Acts 13:1-12

Introduction

A few months ago, it was the twenty years ago that I was ordained. It was at Queensway Baptist Church in Brantford, and it took place on mystery  last Sunday there before starting at a new church. It was a meaningful service but it really was one step in a long process of my calling. I felt God calling me while I was attending Central Gospel Temple here in St Catharines and while participating in Brock Christian Fellowship and especially while on a missions trip with Operation Mobilization. There was encouragement by many people that helped me to sense God’s call to pastoral ministry. I am thankful for that call.

However, there is a misconception in churches about the call to ministry. It is common for people to believe that among Christians, God calls only certain people to ministry. These are the people who attend Bible college or seminary and put reverend in front of their name. This has led to a division among Christians between those who are clergy and those who are laypeople. The problem is that this division is not in the New Testament. It is true that there are specific roles mentioned, including bishops and deacons, as well as a few others. But the gap was not as wide as we make it now and in the beginning, there were not even those divisions.

The passage that we read that mentions the setting apart of Saul and Barnabas is one that is sometimes used at an ordination service. That is fine, but I think we will find that it has a much wider application.

Barnabas and Saul

The passage we are looking at is a continuation of the story at Antioch, the place where the disciples were first called Christians. Things were really taking off. Some of the leadership was spending time in prayer, attempting to discern God’s direction for their ministry. As they spent time in God’s presence, the Holy Spirit told them to set aside Barnabas and Saul for the work that he had for them. The first thing we should notice is that they are not called to be a special class of Christian. Nor did they become Rev. Barnabas and Rev. Saul. It is true that they were commissioned, but was a commissioning to take on this particular mission.

This mission brought them to the city of Salamis on the island of Cyprus. They went through preaching in the synagogues. This brought them to the attention of Sergius Paulus, an important Roman official. This was a tremendous opportunity. But it came with some challenges. They faced opposition by a magician. This is another important lesson. There is an assumption among Christians that if something is God’s will, then it must come easy. That is not what the Bible teaches. It was God’s will that Barnabas and Saul have this ministry but they faced direct opposition. They overcame their opposition but they still faced it.

What we see here is that Barnabas and Saul were called by God, not to be professional Christians but to accomplish a specific task. The Holy Spirit was actively involved in leading them and empowering them for their task. They faced opposition and not everything was easy but by God’s power, they accomplished what God had called them.

Individual Calling

What I would like to do is what I have done with a number of these passages in Acts. I would like to look at how this applies to us, first as individuals and second as a congregation.

As I mentioned previously, there is a danger that we would look at this passage and assume that this applies for people who will do formal theological study and then go through an ordination process to become clergy. But if you went back in time and explained that interpretation to Barnabas and Saul, they would have no idea what you were talking about.

There is no reason to believe that God only chooses certain people for ministry. In fact, there is every reason to believe that God calls all of us to a ministry.

What has God called you to do? How would you even know if God was calling you? Part of it is by encouragement from others. Some of it is by opportunities that come your way. Some of it is about how your gifts or interests fit with a particular need. 

For example, I never wonder ion God has called me to be a musician or a singer. That is not on the radar at all. I have never noticed any abilities in that area and neither has anyone else.

When this happens, you have a sense that you are doing the right thing at the right time. You just know that you are doing the right thing. Even if you have doubts, people around you should recognize that you are fulfilling you calling.

I should also note that this calling is not limited to “churchy” things. It may be a gift or a task that is manifested in a worship service or a ministry program. But it may not. One of the most respected gifts in the Bible is that of hospitality. If you thrive on having people over for a coffee or a meal, that is an important role. If you are called to pray, not public prayer in a service, but interceding at your home, that is an important calling.

We should also recognize that God can call for specific tasks that last for a season. You do not have to do the same thing for the rest of your life. I loved doing youth ministry during that chapter of my calling but I am in a different chapter now. Be watching how God is moving you around for his kingdom work.

Church Calling

One of the common but sad misconceptions is that congregations are in competition with each other. How can we as a small congregation compete with that large congregation? But we are not in competition and our calling doesn’t have to look exactly the same.

I once was pastoring at a small church. A young family with a teenager came and visited for a number of weeks. I was not surprised as we had no young people at that time. Then a couple of months later, they returned and informed that they were making us their church home. They assumed their son would want a church with a vibrant youth ministry but instead he preferred the family feel of our small church. It did not mean that we were better than that other church, but rather we had different callings. I preached in their church and their pastor preached in our church. We were on the same team, even though how we fulfilled our calling looked different.

God calls congregations, just as he calls individuals. It may be for a specific task or a particular focus on ministry. The challenging thing is that, like the individual calling, the ministry calling of a congregation can change over time. What ministry looks like for us today is somewhat different from what ministry looked like for this church in 1921, and not just because of technology or fashion. Each generation of this church has to go through that same discernment process for where we are going. There was a moment when this congregation realized we were being called to the downtown poor and newcomers to Canada. We needed to recognize that calling and act on it. Over time we have also recognized our calling to minister with people with disabilities. This has happened, not because I have a particular interest in that area, but because God was already working in this church.

This is exciting. We do not have to be like other congregations. We do not have to copy the programs of other churches. We need to listen to the Holy Spirit and recognize our calling and follow that. That really takes a lot of pressure off us.

Conclusion 

A group of Jesus followers were gathered in prayer, seeking the leading of God. The Holy Spirit led them to set aside Barnabas and Saul. This was not to put them in a different class of Christian, it was for them to accomplish a specific task. The same Holy Spirit that called them, empowered them for ministry.

What about us? I can say with confidence that I am not the only one here who has been called by God. You each have a role. It is your job to discern that and then to respond in obedience and faithfulness. The same is true for us as a congregation. The church is not a machine that you turn on and then let it do its thing. The church is a living organism that is relationship with God and must respond to God’s calling. What ministry looks like today may look different from what it did twenty-five years ago and may look different from what it will twenty-five years from now. We need, as a congregation, to follow the path of Barnabas and Saul, not to Cyprus, but to faithful living out of our call.

Acts 12:20-25

Introduction

I’m going to give you a little bit of insight on how I go about picking passages to preach on. I enjoy preaching a series, preferably on a book of the Bible. I like this because it forces me to get outside my own area of interests and to be challenged by the text. The text says what the texts says, whether any of us like that or not. Having said that, I don’t feel obligated to preach on every single passage in that book. I may just pick one passage per chapter or I might go through and preach on the major passages and leave a few behind. The truth is, despite all of the Bible being inspired, there are certain passages that are more inspiring to us than others.

The passage that was just read for us is one of those strange passages. I will confess that when I first was picking what passages to preach on, this one was not originally making the cut. It is really weird. First of all, it is a bit disgusting. Secondly, it doesn’t mention Jesus, or even any of the apostles, despite being in the Acts of the Apostles.

But just as I was skipping to the next passage, I began thinking. What if? What if this passage, as strange as it is, has something useful to say to us? I took it as a challenge and we will see together if I was right.

Herod and the Worms

As we saw last week, this Herod was the grand son of Herod the Great. Herod the Great may have been great but he was not good. He was actually very bad, despite some impressive accomplishments. When it came to his sons and grandsons, some of them didn’t fall far from the tree. This Herod was one of those rotten apples.

We saw last week that Herod had one of the apostles, James son of Zebedee, killed by the sword all as an attempt to win over a certain segment of the people. When he saw that it pleased them, he decided to provide an encore by arresting Peter. Unfortunately for Herod, an angel of the Lord came and rescued  Peter from jail. Herod was so angry that he had the guards, who had been in charge of Peter, killed.

That brings to our point in the story. What is being described seems to have nothing to do with the church. It is not a trial of an apostle or a discussion of potential persecution. It was a purely political event, one that we wouldn’t normally be interested in. Herod got dressed up for the event and made a public presentation. 

The people saw Herod in all his regalia and shouted “This is the voice of a god, not of a man.” So God cursed Herod with worms and he died a painful death. The end.

So what do we get out of this? There are some strange things. It doesn’t say what Herod said after receiving this praise. Was it just a problem of pride? But plenty of people are proud and do not die from worms. Is it just telling us that God has a bad temper and could kill any of us at any time? We need to work through this.

Interestingly, we know this event was historical. It appears also in the writings of Jewish historian Josephus. He too thought it was a story that was worth preserving for future generations.

We need not fear that God is going to curse us with a disease if we slightly step out of line. That is not God’s method. We need to remember that this was a bad Herod from a line of bad Herods. He was a Herod who had killed James and wanted to kill Peter. He was an exceptionally bad person. This was also an important point in the history of the church.

It is not as simple as Herod did not deny that he was god-like. It is more likely that this was an ongoing issue for Herod. He was proud and saw himself as being pretty special, perhaps even divine. This is likely an area of weakness for Herod. There probably was some nonverbal communication as he accepted their praise. Herod, who was very close to the Roma emperors was familiar with the praise they received and perhaps wanted it for himself. He did get sick with worms and died and obviously Luke saw this connected with his actions or lack of action. The issue was not just that he had pride, it was that he longed for godlikeness.

We Are Not God

This has been an ongoing struggle for humanity right from the beginning. What promise did the serpent use to get Adam and Eve to eat the fruit? You shall be like God. Who wouldn’t want to be like a god? What makes someone a god? It is not just power? The Greek and Roman gods were not all powerful. What distinguished gods from non-gods was worship. The Romans had a procedure for voting people, mostly Emperors, to the status of gods. This only meant that even in death, they would receive worship from others.

How does this fit with us? Is there any way that we could fall into Herod’s trap? I’m not suggested that we will be cursed by worms but there may be some way that we could be like Herod. Is there any way that we seek to be god-like?

It is common for people, including people in the church, to overly seek praise. If you think I’m being too critical, then let me say that pastors can be the worst offenders. We want God to be praised but we will take a little of the leftovers. There is a whole culture of celebrity pastors. Where I really see an issue is when one of these pastors does something wrong and is disciplined by their church or organization, they usually do not submit to the organization. These pastors are far too important to be left on the sidelines for the stipulated times and so they start over again immediately, once again putting themselves at the centre.

But this is not something limited to celebrity pastors. There are many laypeople in many churches that want to be recognized for who they are and what they have done. I’m confident that if you visited enough churches, you would find someone who had left their previous church because they did not receive enough recognition. 

So what is the answer? I will tell you what the answer isn’t. It is not to stop encouraging people or receiving encouragement from others. When I began in ministry, I thought the only way to avoid this trap is to reject any compliment that came my way. At the same time I recognized that the Bible tells us to use our words to build people up. So please encourage and receive encouragement. The other wrong response is to always speak ill of yourself. Many people will try and make themselves seem less than worthy or valued. But remember you are created in the image of God and God says you are good.

The real answer, and this is where Herod went astray, is that there is one God and we are not him. A clear vision of God in all of his glory is the antidote for our own god-like tendencies. When we really see how praiseworthy God is, we will not need to seek our own praise, nor will we have to put ourselves down. We will be able to see clearly how we fit into God’s picture.

Conclusion

Do we need to live in fear of God’s curse upon us? Probably not. God didn’t make a habit of killing every person who stepped out of line. Some people, people like Herod, did receive very harsh punishments. This was not make us live in fear but to get our attention. There is one God and we are not him. Herod was not God. Herod’s grandfather was not God. Peter and John and Saul and Barnabas were not God. We are most definitely not God.

There will be moments when we want the praise. Our ego will be hurt when we don’t receive the recognition that we think we deserve. It may be that the people around us are failing at being encouraging enough.

But the point is that it is the one God who deserves all the praise. If the work of God is being done and if we get to participate in that, then that is enough. We can be satisfied that we are part of the kingdom building without being exalted to a place of praise.

Acts 12:1-19

Introduction

It does not take us long before we discover that life is not fair. Children at a young age complain that things are not fair. They sense a disconnect when someone gets something good that they didn’t get or if they get punished and someone else doesn’t. It just isn’t fair!

As we grow older, we do not lose the sense of the unfairness of life. Some people seem to be born with an advantage over others. Even when people are born with the same advantages, sometimes even the randomness of life creates different outcomes that seem unfair.

For people of faith, we have an added complication. It was one thing to say that life is not fair. But what if we believe that there is a God who is both powerful and good. Shouldn’t that provide a consistent prosperity across the board? But again we see different outcomes. Have you ever felt that God is sometimes unfair in the way he answers prayer? Does this mean God loves one person more than an other? Does the person who gets blessed have greater faith? These are hard questions. The Bible does not hid from these questions. The Bible shares the stories of many people, some having happier lives than others. It never seems to work out the same. But it also points us toward some healthy ways of responding to the seeming unfairness of life.

James and Peter

As we think about this, let us reflect upon the twelve apostles. Jesus called twelve to be his close companions. Judas betrayed him and he was replaced. Within the twelve, there were three apostles that were the inner circle. These were Peter and the two sons of Zebedee: James and John. By the way, the fact that Peter’s brother Andrew was not included is another example of something that seemed unfair. Whatever the reasons for that absence, it is obvious that Jesus had a special relationship with Peter, James and John.

Let us fast forward. Jesus has died, been raised and ascended to heaven. The church has been born and has gone through various trials and tribulation. But at least they still have the twelve, that important link to the earthly ministry of Jesus. Until now.

Herod, who was the grandson of Herod the Great, was the Roman-sponsored leader of this area. He wanted to curry favour with the Jews, especially those that were opposing the Jesus followers. So he arrested James and had him killed with the sword. The twelve was broken and we do not read about any replacing of James, unlike what happened with Judas.

Seeing that killing James helped Herod’s popularity, he decided to try it again. This time he arrested Peter. It looked like the church was going to lose another valued member of the twelve. The disciples were of course praying for him. While it doesn’t specify, we can safely assume that prayed just as hard for James. They prayed and prayed. Amazingly, God worked a miracle and freed Peter from jail. This was incredible. Literally, it lacked credibility as even the praying disciples didn’t believe that Peter had been freed.

The problem we have to face is: Why did God rescue Peter and not James? They were both parts of the inner three. The church had been praying for both of them. It feels a bit unfair. I can imagine James’ family thinking about this and feeling that God was not being consistent. Did God love Peter more than James? However, we should also remember that this rescue meant that Peter went through decades of more suffering for Jesus. Also, James died quickly by the sword and when Peter was eventually killed, tradition tells us that he was crucified upside down, which would have been a slow death. Perhaps God loved James more than Peter?

The truth is that the Bible doesn’t give us any answers. However, it does tell us that our level of suffering is not a measure of how much God loves us. That is the message of the book of Job. It is also the message of Jesus. The Father loved no one more than the Son and yet Jesus died before any of the twelve and he died a very painful death. Ultimately, the question is not about God loving Peter more than James. The Bible is much more pragmatic than that. The Bible is more about what we do in the situations we find ourselves. When James was arrested by Herod, he was put into a position where he had to respond to death with faith. When Peter was arrested by Herod, he had to take his path, which led to a couple more decades of ministry until he faced his own death in Rome during the reign of Nero.

Facing Unfairness

When we are talking about James and Peter in the book of Acts, we may be able to accept these principles. But what about when it is our own experience? What about when life, ore even God, seems unfair to us?

I cannot speak for any of you, even though small parts of many of your stories. I will say that my life has not turned out exactly as I expected. If God had given me the power to write my own story, many things would have been different. Don’t get me wrong, I have been blessed in many ways and I have an amazing wife and five wonderful children. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed by how blessed I am.

At the same time, there are a few things that seem a bit unfair. I think of my parents who never got a chance to really watch their grandchildren grow up. My dad never met our three youngest and my mom died just before Faith’s first birthday. If life was fair, they would have had time to enjoy their grandchildren and many other grandparents are able to do. That is not fair.

Speaking of my children, it is not fair that I don’t get to see Logan and Abby as often as we would like. Other parents get to be with their children at that age, we are we this far away and why is there a pandemic that limits our visits?

Here is an example from my life that might be closer to the James and Peter story. I have mentioned before that I got a disease called sarcoidosis about seven years ago. Interestingly, one of my fellow students at Acadia Divinity College also came down with the same disease about a year before me. Her had his initial treatment and it knocked the sarcoidosis into remission and soon he was running marathons. That has not been my story. It has never fully gone into remission and I still take medication for it. I still experience flare-ups from time to time. Why did he have a better experience than I did? Is that fair?

The truth is that life is not a competition. My experience with God in this life is not to be compared to someone else’s experience. Why has my life turned out the way it has? I have no idea. The real question is: What will I do with the opportunities and challenges that come my way?

Conclusion

One of my favourite authors is J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the Lord of the Rings. There is an interesting exchange in that story that is relevant to what we are talking about here.

“Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened. Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

Was it fair that the ring of power with all of its dangers came to Frodo? Not really. Notice how Gandalf responds. He acknowledges that Frodo’s feelings of frustration are normal. Then he reframes the situation from why to what. What matters here is what Frodo will do with the ring.

