaks to the people of Judah after the Babylonians had destroyed Jerusalem and laid waste to the entire kingdom of Judah. The people of Judah were now in exile, far from their homes. So originally, this text was announcing to God’s people that their exile in the land of Babylon would soon be over. It was a reassurance to them that God was not angry with them, and he was going to bring them back into their homeland. If I was preaching on this text I would make sure that my listeners all understood this.

However on that day, when I was under the dark cloud of depression, the Lord spoke to me through this Scripture in a unique way. I felt that he was proclaiming comfort directly to me in my depression. He was saying to me that the time of depression was now at an end, that my “sad days,” were over. That was what it meant to me to me as I read it. Thankfully, I believed the message that the Lord was given me through that Scripture. And then, it was so. My depression was over. Now, I would never preach on that text, and say that the meaning of that text was that everyone who is listening to me who was also depressed would now no longer be depressed. But this of how God speaks to us through his word. This didn’t take place in my head. It came from words that I did not make up.

A second place where God meets us, regardless of how we may feel, is in the sacrament of communion. We are taking real, actual bread into our bodies; real, actual wine (or, grape juice). Communion is not some kind of vague emotional experience. It is real bread, and real wine, in which Jesus has promised to be present. So, if you are wondering where you can find God, communion is one place he promises to meet us. It is not necessary for you to feel anything as you digest the bread and wine.

The third objective place where God meets us is through the fellowship of other Christians. Everyone who trusts Jesus has the Holy Spirit within them. Therefore, in a very real sense, when you are with other Christians, you are in the presence of God in a way that is outside of your self. The Bible seems to tell us that there is a special thing that happens when we gather together with other Christians specifically to worship the Lord. You may or may not feel anything as you worship the Lord with other Christians. Even so, he is there with you and the others, whether or not you feel it. You can look at the other people who are with you, and see that this is not something you are making up. God’s presence is also outside of ourselves.

The words of the Bible are not dependent on how you feel. The reality of the presence of the Lord through communion is not some vague experience. This is also true of the reality of God’s presence when his people meet together for worship.

No doubt there are times when we would really, really like to have some kind of an emotional experience of the presence of God. But by giving us the Bible, communion, and the fellowship of other believers, he has made it so that we can reliably be in his presence, no matter how we feel.

(We’ll close with a final paragraph from Kevin)

  God sometimes uses silence and what appears to be aloofness to draw us to a deep longing for Him. When you are suffering, when you are confused, when you are desperate for His touch, ask “Where, Lord, can I find you?” And, be sure to include your faith community in your search for God’s incomparable touch. In time, He will provide a way to comfort you. He is faithful and He will not allow your despair to become permanent, if you turn to Him. Turn, turn to Him. Again. And again. Ask Him for the stamina you’ll need. He wants to do a deep work in you. Let Him.

2 SAMUEL #12: JUSTICE FOR THOSE WHO REJECT GOD’S LOVE

On By Pastor TomIn 2 Samuel, Bible, Bible Teaching, House Church, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

If someone rejects God, do you think God should force them to be eternally in His presence? It would mean that our choices don’t actually mean anything, that we aren’t, in fact, free. If there are no consequences for a choice, it’s not really a choice, is it? It’s meaningless to “choose” if everything will work out the same way, no matter what you choose.

Mephibosheth shows us what it looks like when we freely accept the faithful love of God. But in today’s passage, Hanun shows us what happens when we make the opposite choice and reject that love.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download 2 Samuel Part 12

Remember that in chapter eight, many of David’s military victories are described. Then, in chapter nine, we read about how David was kind to Mephibosheth, son of Jonathan. Now, in chapter 10, we get the details concerning how one of the wars described in chapter eight came about. Although it seems like chapter nine was an interruption in the flow of the narrative, actually, chapter nine fits perfectly with chapter ten.

In chapter nine, David reached out with the faithful love of God to Mephibosheth, who probably assumed that David was his enemy. Mephibosheth courageously responded to David’s overtures, and the result was a beautiful demonstration of God’s grace through David.

Now, in chapter ten, something similar happens. Nahash, king of Ammon, died. If you remember, it was Nahash who attacked the Israelite town of Jabesh-Gilead, shortly after Saul became king. This is recorded in 1 Samuel chapter eleven. Against all expectation, Saul attacked and defeated Nahash, and the armies of Ammon.

However, it appears from our text today (verse 2) that Nahash had helped David during the period he was running from Saul. This was probably more from a desire to keep the country of Israel unstable and divided, and to get revenge on Saul, than from any true kindness toward David on the part of Nahash.

Even so, when Nahash died, David sent ambassadors to his son, Hanun, to offer his condolences. Just as most kings in David’s situation would have considered Mephibosheth a threat, most would also have considered Hanun an enemy. In addition, the Ammonites were among those Canaanite tribes who worshipped idols and at times led the people of Israel away from the Lord. But David reached out to Hanun in his grief, seeking to show him the faithful love of God, just as he had done with Mephibosheth. In other words, this story starts the same way as the story of Mephibosheth in chapter nine. If you remember from last time, David said he wanted to show “the faithful love of God” to someone in Saul’s family. The Hebrew word for “faithful love of God” is hesed. That same word, hesed, is used here in chapter ten. David says he wants to show hesed to Hanun, in honor of his father (verse 20.

In this case, however, the results were very different from the situation with Mephibosheth. On the advice of his councilors, Nahash seized David’s emissaries, shaved off half their beards, and cut their robes off to show their bare buttocks. He sent them back to David that way, in utter humiliation. I think even today, we can get a sense for how rude and spiteful this was. It was like giving David “the finger” and saying “screw you!” It communicated an absolute lack of respect for David. It was more or less a declaration of war.

In other words, Hanun’s response to David, and to the faithful love of God, was pretty much the exact opposite of Mephibosheth’s response. Hanun rejected the faithful love of God that was offered to him through God’s chosen instrument, David.

Remember that Jesus and his apostles taught that even the Old Testament is ultimately about Jesus. These things actually happened, but God guided their happening in such a way as to reveal to us the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, [Jesus] interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. (Luke 24:27, ESV2011)

14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed. You know those who taught you, 15 and you know that from childhood you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2Tim 3:14-17, HCSB)

4 For whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction, so that we may have hope through endurance and through the encouragement from the Scriptures. (Rom 15:4, HCSB)

12 For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It is able to judge the ideas and thoughts of the heart. (Heb 4:12, HCSB)

So, to really understand this, we need to remember that this is still all ultimately about Jesus. It should help us get to know him better. Last week, we saw that David revealed the heart of God’s ultimate Messiah, Jesus. The heart of Jesus is to find the lost and broken and show them God’s everlasting and faithful love. David lived that out, and Mephibosheth received that love.

But there is another possible outcome. Jesus wants to show God’s faithful and everlasting love to each person. But what about the person who doesn’t want it, who won’t receive it? That is what 2 Samuel 10 is all about. It is the other side of the same coin, the second part in the same story of God’s love for people. It is the story of what happens when people reject the faithful love of God.

Now, it is true, Hanun received some bad advice from his councilors. But even so, he believed his advisors, rather than the emissaries of the kind king, and the responsibility for that belief was all on him. Yes, he had people lying to him. But he also had David’s men telling him the truth, and Hanun made a choice to believe the lies rather than the truth. The consequences were all his own fault.

Now, I don’t know what would have happened if Hanun had repented and sent messengers to David acknowledging his wrong and asking for forgiveness. But Hanun, realizing that he had done wrong, proceeded to do even more wrong. He armed for war, and called on allies to help him. He was proud and stubborn and was willing to make both soldiers and civilians pay for his own mistakes.

The consequences were severe. David sent his army to besiege the capital city. Joab and his brother Abishai commanded the armies, and they defeated the Aramean allies of Hanun, while the army of Hanun fled back inside the walled city. Then the Arameans were upset, and sent another army. David himself took charge of the army of Israel, and the Arameans were defeated a second time. They never again helped the Ammonites. We are basically finding out the details of the military campaigns described in chapter eight.

Ultimately, though it took at least a year, the Ammonites themselves were utterly defeated and their capital city destroyed. Hanun lost his crown, and probably his head; while his people were made into heavy-laborers for the Israelites (these final events are recorded in 2 Samuel 12).

Hanun demonstrates for us what happens when we reject the faithful love of God that is offered through his chosen messiah, Jesus. Mephibosheth humbly received that love, and it blessed him for his entire life. But Hanun rejected it. It took some time, but ultimately, because he rejected it, he lost everything, and ruined the lives of tens of thousands of others.

We like to talk about the love and mercy and grace of God. I know I do. And that love and mercy and grace is indeed ours if we will simply trust the good heart of Jesus. When we receive it, we are brought into a daily relationship with Jesus, just as Mephibosheth had a daily relationship with David.

But the other side of the story is this: it does not go well for those who reject the love of God offered in Jesus Christ. Yes, it’s true, people lied to Hanun about David and his intentions. And the devil will use people and circumstances to lie to us about Jesus. But ultimately the truth was there for Hanun to choose, if he would just trust David. And the truth about Jesus is there, if we will just trust him. When we refuse to do that, we are inviting destruction upon ourselves. None of our allies or misplaced hopes will be able to save us.