Was it fair that James was killed by Herod, while God rescued Peter from jail? From our perspective, not really. We want to know why this happened. But it is not about why, it is about what. What would James do as he faced death? What would Peter do as he faced freedom?

Is your life fair? It probably doesn’t always feel fair. Why did certain things turn out the way they did? We may never find out. We need to decide what we will do with where we find ourselves. It is not our understand that really matters, it is the way we take our next steps.

Acts 11:27-30

Introduction

What is the question that the world is asking about the church? Believe it or not, the main question is not about which church is the true church. People are not lying awake at night wondering of the Anglicans or the Pentecostals or the Baptists have a corner on the truth. That is not to say that truth is not important, but people have a different question about the church.

The question that people are asking is: Does the church have any relevance for today? What is the point having the church? Is it nostalgia for simpler times? Is it to have caretakers for beautiful old buildings? Or is there some relevance for today?

Some Christians get nervous when we speak about relevance. It suggests an adaption that is at best, unnecessary and at worst, dangerous. The church is not supposed to be relevant, the church is supposed to be preaching the unchanging gospel. I will say that even our most traditional view of presenting the gospel was at one point an adaptation to changing circumstances.

But that brings up the question: Is the role of the church simply to proclaim the message of spiritual salvation? Is everything else a distraction? Many people think so.

The problem is that even Jesus spoke on more than just how to get to heaven. Much of what Jesus taught was extremely practical and had much to do with how to be better people right here on earth. And the early church in Acts also saw their role as more than just changing people’s destination on their flight to eternity. That is what we are going to look at today.

One of the phrases that irritates me is “So heavenly minded that we are no earthly good.” I believe that what the Bible actually teaches is that we are “So heavenly minded that we are earthly good.” That’s what we are going to take a look at.

Meeting the Need Then

Last time, we saw how revival broke out in Antioch. The apostles in Jerusalem sent Barnabas and Barnabas sent for Saul. Some amazing things happened. This was causing such a commotion that more people from Jerusalem to see what was happening. This included a prophet named Agabus. You would expect him to prophesy something specifically about the Antioch church. And he did, just not the way we might think. Agabus prophesied that a great famine was coming. But this famine was not centred in Antioch, in fact it is suggested that the greatest need would be in Judea, the area surrounding Jerusalem. What did this have to do with Antioch?

The response to this prophecy is that the disciples in Antioch began to collect money for the believers who were living in Judea. There are some important things to notice here. There was no compulsion about how much each person should give. It was based on their ability to give. If a family did not have much money, they did not have much money. It was all based on their means. Another thing of note is who would receive the money. It was the believers in Judea, including Jerusalem. These were the people who struggled most with the non-Jews directly following Jesus. They were giving money to those who were at least semi-hostile to how they were doing things. Finally, this says something about the general principle of giving in the New Testament. Almost every description of money being collected by churches was to go directly to the poor. There were no church buildings and no pastoral staff to pay for and so the budget had one line item: the poor. That is not to say it is wrong for us to use money in other areas, but it is something to think about.

I want you to see is that two things were happening here. There was a spiritual initiative and a physical response. Agabus prophesied that a famine was coming. The church responded to this by collecting money to care for the victims of the famine that were in Judea. Here we see a church that was relevant to the circumstances but they did by listening to what the Spirit was saying through the prophet.

Meeting the Need Now

I remembering watching a documentary about some of the things churches were doing in Central America. Some churches were actively reaching out to the poor, attempting to relieve their physical suffering. But there was one pastor who was quite critical of that. He saw the church’s role as simply communicating the gospel of salvation. He explained that the church needed to get people saved and once saved, God was free to provide for their physical needs if God wished. I knew that response was wrong, even though I did not know the Bible enough to explain it.

It is true that the church has been entrusted with the message of the gospel. We point people toward Jesus. No debate. But it was never supposed to be an either/or situation when it came to spiritual and physical needs.

We have watched different things happen in Acts as people listened to the Holy Spirit. Sometimes they were guided to explain the gospel to some stranger and sometimes it was to collect money for victims of a famine. The point was to respond to the need that we encounter as the Spirit guides us.

Sadly in the early 20th century, there was a split within the church in North America. The split was between the preaching of a spiritual gospel of salvation and the living out of a social gospel of charity. You had to choose one or the other and there was no room for compromise.

When I look at this chapter of the church I shake my head, even though I have been a member of churches on both sides of the debate. The Bible teaches that church is being the church when it does both.

What does that look like for us today? It is interesting that the passage we are looking at is in the context of a widespread disaster, in that case a famine. Here we find ourselves on the tail end of a worldwide pandemic. Does the church have anything to offer to a post-pandemic world?

I believe that we do and that this is the time that we prove our relevance to the world. Once the vaccines have all been given and the masks put away, there will still be great needs. We are seeing a mental health crisis in our world. We are seeing a rise in addictions and broken relationships. Homelessness is rampant. We can’t solve all of these issues but we can begin to partner with organizations that are doing something, joining with them as they make a difference.

On the day I wrote this sermon, I bumped to a person that I knew from our Saturday night services. He began to tell me that this building saved his life. Obviously the building didn’t do it but the life-saving experiences took place in this building. Between the Saturday outreach we offered and Alcoholics Anonymous, which meets in our building, this building represents hope for a desperate situation. He was deeply thankful for this church.

The nuts and bolts of how we make this happen is the same old thing I always preach: time, talent and treasure. By volunteering and by supporting this church financially, you help the church to be the church.

Conclusion

We are beginning to emerge from a long and draining pandemic. Many of us are saying that we are looking forward to getting back to normal. While I understand the sentiment behind that, it would be better for us to long for the church to be the church. I call this series “Being an Acts Church” not because we should duplicate their methods but because we should be inspired by their example.

The early church became aware of a famine that was going to be difficult for many people. The response was to collect money to send to the needy, including the needy that they had a strained relationship with. We as a church are very aware of the needs that have resulted from this pandemic. This is our time. This is the time for the church to be the church. We are a small church. But we have people and we have a budget and we have a building and more than that, we have a great big God. As we seek God’s guidance for where to put our efforts, let’s prepare our time, talents and treasure for the mission ahead of us.

Acts 10:1-33

Introduction

How common would you say prejudice is? We might be inclined to think that we are not as prejudiced as some other people. But then that is a form of prejudice. Here is an example.

I find that Canadians point to Americans as people who have really struggled with racism. We hear stories of the KKK, lynchings and stores and restaurants for whites only. We hear those example and we thank God we are not like those Americans.

Sadly we have our own history of racism. The most obvious example being the treatment of indigenous people. I hope you have taken time to learn about the residential schools. It is heartbreaking to hear those stories but hear them we must. But it has not just been with indigenous people. Canada does have a history of systemic racism against blacks and Asians, even if Canadians have done it somewhat different from our American neighbours. I can remember through my childhood, waves of racism depending on what new immigrant group arrived in Canada. And of course women are still fighting to get equal pay for equal work.

You might be wondering why I’m talking about this. We expect that in the world, but we are the church, we are islands of righteousness in a sea of wickedness. If only that were so. The church has been complicit in much of the discrimination that has taken place in our culture. Remember those terrible residential schools? The Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian and United churches were all involved in running those schools. We are not innocent just because Baptists are not a part of that list.

For as long as there have been churches, there have been churchgoers who have believed that certain people are “the wrong kind of people.” It may be ethnic groups. It may be gender. It may be some other characteristic that labels the person as “the other.” There have always been sort of group that is not fully welcome or included into the fellowship of the church.

This has been going on since the beginning and we are going to look at how God made one man face his prejudice and how God continues to make us face our prejudice.

Peter and the Gentiles

Much of the first half of Acts has focused on the Apostle Peter. How has Peter been portrayed? Unlike the Gospels, where Peter seems to always say the wrong thing at the wrong time, Peter seems to have turned a corner in Acts. Having received the Holy Spirit, Peter has a new confidence and wisdom. He seems to have overcome his awkwardness and has grown into a strong and talented leader in the church. While no means perfect, Peter is a good man.

Slowly, God has been chipping away at the prejudices of the church. We saw God working on the differences between the Hebrew and Greek Jewish believers. We saw God welcome in the Samaritans, who were sort of half Jewish. We saw the welcoming in of the Ethiopian eunuch. Now God was going to do his most radical work yet and he was going to use Peter to make it happen.

What I love about this story is that God was proactive in addressing Peter’s prejudice rather than waiting to hear Peter’s objections. So what did Peter think about the Gentiles or non-Jews? Did Peter hate the Gentiles? Probably not in general, although he may have not appreciated the Romans for occupying his nation. Like most Jews, he would have seen the Gentiles as unclean. This is not the same as being sinful. What it meant is that there was a difference in purity that required Jews to keep a certain separation from Gentiles. He may have been able to do some business with Gentiles, but he would not want to come into their homes and definitely not share a meal. Everything about Jewish culture would have reinforced this and it would have been ingrained into Peter since childhood. God knew this wouldn’t be easy to break.

So God did something creative. Peter was praying and he was beginning to feel hungry. This was the perfect opportunity. God gave Peter a vision of a bunch of animals and told him to kill and eat. This would have been fine if they were clean animals that were appropriate for Jews to eat. But this included all sorts of things that a good Jew would never consider. We might think, “Come on Peter, it’s just a pig. The bacon will be delicious.” But imagine visiting a friend and they bring out the family dog, a beautiful black lab, and they announce that will be dinner. That is the kind of revulsion that Peter felt. It was important for Peter to experience those feelings because that was going to be the gateway for what was to come. If God said it was clean, it was clean, no matter what emotions Peter experience. That was true not just for what went on the barbecue but for relationships with people. This was all a set up to prepare Peter for his meeting with the Gentile Cornelius. Before this, Peter would have thought it was normal to consider Cornelius “the wrong kind of people.” God forced Peter to face his prejudice and to see there is no “wrong kind of people.”

Our Prejudices

This passage is both a reassuring and challenge passage for us today. It is reassuring because in some way, we are spiritual descendants of Cornelius. The story of Cornelius is the welcoming of the Gentiles into the church and we are largely Gentile. Two thousand years ago, we would have been the “other” and so we are thankful that God broke down that prejudice.

But this passage is also challenging to us because prejudice within the church has not disappeared with the welcoming of the Gentiles. We may no longer be the “other” but new groups have risen to take our place.

You may think that you have no prejudice. There is no ethnic or other group that you hate. You have no problem with people who are different from you. That’s great but here is a test. I want you to imagine that we had a potluck lunch after a worship service one Sunday. Who would you want to sit at the table with you. Would it be someone who had a similar background and interests to you? Is there any type of person you would not want to share a meal with? How would you feel if the person had extremely different theological views? What if they were transgender? What if the person was covered in tattoos and body piercings? What if they were homeless? What if they were a sex worker? Is there anyone who you would consider to be the “wrong kind of person” to share a meal.

I need to be clear. I am not saying that you are a bad person if there is anyone who makes you feel uncomfortable. I am often preaching for full welcoming and inclusion of people with disabilities. But there are certain people with disabilities that have made me uncomfortable. I have shared meals with people who experience significant mental illness and addictions and didn’t enjoy it at all. To be honest, even after all God did to prepare Peter, I suspect that he felt some discomfort when he entered Cornelius’s home.

What this is all about is facing our prejudices. Let’s do this one thing before we do anything else. That’s what God did with Peter and that is what God wants from us as well. We need to ask three questions:

1. Is there a group that we consider the “wrong kind of people”?
2. Why do we see them that way?
3. What would it take to get us to experience table fellowship with them?

Conclusion

Peter was a good man. But he was a human who was shaped by his culture. He may not of hated Gentiles, but he did not see them as his kind of people. God gave Peter a vision designed for one thing: to get him to face his prejudice. It was only after Peter faced his own prejudice that he could be used to welcome Cornelius and the Gentiles into the church.

We all have our own prejudices. Some may be more hidden than others. If we were honest, we would admit that it is harder to be fully welcoming than we would like to admit. God wants us to face those prejudices. God wants us to look at those that we consider the “other” and to challenge us as to what it would take for us to welcome them into our fellowship.

Matthew 28:1-10

A Frightening Morning

I want you to imagine that first Easter morning, specifically from the perspective of the women. Perhaps you think of an early morning stroll through a garden with a few friends. That was not really what was happening. It was very early in the morning, so early that it was probably still dark. And they were walking through an area filled with tombs. Maybe you like walking through cemeteries, maybe you do not. But I’m thinking that at that moment, walking through that place of the dead in the early morning was pretty spooky. And then there was the fact that it was just the women there. Beside all of the fear of the dead, there was a danger that there could be some rough characters hiding behind every corner. But there was more.

Why was it just the women there? Where were the male disciples? They were hiding because they were afraid and they were no where near the tombs. They were afraid because of the possibility of being arrested. Imagine the pressure that was on Peter that he denied Jesus three times. It wasn’t a popular time to be publicly known as a follower of Jesus. So far, these women have every reason to be afraid. But it gets worse.

There is a violent earthquake. That is never good. But in this case, the result is the stone in front of the stone is rolled away. That would be really frightening. But at least there is angel from heaven, with an appearance like lightning sitting on the stone. How would anyone react in such a situation? In case we are still wondering, we have the example of the soldiers. Soldiers are paid to not be afraid. They have been sitting outside of a tomb all night, ready to fight off anyone who might try to take the body. And how do they respond to the situation? They are paralyzed with fear. So imagine what the women were feeling.

Then the angel speaks to the women. We would expect that the first words would be extremely important. And they are. “Do not be afraid.” Do not be afraid? That’s easy for the angel to say. This is one of the most frightening situations imaginable and the angel tells them to not be afraid?

But the angel does more than just say “Don’t be afraid.” There is a reason for them to not fear. The reason is that Jesus has risen from the dead. In some ways, you might expect this to create more fear. People don’t normally come back to life after a couple of days of death. But this is the angel’s antidote for fear: the resurrection of Jesus.

So of course, the women no longer had any fear. Well, not quite. We are told that they were afraid but that it was mixed with joy. That was a start.

Then Jesus appeared directly to the women. No longer was their hope based on the message of an angel, they encountered the risen Jesus himself. They were able to see him, hear him, speak to him and even touch him. And what was Jesus’ message to them? “Do not be afraid.”

What did Jesus mean by this? Was he dismissing that they were in some scary times? Not at all. All Jesus was saying was that the circumstances that were creating fear needed to be seen now through the lens of the resurrection. It was the resurrection of Jesus that was going to get them through everything that would normally fill them with fear. Resurrection is the fear-breaker.

A Frightening Year

Having looked at the events of two thousand years ago, let’s fast forward up to the present. Has there been anything that has happened in the past year that has given us reason to be afraid? COVID-19 has shaped the past year in ways that we could never have imagined. Some people have feared that they would catch the virus. Some people have feared that their loved ones, especially those who are older or who have underlying conditions, would catch the virus. Some have feared that our health care system would be overwhelmed. Even those who have thought the pandemic was not as bad as people claimed had reasons to fear. Some have feared the economic consequences of the lockdowns. Some have feared they would lose their job or wouldn’t have enough money to pay their bills. Some have worried about the emotional impact, about loneliness and mental illness and people being neglected or isolated. 

Even if we didn’t have a worldwide pandemic, there would be things to create anxiety. There are health and financial concerns, either for ourselves or for our loved ones. There are strained relationships. There are day-to-day situations that keep piling up and sometimes it seems like too much.

One of the things that I appreciate about the story of the women coming to the tomb is that it was not just one reason for them to fear. It was one thing on top of another, something that many of us can understand. 

If you are feeling fear in some area of your life, it does not make you a bad person. In fact, when we look to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before his crucifixion, we see Jesus expressing the same human emotions that we experience. Being overwhelmed is a normal human reaction and we have had a year that has been much more than any of us could have imagined.

But still, Easter morning whispers to us: “Do not be afraid.” Do not be afraid. It doesn’t mean that we are bad for experiencing fear, but it doesn’t have to be our destiny.

What is important is that this message is not the same thing as someone coming up to you when your life is falling apart and saying: “Cheer up.” This is no empty platitude.

It is not just “Do not be afraid” but rather, “Do not be afraid because Jesus is risen.” Think about all of the obstacles in life that we face. There seems to be some hope to overcoming them all except one: death. Death seems to get the final laugh. But that is not true, or at least it is not true anymore. Jesus died on the cross. He was really dead. His body would have begun to decay. There was definitely no life there. But on the third day, Jesus walked out of that tomb. This was not a resuscitation after a false pronouncement of death. This was real resurrection from the dead. And the part that we often miss is that this was not just the resurrection of Jesus but the promise of our own resurrection from the dead.

It is from the resurrection event that we hear: “Do not be afraid.” That doesn’t mean that there is never a moment of anxiety for a Christian. What it does mean that we are supposed to look at everything that causes us fear through a resurrection lens. Even the women still had fear, but they were moving in the direction of less fear because Jesus was alive.

When I was young, one of the things that many of us feared was a nuclear war. It was not just the damage of the blast, it was what the radiation would do to the entire area, coating everything and changing everything it touched. 

Think of the resurrection of Jesus as a nuclear explosion. The initial blast blew off the door to the tomb. But resurrection radiation continues to spread, infiltrating every part of us. The resurrection of Jesus gives us hope for an afterlife but also hope for dealing with this life. The resurrection of Jesus whispers and then yells to us, “Do not be afraid!”

Matthew 21:1-11

Introduction

If you are a parent, or have at least spent some time with children, you will know that there is an ongoing lesson that needs to be taught. And that lesson is the difference between a need and a want. They need their favourite blanket. They need a bowl of ice cream. They need a new video game. They need to hang out with their friends. But do they really need all of those things? Isn’t more that they just really want those things? And so parents and other interested adults spend hours trying to teach children the difference between needs and wants.

But as adults, do we really accept that distinction? What is it we really need? We need air to breather, food and water to nourish and shelter to protect. Do we really need anything else? If it goes beyond basic survival, does it shift from a need to a want?

You may be familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that was published by Abraham Maslow back in 1943. The things that we have been talking about are what Maslow calls basic needs and they are at the bottom of the pyramid. But beyond them, there are psychological needs and self-fulfillment needs. Those are just as much human needs as the other basic needs, even if a human could technically survive without them.

Why do I bring this up? Especially on Palm Sunday? There is a curious story that takes place before Jesus actually makes the journey into Jerusalem. We all know that Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem as the people waved their  palm branches. But where did Jesus get the donkey?

We are given the backstory. Jesus sent to disciples to a certain village where they would find a donkey and its colt. Normally you just can’t take someone else’s animals that are tied up. So Jesus tells them to say: “the Lord needs them.”

But if we as responsible adults were the ones who encountered the two disciples, might we say: “Need? Don’t you mean he wants them?” Technically that would be true. Jesus could have physically entered Jerusalem without a donkey. Did Jesus need them? Yes he did, but to understand that, we need to take a closer look at this story and the character of Jesus.

The Lord Needs the Donkey

Let us look at what is happening in a purely pragmatic way. Jesus must get into Jerusalem because the Father’s plan is for him to be crucified. That is all that really has to happen. Jesus doesn’t need the donkey. Jesus doesn’t need the disciples. Jesus doesn’t need the crowds. Jesus doesn’t need the palms and the cloaks. Jesus could have done all of this much simpler by himself.

But that doesn’t seem to be the way Jesus did things. Jesus didn’t need the core twelve disciples or the larger group that followed him. But early on in his ministry, Jesus did call them and he did use them. Was this just a want? It seems to be more than wanting something, like Jesus wanting a new pair of sandals. Working with others, even though Jesus could do everything himself, seemed to be an important part of who Jesus was.

So by the time we get to the Triumphal Entry, we should be surprised that Jesus doesn’t just sneak into Jerusalem by himself.

Jesus needs the donkey and colt. Why? For one thing, it is a fulfillment of prophecy. But Jesus could have died for our sins on the cross without getting there by a donkey. Yet it was important for Jesus to do it this way to fulfill Scripture. Jesus didn’t technically need the disciples. Presumably, Jesus could have commanded the donkeys to come on their own. But Jesus chose to use the disciples in this event and the ones to follow. It was more than a want. It was a need, in that working with others was an important value of Jesus. This was not something that was frivolous. Even the crowds fall into this category. Jesus didn’t technically need them to get into Jerusalem, and yet they were important to his plan. They proclaimed Jesus as king, even though they didn’t really know what that meant. They cried out Hosanna without understanding the means by which Jesus would save.

When it comes to Jesus’ actions, there is no clear distinction between needs and wants. Jesus could have entered Jerusalem without the donkey, disciples or crowds. But including them was not just a whim. Their inclusion was important because of who Jesus is and how he intended to fulfill his mission.

The Lord Needs Us

This is directly relevant to our experience as a church. The question I want to ask you is this: Does God need us? The answer is both no and yes.

Technically God doesn’t need us. There is nothing we do that God requires. Unlike the pagan gods, our God doesn’t need the worship of humans to gain strength. God doesn’t even need us to share the message. The Holy Spirit could touch individual people and reveal Jesus to them. There are accounts of this very thing happening. God doesn’t need Christian charity as God could care for the physical needs of people without us. It looks like, using the recent phrase, we as the church are not “essential workers.”

Does that mean we should just sit back and let God do all of the work? Why bother telling someone about Jesus? Why bother helping a person in need? Not only could God do it, God could do it far better than we can.

But as we see, there are needs and there are needs. God doesn’t absolutely need us, but God’s inclusion of us in this work is more than a want. Our activity in being the church does not fall into the category of the child who thinks they need a bowl of ice cream.

God needs us, not because of any lack of power on his part, but because God chooses to use human beings. Our worship of God is important. Our work of spreading the kingdom of God is important. Our attempts to make our world a better place through charity and other efforts are important. God needs us.

People may feel that this message is kind of dangerous. If we really accept that God needs us, we will puff up with sinful pride. Before we worry too much about that, we need to remember that Jesus needed a donkey. Being needed by the Lord does not make us better than anyone else.

Conclusion

When we think about the triumphal entry, we focus on Jesus and rightfully so. Jesus is entering Jerusalem as a king. But this is taking that will receive not a crown of gold but a crown of thorns. This king will be lifted up, not on a high human throne, but on a rugged cross to receive a painful death.

Focus on Jesus but remember that he was not alone on that journey into Jerusalem. The Lord needed the donkey, needed the disciples, needed the crowds, not because he couldn’t do it without them, but because he chose to include them and value their participation.

We as the church, are both not needed and needed at the same time. Everything we can do, God can do better. But God chooses to include us in his mission on Earth. Our part has value and is important. The Lord needs us because including us is important to him. If you feel small and insignificant, I want to assure you the Lord needs you and will use you for his glory.

Acts 9:19b-30

Introduction

Has there ever been a time when you have felt rejected, like the whole world was against you? Perhaps the supports that once been there were now gone. Do you remember what that was like? And have you ever been in that position and someone came forward to support you?

It may have been with words of encouragement. Or perhaps the person gave you a chance by providing you an opportunity to show what you can do? Basically, have you ever had someone advocate on your behalf when everyone else had their doubts about you?

I have had some encouragers in my life. During the summer before my last year of my Master of Divinity, I had decided that I was not going to go into pastoral ministry. Having encountered one style of church leadership, I was convinced that I had what it took to be a pastor. I didn’t share these feelings openly. My plan was to finish my M.Div and do my final placement in a non-church setting and then just continue in my job working at a warehouse. Then one day, I received a call at the warehouse from one of my professors, who was also a pastor of a church, asking me to come and interview for their youth pastor position. This was awkward as I had already quit the ministry. But I showed up for the interview anyway. The next thing I knew, I had quit my warehouse job and I was in my first paid pastoral position. Not only that, it was at that church that I was eventually ordained. All that because someone believed in me and gave me a chance. Since that time, I have had many people give me words of encouragement in moments where I was feeling very low.

One of the best examples of encouragement comes from the story of Saul, who was advocated for by a follower of Jesus who had nothing to gain from the risk. From this experience, we can inspired to advocate for others.

Advocating For Saul

In our previous message, we saw that Saul had a radical encounter with Jesus. Saul was not interested in just sitting around and thinking about Jesus. Saul jumped right into ministry, going around and telling people about Jesus. Although the prophecy about Saul was that his ministry would be the Gentiles, Saul here reaches out to those he knew: the Jews. He went to their synagogues and shared a strong message. He didn’t just argue that Jesus was the Messiah, something that could be debated, but that Jesus was the Son of God. That did not go over well and this began a serious conflict between Saul and the Jews. And remember the Jews were not “those people,” they were his people. The people who had made up Saul’s community not long before were the ones who were rejecting him. Community was essential, especially in the ancient world, and Saul needed to find a new community.

You might think that would be no problem since Saul was a follower of Jesus and all he would have to do was fellowship with some other Christians. easier said than done. Saul did travel to Jerusalem, which was where the leadership was still based, even though many Jesus followers had scattered after the persecution. The disciples were less than thrilled to find out Saul wanted to join them.

Before we are too harsh toward the disciples, we need to think about what we do in the same position. Imagine that a former member of ISIS, who had actively persecuted Christians, wanted to join our church. How eager would you be to sit beside them in worship? Wouldn’t you be nervous that it was a trick to create more violence?

That’s where the Jerusalem church was at. Enter Barnabas. Barnabas was not his real name. He was actually Joseph, but was nicknamed Barnabas—Son of Encouragement. And we are going to see why.

While the other disciples only saw the risk of embracing Saul, Barnabas saw the potential. Barnabas knew about Saul’s ministry and the zeal he had for the Lord. Saul may not have been yet the mature Apostle Paul that we think of, but the potential was there. 

Barnabas advocated on Saul’s behalf to the apostles. This was a risky move. If this was a trick by Saul, not only would Barnabas’s life be at risk, so would the entire leadership of the church. If Barnabas was wrong, things good go very bad. But Barnabas was right and Saul was a follower of Jesus. Before we feel too good about the happy ending, we should acknowledge that some in the Jerusalem church never filly accepted Saul, especially after his focus turned to the Gentiles. Barnabas could not control the actions of others but he could choose to be an advocate for someone he believed in.

Advocating For Others

Once Saul was welcomed in, can we say that there has been a wide open welcome to everyone ever since? Not all. It is not even a wide open welcome for the rest of the book of Acts.

Today there is still a need for a Barnabas—a son or daughter of encouragement, someone who will advocate on behalf of others.

There has been much talk in recent years about the role of privilege. What is privilege? It is basically the observation that certain types of people are not held back from influence. What does that look like, especially in the context of the church? Traditionally, a white, straight, able male of financial means has not been held back from influence within the church because of any of those characteristics. Some assume by that observation of privilege that such people must be intrinsically bad. That is not the case. Nor does it mean that such people have never struggled. It just means that the obstacle was not their whiteness or maleness or other characteristic.

The church, including this congregation, has changed and adapted over the years. You do not have to be a certain kind of person to be involved in ministry in the church. But how did we get to that point?

Queen Street Baptist Church has ordained a number of women over the years. But it wasn’t always that way. There had to be someone or some people who would advocate on their behalf, to fight for their acceptance. The same with race. We take for granted that people of colour are in leadership. But there was a time when the leadership was all white. There had to have been some advocacy before the shift happened.

My question to all of us is: Who are we currently advocating for? We cannot assume that just because the opportunities come easy to us that they come easy to everyone else. Barnabas is still needed in the church. For myself, for personal reasons I have chosen to advocate for people with disabilities, whether physical or developmental. There is still such great need in this area.

How do you advocate? There are many ways. Years ago, I was an associate pastor at another church. There was a young man in the congregation who came out as gay. Many of his former friends rejected him and were outwardly hostile toward him. Amanda and I decided that we would have him sit with our family during worship services, we wanted other to see we cared for him. 

Advocacy can take the form of personal encouragement or it can be speaking out against injustice. It starts by acknowledging that not everyone has the same access that we do and then being willing to do something about it.

Conclusion

Thank God for Barnabas. I’m sure Saul said that and we can say the same thing. When people were afraid of Saul, Barnabas stepped in and bridged the gap. Barnabas advocated for Saul, who did not have the same access that he had. Barnabas was a true son of encouragement.

The need for encouragement did not die out with the apostles. There are still those who need an advocate. It may be a whole group of people, such as those with disabilities or those suffering from mental illness, or it could be a single individual fighting for acceptance. Who are we advocating for in our life and what are we doing to make them fully welcome?                                                                                                                                                                                

Acts 9:1-20

Introduction

I want you to think about the person you would most be surprised to become a Christian. It could be someone famous, perhaps a musician or an actor or a politician. Maybe it was someone who is a known criminal or is had had a particularly immoral life. Maybe it is someone in your family or a close personal friend. Think about that person, the one you that you are thinking: “There is no way they are going to become a Christian.” I want to tell you that nothing is impossible for God.

I wouldn’t say I was the most unlikely person to have become a Christian, but I was pretty unlikely, especially in my teen years. I will tell you that I have been amused to see the reaction of people I knew in high school when they find out that I became a pastor. There is a very visible expression of disbelief. I know that the mother of one of my teen friend, who was a Christian, was pretty surprised when she found out I had become a pastor. While I know she was praying for me, sometimes we are surprised when God answers our prayers.

As we think about these unexpected Christians, there was never more of a surprise for the church as there was with Saul, who became known as the Apostle Paul. We are going to take a look at his story.

Saul Meets Jesus

Before we take a look at what happened to Saul, we need to reflect on whether he was a good man or a bad man. That is a complicated question. On the good side, he was someone who had a strong faith in God. He was zealous for his beliefs and they were not something that was just tagged onto the rest of his life. He was someone who cared about the truth and when he encountered those who, according to his perspective, were saying false things, he needed to respond. We would call Saul an active rather than a passive believer.

But Saul was not just a good man waiting to meet Jesus, as we will see with Cornelius in the next chapter. Saul’s zeal led to intolerance. Saul couldn’t just agree to disagree. Nor could Saul keep things on an intellectual level, debating people whether or not Jesus was the messiah. Rather Saul actively persecuted followers of Jesus, using violence and even being involved in killings. Zeal, even for the noblest purposes, is never an excuse to do violence against someone you disagree with.

Saul was on his way to do some more persecuting, feeling perfectly justified in what he was doing when something happened on the road to Damascus. Saul met Jesus. This is what I love about this story. There was no debate, Jesus didn’t try to convince Saul to follow. Jesus just informs him that Saul had actually been persecuting him and then told him what to do. And Saul did it. He went to the location he was sent to, blind after his meeting of Jesus.

The next part of the story involves a man named Ananias. While Jesus could have done all the work between himself and Saul, he chose to include other people. Despite our talk of a “personal relationship with Jesus,” we must eventually experience Jesus in community. Jesus sent Ananias to Saul and Ananias was understandably reluctant. While we might like seeing unexpected Christians, we may not want to be the one to test out the genuineness, especially if violence has been a part of the story. Here is the beautiful thing about this, despite his misgivings about Saul, when Ananias greeted him, he addressed him as “brother.” Imagine the emotions going on within Ananias. Now, imagine what it was like for Saul, to have a representative of the people that Saul had been persecuting, calling him “brother.”

What happened that day on the road to Damascus, not only changed Saul forever, it completely shaped the Christian church. While we are followers of Jesus, so much of what we do is based on how the Apostle Paul applied Jesus to the non-Jewish world. Without Saul/Paul, our experience of Christianity would have been so different.

We Meet Jesus

There are many people today that identify with Saul’s experience. The started off far from God, perhaps even living a violent life. They were that person who seemed to be the most unexpected to become a follower of Jesus. But they met Jesus in some way, some more dramatic than others. It was an instantaneous transformation. They went from one minute living for sin to the next living for Jesus. And they have never been the same. Perhaps you know such people. You may even be someone like this.

But what about the average Christian who may have been raised in the church? What about the person who has never done something really bad, at least not on the outside? What about the person who has always been respected and well thought of, who never had serious doubts about God?

Such people may look at Saul and think, “That’s nice for him but it has nothing to do with me.” I would say to not be too quick to dismiss the relevance of this story.

We often call this the “conversion” of Saul. But was it? Did Saul convert from one religion to another? I don’t think that Saul saw it that way. He believed in the God of Israel before the Damascus road and he believed in the God of Israel after the Damascus road. Saul was a Jew before and he was a Jew after. He was zealous before and he was zealous after.

So what happened to Saul? He met Jesus. Jesus changed everything. It was like putting on a pair of glasses or a hearing aid for the first time and discovering what reality is really like. Saul saw things clearly for the first time. That is why, I think, he had an experience of blindness and recovery of sight. What happened to him physically was an image of what happened to him spiritually. 

While we may not have such a dramatic experience, what’s to stop us from seeing Jesus in a new way. An encounter with Jesus doesn’t have to be just at the moment of “conversion.” We can be a good and dedicated church member for decades and then something happens that makes us see Jesus in a new way. And when we see Jesus in a new way, we see everything in a new way.

I believe that Jesus is seeking to interrupt us on the roads that we travel. He wants us to knock us out of our comfort zone. He wants to redirect our zeal to things that really matter.

Conclusion

Saul’s experience on the road to Damascus was life-changing and history-changing. Jesus did something amazing with Saul and he became an unexpected Christian. But this is not just Saul’s story. This is our story. Jesus wants to meet us. The truth is that there is still time for us to become an unexpected Christian. We can see Jesus in new ways, we can encounter him in such a way to change the direction of our lives. For some this is their conversion experience. But it can also be our discipleship experience. Keep your eyes open on the road of life. Jesus might be just around the corner.

Exodus 3:1-15

Introduction

Have you ever had an opportunity come your way that totally scared you? While you valued the opportunity, the task seemed beyond your abilities.