This isn’t just an Old Testament teaching either. The writer of Hebrews says this:

1 God’s promise of entering his rest still stands, so we ought to tremble with fear that some of you might fail to experience it. 2 For this good news—that God has prepared this rest—has been announced to us just as it was to them. But it did them no good because they didn’t share the faith of those who listened to God. 3 For only we who believe can enter his rest. As for the others, God said,
“In my anger I took an oath:
‘They will never enter my place of rest,’”
even though this rest has been ready since he made the world. 4 We know it is ready because of the place in the Scriptures where it mentions the seventh day: “On the seventh day God rested from all his work.” 5 But in the other passage God said, “They will never enter my place of rest.”
6 So God’s rest is there for people to enter, but those who first heard this good news failed to enter because they disobeyed God. 7 So God set another time for entering his rest, and that time is today. God announced this through David much later in the words already quoted:
“Today when you hear his voice,
don’t harden your hearts.” (Hebrews 4:1-7, NLT)

This is pretty clear: we need to rest from our own life that centered around our own desires and selfishness, our own works and ambitions, and instead rest in God’s great love for us, surrendering to him. We enter that rest by trusting the Word, that is Jesus. If we don’t, the good news we have heard about Jesus does not help us. That’s the lesson of Hanun, king of the Ammonites. When we reject the faithful love of God, we are inviting judgment onto ourselves.

Paul writes something similar in 1 Corinthians:

1 Now I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3 They all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. 5 But God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the wilderness.

 6 Now these things became examples for us, so that we will not desire evil things as they did.

Those ancient Israelites chose not to trust God, and as a result they suffered the consequences.

Isaiah wrote:

In repentance and rest is your salvation. In quietness and trust is your strength. But you would have none of it. (Isaiah 30:15)

Jesus himself mourned because the people of Jerusalem refused to receive him, and he said that as a result they would experience much suffering and sorrow. He also said this:

16 “For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.  17 For God did not send His Son into the world that He might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. 18 Anyone who believes in Him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the One and Only Son of God.

We usually only read verse 16. But verse 18 adds that if we reject God’s chosen messiah, we have condemned ourselves. About 75% of all Americans think there is a heaven, and they will go there when they die. 40% of people think it doesn’t even matter how you relate to God, he’ll accept everyone anyway. But the bible is clear: grace and truth and eternal life are offered through Jesus Christ alone. When you reject Jesus, you reject God, and you condemn yourself. John wrote:

11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. 12 The one who has the Son has life. The one who doesn’t have the Son of God does not have life. 13 I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. (1John 5:11-13, HCSB)

Hanun shows us the route of “not-life.” It is real. Some people do reject Jesus. Believing the lies someone told them is not an excuse for people when they also have the truth in front of them. There are consequences to rejecting God’s faithful love.

This is difficult for many people in modern Western culture. We think it’s unfair unless everyone is included, regardless of their response. But if you think about it, it makes a great deal of sense. If someone rejects God, do you think God should force them to be eternally in His presence? It would mean that our choices don’t actually mean anything, that we aren’t, in fact, free. If there are no consequences for a choice, it’s not really a choice, is it? It’s meaningless to “choose” if everything will work out the same way, no matter what you choose.

This is the part of the Christian message that most people don’t like. In fact many people say that ideas like this are judgmental, and mean and intolerant. Do a thought experiment with me. Imagine you are at the top of a cliff, and there are many bushes all around you, so you can’t see the ground under your feet. You come upon a sign that says, “Warning! Stay Back! If you walk forward from here you may die!” Is that sign mean and judgmental, or intolerant? Of course not. The message is there to protect you from making a tragic mistake. Or imagine an inviting swimming hole in a small river. Next to the water a sign says: “Do not Swim Here! Dangerous currents and undertow! High risk of Drowning!” Is that sign being cruel and bigoted? Of course not. It is an entirely appropriate warning, trying to protect you from throwing away your own life out of foolish ignorance. The truly cruel and horrible thing to do would be to let people fall of the cliff, or drown in the swimming hole, because you were afraid of offending them by posting such signs.

Listen to God’s heart-cry toward us:

10 “Son of man, give the people of Israel this message: You are saying, ‘Our sins are heavy upon us; we are wasting away! How can we survive?’ 11 As surely as I live, says the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of wicked people. I only want them to turn from their wicked ways so they can live. Turn! Turn from your wickedness, O people of Israel! Why should you die? (Ezekiel 33:10-11, NLT)

It might surprise you to learn that Jesus spoke about hell more than any other person in the Bible. He did not want anyone to suffer eternal separation from God, and that is why he came and died for us. But he was very clear about what happens if we reject the faithful love of God offered to us through Himself. He was so clear about it, because he does not want anyone to perish:

3 This is good and pleases God our Savior. 4 He wants all people to be saved and to learn the truth. 5 There is one God. There is also one mediator between God and humans—a human, Christ Jesus. 6 He sacrificed himself for all people to free them from their sins. (1 Timothy 2:3-6, GW)

Jesus Christ does offer forgiveness, second, third and 233rd chances, love, grace and peace. He offers us daily relationship with himself, and joy. But outside of Jesus, none of that is ours. It all comes only in and through Jesus. If we reject Jesus, we reject it all, and none of the other things we rely on will be able to save us. So let’s pay attention to the lesson of Hanun, and today, let us not harden our hearts. Let’s be like Mephibosheth, not Hanun.

Listen to the Holy Spirit right now.

2 SAMUEL #9: GOD’S HOUSE?

On By Pastor TomIn 2 Samuel, Bible, Bible Teaching, House Church, Old Testament, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment
Photo by Filippo Bergamaschi on Pexels.com

God’s true presence is not found inside of special buildings, but rather, within the community of his people as they gather together to worship, learn and serve.

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For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

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2 Samuel #9 .  2 Samuel Chapter 7:1-29 ; 1 Chronicles 17:1-26

Last time we examined the covenant the Lord established with David: to make one of his descendants the Messiah, the forever-King and savior of God’s people. We also considered God’s over the top grace offered to David and to us, and the security knowing that when we want to do God’s will, even if, by mistake, we try to do the wrong thing, the Lord will make sure to keep us from pursuing it. I think there is yet one more lesson to glean from this passage.

David set up various full-time ministries for the tent of meeting, and then he wanted to build the Lord a permanent temple in Jerusalem. The prophet Nathan agreed with David, and they were ready to start the project when the Lord spoke to Nathan, and told them to wait.

It wasn’t that David’s heart was in the wrong place, or Nathan’s instincts. They just didn’t fully understand the Lord (no one ever does, of course). The Lord wanted to show David and Nathan a few things. The first thing the Lord wanted to make sure they knew is this: He doesn’t need a house. He says this:

5 “Go and tell my servant David, ‘This is what the LORD has declared: Are you the one to build a house for me to live in? 6 I have never lived in a house, from the day I brought the Israelites out of Egypt until this very day. I have always moved from one place to another with a tent and a Tabernacle as my dwelling. 7 Yet no matter where I have gone with the Israelites, I have never once complained to Israel’s tribal leaders, the shepherds of my people Israel. I have never asked them, “Why haven’t you built me a beautiful cedar house?”’ (2 Samuel 7:5-7, NLT)

During the historical period in which David lived, most people believed that gods were attached to specific places and people-groups. This is important in understanding the Old Testament. The Philistines had a primary god named “Dagon.” They built a temple for him, and made an idol of him. The Canaanite peoples who lived nearby also believed in Dagon—but not as their god. He was the god of the Philistines, and no one needed to worry about him—unless you went into Philistine territory. If you did that, then you needed to respect Dagon, because that was where he lived. The Ammonites, who lived on the other side of the Jordan river, and to the south, worshipped a god named Moloch. For their part, the Philistines theoretically believed that Moloch was a deity, but they didn’t worship him because his territory was some distance from where they lived. There were various other gods in the region as well, including the one known as Baal. It is likely that all of the non-Israeli people around the area had some level of belief in Yahweh, the God of Israel. But they thought of him like every other ‘god.’ To them, he must be just the god of the Israelites, and only really powerful in Israelite territory.

The Israelites were continually tempted to believe in the Lord in the same way: as their personal god, one among many, generally most powerful only in their own territory. But the Lord had been continually trying to get them to see the truth: that there is only one real God, the Lord Himself, and that he is God over every people and place. That was one reason the Lord had never, before this, asked his people to build a temple for him. I think God was trying to stop the Israelites from getting the idea that he really was just like all the gods of the people who lived around and near the Israelites. They might tend to get stuck on that idea if there was a permanent temple in which he “lived.” The idea that the Lord traveled with Israel wherever they went was entirely new and unique in the ancient world. No one had ever heard of a God who went with his people, wandering anywhere he chose, even into the territory of other gods. No one had ever really conceived of the idea that there was only one true God. So, a temple might tempt the Israelites to think of God as only a local, Israelite deity.

By the way, the Canaanites worshipped a god they called “Baal.” In the ancient Canaanite legends, Baal demanded a bigger and better temple. So the Lord’s response also shows David how different he is from the supposed “god” of the people who lived nearby.

Now, eventually, of course, Solomon, David’s son, did build a temple to the Lord. Why would God do that? Did he change his mind? One way in which it was very different from the temples of the gods of the surrounding people is that there was no statue (idol) of God anywhere. But I think the main issue was this: During Solomon’s reign there was much more peace with surrounding cultures, because the Israelites had conquered them. Because they lived at peace, the Israelites started befriending their non-Israelite neighbors, and going with them to worship sites on top of high hills, where the heathen people worshipped their false gods. Therefore, one purpose of the temple in Solomon’s time was to bring the Israelites together to worship the Lord alone. Even though, as we know, a person can worship the Lord anywhere, the Israelites were being drawn to worship false gods when they went to other places. The temple, when Solomon finally built it, was intended to make sure they would worship the Lord only, and do so together as one people. Even so, in the end, that didn’t really work out. Solomon himself recognized the limits of a temple. After it was built, he prayed:

18 “But will God indeed dwell with man on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that I have built! (2Chr 6:18, ESV)

So God wants us to understand that he lives everywhere. He doesn’t need a dwelling place on earth. I get a little crazy when I hear Christians calling their church buildings “the house of God.” No church building, not even the most magnificent cathedral, is a place where God “lives.” If you want to see “the house of God,” look around at your fellow believers, and look in the mirror.

19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20, NLT)

We believers are individually temples of the Holy Spirit, but most especially, believers who live and worship together are the place where the Holy Spirit “lives.” The Lord lives “in his body,” and his body is made up of the people of the church (not the building).