When I think about these feelings, I automatically think about the anticipation of my basic training for the army. I did not have much time to process what was going on. I had just been sworn into the Canadian Armed Forces a few weeks before. I received my kit, including my uniform, just a week before. I had no idea what to expect. I was not really physically fit and had serious doubts about I would do with military drill.

I can still remember going out for lunch with my daughter Abby before leaving for CFB Borden. I was trying to enjoy our father-daughter date, but I kept getting drawn into the anxiety about basic training. Did I really have what it took to be in the army reserves? I was not so sure at that moment.

What I have described is only a small portion of what Moses was feeling as God called him to a mission. We are going to to take a look at his experience and figure what that means for us.

Calling Moses

Our passage starts with Moses tending sheep on Mount Horeb. But that was not the beginning of his story. Moses was a Hebrew but was brought up in an Egyptian household. Not just any household, but that of the Pharaoh. Moses grew up with all the privileges of a prince of Egypt.

Eventually, Moses began to accept his Hebrew heritage. His eyes were opened to the suffering on his people and he had compassion on them. He saw an Egyptian guard beating a Hebrew slave and Moses killed the guard. Moses did it not out of hatred of the Egyptians but out of a desire for justice.

Unfortunately, things did not work out the way he desired. What he hoped would remain a secret became public knowledge. Moses was forced to flee from Egypt, from his home and everything he knew, and to make a new life for himself in a strange land.

Moses found himself a wife and began working for his father-in-law by tending sheep. It was a far cry from palace life but it was simpler. Each day would be like the next. Until it wasn’t.

Moses encountered God on the mountain. It was the famous burning bush. God didn’t appear just to say “hello.” God had a mission for Moses to undertake. God had heard the suffering of the Hebrew people and was sending Moses to lead them to freedom. 

Centuries later, God would speak to another prophet named Isaiah. Isaiah would respond with the words, “Here I am, send me.” (Isaiah 6:8) Moses responded with “Here I am,” but the rest of his response was saying, “Here I am, send someone else.” Moses had all sorts of excuses why he shouldn’t go, many of them outside of this passage.

You can’t blame Moses. He had tried to make a difference and he had failed miserably. Why should this time be any different? Especially since last time, Moses only tried to help one person and this time God was expecting him to help the entire nation.

God says a lot of things to Moses but what I want to focus on is that God says, “I will be with you.” (Exodus 3:12) That is the difference. Last time, Moses tried to do something on his own. This time God was going to be with him. God seals the deal by revealing his personal name to Moses. This time was going to be different.

So Moses head off to Egypt, put Pharaoh in his place and casually walked off with his people to a life of freedom. Well, it was not quite that easy. In fact it was very hard and at times Moses felt discouraged. But God was with him. God did not do everything for Moses but God was with him. The presence of God can get us through but it is never a promise of ease and comfort.

Calling the Church

We can look at Moses and either praise or criticize him. It is easy for us to look at him as an isolated case, far removed from our experience. The reality is that his story is our story.

God calls us to mission. You might be thinking that you don’t recall encountering a flaming bush. We don’t need to have a bush because we have something better, we have Jesus.

Jesus calls us, as his church, to fulfill the work he has for us. In the case of Moses, it was to free the Hebrews, what is for us?

The mission of the church is rather simple. Not easy, but simple. It all comes down to the Great Commandments and the Great Commission. The Great Commandments are to love God and love our neighbours. So we as Christians, need to invest into our relationship with God and to reach out with practical help for those around us. Remember that Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan to illustrate what a neighbour looks like. That is a great place to start. The Great Commission tells us to go and make disciples. Here the emphasis is on “go.” This is not just feeding and housing but making followers of Jesus, wither locally or globally.

I’m sure we can all agree in principle that these are the things we are to do as a church. But we are in the same situation as Moses. Perhaps we have tried something along these lines and it didn’t go so well. Perhaps we are staring at the Great Commandments and the Great Commission and are coming up with a long list of excuse why God can’t use us. We don’t have enough money or people. We are too old or too young. There are other churches that are better equipped.

I hate to tell you this but God is as impressed with our excuses as he was with Moses. The Great Commandments and the Great Commission are for every Christian and every congregation. You don’t have to meet a specific criteria to be included.

And like with Moses, God gives us the same promise as we go on our mission. “I will be with you.” (Exodus 3:12) Although it might not feel like it at the time, that is enough. What is the name for Jesus that we talk about at Christmas? Emmanuel. God with us. Jesus is the promise that God will never leave us nor forsake us. None of these things means that our mission will be easy. It only means that God will be with us every step of the way.

Conclusion

I started by talking about my feelings going into basic training. I was very anxious about what it would be like and if I had what it would take. I would love to tell you that I arrived at Borden and it was super easy. I found it very challenging, both physically and emotionally. There were times when I felt like giving up. But I made it. I graduated with my Basic Military Officer Qualification.

I would also like to tell you that things were easy for Moses and things will be easy for the church. But I can’t. God doesn’t give us easy tasks. What God calls us to may be simple to understand intellectually but is challenging in practice. But God has promised to be with us as he promised to be with Moses. The presence of God is what will bring us to where we need to be.

Acts 8:26-40

Introduction

I have often felt like the story of the Ethiopian eunuch is one of the strangest in Acts. It’s not the picture of Philip running alongside the horse drawn chariot, listening to what the man was reading. Nor is it the way the Holy Spirit takes Philip away immediately after, making it sound like he was almost teleported.

Here is what I struggled with. This passage looks like the Ethiopian is the first Gentile to become a believer. But in Acts 10, it looks like Cornelius is the first Gentile to become a believer and it’s Cornelius’s conversion that really throws the church into crisis. So who was the first Gentile to be converted?

Technically it was the Ethiopian. But there was a difference between the Ethiopian and Cornelius. The crisis that erupted over Cornelius was not about whether Gentiles could follow Jesus but if they could do that without converting to Judaism. And the required step for males to convert was circumcision. For the Ethiopian as eunuch, that was not possible. For Cornelius, he could have but did not, thus creating a huge issue.

But that then leaves us the question of why is the story of the Ethiopian even shared? This passage is found in the middle of a section about welcoming outsiders. Everything else around it is a major step. If the issue is not that the Ethiopian was a Gentile, what marginalized group does he represent?

I am going to suggest that the Ethiopian represents people with disabilities. You may not have thought of the Ethiopian as a person with a disability but he was. How is being a eunuch a disability? After all, Roman Catholic priests voluntarily choose a life of celibacy.  But in the ancient world, being able to continue your family line was the most important thing you could do. The loss of children, either through death or the inability to conceive was a terrible thing. There was a stigma to being either a eunuch or a barren woman. 

Unfortunately for eunuchs, probably because they were men, there were added limitations. We are going to take a short tour of the Old Testament to understand the significance of this story.

Eunuchs in the Bible

Since we encounter the Ethiopian eunuch while he was reading the Scriptures, it is appropriate that we look at what the Bible says.

In Leviticus 21, we find a passage that gives regulations for temple priests. One of the restrictions is that placed upon priests has to do with disabilities. It lists a number of disabilities, which would include eunuchs. We are told that none of them are allowed to offer sacrifices in the temple. To our modern sensibilities, that sounds very unfair. It gets worse.

Only a portion of one of the twelve tribes were priests and so these limitations would affect only a few people. In Deuteronomy 23:1, we are told that no eunuchs are allowed to enter the assembly of the Lord, which is the gathering of worship. This affects not just those who choose to become eunuchs but those born that way and those who had it done to them against their will. If that is all that we had, we might question God’s goodness when it comes to people with a certain disability. But things get better.

In Isaiah 56, we read this prophecy:

“To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,

    who choose what pleases me

    and hold fast to my covenant— 

to them I will give within my temple and its walls

    a memorial and a name

    better than sons and daughters;

I will give them an everlasting name

    that will endure forever.” (Isaiah 56:4-5)

This is given right before a prophecy of the welcoming of foreigners. What is being said here is that despite previous limitations, a time is coming when eunuchs will be welcomed in and given  a special blessing. While culture might say that sons and daughters are the greatest blessing, there is a better blessing in store for them. The name that people longed for was a long line of descendants. God would give these people a name based on their relationship with them.

Because the book of Isaiah was on a scroll and it would have been easier to unroll from the end to get to these later chapter, the Ethiopian would have had to pass through the Isaiah 56 prophecy on his way to get to the Isaiah 53 passage he was reading when Philip found him.

God fully welcomed the Ethiopian as he was. He did not get healed first. He was acceptable the way he was. Isaiah 56 was being fulfilled in him.

This is not just about the specific condition of eunuchs. Eunuchs are an image for all disabilities that may separate some people from others. As we have looked at the Scriptures, we have journeyed from restrictions to prophecies of hope to full acceptance. This is very relevant.

Disabilities in the Church

In many ways this is the story of many people with disabilities in the church. For some people, they are excluded from leadership. Some congregations are fine to have people with disabilities around but do not give them any leadership roles. It may not be out of any malice, people with disabilities are just not on their radar. Some might not think people with disabilities are qualified for leadership.

In some instances, it goes much farther. We saw a passage where eunuchs were excluded from the assembly of the Lord. Sadly, there are cases of people with disabilities being asked not to attend worship services. If we heard of people of a certain ethnicity being asked to leave, our society would be outreached. And yet I have talked to parents who have been told not to bring their children with disabilities because it might disrupt the show they trying to put on for Sunday mornings. This does happen.

But there is hope. Isaiah 56 spoke of a time when those who were excluded would be included. The story of the Ethiopian eunuch reminds us that the time is now. All we have to do is catch up to what God is already doing.

A study done a few years ago revealed that 22% of Canadians have at least one disability. That means that if 100 people showed up to church on a Sunday, we would expect that at least 22 people would have disabilities. It is likely that most congregations don’t meet that level, even taking into account invisible disabilities.

Unfortunately, many people with disabilities do not feel welcomed or included. They may feel either pushed to the sidelines or have demands for healing being forced upon them. 

The story of the Ethiopian tells us that people with disabilities are fully welcomed into the church, on equal grounds with everyone else. How can the church take a different view?

This requires not just welcoming people and making the building accessible. It also means including people in the full life of the church, including ministry and leadership. Every person has some gifts, no matter what their abilities. 

Conclusion

Let’s take a moment, as we conclude, to think of this Ethiopian. What was he religiously before meeting Philip? He was not a Jew, because it was impossible for him to convert. But he was reading from the Hebrew prophets and so was obviously interested in their God. He was someone who had a longing to know God but he was doing it as someone from the outside looking in. He was excluded and was stuck on the margins.

But then Philip came along and explained to him about Jesus. The prophecies of Isaiah were being fulfilled in their day. Those who had been excluded were now being included. The welcoming of the eunuch, representing people of all disabilities, was a part of what God was doing in welcoming all outsiders, from the Samaritans to the Gentiles.

Now we are here in the 21st century. The experience of people with disabilities has changed. But the church is still playing catch up. We as a congregation are trying to be fully welcoming and inclusive. But there is always room to grow.  

The Church scattered February 7, 2021 QSBC

Acts 8:1-8

Introduction

Back when I was in my mid-20s, I went on my first mission trip. It was with the organization Operation Mobilization. I was pretty excited to go overseas and preach the gospel. And I as feeling a bit overconfident as well, if I am honest. The Canadians met in Oakville and got a bit of training. Then we were sent to the Toronto airport, not just to catch a flight, but to do evangelism. 

We were terrified and so we gathered together in large packs at the airport. We felt like there was safety in numbers. Our primary concern was not our effectiveness but our own comfort. e were pretty useless. Eventually we arrived in Germany and from there we went to our individual countries. That group of young Canadian short-term missionaries that tried to keep it safe as then scattered across Europe. As frightening as that was, it was then we were actually able to do something useful.

I didn’t know it at the time but what I was experiencing echoed something from the book of Acts and that this also is often replayed in churches all over the world.

Scattering in Acts

Way back in Acts 1, Jesus just before his ascension said to them, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8) As we saw, God was faithful to his side, sending the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. But how did the disciples do?

The disciples were very effective in Jerusalem. They preached the gospel and made sure that people knew that Jesus was Lord and the kingdom of God was arriving. They did okay in Judea, that area around Jerusalem. Samaria? Not much had happened there. There had been a longstanding conflict between the Jews and the Samaritans. That was way outside their comfort zone. And you could just forget about the ends of the earth. The safest thing to do would be to stay clustered in Jerusalem with occasional forays into the surrounding towns.

But then Stephen happened. His style was far from seeker sensitive or friendship evangelism. Stephen had a confrontational style and this led to his death. But it didn’t end there. The opponents to the followers of Jesus realized that they had to take a stronger hand. If they didn’t stamp out this Jesus talk, things could get out of hand. So instead of just pressuring leaders, they went after the church in general. Persecution was put in gear.

I need to make a comment about this. The first persecution of Christians were by the Jews. That can sometimes be seen as conflict between the religions of Christianity and Judaism. That was not exactly the case. Everyone involved were Jews. This was seen as an attempt of one group of Jews to stamp out another group of Jews whose beliefs were seen as heretical. This was no different than what happened after the Reformation when one Christian group would persecute another Christian group.

What was the result of the persecution? Many of the Christians scattered. Their safety was disrupted and they were forced to go to new places. Ironically, the non-Christian Jews would be forced to scatter less than forty years later when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. It was one of the reasons why Judaism has survived until this day.

What about the Christians? This scattering was not just to find a new place of comfort and safety. The Christians were scattered to do ministry. We are told that some of them fled to Samaria. This will lead us directly into the story of the evangelism of the Samaritans. This would be the first major group of non-Jews to be welcomed into the church.

We are told that the apostles stayed in Jerusalem. But don’t think they got off easy. Tradition tells us that they too would be scattered and that they would share Jesus in far off lands, some as far away as India.

Let’s be clear. Persecution is a bad thing. We do not want people being arrested for their faith. But God used this event to scatter an overly comfortable church, not just to disrupt them, but to send them out for ministry. In the coming weeks, we will see what some of that ministry looked like.

Scattering Today

All of the principles that we have talked about so far are played out again over and over in modern times. This is especially true during our current pandemic.

The first principle is that the idea of safety and comfort are extremely appealing. Just as those early Christians wished that life would continue as normal in Jerusalem, we wish that life would continue as normal in our church building. One year ago from right now, we were keeping an eye on COVID-19 but with no concerns of any major disruptions. We were looking at increased use of hand sanitizer and decreased shaking of hands and that was about it. Can you remember what it was like a year ago? Can you remember gathering together for worship and Bible studies and fellowship and meals? Can you remember being able to be faithful to our traditions, doing things the way we had for years? It was very comforting and we miss those comforts now.

The second principles is that life happens. This pandemic is not the first incident to disrupt us and it will not be the last. Hopefully it will be a long time before we have anything like that again, but these things will happen and have been happening. The increase in drug use in our community had already changed Out of the Cold from the days when the biggest concern was that a guest had a bit too much to drink. Ministry has to continually adapt to changing circumstances.

The final principle is that our discomfort can be used for the building of the kingdom of God. In Acts, we saw the persecution resulting in the scattering of the Christians to Samaria and beyond. Some very important ministry took place because of it.

In a way this pandemic has scattered us. Normally on a Sunday morning, the majority of our congregation would be in the same building at the same time. While you are watching this, we have people scattered across St Catharines and  beyond. The scattering is not for finding a new place of comfort but ministry. This is not a time for a comfortable people to be consuming spiritual goods and services. This is a time to mobilize the congregation for ministry to a world that is losing hope. What that ministry will look like will be different for all of us, but it is must happen.

Conclusion

When I think about that moment when Stephen’s persecutors turned their attention to the rest of the church, I try to imagine their reaction. There must have been much confusion and frustration. They were fellow Jews who were trying their best to serve God. There must have been panic as they had to leave their homes and move onto unfamiliar places.

I think we can identify with some of their feelings. Our world has been turned upside down as well. We are experiencing confusion and frustration. Some of us might be living with panic. But just as a crisis led to greater ministry for the early church, our crisis can lead to greater ministry for us. COVID-19 is the end to the effective ministry of Queen Street Baptist Church. It may actually be the beginning of our our best ministry years. 

Acts 7:54-60

Introduction

Have you ever thought about what it will be like when you die? I don’t mean passing into the afterlife but in the hours and minutes leading up to it. I know that sounds morbid and yet it is something we will all experience.

I have spent time with a lot of people as they approach death. Everyone experiences it differently. I can say that how one approaches death says a lot about how that person lived their life.

That is certainly the case when it comes to Stephen. We have spent a lot of time with Stephen and now we come to his death. Stephen has spoken his mind, shared his faith, offended his accusers and now he is executed. This is probably more of a mob killing than a legal execution. Stoning is a terrible way to die. You probably don’t die with the first hit. Rock after rock does its damage. Then you lose consciousness and yet the crowd doesn’t stop until all life is gone. Sadly, stoning still happen today. 

This could be a very depressing message and yet I want to focus on something positive. As I said, how we die says something about how we live. What I want to focus on is the statement that Stephen was filled with the Holy Spirit. What does that mean? What does that look like? I used to attend a Pentecostal church and they had a very clear idea of what it was to be filled with the Holy Spirit. A Spirit-filled person was someone who was operating in the spiritual gifts described in 1 Corinthians 12. In other words, it should be accompanied by some kind of dramatic supernatural manifestation. Now we do see Stephen receiving a vision, but that is not the only thing that happens. We are going to look at what it meant for Stephen to be filled with the Holy Spirit and then what it means for us to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Stephen Full of the Spirit

So we do see that Stephen has a vision of Jesus on the right hand of the Father. It is significant that Jesus is standing and not sitting. Jesus is ready and prepared to be there for Stephen. That must have been very comforting for Stephen. But what I want to focus on are the moments leading right up to Stephen’s death. The crowd begins to stone Stephen and two things happen. Stephen does not grieve his own impending death. We don’t see him getting upset. Rather, Stephen calls upon Jesus to receive his spirit. Does that sound familiar? Jesus said something very similar during his crucifixion. Jesus called out to the Father, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” For both Jesus and Stephen, this was an act of surrender and trust that their existence was safe in the hands of God. That by itself would be enough.

But after that, Stephen asks the Lord to not hold their sin against them. Again, Jesus said something very similar as he was dying on the cross. Jesus said, “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” So both Jesus and Stephen, in addition to surrendering their lives to God, took time to forgive those who were responsible for their deaths. I believe that both of these actions by Stephen are directly related to his being filled by the Spirit.

Does this mean the evidence of being fill by the Holy Spirit is trust in God and forgiving of enemies? Yes, but I can be even more specific. I would say that being filled with the Holy Spirit leads to being Christ-like. It just so happens that this led Stephen to be very much like Jesus at his death but it doesn’t have to be limited to that.

Being filled with the Holy Spirit is not just a way for us to have a good death, it is also a way for us to have a good life. A disciples is not just one who respects their master, it is one who is attempting to be like their master. Disciples of Jesus, like Stephen and others mentioned in Acts, were empowered by the Spirit to become more and more like the Lord Jesus. If Stephen hadn’t been killed at that point, we would have seen other examples of his Christ-likeness.

How does being filled with the Spirit lead to becoming more like Jesus? Although Jesus is the Son of God, he took a route for his ministry that can be followed by us. The very first thing before starting his ministry was his baptism. We are told that at his baptism by John that the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove. Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit that is available to us. That doesn’t make us exactly like Jesus but it gives us the direction by which our lives should be pointed.

Full of the Spirit

Stephen was filled with the Holy Spirit. But what about us? What would a church that was Spirit-filled look like? You might think that it would be a place where healings and miracles are taking place. That could be part of it but being full of the Holy Spirit has a broader meaning. Being full of the Holy Spirit means being like Jesus, not just in his death but in his life.

To understand what a Spirit-filled church would look like, we would need to understand what a Spirit-filled Jesus looked like. So yes Jesus performed miracles. But what else did he do? He had compassion and love. He cared for people’s practical needs. He spoke the truth in the face of opposition. He spent time with the marginalized. He invested himself in people. He prayed and spent time with the Father. He was faithful to his calling.

The Apostle Paul, another person who was filled with the Holy Spirit, said this, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23) Those are all very good virtues. And who does that sound like? It sounds like Jesus. The work of the Holy Spirit is to make us like Jesus and the list Paul gives is a very good indicator of where we are at.

If you are like me, you will notice areas of your life that are not very Christ-like. That might be concerning. I suspect that Stephen has areas that were not quite like Jesus. We can see some examples of where Paul and Peter missed the mark. 

The truth is that the Holy Spirit works in our lives in numerous ways. One is the slow and steady growth. It is like the planting of a seed. You cannot see the difference day to day, but over time there is definite growth. Another way the Holy Spirit works is with a sudden and powerful filling. We see examples in the Bible and the modern world of that happening. This is like those days in the spring when there is a warm and heavy rain and the trees that looked dead before the rain, suddenly are green with leaves. But even with this, that does not mean that Holy Spirit makes us Christ-like in every area all at once. The Spirit might change us in the area of ministry gifts or personal holiness or forgiveness or any other area. The point that I am trying to make is do not be discouraged if you are not as perfect as Jesus. What is important is that you are moving in the right direction.

Conclusion 

I am leaving for the conclusion what is perhaps the most confusing part. How do you become filled with the Holy Spirit. I wish I could give you three easy steps. I even wish that I could just pray for you and have it happen in an instant. But it is more complicated than that. We are not even told how Stephen was filled with the Spirit.

That is not to say we can’t say anything about it. I think the starting point is just wanting it. We will see later what happens when that is from impure motives. This has to be a deep desire to be like Jesus, not just in power but in suffering as well. It is going to require a surrender of our will, getting off our throne and giving it to Jesus. It probably should include a study of Jesus to know what he is like so we can recognize what is happening in us. 

Being filled with the Holy Spirit is like falling in love. You can’t give precise instructions but you will recognize it when it happens. And like falling in love, it will take over your life/

Stephen died full of the Holy Spirit. Let us live full of that same Spirit. 

Acts 7:51-53

Introduction

Have you ever been having a conversation with someone and you realize that you have come to a crossroads? You can see the next thing that you plan to say in your mind. You know that if you say that, there is no going back. Not only will it change the direction of the conversation, it may totally transform the relationship.

That is where we are with Stephen and his defence before the religious leaders. So far he has been taking them on a tour of the Scriptures, reminding them of how big God is. His interpretation and focus has been challenging enough. The next thing he says will tell us what his goals for this speech really were. Is this a defence in the sense of trying to prove his innocence and avoid punishment? Or is this an example of the best defence being a good offence, as he goes on the attack? The fact that he opens this section by calling them “You stiff-necked people!” may give us a clue.

He didn’t have to say these things. In fact if he had ended right before this, he might have gotten off with some lashes and a stern warning. But no, Stephen insisted on going all the way. His personal safety was the least of his concerns. He accuses them of murdering Jesus and by that, being disobedient to the Law. They condemned him for breaking the Law and now he condemns them on the same charge. Definitely doesn’t sound like someone fighting to save their life. We will see next week how that turned out for him.

What I want to focus on is Stephen’s charge that his accusers always resist the Holy Spirit. What he means by that is the Spirit spoke through and empowered the prophets, who predicted the coming Messiah. The Spirit was at work in Jesus, proclaiming the kingdom of God. But some people rejected what the Spirit was doing, resisting to the limit of their abilities. The temptation for us is to point fingers at them and agree at how terrible it is that they resisted the Spirit. But how do we resist the Spirit? Implicit in that question is how the Spirit speaks to us today. That is what we are going to look at.

The Bible

Stephen gives us a hint of one way that Spirit speaks in his speech. He talks about how his accusers received the Law but didn’t obey it. They held up the Law as something important but did not follow it the way God intended. And that brings us to the first way the Spirit speaks to us, through the Scriptures. We believe the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit and this is the clearest voice for us.

So just obey the Bible. That’s simple. Or perhaps not. What are we expected to do? The Bible speaks a lot on a wide variety of topics. How do we even begin to know what to do?

The first thing we need to do is to start reading our Bibles. Biblical literacy is one of the biggest problems in the Church. How can we obey the Bible if we don’t know what is in it? Perhaps the first way we resist the Spirit is by not reading the book that the Spirit inspired.

But even if we do read the Bible, it can still be overwhelming. What do we do with all of these books and chapters and verses? I would say start with the basics. There are certain consistent themes. Jesus summarized the Law as loving God and loving our neighbour. Let’s start with that. Resisting the Spirit today would be neglecting the greatest commandments. Would people identify us as those who love God and other people? Another consistent them is reaching out to the marginalized. Do we spend our time only with those who are an advantage to us or do we spend time with those who live on the margins. Don’t worry with the things people consider “deep teachings.” These are deep enough to keep us busy for a whole life time.

The Church

Resisting the Spirit can also be manifested in how we relate to the Church. I want to be careful in how I say this. I don’t want to focus on bling obedience to a church. That usually ends up becoming a cult. Human leadership will always make mistakes and we need to use our reason.

What I’m really talking about here, in terms of the Spirit, is working toward the unity of the Church. In 1 Corinthians 3:16, Paul compares the Church to the temple of the Spirit. He then gives a very stern warning against those who would seek destroy the unity of the Church. Paul is not arguing that we all need to be the same to keep people happy. Paul actually argues for a unity with diversity rather than uniformity. Our differences are our strength but within our differences we still have unity of purpose. This unity is the work of the Spirit and if we seek to divide the Church for our own selfish purposes, we are resisting the Spirit.

Other People

The Holy Spirit also speaks to us through other people. I purposely didn’t say Christians, although the Spirit speaks through Christians. Rather I am saying that the Holy Spirit can speak through anyone he wants. But are we listening?

I need to clarify something. I am not saying that if a person comes up to you and they identify as a prophet that you have to obey what they say. Numerous so-called prophets predicted the outcome of a recent election and they were wrong. I’m thinking of something more natural.

The Spirit speaks through people and we have to compare that to what we know from Scripture and common sense. This requires careful listening to discern what the Spirit is saying admit all of the other voices out there. If we ignore the wisdom of others, we may be resisting the Spirit.

The Still Small Voice

The final way the Spirit speaks to us may be the most frightening. It is when the Spirit speaks directly to us. I do not mean in an audible voice. But the Spirit does speaks to us. I have experienced it myself. But why is this frightening?

Because we cannot be sure it is the Spirit and not our own desires. I know of an example of woman who felt led by God to leave her husband for another man. That was not the Holy Spirit. I have heard many other examples, where one’s personal desires are so strong that they believed it was God. Like hearing from other people, we need to test it according to the Scriptures. I would also hesitate to announce to people that God told you to do something. Listen to the Spirit, test it through the Scriptures and look for further confirmation. You may not know it was the Spirit leading you until you have gotten to where you were supposed to be. Also do not look for extremely specific guidance. It is usually more of a nudge in the right direction. But we should not just ignore what we think the Spirit is doing in our life. Use caution but don’t resist the Holy Spirit.

Conclusion

Two thousand years ago, Stephen accused his accusers of resisting the Holy Spirit. He was not talking to the Jewish people in general but to those who ignored what the Spirit was saying in the Scriptures and killed Jesus.

Christians today can be just as bad at resisting the Holy Spirit, even if it looks different in our circumstances. The Holy Spirit is active and is speaking to us. Do we hear? Can we hear the voice of the Spirit in the Scriptures, the Church, other people and within ourselves? And if we do hear, are we responding appropriately. It takes both wisdom and courage but it is the only way we can build the kingdom of God. 

Acts 7:44-50

Introduction

Many years ago, I was at a revival service here in St Catharines and I heard something that I have never forgotten. Interestingly, it was in his sermon but in his appeal for the offering. As he was asking people to dig deep into their wallets, he told us that God was obligated to give us back $100 for every $1 we put in the offering plate. It was a sure investment. It stuck with me because I was shocked that we would bind God with such strict rules.

I could get pretty judgmental about this but on deeper reflection, I have come to realize that I have put certain limits or expectations on God that were just as bad, if not quite so public. I decided that I knew exactly how God operated and anything outside of that just couldn’t be God. I thought I knew the denominations that God was at work in and those he was not. I decided on the kinds of experiences that were valid or required. I put a lot of limitations on God. Thankfully, God has been punching his way out of the box I keep trying to put him into.

I doubt that I am not the only one who struggles with this. In fact some of our current struggles have revealed how the church in general is having trouble in this area.

The passage that we are looking at today, a portion of speech by Stephen, helps us to see what we want to do with God, and who God really is. Let us take a look.

Old Limits on God

If you remember back before Advent, we were going through Acts and had gotten to the section on Stephen. Stephen had gotten in trouble for his preaching and the religious leaders were quite upset. The accusations were that he was speaking against the Law and the Temple, two of the foundations for the Jewish people. What we have in Acts 7 is Stephen’s defence against those accusations.

When it comes to the Law, it is not just a list of commands. The Law or the Torah is actually the first five books of the Bible, Genesis to Deuteronomy. While Stephen goes beyond the Law, he spends much of his time expounding from the Torah, demonstrating that he was just as committed to those traditions as they were.

Now remember, as we look at what Stephen says, that they were completely focused on God as located in the Jerusalem temple. Watch what Stephen does.

Stephen begins with Abraham. He recounts how God spoke to Abraham. But where did God speak to Abraham? It wasn’t in Jerusalem or any where near what would become Israel. It was in Mesopotamia, in what we now call Iraq. Then God spoke again to Abraham, this time in Harran, still not in the Promised Land. God was free to speak and act any where he wanted.

The we move to Egypt, where Joseph became second only to Pharaoh in power. God blessed Joseph in an unexpected way. But eventually the Hebrews lost their privilege and became slaves in Egypt. This brings us to Moses, a man born and educated in Egypt. God used him in a mighty way, but he used him outside of Israel. Even Mount Sinai, the place where God made his covenant with the people, was not in Israel. A tabernacle was constructed to be a focal point for worship. It was like a temple but it was mobile. God moved around with the people. During the time of David, the tabernacle became settled in Jerusalem and it was his son Solomon that built the temple. 

Do you see what was going on here? We have a gradual limiting of the activity of God. God was going where he wanted, then went were the tabernacle was taken and then was settled in the temple. I’m not saying that the temple was wrong, it was part of God’s plan. What was wrong was the attitude of the people that by creating a building, they were keeping God to themselves. But Stephen quotes from the prophet Isaiah that God never considered himself so limited. “Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool.” 

Stephen wasn’t saying that the temple was bad, he was saying that God was bigger than the temple, that he was free to act in unexpected ways. We will see how his accusers felt about this next week.

New Limits on God

It is interesting that we are looking at this passage at this moment in time. In this passage, Stephen argued that God was not limited to the temple, that he was bigger than the building. What is happening with us? We are currently in a lockdown and our church building is closed to in-person worship service. Some people are really struggling with this. Some congregations have taken the stand that the only way to remain faithful is to continue to gather for physical worship services in the church building. Not only are they willing to risk the spread of COVID-19, they also are willing to be fined by the government as a result of their disobedience.

I do not want to get into the debate over these issues but I will say something. I would prefer to meet in our church building with our people, singing songs and praying prayers. I would especially love a potluck after the service. But I don’t believe that is wise at this time. It is not out of fear of the government but out of love for people and a desire to keep people safe.

But it is also because of something else. Like my namesake, Stephen, I believe that God is bigger than the building. I love our church building but God is not limited by these walls. He is active in our homes, in our workplaces and yes on the internet. For those who worry that a lockdown will stop the ministry of the church, you need a bigger picture of God.

But it is not just about a building. This problem didn’t start with COVID-19. We put all sorts of limits on God. “God can only work through certain types of worship music.” “God can only work through certain types of Bible translations.” “God can only work through certain types of people.” Too many people have bought into these lies.

We need to let God out of the box. Not just the box of a physical building but the box of our own personal preferences or expectations. God is far bigger than we can imagine. Heaven is his thorn and the entire earth is his footstool. What would happen if we truly comprehended that truth? How would it change we do church and how we live as the church?

Conclusion

Stephen got in trouble. He got in trouble for telling the truth. He looked back over biblical history. He reminded people how God was not limited to Jerusalem. He spoke to people from Mesopotamia to Egypt and beyond. Yes it was good to have a way to focus our worship, whether in a tabernacle or a temple. But those structures were not limitations on God, even if it might be more comfortable for us if they were.

What if COVID-19 was a blessing and not a curse? What if God used this terrible pandemic to free himself, not just from our church buildings but from all of the human limitations that we place upon him? What if this was what we needed to reminded about big God really is? 

Matthew 2:1-12

Introduction

You may think that Christmas is over but it is not. As the song says, there are twelve days of Christmas, starting on December 25 and ending on January 6. So Merry Christmas!

When I think of Christmas, I often think of nativity sets. Each of us might be drawn to different figures of the nativity. But as we look at them, we need to remember that it probably did not look exactly that way. For example, it is very unlikely that the shepherds and the wise men were there at the same time. There are good reasons to believe that the wise men didn’t show up until well after the actual birth. And just to shake things up a bit more, Matthew doesn’t actually say that there were three of them, nor does he say that they were kings. I realize that this ruins the carol “We Three Kings” for you. Still, the wise men are an important part of the story and I want to take some time to think about them and then what their appearance in this story means for them.

The Magi

So who were these mysterious visitors that came to see the holy infant? As I said, Matthew doesn’t call them kings, even though there would be something beautiful about three kings coming to worship the baby king.

Wise men is a better way of thinking of them but the actual word that is used is magi. The original magi were the priestly class of an ancient Persian religion. These magi may have been Persians but by this time magi had a wider meaning. Any wise man could be called a magi, even if they were not connected to that religion. Many scholars think that these magi or wise men came from Babylon. While we cannot know that for certain, it would make sense as there was still a large Jewish population in Babylon, and these magi were looking for the king of the Jews.