27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. (1 Corinthians 12:27, ESV)

11 Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. 12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. 13 This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.
14 Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. 15 Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. 16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. (Ephesians 4:11-16, NLT)

God “lives” in each of us individually, and also in a special way with all of us together. None of this has anything to do with physical buildings. So this was one reason God didn’t want David to build a temple.

This might sound a bit startling, but stay with me: a building accomplishes nothing spiritual.

A building is completely unnecessary to real church, and often has a negative impact on making disciples. History bears out what I am saying here. It was precisely at that point in time – during the time of Solomon and his temple – when the people of Israel began to go astray again and worship other things. The temple did not help in the least, and an argument might be made that it hurt. Solomon’s temple was destroyed four hundred years later, and about a century after that, another was made. Four hundred years after that, king Herod built a  third temple to please the Jewish people who were his subjects. It was even more magnificent than Solomon’s temple. Even with these amazing temples, the Jews utterly failed to walk with God. Let me make it very clear – the magnificent temple of the Jews did not help them when it came to actually receiving God’s salvation in Jesus Christ.

Jesus himself found the most receptive hearts far away from the temple – in the outlying areas of Palestine, not in Jerusalem. The temple, as God gave it to the people, was intended to help people recognize the Messiah when he came to earth. But most people missed the point entirely, and instead made the temple itself into a kind of idol.

Some people make church buildings into an idol as well. The closest thing in the New Testament that we have to modern church buildings is the synagogue. Jesus apparently was regular in going to the synagogues. But most of his real ministry and disciple-making took place outside of weekly worship services.

After the time of Jesus, the church worshipped in private homes, in small groups, for almost three hundred years. Even now, that period stands as one of the most effective disciple-making eras in history. After Christianity finally became legal in the Roman empire, Christians began creating buildings for their church meetings. The emergence of this trend of constructing dedicated physical church buildings coincides with the beginning of a long decline in Christianity. In fact, it wasn’t long after this that Europe entered what we call “the dark ages.” We can’t blame all of the problems of the dark ages on church buildings, but it was a period where Christianity was focused on buildings and institutions, and did very little real disciple-making that truly transformed lives.

A building dedicated to worship sometimes has practical value. However, a lot of church buildings are used for only a few hours each week – which doesn’t seem very practical after all. If the bible and history teach us anything about worship-buildings, it is that they often lead believers to live with the wrong focus, and sometimes to entirely miss the point.

I want to be honest here. I think one of the reasons New Joy Fellowship (our church here in Lebanon, TN) has not grown much numerically is because we have not built a church building. I think a lot of folks would be up for that – to build something we could look at and see and touch and say “We did that. That’s ours.” I deeply wish that people would be that committed to building a life that belongs entirely to Jesus and to living for his purposes. I think a lot of people who might otherwise come back to our worship after visiting just don’t feel like it is really “church” without a church building. I want to be blunt: when we have a building, we can divert our attention to religious activity that keeps God at arm’s length. But when there is no building, we are confronted with what it is really about: walking with God, walking in fellowship with each other, and working in God’s kingdom. If you have a building you can “have church” without those things. But if you don’t have a building, and you don’t have those things, you don’t have a church. It’s easier to have a building – you can pretend to be a church without really engaging with Jesus.

I’m not saying it is wrong for churches to build their own buildings to worship in. But I am saying it is unnecessary, and often it slows down spiritual growth and disciple-making.

Let’s see what Jesus said about worshipping in a particular building:

21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:21-24)

Jesus essentially says here that worship is not about a place. It is about turning to God in spirit and truth. In fact, that is the kind of worship God is seeking, not people who just want to go to a certain place. God said to David, look, the place of worship for the past four-hundred years has been that moldy tent, wherever it happens to be parked. Why do you suddenly think that isn’t good enough?

So, what does all this do for your relationship with God today? First, I want to encourage you to hold on to the understanding that a real church is a community of people who trust Jesus and walk in fellowship with God, and in fellowship with one another, and allow God to use their lives for his kingdom purposes. It has nothing to do with where, when or in what building they worship.

There are people who take things too far the other way. They claim it is not important to have dedicated times of worship with other believers. They think “Hey, my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. I don’t need to be part of a worshipping community.” But that picture is not Biblical either. Such a thing would not even have occurred to the apostles, or any Christians throughout history, until quite recently. Historically, all cultures were very communal, and the idea of an individual who doesn’t need a community was entirely unknown in Biblical times, and even for centuries afterwards. So, to be clear, though Christians don’t need a church building, they do need a church—that is, a community of people with whom they regularly worship and serve.

David and Nathan were both godly men who thought at first that a building for God was important. So don’t feel bad if you have thought that in the past. But understand, God told Nathan and David, “No, it isn’t important. I don’t want a building right now.”

The focus that God wanted was on his work to bring salvation into the world. He wanted his people to receive the Messiah and put their trust in him. That is the focus he wants for us also.  Jesus said:

19 Again, 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. 20 For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there among them.” (Matt 18:19-20, HCSB)

The word “where” means “whatever place you happen to be in.” The full presence of God, and full authority of heaven is found among God’s people gathered together, not in a building somewhere.

Now, I want to speak directly to New Joy Fellowship and to the people of Life Together Churches for a few moments. It’s easy to say “come help us build a building.” People understand that. It’s a helpful thing to motivate people. It is a simple vision to grasp and it is less threatening than real discipleship.

But I want to challenge you to present new people with a vision to “come help us build disciples.” Think about it this way. Not a single church building that now exists will be there in the New Creation. Not. One. But every single disciple that we make will be there with us. Let’s not waste time and money building what is after all, a fake church. I mean it. A building is not a church, no matter how many crosses and altars you slap on it. Let’s put our time into real church. We can present the vision clearly and simply. We want to make disciples. We do that by walking with God, walking with others and working in the kingdom. Let’s build a real house of God in that way!

2 SAMUEL #7: GOD’S HOLINESS AND WORSHIP

On By Pastor TomIn 2 Samuel, Bible, Bible Teaching, House Church, Old Testament, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment
Photo by Luis Quintero on Pexels.com

Worship is not necessarily an expression of spontaneous feelings, though that can be part of it. One of the things that liturgical churches get right is that we can make a plan for how to worship God, and follow through on it, regardless of how we feel. Worship is based upon the objective truth that God is God. He is Holy, whether we really get that or not. He is good, whether we feel that at the moment, or not. All of the good things in our lives have come about because of him, whether we recognize that or not. And so, we can decide to worship God, even when we “don’t feel like it.”

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download 2 Samuel Part 7

Second Samuel# 7. 2 Samuel 6:12-23

Last time we considered the holiness of God. When we realize how holy God is, and how sinful we are, and how much Jesus has done for us, the appropriate response is worship and thanksgiving.

I want to return to God’s holiness before we talk more about worship. Last time we mostly considered how God’s holiness is a problem for sinful humans (which means: all humans). We talked about how God’s holiness destroys sin. But it’s an even bigger problem than that. Bear with me as we look at it another way.

Pause, and try to think of a time when you were filled with some deep, positive emotion. Maybe it was profound gratitude as you held your kids or grandkids on your lap. Perhaps it was an inward delight as you listened to some really good music. It could have been a time when you were the one playing the music, and everything came together, and you felt lifted above yourself. Another such moment might come when you are looking at beautiful scenery, or, perhaps, some stunning artwork. Possibly, you felt a kind of inward rush of admiration and awe when you read a great book, or saw an amazing movie. Maybe it was a recognition of how blessed you are to be loved by the important people in your life. It could also be that time you were at a sporting event, and together with the whole crowd, you were there for an amazing win, even though your team was the underdog. I could go on, but I hope you know what I’m talking about. There are moments in life when we experience joy, or hope, or longing, or some kind of sweet, deep emotion. Think about something like one of these things. Picture it, especially how you felt. Stop reading and just enter that wonderful memory for a little while.

OK, now what I want to say is this: That terrific moment, that amazing feeling you had, originated from the holy presence of God. James writes this:

16 Do not be deceived, my dear friends! 17 Every good gift and every perfect present comes from heaven; it comes down from God, the Creator of the heavenly lights, who does not change or cause darkness by turning. 18 By his own will he brought us into being through the word of truth, so that we should have first place among all his creatures. (James 1:16-18, GNT)

The apostle Paul, preaching to people in the town of Lystra about God, put it like this:

17 But he has always given evidence of his existence by the good things he does: he gives you rain from heaven and crops at the right times; he gives you food and fills your hearts with happiness.” (Acts 14:17, GNT)

Everything good, beautiful, praiseworthy, excellent, joyful, gratitude-inducing comes from the presence of God. In fact, it may be that everything that brings us true joy is a by-product of God’s holiness. That doesn’t mean that all of these things are automatically righteous. For instance, I can imagine that someone having an extra-marital affair might feel real joy in being loved by their lover. That doesn’t mean God has approved and blessed the adulterous relationship. It just means the joy of feeling loved is an echo of the fact that we were made for the love of God. But that echo doesn’t mean it’s righteous – it means that God has created us for relationship, and even in illicit relationships what we are really seeking is God himself. The euphoria of affairs wear off eventually, and they tend to be wildly self-destructive to the closest people in your life. My main argument is that joy always points toward God, but it doesn’t necessarily mean everything that gives you joy is blessed and approved by God.

God scatters these moments to all people, whether or not they have trusted Jesus. But they are always temporary, sometimes only momentary. And that hints at the problem: Without the intervention of Jesus, eventually we would be separated from all such joy, happiness, contentment, goodness, and so on, forever. It isn’t just that we will be separated from an uncomprehensible God who is “other” in his holiness. It is that, because of our inborn sin, we would be separated from everything we crave, everything we love and find joy in, everything we so deeply need.