What we do know, based on ancient magi and wise men and based on Matthew’s description, is that they were likely astrologers. Does that concern you? Try not to think so much of Jeane Dixon or astrological advice in newspapers. At that time, there was no strong division between astronomy and astrology. A person like today’s self-proclaimed astrologists would not have sought the help of King Herod. These wise men would have thought of themselves as more scientist than psychic. Still, there probably were practices by them that would make us uncomfortable.

There is something else that we know about these magi. They were gentiles, that is non-Jews. This is very interesting, especially as we compare the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Luke was a gentile and his Gospel is especially interested in Samaritans and gentiles. Matthew was Jewish and his Gospel is the most Jewish of the four Gospels. And yet in the birth stories, Luke has the Jewish shepherds and Matthew has the gentile magi.

Not only that, but when we go back a chapter in Matthew’s Gospel, we get his genealogy of Jesus. Normally a genealogy would only include the fathers, because that is how the line passed. But Matthew mentions four women in his genealogy. That alone is remarkable. But when we look closer at these women, we also notice that all four of these women were gentiles. That seems strange to include, especially when Matthew is very interested in the Jewishness of Jesus.

Part of what Matthew is trying to do is to demonstrate that it would be through Jesus that the Old Testament prophecies of the welcoming of the gentiles would be fulfilled. Many of the promises of the Old Testament were about the welcoming of the outsider, something that made insiders very uncomfortable. But this would be part of what the Jewish messiah would do.

Notice that the magi specify that they are looking for the king of the Jews. As gentiles, that would seem to highlight that they were outsiders looking in. In fact, the only ones who refer to Jesus as king of the Jews are gentiles. We next find this phrase at Jesus’ trial and execution, when he is referred to as king of the Jews by Pontius Pilate and the Roman soldiers. They even put a sign on the cross in multiple languages that Jesus was king of the Jews. Although the title “king of the Jews” sounds very Jewish, it is actually a call to the gentiles, to the outsiders, to decide how they will respond.

The Outsiders

While I love to dig into the original context of these biblical passages, it is also very important for us to determine the application for our lives. I doubt that the visit of the magi was meant to just liven up our nativity sets. There is something important here.

The wise men or magi represent the outsider. The Jewish people had built barriers to keep themselves separate from the gentiles. There were clear distinctions between who was in and who was out. There were prophecies that the outsiders would be welcomed but no one knew what that would look like.

What we read about in Matthew with the star leading the magi, it is obvious that God wanted them there and this was not about accidentally stumbling on Jesus. It was time to welcome outsiders.

There is a danger that we could look at the insider language of the Jews and be overly critical. The truth is that Christians struggle just as much. The book of Acts chronicles the church’s ongoing struggle to open itself up to the outsider. Sadly, this is something that was not overcome in the first century.

For two thousand years, Christians have attempted to put up walls to keep certain kinds of people out. My question to you is, who are the gentiles today? I’m not referring to non-Christians, although it could include that. Are there people who, if they sat down beside you in church, would make you feel uncomfortable? Is there anyone that you would give a side ways look, wondering why they were here? Are there people that we have pushed to the outside to try and protect our identity as insiders?

What are the differences that put someone on the outside? Is it an ethnic group, religious beliefs, being LGBTQ, being homeless, disability? 

The story of the magi is a reminder that there are no “wrong kind of people” to come and worship Jesus. This is something followed Jesus through his life. He was constantly being criticized by the “right kind of people” for spending so much time with the “wrong kind of people.”

I have been criticized for numerous things as a pastor over the years. The most encouraging criticism I ever received was that I was putting too much emphasis on the poor and people with disabilities. Although it was meant as an insult, I took it as a complement. 

Conclusion

The visit of the wise men to the infant Jesus has become a beloved part of our Christmas story. We often focus on the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. But what if the story was not just about what the wise men gave to Jesus but about what Jesus gave to the wise men. This story is not just about great men recognizing the greatness of Jesus. This story is about outsiders being welcomed into the presence of Jesus. This story is also a challenge to the church for us to welcome outsiders into the presence of Jesus. We dare not let our prejudices or desire for comfort to get in the way of that mission. 

Hebrews 12:1-2

Introduction

Throughout this season of Advent, we have looked at Jesus as our Hope-Giver, Peace-Giver and Love-Giver. We now come to Jesus as our Joy-Giver. It is not difficult to find the concept of joy in the Christmas story. When the pregnant Mary visited her relative Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist, something significant happened. We are told that John leapt in his mother’s womb. I have always focused on how John recognized Jesus as the Christ but there is more going on. We are told specifically that John leapt for joy. The very first thing that Jesus ever gave, even before he was born, was joy. Then there was the appearance of the angels to the shepherds. We are told that the shepherds were afraid and the angel responded, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.” (Luke 2:10) The good news is that Jesus was being born and this would cause great joy. The implication is that this joy is not limited to the normal joy when a baby is born but that this baby will somehow lead to great joy for many people. And of course, one of the most triumphant Christmas carols is Joy to the World by Isaac Watts. There is something about sing that song or even listening to it that lifts us up.

It seems clear that Jesus came to bring joy. But what does that mean? How does that fit with living in difficult circumstances? You don’t need a worldwide pandemic to struggle in finding joy. There are plenty of things in life that seem perfectly capable of robbing us of joy.

Part of the problem is how we define joy. If we define joy as always being happy, then we are going to struggle in maintaining that standard. A good place to start is looking at how Jesus experienced joy and then looking at how we can follow that example.

The Joy Set Before Jesus

The passage we are looking at in Hebrews 12 tells us to turn our eyes upon Jesus who is described as the pioneer and perfecter of faith. That gives very clear instruction that we are to emulate Jesus if we are to be strong in our faith.

I chose this passage because of the phrase, “the joy set before him.” Joy is held up as a motivator for Jesus, as the goal toward which he would reach. That sounds like something that we would want to achieve as well.

The questions is: What was the path that Jesus took to reach that joy that was set before him. Since Jesus is to be our example, let us hope that the path was one of comfort and quiet contemplation. If that is our hope, we will be sadly disappointed.

It was with that joy in mind that we are told that “Jesus endured the cross,” not just in its pain but in its shame. Everyone has to die and there are some deaths that are more honourable than others. Crucifixion was the worst. In fact it seems like the least likely path to find joy. 

That is where we need a good definition of joy. Joy is not about the happiness of the moment but rather our confidence that we are in God’s will and are on track to where God wants us.

Let me make it perfectly clear: there was no part of Jesus’ experience on the cross that was pleasant. He was in physical and emotional pain. His disciples had fled. The people around him were mocking him. Every part of it was terrible.

But Jesus was able to see beyond the moment. He knew he was called to the way of the cross, this was done in obedience to the Father. He also knew that he was returning to the Father, not just to be with him but to sit at the right hand of the Father. That was the joy that was set before him. But to get there he had to go through the cross.

I earlier mention Isaac Watt’s carol, Joy to the World. Watts was also the writer of When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. One of my favourite verses is:

See from his Head, his Hands, his Feet,

Sorrow and Love flow mingled down!

Did e’er such Love and Sorrow meet?

Or Thorns compose so rich a Crown?

Watts understood that when it comes to Jesus, both joy and suffering are important parts of the story. Jesus had joy but it was joy that was present in suffering.

The Joy Set Before Us

Our story is a little different from that of Jesus. Hopefully we will not be crucified and we will not sit on the right hand of the Father. But other than that, the principles are the same.

It comes down to that definition of joy. One of the trends in the church that I am concerned about is what I call prosperity gospel lite. The prosperity gospel, often preached by televangelists, claims that God’s will is for us to be always healthy and wealthy. Many of us can recognize the error of this, at least in its extreme forms.

But there is still the danger of prosperity gospel lite. This doesn’t claim that we should all be millionaires or never suffer a cold. But it does believe that Christians should have at least a moderate form of prosperity. It actually affects us all. One of the most common things that is said when bad things happen is: “Why is this happening to me?” Implicit in that is the belief, unconscious or not, that really bad things shouldn’t happen to Christians. That is why we are shocked when we hear something terrible happening to a Christian that we know is very faithful. Didn’t God have some sort of an obligation to protect them from that?

And yet when we look to the lives of Jesus and the apostles, and even the prophets before them, we see that there is no one so righteous that they avoid suffering. Yes God does answer prayers, helps people in need and pours out blessings, but no where is there a promise that we get a pass on suffering.

So how can we possibly have joy? The same way that Jesus did: The joy set before us. As we are faithful to God, we have assurance that we are in God’s will. Yes we make mistakes but there is confidence that we are at least going in the right direction, even if we stumble along the way. We can also have joy in knowing that we will one day be in the presence of God.

I do need to make clear that I am not saying that you should smile in your pain because you will go to heaven when you die. What I am saying is that there is joy available to us in our relationship with God through Christ. I am saying that joy is available in grief, in sorrow and in loss. Those things are real but so is the joy that Jesus gives us. You don’t have to be happy about your suffering but you can have joy.

Conclusion

I remember when my first son was born. I was filled with joy. It felt amazing to have a son and to anticipate our relationship with him. I still love him and the rest of my children very much but the magic of that moment is not often on my mind.

The birth of Jesus was different. I’m sure that it gave Joseph and Mary the normal joy that any parents have. But it did much more. Jesus coming into the world was transforming everything. The baby would grow up to be a man and that man would go to the cross. But that wasn’t the end, he rose again and ascended to the Father to sit on the right hand. Jesus navigated suffering with his eye on the joy set before him.

We as the followers of Jesus follow in his path. Bad things are going to happen, both part of and aside from the pandemic. We are not always going to be happy. But there is joy in our relationship with God in Christ. If Jesus could give joy to the unborn John the Baptist, imagine the joy he can give to us who know the full story.

John 13:34-35

Introduction

I have a love-hate relationship when it comes to tradition. On one hand, I really love tradition. It may be connected with my appreciation for history, including church history. There is so much that we can learn from the past and tradition is an excellent way of passing on those lessons. Not only is there is a teaching component, there is also comfort that is found in tradition. Tradition can be like that well-worn pair of boots that fit so nice. Innovation can feel like putting on a brand new pair that leaves your foot covered in blisters. As you may know, I am also in the army reserves and the army is as traditional as the church. There are certain things that are done just because someone started doing it hundreds of years ago and we still follow the tradition. On both the army and church side, tradition is good because it connects us to something bigger than ourselves. 

But I can also struggle with tradition because I tend to be the person to ask, “Why?” Why do we do things that way? Yes, certain things that we do are commanded by the Bible. But much of what churches do is based on tradition. Think of the songs that we do. There are certain kinds of songs that we do at Advent and others that we do at Lent. Why? Tradition. There is nothing unbiblical about doing an Advent song during Lent. What about how we do communion? You may remember that just before the lockdown, we had started doing communion every week for Lent, even though the Baptist tradition is that we do it monthly. You may have struggled with that because that is not the way we have done things before. However, breaking tradition in strategic ways can be a positive spiritual experience.

That is why I am going to break tradition once again. This time I will do it by preaching a Maundy Thursday message on the third day of Advent. Maundy Thursday is the day before Good Friday and it is a remembrance of the last supper and Jesus’ washing his disciples’ feet. The word Maundy comes from the Latin for command and it refers to the commandment that Jesus gave about love at this event.

Why are we looking at this during Advent? We have been looking at why Jesus was born and what he came to bring. We have already seen that Jesus was the Hope-giver and Peace-giver. Jesus was also the Love-giver and this passage is one of the best examples. We need to remember that Jesus wrapped in a towel, washing his friends’ feet began with a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

As I Have Loved You

The actual command is for the disciples to love one another. But before we look at that, we are going to look at the model for that love, which is the love of Jesus. Jesus tells the disciples that they are to love as Jesus loved them, so we need understand that love.

Even before going to that, we need to remind ourselves that Jesus was the object of love, not just from his friends but from the Father. Did you know that the Father only speaks directly twice in the Gospels? Once at Jesus’ baptism and once at the transfiguration. Listen to what the Father says at each of those events.

“You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” (Mark 1:11)

“This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!” (Mark 9:7)

Jesus, who is the Love-giver, was also the recipient of love, love from the Father.

From this abundance of love, Jesus gave. But like peace, we need to understand definitions. Despite what entertainment tells us, love is not a feeling or an emotional, although there is nothing wrong with the feelings that sometime accompany it. Love is primarily action. Jesus is giving this command in the midst of washing his disciples’ feet. He could have just sat at the table and felt affection for the disciples but instead he put his love in action by washing their feet. And that was only a hint of what was to come. The very next day, Jesus would demonstrate the ultimate act of love by dying on the cross. Jesus would move from washing feet with water to washing away our sins. That is love in action.

But there is another aspect to the love of Jesus found in this passage that we could easily miss. This commandment that Jesus gives takes place between two important events. Immediately before this, Jesus predicts Judas’ betrayal and immediately after this, Jesus predicts Peter’s denial. The love that Jesus is talking about is messy love that is not always returned in the way we wish. What Jesus is going to ask of us is something that he has already experienced himself. Jesus is the Love-giver.

Love One Another

So Jesus gives us love. That sounds wonderful. But what do we do with that? How do we respond? One option is to just lay back and soak it in. And there are short seasons for us to just do that but that cannot be our permanent situation.

The commandment that Jesus gives is not to receive his love, although we should do that, but to love one another and let that love be shaped by the love of Jesus.

Is this a new commandment? The Bible speaks elsewhere about us loving one another. Earlier Jesus told us to love God and love our neighbours, both of which come from the Old Testament. What is new about this is that this command to love rises to central importance. This is to be the defining feature of the Christian.

How do we recognize a Christian? Is it by the way they dress? Is it by the political party that they vote for? Is it by their religious rituals? No, Jesus makes it clear that disciples are recognized by loving one another. The hope is that people would meet a person, see them as a loving person and thus recognize them as a follower of Jesus. This does not mean that non-Christians cannot be loving but rather Christians cannot be unloving. 

Again, this love is to be modelled on the love of Jesus, because that love is our source. It is not expected that we will feel love for all Christians. We may find some of our brothers and sisters almost unlovable. But they are not. Love is a choice. This commandment is sandwiched between the predictions about Judas and Peter for a reason. Real love is how we treat those who don’t return our love. This love is meant to be put in action.

I appreciate this statement of James, referring to those in need. “If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?” (James 2:16) Love requires action.

Conclusion

I would like to conclude this message with a challenge to us as a congregation. We are approaching the end of this year and about to begin a new year. There is much about this new year that we don’t know about. We definitely couldn’t have predicted this year a year ago. 

But there is something that we can now with certainty. Jesus is the Love-giver and he expects us to respond by demonstrating love.

My challenge is this: What can we do as individuals and as a congregation to demonstrate that we are people of love. That is love for our church family and love for our community. People recognizing us as disciples is not going to happen by accident, especially as many of our regular routines are disrupted. We need to be intentional in sharing the love we have received from Jesus.

Introduction

Last week, we looked at how in our dark times, our world is in desperate need of hope. We also saw that Jesus came as the hope-giver. That is Good News.

What else do we need in these turbulent times? It just so happens that the second Sunday of Advent is that of peace. We need to ask, how badly do we need peace? And in what areas?

We have been reflecting on COVID-19, although that is not the only crisis we are going through. This pandemic has created conflict as people have strong opinions on how to respond and those opinions do not always agree. Let’s take a look just at the church. People within congregations disagree on what measures to take. Congregations disagree with other congregations on how to respond. Some congregations are in conflict with the government and  health officials about what to do. It is not just that we have different opinions, it is that people can get down right nasty with people on the other side.

There are many other areas that we need peace. We need peace in our relationships with other people. We need peace of mind as we struggle with stress and anxiety. We need peace to deal with our grief and mourning. Thankfully Jesus is the Prince of Peace and so we have nothing to worry about.

Except that is not quite that simple. When we looked at hope, we saw that Jesus rarely used that word. We have the opposite problem when it comes to peace. Jesus spoke a lot about peace but it can be a struggle to understand what he is really saying. So Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.” (John 14:27) But Jesus also says, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34) So which is it? Did Jesus come to bring peace or not? The answer is yes.

What Jesus is doing throughout the Gospels is messing up our definition of peace. How might be define peace? One definition might be that peace is the ending of conflict and the shift to people just getting along. That sounds good but what if there is a deeper peace? We are going to look at peace from the life of Jesus and then unpack what Jesus meant by peace.

Peace For Jesus

We are attempting to argue that Jesus is the peace-giver. That assumes that Jesus has peace to give. I can offer to give you one million dollars but since I don’t have one million dollars, that is an empty promise. So what did peace look like in Jesus’ life?

We think of the birth of Jesus as the ultimate picture of peace. But part of the Christmas story is King Herod’s jealousy of the new King of the Jews. Herod has the young boys of Bethlehem killed and Joseph, Mary and Jesus are forced to flee to Egypt. That doesn’t sound very peaceful. Then Jesus began his ministry. That quickly turned into conflict with some religious leaders. There were different groups and it seemed at times that all they had in common was their dislike for Jesus. There was also conflict with Jesus’ family, with his brothers in particular having strong feelings against his ministry. Even his disciples whom he hand picked were a problem. One betrayed him and another denied him. Jesus was arrested and condemned and was crucified by the Romans as a criminal. Where is the peace that Jesus had to offer?

This is where those two statements about peace come in. Jesus knew that the message of the gospel, far from making everyone happy, would cause division. When people took a stand for the kingdom of God, there would be those who would not like it. Relationships would be broken, including family relationships. Jesus knew this as a theological fact and from experience. What Jesus was teaching his disciples is what Jesus was experiencing himself.

So if that is the case, where is the peace? While Jesus experienced conflict, he also experienced peace. But as he promised his disciples, he would give peace not like the world gives. The best the world can give is break in the conflict, this peace would be deeper.

The first kind of peace that Jesus had was peace with the Father. He was confident in his relationship with the Father. He was both able to admit his fears and be able to say “Not my will but yours be done.” This was foundational to the peace Jesus enjoyed.

Closely related to that was the peace that came from being confident in who he was. He had a strong self-identity. He knew who he was and what he was to do. This shaped his relationships with others. He did not depend on other’s approval for his own value. People could hate him or love him and that wouldn’t change who he was. Jesus had compassion toward all, no matter who they were. But people had to accept him or reject him as he was, and this gave him peace even when people, both friends and enemies, came against him.

Peace For Christians

The theme for this message is that of Jesus as our peace-giver. We have just seen how Jesus experienced peace himself: peace with the Father and peace within himself. How does this affect our own experience of peace? The principles are exactly the same.

Jesus made it clear that aligning ourselves with him would have a cost. Perhaps we didn’t feel it as much in previous generations, as cultural Christianity was still strong. But with each passing year, as Canada sheds the veneer of cultural Christianity, there will be those who will dislike us for being followers of Jesus. There are those who think of Christians as at best, mentally ill and at worst, actually dangerous to the flourishing of humanity. Some of those people may be in our families, of circle of friends or our workplace. So if we think the peace that Jesus offers will mean that everyone likes us, we will be disappointed.

We get the same peace that Jesus had, starting with peace with God. The truth is that sin separates us from God. We are offered peace with God through Jesus Christ. This is not a simple cessation of hostilities but an adoption into God’s family. We are invited to pray “Abba, Father,” the same prayer that Jesus prayed.

We also get inner peace, although it does take time for us to experience it in fulness. We don’t have to find our value in other people’s approval. We are who we are in Christ. We are created in the image of God. What people think of us can never affect that. Now we are human, and what people say or do will affect our feelings, but it cannot change our identity. This inner peace can give us strength to overcome any circumstance. At this time we are think of friends and family who we have lost. We experience grief and we should be open to those feelings. But even that loss cannot change who we are. We will miss those relationships but we are and always will be in Christ.

Conclusion

Jesus Christ was born approximately two thousand years ago. He came as the Prince of Peace. What was that peace like? It was not like the world thinks of peace. Jesus experienced more than his fair share of conflict and he promised the same for his followers.

Jesus offered a special peace, the same kind of peace that he enjoyed himself. Peace with God and peace with ourselves. The problem is that we want to start with peace with others. But if we start there, we have to shift and change to meet their expectations. The best we can do is be at peace with God and peace with ourselves. Some people will not like that but others will accept us. Remember that long list of people that Jesus had conflict with? Some of those religious leaders followed Jesus. Those brothers followed Jesus. The one who denied him followed Jesus. The point was being confident in who we are in Christ and letting that shape our relationships. That is true peace. 

Introduction

This is the first Sunday of Advent. It is a time when each week we light a candle, bringing light out of the darkness and we reflect on what it meant for Jesus to arrive in our world.

This is also the first Advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. If ever there was a time for us to deepen our understanding of the Advent themes, it is this year.

The first Advent theme is traditionally that of hope. This may be one of the most difficult things for us at this time in history. Hope is the expectation that what we are going through right now is not all that there is. It is the expectation that something better is coming.

What does hope look like in the era of COVID? Do you remember when it was just two weeks to flatten the curve? Then it was just get to summer. Then it was just get to September. Now we are waiting for the vaccine. The ongoing struggles with no end in sight makes it difficult to hold onto hope.

And yet the world that Jesus appeared in was also difficult. The land that had traditionally been Israel was now Roman occupied with Romans choosing the high priest. Jesus was born during the time of the client king Herod. Herod may have been great but he was not good. He was an evil man and even his own family was not safe from his wickedness. There really was not much at the time of Jesus’ birth that would suggest that the people should have hope.

And yet here we are in Advent, celebrating the coming of Jesus and lighting the candle of hope. What we are going to do is examine how Jesus can give us hope.

Hope in the Gospels

One way to look at Jesus as out hope-giver is to do a word study on hope in the Gospels. The word hope only appears five times in the Gospels, and four of those of five are referring to disappointed help. Three are in the Gospel of Luke. The religious leaders had hoped to trap Jesus in a debate. Herod had hoped to see Jesus perform some miracle. And after the crucifixion, two of the disciples, not realizing that they were talking to the risen Jesus, had hoped that Jesus was the Messiah. He was the Messiah, but at the moment they were feeling disappointment in the wake of the cross. In the Gospel of John, Jesus criticizes the religious leaders for putting their hope in Moses instead of the one whom Moses put his hope in.

This leaves us with Matthew 12:21, which is the last part of a quote from Isaiah 42:1-4. In the context of Isaiah, it is a prophecy in the dark times of Israel that God will send his servant and there will be hope, not just for Israel but for those outside of Israel. 

In the context of Matthew, Jesus had been performing miracles, healing the sick. Instead of receiving honour, the religious leaders were seeking to condemn Jesus for his actions. Imagine how discouraging that must have been, even for the Son of God, to be criticized for acts of compassion.

Jesus withdrew from them but the crowds still followed him. The leaders may have hated him but the crowds desired his power. It is in that moment that Jesus quotes from Isaiah. The first part is very similar to the words that his Father used at his baptism. It was at his baptism that Jesus received the Spirit, the very thing that is mentioned in the prophecy of Isaiah. It looks like Jesus is taking time to reflect on his calling, the one he received at his baptism. The last part of that prophecy is a reference to being the one people put their hope in. Jesus came into this world as the hope-giver.

Since this is Advent, let us rewind to the birth of Jesus. There was nothing obvious about the birth of Jesus that would suggest he was bringing hope into the world. How many babies were being born that night across Judea? They may have given joy to their parents but not hope to the world.

Hope appeared as a little baby with little hint of what he would create in the future. But that is the way hope works, it starts small and has a delayed reaction. Now today, millions and millions of people put their hope in that same Jesus.

Hope in Jesus

So what does this mean for us? All I can tell you is what it means for me. I will tell you that 2020 has been a long year for me. I am still trying to figure what it means to be a pastor, an army chaplain, a student, a father and a husband in the COVID-19 era. Everything has changed, everything is more complicated, everything is more difficult. I am tired and I have no easy answers about how to make everything okay again.

This is not something that we can just solve, as if we did A, B, and C, that we would get the desired result. This is frustrating because that is what we want. We want to do something now and get immediate results.

The problem is that the Bible doesn’t promise that. Yes there are examples, both in the Bible and in my experience, of answered prayer in the moment. However that is not always the care.

The truth is that the frustration we are feeling in the tension between what we experience and what we desire pushes us into the area of hope. Remember that hope is the expectation that better things will come. For Christians, this is not a blind leap of faith but is based on the historical appearance of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in this world.

Jesus is real and this gives us hope and his message was one of hope. Even if he didn’t use that specific word all that often, hope infused everything he said and did. Jesus preached the coming of the kingdom of God. The kingdom was beginning to appear then and will be in its fullness at Jesus’ return. The kingdom of God is God’s reign over everything, including all those things that cause us pain. Everything will one day submit to God.

This doesn’t mean that everything will be comfortable in the present. That is the nature of hope, in that is a future event. But eventually the future and the present meet. 

Think of all those things that have happened to you that it seemed like there was no end in sight. But at some point you got through it. There is hope for us in this world and there is hope for us in the world to come.

Conclusion

We are all tired of COVID-19. And if you return to this sermon in five or ten years, there will be another crisis that we will be tired of. There are other things that are weighing us down, whether finances or relationships or health. There is hope. There is always hope. That hope has its foundation in Jesus Christ. Two thousand years ago, a baby was born in Bethlehem. The world would never be the same. The baby look just like any other Jewish baby (no he didn’t have a halo). But from those humble beginnings, the seeds of hope were sown. We are the beneficiaries of that hope. No matter what happens, no matter how hopeless it looks, there will always be hope. Jesus Christ guarantees it.

Introduction

I want you to think about a time when a person or a group of people were very upset with you. Not just slightly annoyed but downright angry. Now I want you to think about what it was that made them angry. How accurately were they interpreting the facts of what you supposedly did? There are basically three options. One is that they totally got the facts wrong and that you didn’t do anything like what they thought you did. Another is that they totally got the facts right and you are guilty as charged. Probably more often, it is a mix of false and true, something you did do but perhaps exaggerated or mixed with falsehood.

Probably most of the controversies we see in politics or in entertainment, and yes even in the church, is that mix of true and false, something that was done but facts being stretched to various degrees.

This was also true for the life and ministry of Jesus, as well as that of the early church. Did Jesus do anything that made the religious leaders angry? He absolutely did. Were the charges they brought against him at his trial completely true? They absolutely were not.

This brings us to the story of Stephen. While this book is called the Acts of the Apostles, significant space is given to Stephen and Philip, neither of whom was one of the Twelve. We will see that this same principle applied to him and how this informs us as a church in the way we interact with our critics.

Stephen Accused

Stephen is such an interesting character. We saw last week that Stephen was chosen to be one of the Seven, those gifted Christians who would make sure that the needy received the care they required. The point of the Seven was to free up the Twelve for the preaching of the Word. So what does Stephen do, he goes off and preaches Jesus.

Apparently he was quite good at it as well. Perhaps even too good. There would have been many people sharing Jesus throughout the city but it was Stephen that caught the eye of the religious authorities.

Perhaps they thought that as someone who was not an apostle that he would be an easy target. They could bring their best and brightest against him and demolish his arguments in front of the people. But it did not go as planned. Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, was able to  overcome the arguments of the leaders. That did not go well.

The religious leaders had to act and in so doing, they fell back to the strategy they used against Jesus. They took kernels of truth and wrapped them with falsehood.

We are not told here exactly what Stephen had been preaching, although we will get a good example in the next chapter. What we do know is that Stephen seemed to speak about the temple and the law. From other early Christian preaching, from Jesus and others, we can guess somewhat of what Stephen said. The Jews understood the temple as the one place where God dwelt. But Christians believed that in one way Jesus was the temple of God, as the fullness of God dwelt within him. In another way the church was the new temple, as the Holy Spirit was active within it. There were also prophecies that the physical temple was coming to an end. None of this was meant to be an attack on the temple. Both Jesus and the apostles valued the temple. But the leaders took this as an insult to God’s holy house.

As for the law, Jesus and the apostles never insulted the law. They believed that the law had been revealed by God. What they did believe was that obedience to God was primarily by following Jesus rather than each of the commandments. The law was important but it was not what offered eternal life.

The charges that were being brought against Stephen were not completely baseless. He probably spoke about the temple and the law in a way that made them uncomfortable. But those religious leaders took that truth and expanded it and wrapped it in a cloak of exaggeration and falsehood. We will soon see how Stephen responds.

The Church Accused

It would be nice if I could say that was the last interaction between the church and her critics. But that is not the case. People continue to look at Christians with an eye of suspicion. If you asked a person on the street if they could think of anything negative about the church, you probably would not have difficulty getting a response. Some of the criticisms may be well deserved, others not so. 

The same principle that went into the attack on Stephen continue with the church. Let me give you an example from the early church. Did you know some of the Roman critics of the church thought that they practiced both incest and cannibalism? That sounds ludicrous to us but listen to the logic. They were aware that Christians called each other brother and sister. And if a married couple were both Christian, then they would call each other brother and sister. Then they would hear about the communion services where Christians would claim to eat the body and drink the blood of Christ. That sounded too close to cannibalism for some. So what was happening is that outsiders were hearing something that was true but then misunderstanding it so much that it became falsehood.

This is what we need to know as a church today. There are things about Christianity that are truly offensive on their own. The idea of Jesus as lord rather than we being in charge is one of the most offensive things in our culture. The idea of picking up your cross is completely offensive. The idea that it is only through Jesus that we find salvation is one of the most offensive ideas out there. The gospel by itself is offensive without any help from us.

The problem is that Christians create offence where there should be no offence. We create a hierarchy of who is loved by God when Christianity is designed to be the most inclusive faith. We tie the gospel to politics and condemn people who are not like us. We say one thing and do another. We speak hypocritical judgment rather than uncompromising love.

We need to let the gospel be offensive in its own way without adding any offence of our own. We also need to clarify what is and what is not the gospel. People on the outside can’t tell the difference between our personal convictions and what the gospel real is. They assume that if one Christian says this is the way, then that is the message of Christianity. This is why I like C.S. Lewis’s concept of Mere Christianity. Instead of trying to defend every idea that has attached itself to Christianity, we need to put forth the gospel as it really is. Often all we can do is clarify the truth, separate the truth from fiction and let people decide for themselves.

Conclusion

Is Christianity offensive? Yes it is, in its own way. If you want to be lord of your own life with no obligations to God or other people, the gospel is deeply offensive. But the danger is that we will make Christianity more offensive than it needs to be.

Stephen preached Jesus and the religious authorities didn’t like it. They heard some of what he said but either misunderstood or misrepresented. 

Those same forces are at work today. People hear a bit of what we say and then based on ignorance or malice, come up with a different message. All we can do is focus on the basic gospel and correct the misrepresentations as best we can. However, as Stephen found, there are those who will be too offended to listen. And thus we rely on God. 

Introduction

With this being Remembrance Sunday, I can’t help but think of conversations I have had in the past with veterans, especially of the Second World War. I was blessed in my previous church to have a good group of WW2 veterans that I was able to get to know and hear their stories.

One man told me how he lied about age to join and that he landed at Juno Beach on D-Day. It was an exciting story that he had. That might be the kind of experience that we expect. But another man told me that his job was not to fire a weapon but to drive a truck. Without transportation, the troops couldn’t get to where they needed to be. Another man told me that he never left England, but remained there as a cook, helping to feed the troops that were stationed there. Troops can’t fight if they can’t eat. Another veteran told me that he never left Canada during the war. He was in the air force and he was posted where they were training the pilots. His job was to help clear the wreckage when the pilots crashed. The part he played to make sure pilots were trained here so they could fight in Europe was just as important as the person who was in that landing craft on Juno Beach.

Why do I bring this up? Because we are thinking about Remembrance Day but also because there is a lesson here for the church. Whether we like to admit it or not, we have a hierarchy of roles within the church. There are certain jobs that we think of as more or less “spiritual.” But that is a mistake. All of the roles are important and a healthy church requires many different types of activity, none of it more or less spiritual than the other.

The passage that we are looking at today is a point where the simple structure of the church was no longer working. Things were becoming more complex and it had having results that affected real people. Let us take a look.

A Potential Crisis

At this point in the church, there is a pretty loose structure. There are the followers of Jesus, with the apostles having a recognized authority. The church has role to preach the gospel and to help those in need. It is pretty much the same thing we are supposed to do.

People are excited about Jesus and are willing to preach him even in the face of persecution. However, zeal does not always translate into the skill and structure to make things work smoothly.

An issue had come up. At this point the church was all Jewish in background. However, there were differences among Jews. There were the Jews that had always been in Galilee or Judea and spoke Hebrew or Aramaic. Then there were the Jews from families that had moved all around the Roman Empire and beyond and had now come back. They would have spoken mostly Greek. One of the groups that the church were taking care of were the widows, since there was no government support nor job opportunities. The Greek Jews felt like their widows were being neglected in favour of the Hebrew Jews.

It doesn’t matter if that was the case, because all it takes to split a church is the appearance of corruption. This was a dangerous moment in the history of the fledgling church. The apostles had to act quickly and decisively. But they couldn’t just step in take care of all the work. If they spent all of their time supervising the distribution of food, they would have no time to preach. It is not that feeding the widows was unimportant, but they couldn’t do everything and they already had a role.

Their solution was to appoint another group to take over work that need to be done. There already was a Twelve, now there would be a Seven. Please notice this closely. It does not say that they grabbed whoever was available to do a job that no one wanted. They sought out the best of the best, people filled with the Spirit and wisdom. These were gifted individuals who were greatly respected. In fact we know far more about Philip of the Seven than we do of Philip of the Twelve. The added detail of their appointment is that most of them have Greek names. The apostles sent a clear message that not only is caring for the needy important, so is the unity of the Hebrew and Greek Jewish Christians.