In our text today, the Lord offers David and his people just a hint of that. This terrible and holy Ark, the instrument of the death of Uzzah, is also the instrument of tremendous blessing to Obed-edom, on whose land the Ark now stood. His whole family was blessed by good fortune. David was encouraged by this. He saw that God is not just holy, but is also loving and good. In fact, the love and goodness are part of the holiness. So David returned to the Ark with many people to joyfully bring it to Jerusalem, to be a blessing available to all of the people of Israel.

Verse 13 shows us that David, or the priests, or both, had searched the scriptures to see what they had done wrong the first time. They now knew it should be carried with poles through the rings that were secured to the four corners of the Ark. And that is what they did.

After the first six steps, the priests carrying it stopped, while the people sacrificed a bull. There is significance to the number six. In six days, God created the earth, and on the seventh, he rested. He set aside the seventh day as holy. Seven was considered the number representing God’s perfect work. So David and the priests set aside the seventh step as holy, and offered an approved sacrifice for worship. As they proceeded, David and the others with him were filled with joy and thankfulness to God.

5 David and the whole house of Israel were celebrating before the LORD with all kinds of fir wood instruments, lyres, harps, tambourines, sistrums, and cymbals. (2Sam 6:5, HCSB)

14David was dancing with all his might before the LORD wearing a linen ephod.15He and the whole house of Israel were bringing up the ark of the LORD with shouts and the sound of the ram’s horn. (2 Samuel 6:14-15).

David, filled with the Holy Spirit, understood more than probably anyone else in his generation that God is wonderful and  good. And so he entered whole-heartedly into worship. There is a sense of extravagance and freedom here. There are all sorts of instruments. People are shouting, and dancing and blowing horns. God’s grace and joy are filling the people.

Now, I want to point out a few things about this. First, it shows us that we don’t have to be narrow in how we worship God. Some people sang. Others danced. We have six different instruments named, and it sounds like there may have been others used that weren’t specified. Worship, as described here, included free and open expressions of joy through music and dancing. The instruments listed here are a lot more like guitars, bass and drum than they are like a pipe organ. It looks like there was a lot of spontaneity also.

David’s first wife, Michal, did not approve. She told David that he made a fool of himself. David’s response is one of the best verses in 2 Samuel:

21 David replied to Michal, “I was dancing before the LORD who chose me over your father and his whole family to appoint me ruler over the LORD’s people Israel. I will celebrate before the LORD, 22 and I will humble myself even more and humiliate myself. (2Sam 6:21-22, HCSB)

David understood that the only opinion about worship that matters is God’s opinion. He worshipped the way he did for the Lord, not for anyone else. He was willing to go even further, and look even more foolish for the Lord. David understood the awesome power of God’s holiness, and how gracious God is to come close to us anyway. Not only that, but David also understood that part of God’s holiness is his sheer goodness. In David’s mind, nothing at all could compare with the wonder, goodness, glory and holiness of God. He refused to hold back anything from the Lord.

I think we need to be encouraged by this to give honor and worship to God, even if it means looking silly to the people around us. If you are worried about how you look, you will not be able to fully worship God. When I’m not playing guitar, sometimes I raise my hands. I do this sometimes even when I’m not “feeling the vibe.” I do it because God is worthy to raise my hands to – he deserves that kind of honor, and, in fact, much more. I do it to remind myself to quit thinking what others around me might be thinking, and wonder instead what God thinks. Worship should not be governed by what we think is socially expected, but rather by how we can truly honor God.

The second point is this: Worship should not be governed by what we think is socially expected, but rather by how we can truly honor God. Yes, I know I just said that, but this time, turn it around the other way. I’ve been in worship services where the social expectation is that you raise your hands and dance and jump up and down. I think that is terrific if those things are the way you express honor to God. But sometimes, I want to honor God by kneeling quietly, or bowing my head and standing still, or just singing with all my heart. I should not allow social expectations to force me to raise my hands or dance, any more than I should allow them to stop me from doing those things.

Now, please don’t use that as an excuse to stand with your hands in your pocket, refusing to give God the honor he deserves. I’m just saying, don’t let what others think you should do, or what others are doing (or not doing) be your guide for how you worship. Freely and fully express yourself to God in keeping with the person he made you to be. Sometimes the Holy Spirit may nudge you to go out on a limb and be more expressive, even if what he wants you to do feels a bit uncomfortable or unnatural. You might, in fact, look foolish if you worship that way. David shows us the way. If your choice is between looking like a fool to other human beings, or looking like a fool to the Lord, it’s obvious that we should choose the first.

Sometimes the Spirit may nudge you and remind you not to put on a show for others, but to focus on Him alone. Listen to that too.

I do want to make sure we understand worship. You can worship through singing, but worship incorporates more than just singing. As we receive the Lord’s Supper in faith, we are worshipping. When we thank God for a meal, or for a good gift of any kind, we are worshipping. The heart of worship is thanking God for all of his good gifts, and, above all, thanking God for who he is, which is sometimes called “giving glory to God.” Those thanks, and that “giving glory” can be offered in a variety of ways: singing, praying, saying liturgy, reading scripture out loud, having a time of silence.

One way to worship is to enjoy God’s gifts while consciously acknowledging the fact that they come from him. For example, I used to worship while I was skiing in the Cascade Mountains. I recognized that the mountains, and my ability to enjoy them that moment while skiing, were gifts from God. My heart was lifted up to God while I skied.

The Bible also teaches us that worship is most unique and precious when it is done alongside other believers. Something special happens when believers worship together that is more meaningful and powerful than worshipping alone. Being with other believers helps to keep us humble–because we need each other to worship God in the way that delights him most. While there are examples of believers worshipping alone in the Bible, by far the most numerous examples of worship involve more than one person. People who suggest that the only worship that they “need” to do is being in nature by themselves misunderstand the nature of worship. As deeply introverted as I am, I cannot deny that God created us, and redeemed us, to worship him alongside others of his people.

Also, worship is not necessarily an expression of spontaneous feelings, though that can be part of it. One of the things that liturgical churches get right is that we can make a plan for how to worship God, and follow through on it, regardless of how we feel. Worship is based upon the objective truth that God is God. He is Holy, whether we really get that or not. He is good, whether we feel that at the moment, or not. All of the good things in our lives have come about because of him, whether we recognize that or not. And so, we can decide to worship God, even when we don’t “feel” like it.

Our God is holy. I think one reason David and his people worshipped so extravagantly, is because they had a very recent reminder of how holy God is, and how big the gap was between them; and yet they also had a reminder of how good and gracious he is to bridge that gap himself.

Let the Holy Spirit speak to you about this today.

1 SAMUEL #9. UNFAILING GRACE

On By Pastor TomIn 1 Samuel, Bible Teaching, House Church, Old Testament, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment
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The things that God did for his people in the past are supposed to be considered part of his faithfulness to us in the present. What God did for previous generations, he also did for us. God’s goodness to others is part of his goodness to us, because we belong to his people. His faithfulness does not end when we make mistakes. He walks with us even when we choose the wrong path, and redeems us in our mistakes, if we will let him.

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1 Samuel # 9. God’s faithfulness to us at all times. 1 Samuel 12:1-25

Think for a moment about some decision you made, or action you took that you now know was a mistake. What would you change today, if you could? How would your life be different?

We all know that you can’t go back and unsay those cruel words, or un-make that decision that led you to where you are today. I’m not going to pretend that I’ve found a way to do that. But I do think that through 1 Samuel chapter 12, God is offering grace even after we have stepped out on the wrong road. It isn’t grace to go back. It is grace to go on.

In first Samuel chapter 8, the people asked God, through Samuel, to give them a king. This was a rejection of God’s plan for them as a nation. It was a choice to exchange the freedom and protection they could have had in following the Lord for the false-security of a king who would take care of them, but also rule over them. Samuel, in his wisdom, knew it was a mistake. He talked to God about it, who affirmed Samuel’s instinct that it was a mistake. But the people were determined.

Not only did they want a king, they wanted a certain kind of king. Their requirements were also a mistake. But the people were determined. The Lord allowed them to choose their own way. They did, and their choice was a major mistake. Even so, God let them go ahead with it, and helped them to find a king. The man who met their specifications was Saul, a big impressive looking fellow who was also insecure and spiritually insensitive and ignorant.

Even so, the Lord began to use Saul right away. In choosing him, the Lord removed an old shame from many thousands of people, and set up Israel with a magnificent big champion to match a Philistine giant whom no one yet knew about.

God chose Saul through the prophet Samuel. First Samuel anointed Saul in private. Later he was chosen by God in a public assembly of the leaders of Israel. Even so, nothing really happened. After the events we looked at last time – after a great military victory – the people finally made Saul an honest king.

15 So all the people went to Gilgal, and there in the LORD’s presence they made Saul king. There they sacrificed fellowship offerings in the LORD’s presence, and Saul and all the men of Israel greatly rejoiced. 1 Sam 11:15 (HCSB)

So you see, even their approach to the king was not one of faith in the Lord and his choice. They waited until Saul gave them something of what they were looking for – military victory – before they fully accepted God’s help in choosing the king.

After it was finally all official, Samuel stood before the people and made a speech. That speech is the text of 1 Samuel chapter 12.

In the first place (12:1-5), Samuel wanted to make sure his conscience was clear. He also wanted to draw a contrast between his own actions, and the rights of a king. Samuel has never taken anything that wasn’t his. Yet he had warned the people in 8:10-18 that the King would have the right to take many things from the people in taxes to run his household and the kingdom. The people affirmed that Samuel had been a good and fair leader. There is an unspoken implication to this part of Samuel’s speech “So – in me, God gave you a good and fair leader who listened to him and did right. But you wanted a king!”

Next, Samuel reminded them of God’s faithfulness. The Lord led them out of Egypt as a great nation – but without a king. They had Moses, a prophet, and Aaron, a priest, but no king. And the Lord cared for them and provided for them. Although Samuel doesn’t mention this explicitly, the troubles the people had in the wilderness during the exodus were not due to lack of a king, but rather to disobedience to the Lord.

During the time of the Judges, the people had troubles again. But Samuel points out two things. First, the trouble was their own doing, not because they lacked a king. It came because they quit following the Lord. Second, when they repented and cried out for God’s help, he was gracious and delivered them.

11 So the LORD sent Jerubbaal, Barak, Jephthah, and Samuel. He rescued you from the power of the enemies around you, and you lived securely.

There is something else about part of Samuel’s speech that is striking: most of the incidents he described of God’s goodness to the people happened to previous generations of Israelites, not to the people with whom he was speaking. However, he speaks as if God had done all this for the present generation. This is something important that Moses taught the people of Israel long before. Every generation of Israelites was called to remember the great acts of God in the past, and to live like God had done those things for themselves, in this present generation. The people of God are heirs to all that God has done in the past. God’s work in the past should be considered a sign of his faithfulness in the present.

We live in a highly individualized society, and on top of that, our culture is obsessed with the future, and new things. But there are other ways to live, other ways to view the world. God’s people in ancient times were much more communal, and much more in touch with the past. If God did something for past generations, it was counted very much as if he had done it for the present generation. If God did something for me, he did it for his people. If he did it for his people he did it for me.

I think we should learn from this way of looking at the world. I find that I easily forget the things God has done in the past even in my own life. I hardly even consider things he has done for others, or what he did for previous generations of his people. But if we start to see ourselves as part of the intergenerational community of God’s people, then his faithfulness to us becomes overwhelmingly apparent. Twenty years ago God healed my friend Adam from a broken back. The healing was documented by before and after x-rays. A few years ago, he healed my friend Doug from twisted intestines – again documented before and after by CT scan. But those healings weren’t just for Adam and Doug – they were for me, for all of us in the community of faith. And they weren’t just for those moments in the past – they were for us now, and for future generations. I could easily name a dozen other amazing things God has done for me, and for people I know. And then add in God’s graciousness to Christians I don’t even know, and then to his people of previous generations, and suddenly, God’s grace and faithfulness become overwhelming. I think it would be very helpful if we began to consider God’s faithfulness to his people as a whole, including his faithfulness to previous generations. The writer of Hebrews encourages us to do exactly that. After writing about God’s mighty acts for his people in the past, he says this:

1 Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, 2 keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that lay before Him endured a cross and despised the shame and has sat down at the right hand of God’s throne. (Hebrews 12:1-2, HCSB)

There is a great cloud of witnesses to God’s faithfulness to his people. We belong to God’s people. His goodness to them is also his goodness to us. Everything God did in the past, he did for us, the people of God.

4 For whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction, so that we may have hope through endurance and through the encouragement from the Scriptures. (Romans 15:4, HCSB)

Let that sink in, and let it lead us to lay aside all heaviness and sin, and run our race with perseverance, knowing that we too, are a part of that group of witnesses.

Back to Samuel’s speech. The overall point Samuel is making is that when they followed the Lord faithfully, he delivered his people, protected them, and they lived in peace and security. All this took place without a human king. The Lord was their king. Samuel is saying – look, when you were faithful to God, the old way worked just fine. God did so much for you. Even so, you are ignoring everything he did for you. You are claiming it just isn’t working out, when the reason it isn’t working out is your own stubbornness, your own turning away from God.

After the people heard this, they recognized that Samuel was right. They felt bad about what they had done, and they were afraid. I would bet that no one reading this – even you folks who live outside the United States – has asked God to give you a king. But have you asked him for something that was a mistake? Have you ever determined to go ahead your own way, and later realized it was a mistake – maybe even a huge error of judgment?

1 Samuel 12 gives a picture of how God deals with us in those kinds of situations. I always want to go back and do it over, only correctly this time. I want to have my mistakes undone. But God doesn’t work that way.

Sometimes, I enjoy playing computer games. One of the great things about computer games, is that you can mess up, you can even die – and it doesn’t matter. You just start the game over from the last point at which you saved it. I have often thought – and maybe you have too – wouldn’t it be cool if life was like a computer game? If you blow it, you just get a “do-over.” If you make a bad choice, you go back to that point and make a right choice now.

But there is something else about computer games. They are fun, but they are also meaningless. I don’t mean that it is evil or wrong to play them. But the choices you make within a computer game are meaningless. Death in a computer game is meaningless in real life. Life in a computer game is meaningless. We need to understand something here: choices without consequences have no meaning.

There is a famous old story about an ordinary young man who falls in love with a princess, and she loves him back. The father of the princess, the king, is not pleased. He decrees that the young man be placed in front of two doors, with a choice to open one or the other. Behind one of the doors is a beautiful maiden, however, not his beloved princess. If he chooses her door, he will be married to her immediately and they will be exiled to another kingdom. Behind the other door is an angry, hungry tiger which will surely kill him. He doesn’t know which door holds the lady and which holds the tiger. However, the princess, the young man’s lover, knows the secret of the doors. If she tells him to open the tiger-door, he will be killed in agony. But if she tells him to open the lady-door, he will be married to the beautiful maiden behind that one, and the princess who loves him will be left alone. She signals him secretly to open one of the doors. Here’s the question: which door did she tell him to open?

 This story has endured for over a hundred years, in part because there is an agony in knowing that the choices matter. However, as a thought experiment, change the story a little. Suppose that no matter which door he chose, the tiger would be there. Or, no matter which door he chose, he would get the princess herself and they would live happily ever after. The story is no longer compelling if the choices do not result in some consequence.

Imagine I held in one hand a bag containing a candy bar, and in the other hand, a bag containing a piece of scrap wood that was good for nothing. If you think you might have a shot at the candy bar, it would be fun to try and make the right choice. If you knew that no matter what you chose, I would give you the wood, you wouldn’t bother even playing. If you knew that no matter what you did, I would give you the candy bar, you might be happy about the candy, but you would probably think going through the motion of choosing is pretty pointless and stupid – in fact, meaningless.

So we see that with the Israelites, the Lord gave them their free and meaningful choice. If He undid their choice, it would mean their choices would have no consequences, and therefore no meaning, and therefore they would not actually have free choice. The same is true of our choices. So the Lord doesn’t undo them.

What the Lord did do for the Israelites was promise to walk with them through the consequences they brought on themselves. He works even with their wrong choices, and accomplishes his purposes in spite of them. So, Samuel encourages them to walk with the Lord NOW.

20 Samuel replied, “Don’t be afraid. Even though you have committed all this evil, don’t turn away from following the LORD. Instead, worship the LORD with all your heart. 21 Don’t turn away to follow worthless things that can’t profit or deliver you; they are worthless. 22 The LORD will not abandon His people, because of His great name and because He has determined to make you His own people.

23 “As for me, I vow that I will not sin against the LORD by ceasing to pray for you. I will teach you the good and right way. 24 Above all, fear the LORD and worship Him faithfully with all your heart; consider the great things He has done for you. 25 However, if you continue to do what is evil, both you and your king will be swept away.” (1 Samuel 12:20-25)

It was not God’s plan for Israel to be led by a king. Once they made that choice they had some difficult consequences to follow, as we will see. But even so, God worked through that mistake. In fact he worked through it in a mighty and amazing way. Eventually he used the monarchy of mistake as a way to bring his salvation to the entire world; Jesus, in his human ancestry, was descended from the kings of Israel.

Maybe it was a mistake for you to take the job you have right now. Perhaps the Lord was calling you to something else, but you just didn’t have the faith to take the risk. OK, so you messed up. But don’t turn away from following the Lord. He can do great things through this. Just be sure to let him.

Maybe you married the wrong person. People think this all the time. They think that somehow they missed out on their real soul mate, and now their entire marriage was a mistake. Fine, what if it was? God can and will work through this marriage, if you let him. Even now, don’t turn away from following the Lord. Don’t follow worthless things. God will redeem your mistake and make it beautiful, if you allow him to.

I’m not only talking about honest mistakes, either. The people of Israel knew that God didn’t want them to have a human king. They did it anyway. In the same way, sometimes we deliberately make a sinful choice. God can redeem even those choices; maybe especially those choices.

God is so good. He wants our lives to have meaning, so he allows our choices to be free and real. And yet, even when we make the wrong choice, if we turn back to him, he can work through any circumstance we might create for ourselves, and make good come out of it.

Once again I’m reminded of Romans 8:28:

28 We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28, HCSB)

1 PETER #32: GOD CARES FOR YOU

On By Pastor TomIn 1 Peter, Bible, Bible Teaching, Christianity, House Church, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment
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The key to balancing our understanding of God’s care for us is to remember to humble ourselves before God, recognizing that life is not about you or me. At the same time we are called to trust that he does, in fact, care for us. Humility means we do not demand that God serve us, and especially, we do not insist that he must answer our prayers only in the way we intend. We come to him humbly, in awe and wonder at the fact that he really does care for us, knowing that we do not deserve it, but trusting that he does care all the same. We come to him humbly, agreeing that we do need his help and love and grace. And we come to him in trust, relying on him to care for us, knowing for certain he does, because of Jesus.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

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1 Peter #32. 1 Peter 5:6-7

Last time we discussed humility. We noted that there is a connection between humility, and casting your anxieties on God, because in order to give our cares to Him, we must admit that we can’t handle them ourselves. This topic reminds me of the poorly worded church sign that said “Don’t let worry destroy you – our church can help!”

There are two possible errors when we consider the idea that God truly cares for us. The first is to believe that this is the main thing about God. We can begin to believe that God’s main purpose is to care for us; that this is what God is for. We start to think that this is what being a Christian is all about – having a God who will take care of our problems.

Making this error leads to all sorts of problems. The first, and biggest, is that we believe that life is all about us. People think that God is there to serve them, so naturally that means that they, and their needs, desires and problems, are the most important things about faith in God. Now, they probably wouldn’t actually put it that way so bluntly to themselves. But when people make this error, the way they pray, and pursue God, shows that they think God is primarily there to help and serve them (and, to be fair, other believers). This is really where the “prosperity gospel” comes from. One of the big dangers of it is that it is often so close to the truth, yet distorted in significant ways. If the main thing about God is that he exists to care for them, then what they really need is to find a way to get access to God’s caring and blessing. They might do this by reducing how much they sin. After all, (the thinking goes) sin gets in the way of God giving them what they need. Now, reducing sin is a good thing. I’m all for it. But the reason we try to sin less is because God is holy, because some things are right and some are wrong, not because it will help us get more stuff that we want.

People might try to get more of God’s blessing and care through prayer and worship – prayer and worship unlock God’s blessing (so many people would put it). Again, I think prayer and worship are good things. But we should do them because God is God, and deserves our worship, and much more besides. It is true that sometimes we are blessed through prayer and worship. However, doing such things mainly in order to get more blessings is a serious distortion of what the Bible teaches.

People who buy into this error go to church primarily in order to learn how to “release” more of God’s care and blessing into their lives. They give their tithe not because God is God, and owns everything, but rather, they give primarily in order to get greater blessing back.

Many churches and ministries that take this approach are very large and outwardly successful. This is because the whole idea appeals to human selfishness. Instead of dealing with the basic sin of self-centeredness, ministries actually appeal to it in order to get people to do religious things, and to grow the church. It’s easier to grow a ministry if you encourage and manipulate the sinful desires people have, rather than confronting them with the gospel.

When we look at our text today, we can see the main mistake. People who make this error keep “God cares for you,” but they ignore “humble yourself before God.”

The other major problem that comes out of thinking that God is mainly there to take care of us is that when he doesn’t take care of us the way we think he should, our faith is shaken. I have met many, many people who turned away from God, in essence, because they felt like God let them down. He didn’t care for them in the way they wanted to, or in a way that they could understand. It is a fragile and unstable foundation for faith.

I’ll be honest, I do not remotely understand how to reconcile these thoughts: 1) God cares for me. 2) God is all powerful. 3) God has not healed me from my constant, brutal pain. If I thought God’s primary job was taking care of me, I would be tempted to think he’s pretty bad at it, and I might want to abandon my faith. As it is, though I do believe God cares for me, I also believe that his ultimate purposes are bigger than just me, and that, because he is God, I should not expect to understand everything he does, or does not, do. I can trust him beyond what I can understand.

There is another error that people sometimes make about these verses. Some people find it very hard to believe that God actually does care for individuals, families and small groups. They understand that God is God, all right, but they can’t believe he has any true interest in dealing with eight billion separate people, nor yet the time to do it.

This error is also dangerous. It is a rejection of what the Bible actually says. As incredible as it seems, God actually cares what happens in the lives of individual people:

16 But I will call on God,
and the LORD will rescue me.
17 Morning, noon, and night
I cry out in my distress,
and the LORD hears my voice. (Psalms 55:16-17, NLT)
17 As for me, I am poor and needy,
but the Lord takes thought for me.
You are my help and my deliverer;
do not delay, O my God! (Psalms 40:17, ESV)
8 Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matthew 6:8, ESV)
26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. (Matthew 6:26-32, ESV)

As you might imagine, there are many other such verses. According to the Bible, God really does care for each person in the world. The details of our lives, and our struggles, are important to Him.

 In 2017, we were incredibly blessed to take a one month sabbatical in Europe. My wife Kari was struggling to believe this very thing: how can God really care for each one of the billions of people on earth? How can he even keep track of them all? Traveling often brings this up. When you travel, you realize how many people and places there are in the world. It seems impossible for God to keep track of everyone.

We had two surprising experiences in which God showed us once again that he is God. At one point, we went to Venice, Italy, where we stayed in a Methodist guest house. Breakfast was included with the cost of the stay, and one morning we ate next to a German family. I was excited to practice my German, so I spoke to them. The man asked me where I learned German, and I explained that I grew up in Papua New Guinea (PNG), and many of our friends there, including our neighbors, were Germans. To shorten the story, it turned out that he had worked, in Germany, with one of my former German neighbors for several years! The odds of bumping into someone who knows someone else from PNG are astronomically small anywhere in the world. The odds that it would be someone who knew my actual neighbor are infinitesimally small. You would be a fool to bet any amount of money on such a thing happening by random coincidence.  

Another “coincidence” began about a week later, when we were in southern Italy on a ferry boat. On the boat, we got to talking with a friendly couple from Australia, and we enjoyed our time with one another. We left them once we reached shore, and didn’t see them again. A week after that, we were in the Rome airport, to take our flight back to the U.S.. That particular airport is stunningly gigantic. We went through all sorts of lines, and rushed from one point to another, passing thousands of people, until we came to the international departures checkpoint. There were several hundred people in the line, which snaked back and forth over a huge area. We got settled into the line, and took a moment to catch our breath. We turned around, only to find the Australian couple immediately behind us. I wouldn’t know how to begin to calculate how unlikely this was. If I put this sort of coincidence in one of my books, people would call it bad writing; they would say that as the author, I am clearly manipulating the plot in an unbelievable way. Perhaps that is exactly what it was, with, of course, God being the author of our experiences, manipulating things so that we can catch a glimpse of him.

Speaking of writing, my own experience as an author has helped me to see how God can care for each individual person. Suppose I am writing a scene in which my main character (Jonah Borden) meets another key character in the story, named Peter. Jonah goes on a hike, and coming around a corner, he meets Peter. In the pages of my book, all this happens instantaneously. But in my life, as the author, I can write (speaking as Jonah) “I came to a fork in the trail, and took it. Around the next bend, I met a man.” Then, I can stop, and take two days to think about Peter, and his motivations and needs, and how he came to be there at that particular time, and everything else about Peter’s life, and how his life will affect Jonah’s life, and vice-versa. In the time-frame of the book, it all happens from one moment to the next. But I can step out of the pages of the book, into my own time-location and take all the time I want to work all this out. I am not bound by the time-frame of the people in the story.

If Jonah believed in me as the god of his world, he could pray, “O Author, please let me meet someone in the next five minutes who will help me with my troubles.” I could take as much time as I need to set up an answer for him, even though only five minutes (or less) elapsed for him, in my story. Or, alternatively, I could see that Jonah’s request doesn’t work with the story I am telling, and so I would not have him meet anyone, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care for him. In fact, he is my creation, and I am pretty fond of him, to be honest, but that doesn’t stop me from putting him into a lot of difficult situations.

In the same way, God is not bound by our time frame. He has all the time in the world to hear my prayer, and yours, and the prayers of believers in China, and India, and South America. He has all the time there is to arrange for us to meet someone significant at just the right time and place. He has much more time, in fact, than I do as an author. God is infinite, and we are not, and so he has, literally, more than enough time, and more than enough capacity, to care for not just eight billion people at once, but even trillions and trillions more.

The ultimate demonstration of God’s love for us is the death of Jesus Christ. God did not have to save us. Jesus did not have to die. He chose to die, and he did so because he loves us.

6 When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. 7 Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. 8 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. 9 And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. 10 For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. (Romans 5:6-10, NLT)

He has already proven his love for us, and if we ever doubt it, we can remember the cross, the torture and suffering, the incredible spiritual agony that he endured for you and me. Look at the cross, and see how much he cares for us.

We are called not just to know that God cares for us, but to actively cast our cares upon him. Peter obviously means that we should pray about the things that burden us. Paul says something similar:

6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7, NLT)

 Unburden yourself to the Lord. Tell him, in plain language, in your own words, what is troubling you. But there is a second part of casting your cares on the Lord that we often forget. If we cast our cares upon God, that means we have to let go of them. The same word is used in Luke when the disciples threw their cloaks onto the donkey that Jesus rode. They couldn’t throw their cloaks onto the animal, and still wear them, or hold onto them at the same time. To cast your cares on God means to release them into his hands. If you tell God what concerns you, and then you continue to worry and think and imagine about it, you haven’t really cast your cares on him, have you? You’ve just given him a look at your worries, while you still hold them tight. He can’t carry your burden for you if you insist on carrying it yourself.

Now, I do know that this is easier said than done. But the first step toward really giving God your concerns is to recognize that once you have prayed, you must let go of them. I think that sometimes, worrying is our way of trying to control the uncontrollable. We can’t actually stop a loved one from getting into a car accident, but it almost feels like if we worry about it, we have some measure of control. To cast your cares on the Lord, you have to humble yourself to the point where you give up the idea of controlling what happens. You have to trust him.

I have a few practical suggestions about how to actually do that. In the first place, pray to God for the ability to trust him, and the capacity to give up control. Seriously, ask him to help you. As much as you can, give him your willingness to change. I think this is probably the best thing we can do.

Another thing that sometimes helps me is to set a timer for how long I will pray about something that really bothers me. When the timer is done, my time is up. It’s in God’s hands, no take-backs. At other times, I might write down my deep concerns, and, after praying, physically burn them in order to leave them with God. At other times, if I am walking and praying. I might pick up a rock, and use it to represent my anxieties. After praying, I will throw the rock away from me as far as I can.

As I mentioned a while ago, the key to balancing our understanding of God’s care for us is to remember both to humble ourselves before God, and also to trust that he does, in fact, care for us. The humility means we do not demand that God serve us, and especially, we do not insist that he must answer our prayers only in the way we intend. We come to him humbly, in awe and wonder at the fact that he really does care for us, knowing that we do not deserve it, but trusting that he does care all the same. We come to him humbly, agreeing that we do need his help and love and grace. And we come to him in trust, relying on him to care for us, knowing for certain he does, because of Jesus.

1 PETER #31: HUMILITY

On By Pastor TomIn 1 Peter, Bible Teaching, House Church, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment
The Bible

Jesus explicitly taught his disciples to be humble. Humility is not the same as humiliation. Jesus, being who he was, understood that he was, in fact, the most amazing being in the universe. Yet, he did not insist that others recognize him as such, even though he knew it to be true. The essence of humility is trusting God to make all things right, in his own time.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

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Humility is a challenging topic for me to teach about, because it’s so difficult to be humble when you are as amazing as me. (Sorry, I had to do that one – it was so obvious!) Actually, when I think of how bad I am at humility, I am humbled. (OK, I’ll quit now). All right, on a serious note, I do actually struggle with the whole topic of humility, because I struggle with the idea of injustice. It seems wrong to me – unjust – when people are not recognized for their amazing gifts, achievements, or personalities, while other people, less deserving, get credit when they don’t really deserve it. However, Jesus and his apostles are crystal clear about humility: Humility is part of the character of Jesus, and therefore it should be part of the character of every Christian. Paul explains this in many places, but perhaps nowhere better than in his letter to the Philippians:

3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

(Philippians 2:3-11, ESV)

Jesus himself explained the importance of humility to his disciples many times:

7 Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, 8 “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, 9 and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. 10 But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. 11 For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

(Luke 14:7-11, ESV)

Jesus’ own life was one huge example of humility. Being God, the Creator and Ruler of the universe, he humbly confined himself to the limits of human flesh. Even when he did that, he did not choose to be born in Rome, or Athens, which were the centers of power and culture in those days. He did not become the son of a king, emperor, or even just a noble family. Instead, he became the son of a poor family. Not only was he not born in a palace, he wasn’t even born in an ordinary house, but rather a stable. He grew up in Nazareth, which was a no-account town in a no-account region in a no-account country. When he spoke, it was with a Galilean accent, which sounded to the people of Jerusalem like a hillbilly/redneck way of talking. He washed the feet of his disciples as if he was a common servant. He was put on trial and mocked by people who should have fallen on their faces to worship him. The wood that was used to crucify him came from a tree that would not have existed if he hadn’t caused it to be. And even today his name is mocked. This is how it is supposed to be, for now, says Jesus:

25 But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. 26 It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, 28 even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

(Matthew 20:25-28, ESV)

Now, I do think sometimes we misunderstand humility. Perhaps we think it is similar to humiliation. We might imagine that to be humble means to have a low opinion of ourselves, or even hate ourselves. But if we look at Jesus as the greatest example of humility, I think we can see more clearly.

Jesus did not have a low opinion of himself. He did not think of himself as worthless, useless or pointless. If you took every human being who ever lived, and every great work of art, culture, literature or engineering that was ever made, and threw in all the gold and jewels and real estate in all of the history of the entire world, all of it together is not as valuable as the life of Jesus. And if Jesus is who the Bible says he is, he must have known that. He knew that he was the most amazing human being to ever walk on the surface of this planet. He knew that the entire planet was not equal in worth to a single drop of his own blood.

So Biblical humility does not mean self-hatred. It does not mean you pretend you are worthless when you know you are not. But Jesus, being who he was, knowing who he was, did not insist that everyone else acknowledge that. He had self-respect, but he did not demand that others treat him with the respect he deserved. In the verses from Matthew chapter 20 (above) he says: “I didn’t come to be served, but to serve, and to give my life as a ransom for many.”

When we are humble, we do not insist upon our own way, even when we could rightfully do so. We do not insist upon getting credit for something, even when we deserve that credit. When we are humble we patiently endure it when others treat us unjustly and unfairly, knowing that one way or another, God will eventually make all things right. We don’t have to defend ourselves, our abilities, our work, or our reputation, because God will do so in his time and in his way.

This leads us to another important aspect of humility. In order to truly be humble, we need to trust God. We need to trust that he will look out for our interests, for our credit, for our good and safety. If we think we are on our own, if it is up to us to look out for ourselves, we cannot be humble, because the world will run over us, and we won’t get what we need and deserve. But if we trust that God will look out for us, we can let go of the need to make sure we get “our rightful share” of everything in life.

On the other hand, in order to trust God, we need to be humble. Humility says, “I need God. I am not enough on my own. I need grace and forgiveness.”

I recently watched a TV show. The story was about a woman named Donna who was married to a violently abusive husband. She had an affair, and got pregnant from the affair. A teenage girl found out, and threatened to tell her husband, so Donna killed the girl. She allowed an innocent man to be convicted of the murder, and that man served twenty-years in prison for Donna’s crime, until she was found out.

When the police finally found out that Donna was the murderer, she blamed everyone but herself. She said it was her abusive husband’s fault. She said it was the girl’s fault for threatening to tell. It was the fault of the man she had an affair with. It was the police’s fault for not making her feel safe from her husband (though she never told anyone, until after he died, that he was abusive).

After serving a few years in prison herself, she developed terminal cancer. The sister of the girl who she murdered came to see Donna, to tell her that she forgave her. Donna’s response was “-—you, and -—forgiveness!” (“—” stands for a swearword). I think this portrays a very real kind of attitude. You see, in order to receive forgiveness, Donna would have to admit that the murder was indeed her fault. She would have to give up defending herself. She would have to put herself in a place of need that she could not fill herself. In short, she would have had to humble herself, and she refused to be humble.

I know that’s only a story, but like all good stories, it connects us to something real about life. Most of us have not committed murder. Even so, we need forgiveness no less than the character of Donna in the story. But in order to be forgiven, we have to admit that we have a need for it, and we cannot meet that need ourselves. Humility means we must depend upon God – we can’t do it alone. We have to rely on him for something – we cannot rely on ourselves alone. We need forgiveness, but we don’t deserve forgiveness, and we are at the mercy of God’s willingness to give it to us. That is a place of humility, and many, many people refuse to be so humble.

We will spend next week on the phrase “casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” But for now, I want to point out that to cast our anxieties upon God requires humility. We have to admit that we can’t handle it all. We have to give up trying ourselves to make life work, and trust God. That requires humility.

Peter urges us to be humble not only toward God, but also toward one another. A few weeks ago in one of our local house churches, someone shared some very personal struggles they were having. This person was allowing us to see that they didn’t have it all together, admitting that they had needs that they themselves could not fill. I was struck by two things. First, it required real humility to be so open and vulnerable with us. That person’s open sharing was a demonstration of humility in action. They were willing for us to see their personal struggles, willing to show that they did not have life all working well. Second, it struck me that this kind of humility requires great courage and strength. We tend to think of people who keep it all in as “strong, silent types.” But I realized, while the person was sharing, that I was seeing incredible bravery and incredible inner strength on display. I think it takes much more courage and inner fortitude to be openly humble like that than it does to keep silent.

So humility can be difficult. It requires vulnerability and trust. But Peter tells us that we will not have to humble ourselves forever. Right now, it is the attitude we should have. But what Jesus and his disciples taught, and what the Old Testament teaches also, is that when we humble ourselves, we are trusting ourselves into God’s hands. If we will trust him by being humble, he will make sure that in his own time, we are lifted up. That of course, is what Peter says in the text today: humble yourselves, and then God, in his time, will lift you up. That is the implication of what Paul writes in Philippians: Jesus humbled himself, and then God lifted him up and gave him honor, and he will receive even more honor when  he returns. Many Old Testament scriptures teach the same thing:

6 Though the LORD is great, he cares for the humble,
but he keeps his distance from the proud. (Psalms 138:6, NLT)
15 For thus says the One who is high and lifted up,
who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
“I dwell in the high and holy place,
and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly,
and to revive the heart of the contrite. (Isaiah 57:15, ESV)
34 He mocks those who mock,
but gives grace to the humble.( Proverbs 3:34, HCSB)

We need to trust that he will indeed “lift us up” when the time comes.

A few thoughts for application: As you have been reading this, is there some way in which the Holy Spirit is prompting you to be humble? Is he asking you to be vulnerable about something with other believers? Is he gently calling you to let go of getting your own way in something? Perhaps he wants you to hold your peace when someone less deserving gets credit for something.

On a different line of thought: how is the Lord calling you to humbly trust him right now? Do you need to let go of pride, or self-sufficiency?

Let the Spirit speak to you today!

1 PETER #12: ORDINARY PRIESTS, SPIRITUAL SACRIFICES

On By Pastor TomIn 1 Peter, Bible, Bible Teaching, Christianity, Churches in Lebanon, House Church, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment
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In Christ, we do not need priests to help us connect to God. ALL of us have direct access to God through Jesus Christ. This means that in a sense, we are all priests. That priesthood extends to the fact that all Christians are called to represent and serve God wherever we live, work and relax.

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 1 Peter Part 12

1 Peter #12.  1 Peter 2:4-5

As you come to him, a living stone—rejected by people but chosen and honored by God—5 you yourselves, as living stones, a spiritual house, are being built to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

1 PETER 2:4-5

As in pretty much the entire letter, when Peter writes “you,” in Greek, it is plural. In English it should be “you all,” which is just one more argument for adopting “Y’all” as an actual, proper word. Anyway, Peter is saying that Christian communities are part of something that God is building. He begins the building with the foundation of Jesus – the living stone, rejected by humans – but he is building us Christians, through our local church communities, into living stones, and those living stones are making a spiritual house. Next, he explains that within the spiritual house of God, every single Christian is a priest.

I want to unpack this a little bit. We will deal with Jesus as a “living stone,” next time. Peter also calls his readers (that is, all Christians) “living stones.” He is providing an analogy about the church. If we needed any reminder that the church is not contained in physical buildings, here it is: we, the people who follow Jesus, are the building blocks, and we are being built into a spiritual house, not a physical one. Remember, there were no “church buildings,” until three hundred years after Peter wrote this letter. One of the main points Peter is making is that God lives within the community of his people (not within physical buildings). When we gather together to worship (even when it is on zoom), God inhabits our spiritual community in a special, and spiritual, way. Part of our purpose as Christians is to be a community in which God dwells.

Let’s spend the bulk of our time exploring the fact that Peter calls Christians “a holy priesthood.” In the first place, in ancient times, only a priest was allowed to “approach God” to make a sacrifice. For the Israelites, the priests had to be born into a particular bloodline. Most people were not priests, and as close as they ever could get to the presence of God was to stand outside of God’s temple, in the courtyard. The priests (lucky enough to be born into priestly families) were allotted into divisions, and the divisions were rotated in their service at the temple. The priests had to go through various cleansing rituals in order to be considered holy enough to complete their service of offering sacrifices on behalf of the people. No one but a priest ever got to go inside the temple, and even for a priest, it was probably a once in a lifetime chance, because you were chosen for the duty by random chance.

Most of Peter’s first readers were probably not Jews, so they might have been more familiar with the pagan religious rites of Greece and Rome.  Although perhaps the requirements were not so stringent, certainly, to engage in anything beyond a minor act of worship (like burning incense in front of an image in your own house), a priest or priestess had to be involved. If you really wanted to connect with a deity, or enlist its help, you needed someone in the class of priests. You couldn’t do it directly.

But Peter says: “Now, through Jesus, you are all priests!” This is one of the revolutionary aspects of Christianity: Because of Jesus Christ, by God’s grace, anyone can directly approach God through faith. You don’t need a priest to pray for you: you yourself can pray directly to God. And in fact, the prayers of a Christian priest/pastor are no better than those of any other Christian. Our prayers are heard because of Jesus Christ, not because the one who prays is somehow special. I have non-Christian friends who sometimes say something like this: “Put in a good word at the Pearly Gates for me.” I usually respond like this: “My word is no better than yours at the Pearly Gates. But I can introduce you to the guy I’m counting on to get me in.”

I am a called, trained, and ordained minister of God’s church. That does mean something. It means that I have a particular kind of calling to spend as much time as I can (ideally, all of my “working hours”) teaching people the Word of God, helping them to grow closer to Jesus, and training them to engage in the callings God has for their lives.. The calling to vocational ministry is relatively rare – maybe 1-5% of Christians are called to it. But my calling does not give me some special hotline to God that other people don’t get. It is about my role in the church, and about dedicating myself entirely to God’s service. It most certainly does not mean that people have to use me as an intermediary to talk to God. In fact, there is no point in trying to use a priest or pastor that way.

So that’s the first part of all Christians being the “priesthood of believers:” we all have direct access to God through Jesus Christ. No one is excluded. There is a second thing, also. While it is true that being called to full time vocational ministry is fairly rare, every single Christian is called to live in such a way that God is glorified, and the church is built up. Ephesians 4:11-16 explains:

11 Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. 12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. 13 This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.
14 Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. 15 Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. 16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

(Ephesians 4:11-16, NLT)

This passage lays it out plainly. There are callings and gifts for vocational (full-time) ministry: apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher. Some people say that all of these gifts are found in one person, and they call this “the five-fold ministry.” Others say that they are all supposed to be in separate people, so that every church should have at least five leaders (one with each of the gifts). My own inclination is to believe that all of these gifts are present, to some degree, in anyone who is called to full time ministry, but that they are not all found in equal measure.

So, for example, I have a friend who is also called to full time ministry. His strongest gift is that of pastor, and he has a clear gift of prophecy, also. He undoubtedly serves the broader church, like an apostle. He can also lead people to Jesus, as an evangelist (and has), and he can teach, but those are not his greatest strengths. Each of us who is called to vocational ministry has a unique combination of these five things. My friend is a bit older than me, and he has observed that over the many years of his ministry, at times he was called to be more of a prophet, and other times more of a pastor, and right now is doing more with his gifts of apostle (serving not just one congregation, but the church at large).

We see that one of the main aims in the work of those who are called to full time ministry is to equip everybody else in the church to also minister in some way. It is not the full time ministers who are supposed to do everything, but rather, we (the vocational ministers) are supposed to train others to use their talents and time to build up the church, and let love overflow to the world. In other words: every Christian is called to minister in some way. This is part of what it means to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices to God.

Pastors do have a particular and unique calling and gifting. But so does every other Christian! This is Christianity 101. Being a Christian means to follow Jesus, and that involves all of your life. It means your life is now to be used to lift up and glorify Jesus Christ. Paul describes it like this:

4 Now there are different gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 There are different ministries, but the same Lord. 6 And there are different activities, but the same God activates each gift in each person. 7 A demonstration of the Spirit is given to each person to produce what is beneficial

(1 Corinthians 12:4-7, HCSB)

This does not necessarily mean that you should quit your job and just “live for Christ.” For most Christians, instead, it means, live for Christ where you are right now. If all the Christians who worked in a factory quit their jobs, who would be left to show the grace and truth of God to the others in the factory? If everyone became pastors, so many important things would be left undone.

12 For as the body is one and has many parts, and all the parts of that body, though many, are one body — so also is Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body — whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free — and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. 14 So the body is not one part but many. 15 If the foot should say, “Because I’m not a hand, I don’t belong to the body,” in spite of this it still belongs to the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I’m not an eye, I don’t belong to the body,” in spite of this it still belongs to the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But now God has placed each one of the parts in one body just as He wanted. 19 And if they were all the same part, where would the body be? 20 Now there are many parts, yet one body.

(1 Corinthians 12:12-20, HCSB)

No, for most people, it means that you are called to represent God where you are right now. And, according to the verses above, that role is indispensable. God desires Christians in factories, in offices, in homes raising children, in transportation, in technology, in government, in education, in law, in sales, in small business – the list is almost endless. We are called to be priests wherever we are – that is representatives, and servants, of God. We are called to glorify God, and to touch others with God’s truth and love. That doesn’t mean you can never change jobs, but it does mean that whatever you do, wherever you go, you do it as a priest of God.

The third thing about the holy priesthood is that now we are set apart, special to God, just as priests were considered specially set apart to God. This can offer us a helpful rule of thumb for everyday behavior. You might ask yourself: “Can I say what I am about to say as a priest of God?” In other words, do my actions and words reflect my calling as one of God’s priests where I am? If not, maybe we need to change what we do and say. We can’t make that change without the help of the Holy Spirit, but recognizing the need to change is the first step.

Another aspect of this is integrity. Being a priest of God where you are may get you fired sometimes. I don’t mean that we should be unnecessarily confrontational. We shouldn’t go out of our way to create conflict. But at times, we may find ourselves facing a choice between doing what is right – that is, doing God’s will – or doing what our boss tells us to do. In such cases, being God’s representative may cost us something in material or financial terms. God promises, however, that whatever we lose in this life is more than compensated for:

18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is going to be revealed to us.

(Romans 8:18, HCSB)

In addition to being a priest in the workplace, and at home, you are a priest within the body of Christ, as well. That is, you can provide encouragement and support to other Christians in unique ways. You may have a call to lead a ministry to serve the poor, or to teach the Bible to children, or lead worship, or help maintain the physical resources of your church. You are probably called, at least from time to time, to say things to your fellow Christians that they need to hear. We are all called to pray together, and pray for one another. We are called to love one another, and the way we do that reflects the unique way God made each of us. God has designed you to encourage his people, and to help bring them to maturity, in a special way.

Peter says as God’s priests, we offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. There are several important things to understand about these “spiritual sacrifices.” The first thing is they are something different from the actual, physical animal sacrifices common to almost all religions at that time. In the ancient world, most major worship events involved sacrificing animals in the name of one god or another (or, in Israel, the sacrifice was for the God we worship today). Usually, after the sacrifice, the worshippers would eat together, consuming the meat of the sacrificed animal. In the case of non-Jewish worship, any leftover meat was sold in the public marketplace. So, people understood that one of the primary acts of worship was an actual, sacrifice: a physical animal. In some cases, instead of an animal, an amount of grain was used, or a drink was poured out in honor of the deity.

Peter says, now, through Jesus Christ, we are no longer killing animals or burning up food or wasting drink as part of worship. Instead, what we offer God is spiritual. How do we do that? What is a spiritual sacrifice? Paul tells us, in Romans:

So then, my friends, because of God’s great mercy to us I appeal to you: Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This is the true worship that you should offer. 2 Do not conform yourselves to the standards of this world, but let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind. Then you will be able to know the will of God—what is good and is pleasing to him and is perfect.

(Romans 12:1-2, GNT)

The spiritual sacrifice we offer is our very selves. We make ourselves available to God: body, soul and spirit. The verse above explains that part of that sacrifice involves allowing God to transform us inwardly in such a way that results in outward changes. . What God wants is our hearts. He wants us to willingly come to him in love, and trust him, even when we have doubts and don’t understand. The transformation begins through God’s Word as we learn it, and believe it.

In case that gets too esoteric and difficult to understand, let’s make it practical. It starts with reading the Bible and believing what we read. And it continues like this: When I believe that all the good in my life proceeds ultimately from God, and I thank him for it, I am offering  a spiritual sacrifice. When I am hurting, and struggling, but I choose to trust that God is good, and is working good in my life – even though I can’t see or understand it at the moment – and I thank him for that good, that is a spiritual sacrifice. The contemporary song Blessed Be Your Name captures both of these types of spiritual sacrifices beautifully.

Blessed be Your name // When the sun’s shining down on me // When the world’s all it should be:

Blessed be Your name.

And blessed be Your name // On the road marked with suffering // Though there’s pain in the offering: Blessed be Your name

There are other types of spiritual sacrifices that we can offer God. When I want to do certain things, but I learn that God does not want me to do that, and I obey him, rather than my own desires or preferences, that is a spiritual act of worship. When I give God my time and energy, to be used as he wishes, that is spiritual worship. When I choose to let God love others through me (though I might prefer not to) I am giving God my spiritual worship through Jesus Christ. Prayer is spiritual worship, as is music. Quieting my mind to listen to His Spirit is spiritual worship.

I hope you can see, that it all comes back to giving ourselves wholly to God in faith, through Jesus Christ. Why don’t you spend some time offering yourself to Him right now?