The other thing we should note is that we have a Twelve and a Seven. Those are two of the most important biblical numbers. They could have chosen six or eight but they went with seven. The apostles were making it clear that the Seven were just as important as the Twelve, even if they had a different role. What we need to see here that the church had different areas of ministry and all of it deserved attention.

Avoiding Crisis

This is all very interesting but what does it mean for us? We can look at this and see it as biblical trivia or we can see this as a guiding principle for the church throughout the ages.

The church doesn’t have just one role. It is not just to preach the message of Jesus, although that is central to it. If that was all we needed to do, we could all just stand on street corners and yell to everyone we met. But we are not just called to tell about Jesus, we are called to love like Jesus. Jesus preached but he did many other things. Jesus got involved in people’s lives, he showed compassion, he fed the hungry and healed the hurting. We have seen in these first chapters of Acts that the church was supposed to continue to do the work of Jesus.

So what does this passage look like today? While pastors are not apostles, pastors do focus on prayer and preaching the Word. And the Seven are often looked at as the prototype of the deacon. So a church has pastors and deacons, end of story.

That is not exactly the case, although it is good to have pastors and deacons. The principle is deeper than this. The point of this passage is that there are different roles and it is important to have godly and skilled people in those roles, not neglecting one area for another.

We want the Word of God preached here. We also want a building in good shape that we can gather in. We want the opportunity to worship, both with music and other means. We want to be able to care for our own. we want to be able to reach out to our community, meeting their spiritual and physical needs. 

One person cannot take care of that. More than that, one kind of person cannot take care of all that. For the church to work properly, we need to all work together, using the gifts that God has given us. I cannot imagine one person in the church as not being involved in some way. We have people who cannot get out regularly. But they can pray and they can call up someone with a word of encouragement. Some of us can sing, some of us can’t. Some of us are good with finances, some of us are not. We always need people ready to serve in areas like Deacons and Management, but there are plenty of other areas that never make it on an org chart. 

It is always difficult to get volunteers. But I suspect that has more to do with filling blank spaces than matching the right people with the right opportunities. 

We are in a historic time in our church with the COVID-19 pandemic. We want to do more than survive, we want to thrive for God’s kingdom. I know I can’t do that by myself. Even the official leadership team can’t do it. But we can do it. All of us together. What role will you play?

Conclusion

The conflict between the Greek and Hebrew speaking Christians was only a symptom of what was really going on. The church had grown and was getting beyond the simple structure that they started with. The church and the leadership had to adapt to changing circumstances. It was getting beyond the Twelve, beyond the apostles. 

If we are going to move forward, not neglecting vital areas of our church ministry, we will need your help. There is not one person part of this church that doesn’t have a role. Christianity was never meant to be a spectator sport. Let us know what your gifts and passions are. Let us know the areas in which you are willing to serve. And let us build the kingdom of God together in our community.

Introduction

As many of you know, I have a great interest in military history. It is not to glorify war but to learn from what happens to humanity when put in the most difficult situations. There are often practical life lessons, and even lessons for us as a church, even if the weapons of our warfare are not of this world.

Did you know the Battle of Britain ended exactly 80 years ago yesterday? You may or may not be familiar with the Battle of Britain from the Second World War. At the beginning of the war, the two nations that had the most chance of stopping Nazi Germany were France and Britain. Unfortunately, France quickly fell, despite having one of the most powerful armies of the day, and they were occupied. But what would happen to Britain? Britain, being an island, was more of a challenge to be invaded. But the island was not impregnable. Air warfare had come a long way since the First World War and the German air force was impressive. 

The Battle of Britain was an air war and it began near the end of June 1940. Earlier on, the German aim was to destroy the Royal Air Force. By September, the Blitz had started, day and night bombing on London designed to wear down the British people and make them sue for peace.

Why do I bring this up other than I find military history interesting? I want you to put yourself in the position of a person living in Britain during the summer and autumn of 1940. France had fallen, the Germans had a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, the United States had not yet entered the war and the Royal Air Force as well as the British people were suffering terribly. If you were in that position, how confident would you be in an Allied victory? Probably not very confident. And yet five years later, France was liberated, the Soviet Union and the United States were Allies and Germany was defeated.

Is there a lesson that we can learn here for the Church? Not just Queen Street Baptist Church but the Church in general? What does this mean for us when things look difficult? What does this mean for the persecuted church?

A Persecuted Ancient Church

Today is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. If I was doing a different sermon series, I might have looked for a different passage to preach today. However, we have been going through Acts and it seems that every week we are seeing some sort of example of the early church being persecuted.

Jesus himself had experienced persecution and after he left earth and the apostles took over, some of the same people who persecuted Jesus, began to persecute the early Christians. In fact, Christianity is so early here that it is not even called Christianity yet.

Before getting too far into this, we should not see any of these examples as being about one religion persecuting another religion. This would have been considered a controversy within one religion: Judaism. There are one group of Jews who believe Jesus was the Messiah who died and rose again and one group that rejected that. To be fair to the Jews, Christians have persecuted other Christians when they felt that people were straying too far.

We have been watching as some of the apostles have been arrested, warned, released and then arrested again. There is an intolerance that has already been manifested in physical punishment and will soon lead to the first martyrs for the faith.

The passage we are looking at his a behind the scenes look at the Sanhedrin, the Jewish authority that is trying to deal with the Jesus problem. There are those of the Sanhedrin, mostly Sadducees, that are very angry with the apostles. They have been warned and yet they keep insisting on preaching Jesus. Obviously these followers of Jesus cannot be reasoned with and so it is time to punish them with death. Remember, the Sanhedrin doesn’t have the authority to execute anyone, that is why they need the Romans to intervene with Jesus. The fact that they were contemplating breaking the rules tells us how desperate they were.

Then a Pharisee named Gamaliel stepped forward. It is important that he is a Pharisee. We tend to give Pharisees a hard time, even using the label as an insult. Both the Pharisees and the Sadducees gave Jesus a hard time but as we get closer to the cross, we see the Sadducees take over as they are most interested in killing Jesus. It is the Sadducees that are more active at persecuting the church.

Gamaliel was a highly respected Pharisee and rabbi. He brought up some examples of Jews who had caused trouble and how their movements had died out, especially after their leader was killed. These trouble-making movements always fizzle out. Unless they are from God. If God is behind it, there will be no stopping it, no matter how difficult things get. Gamaliel suggests caution, he has no desire to be on the wrong side of God, and if this is not of God, it will die on its own. A footnote to this. One of Gamaliel’s students was Saul of Tarsus, who will be known as a persecutor of the church until he meets Jesus and then becomes known at Paul the Apostle.

A Persecuted Modern Church

Persecution didn’t die with the apostles. It continued on throughout the early church. Even once the church was institutionalized, it still experienced persecution from without or within. Persecution is still a very real experience today. This is why I push back when western Christians experience mild pushback on their faith and call it persecution.

There are numerous places around the world where it is dangerous to be a Christian. In fact in sheer numbers, there is more persecution happening today than at any other time in history. Christians lose possessions, they lose rights, they lose opportunities and they even lose their lives.

How do we react to the idea of persecuted church? We could idolize them and see them as super-Christians, people we can cheer on for making the ultimate sacrifice. I do admire their faith as they have been put in places where they need to trust God beyond my experience. None of us know how we would react if a shooter entered our building and threatened to kill all believers.

I actually think about my opening illustration of the Battle of Britain. Things looked hopeless but because of the sacrifice of many military and civilian personnel, the war was won. But that did not diminish the loss that was experienced or take away the feelings of the grieving families. 

This is important for us to remember when we think about the persecuted church. It is not either we are inspired by their faith or we grieve their suffering, it is both.

Some terrible things are happening around the world. When we look at places like North Korea, we wonder if the church can ever prosper. We hear about increasing pressure in other countries to either keep faith private or to stamp it out all together. Where is the hope?

This is why I brought up the Battle of Britain. That looked as hopeless as it could get and yet victory appeared.

The words of Gamaliel still stand, if the Christian church is just a human construct, it will fall on its own, and there will be no real loss. But if the Christian church, including the persecuted church, is of God, then there is nothing that can defeat it. There will be setbacks and real suffering but in the long run, God will take care of his people.

Conclusion

Those early Christians were a relatively small group compared to those around them. They did not have many allies and even their Jewish brothers were pressuring them to give up. It did not look all that promising. But God spoke through a rabbi who didn’t follow Jesus. If God is in this, there is no stopping it. The church is much bigger two thousand years later. We have advantages that those early Christians couldn’t have imagined. But there is still severe persecution. Can the church survive? Yes but not because we are a powerful organization. We can survive because this is God’s church and he will make it happen.

Introduction

Every once in a while I get the urge to write a devotional on the most disturbing passages in the Bible. There are a number that could be included and one of them would be the story of Ananias and Sapphira. This is the story of a married couple in the church who sell their property but only give a portion to the church. As a result, God smites them dead. 

That’s a pretty simple message for us to apply to our current context. Just give the church all your money or die. Not a big problem.

Except none of us do this. Even if one of us sold our house a property and gave just a small percentage to the church, we would be happy and would not even consider praying for a smiting. Is this one of those passage that is an interesting but disturbing footnote and yet has no relevance for us? I don’t think so. This passage was preserved for us for a reason and we need to figure out what is going on.

Integrity in the Early Church

In some ways, this story begins in the last verses of the previous chapter. There we are told of how a man named Joseph, someone we know better as Barnabas, sold his property and gave it to the church. Barnabas went on to become one of the most influential leaders in the church and one of the first ministry partners of the Apostle Paul. That role is connected with what he did with his property but in the way you might think. It is not that he gave money and so the church felt obligated to reward him with a nice important position in the church. Rather what Barnabas did with his money said a lot about who he was as a man of God. When the church was looking for a person of integrity to go out and preach the gospel, Barnabas had already demonstrated what he valued in life. He was the right person for the job because of what he had already demonstrated.

This is where we need to make something clear if we are to truly understand the story of Ananias and Sapphira. The early Christians were not all commanded to sell their possessions. Jesus had asked that of some individuals but not all. Even in the early church, there were some who felt called to this but not everyone did. The New Testament often talks about being generous with what we have but that assumes that we have something to begin with. Most of the early church would not have felt obligated to liquidate their assets.

It looks as if Ananias and Sapphira noticed the reaction toward those with this radical generosity. People were very impressed with what Barnabas had done and it would be nice to grab a little of that respect for themselves.

So they sold their property and brought the money to the apostles. Well, most of it. They kept back a little bit. You know, a cushion, some money for a rainy day. They were allowed to do that because the money was theirs to give or keep. The problems was that they passed it off as if it was all of the money that they made from the sale. Being known as the family who gave only 75% would not do when Barnabas had already given 100%. They would only get 75% of the respect. So they lied and claimed that the money they gave was everything they received from the sale. But nothing remains hidden.

Peter confronts first Ananias and the Sapphira. But how did Peter know? It is unlikely that he investigated each donation. The impression that we are given is that God revealed this to Peter. But why would God care? With this huge universe, why would God care that one couple kept back a little of the sale of their property? It is not as if God needed the money.

This story actually has very little to do with money and has almost everything to do with integrity. Integrity is basically the property of being the same thing all the way through and not relying on surface appearance. This couple wanted the honour of being known from giving everything without the financial cost. They were not the same thing all the way through. They lacked integrity.

This was an important time in the church. Everything was being built from scratch. It had to be done right. It needed to be built on a foundation of integrity. The opposite of integration is disintegration and that is what happens when we lose integrity, we disintegrate. Ananias and Sapphira were doing more than just deceiving church leaders. By introducing a lack of integrity at that early stage of the church, they were attempting to deceive the Holy Spirit who knows us inside and out. 

We may think of the death of Ananias and Sapphira as rather harsh. But instead of sitting in judgment of God, we need to ask why he took that drastic step. It says something about the importance of integrity.

Integrity in the Modern Church

I don’t want you to come to this place in a spirit of fear. You should not live in dread as you put your offering in the plate or when you give online that God might punish you for not giving enough. That is not what this story is about. 

The message for back then is the same as for today. Do we have integrity? Are we the same thing all the way through?

Imagine you are wanting to decorate a room and you are looking for some nice wooden furniture. What would you be looking for? You might look to see if the piece is made from real wood or veneer. Veneer is a very thin slice of wood, only 1/8 “ on particle board. It looks nice on the surface but it is something different underneath. While veneer has its place (the desk I’m writing this on is veneer) but we do not want to be veneer Christians.

God is looking for Christians who are the same thing all the way through. Sadly we have had some prominent Christian leaders who looked very impressive and godly on the outside who were revealed to be something else underneath. While they were responsible for their own lack of integrity, the church is also complicit because of the fostering of Christian celebrity culture. We want Christians to idolize and we want them to look all nice and shiny on the outside, even if that means that we are only seeing the veneer.

You might be thinking that this sounds too hard. No one can be perfect. But it is not about being perfect, it is about letting the outside and inside match. Going back to Ananias and Sapphira, the problem was not that they didn’t give it all, it is that they wanted to look like they gave it all. They could have given half of the proceeds and told the apostles that they were giving half of the proceeds and everything would be fine.

It is ironic that it is at a time when we are required to wear masks that I’m warning you about hiding your true self behind a fake mask. But what if people don’t like who you are underneath? The truth is that I have more respect for people who are honest about their struggles than those who fool everyone with their success when down deep they are just a mess. A church is supposed to be a welcoming place that we accept each other with all our problems. This should be the last place in which you have to cover up the real with a thin veneer of falsehood.

Conclusion

There are still some things about the story of Ananias and Sapphira that make me uncomfortable. I’m thankful that I wasn’t one of the people to carry away their dead bodies. It is rather disturbing.

But we cannot let the principles pass us by. The story is about integrity, about being the same thing all the way through. It is not about being killed for not giving enough, it is about having the integrity to admit how much you really gave. 

This story is a challenge for everyone of us and that includes me. I fully understand that people may have expectations about what a pastor should be like. I may disappoint some and that’s okay. But my goal is to not pretend to be something that I am not. I want to grown in Christ and I want that growth to be at the same rate on the inside and the outside. There are enough veneer Christians in the church, we need to go back to solid wood. 

Introduction

I remember being at a ministerial and I pointed out that John had been a Baptist. The Nazarene pastor reminded me that John may have been a Baptist but Jesus was a Nazarene. That’s when another pastor stated in heaven, we would all be the United Church.

I’m not suggesting that any of you change denominations. But it is true that we are supposed to be united.

In the passage we are looking at, we get a snapshot of what the early church looked like. There is so much that we could reflect on, but we are going to look at one aspect, something the church continues to struggle with, and that is unity.

Unity in the Early Church

In this description, we are told that the Christians were of one heart and mind. They were united. But what does that unity look like? Does that mean that there was no diversity? Was everyone exactly the same? We know that is not the case.

We saw in our look at Pentecost that God’s plan for the church was diversity. We do not need to look like each other. But we are to be one.

There are some interesting observations about their unity. It was more practical than theoretical. It was not something they just gave mental assent to. They demonstrated it by selling their possessions and sharing it with each other. Not jus their closest friends, but all followers of Jesus benefited from their generosity. True unity means all celebrate together or all suffer together. The point is that unity is reflected in how we live our lives, especially our relationships.

That is not to say that there is no belief that is essential to Christian unity. The one thing that is highlighted is the resurrection of Jesus. That is the core belief that unites us. Jesus conquering the grave bound them together in such a way that their other differences couldn’t divide them.

Unity in the Modern Church

So what does unity in the church look like today. Believe it or not, it is not denominations that are the problem. I think the variety of Christian expression is our strength rather than our weakness. But if the Bible is true, why do we have different interpretations? Because, although the Bible is true, our interpretations are still human. It is going to happen.

It is our lack of humility and overconfidence that leads to a lack of unity. It is good to have personal convictions, but trouble comes when we impose nonessentials on others. This is one of the reasons why I am a Baptist. We do not have official positions on many different issues. We have chosen to major on the majors and to allow individuals to interpret the Scriptures. Of course that doesn’t mean everything goes. There are a number of things that we hold to tightly to certain things. Like the earliest of Christians, we rally around the resurrection of Jesus. We can agree to disagree on many things, but the resurrection of Jesus is the sun that we orbit. It is the source of our unity.

What does it look like? Again, it does not mean uniformity. There is plenty of room for friendly disagreement and personal convictions. It comes down to how we treat each other. It may not look like selling our possessions, but it is something that costs us. What happens when there is a Christian who holds a very different position on something and we have the opportunity to help or hurt? What do we do? Is our unity in Jesus enough if we hold in common what is really important? 

The best way for us to have a positive witness to our world is not for us all to think the same way but to show that we can love one another and bless one another, even when we disagree. That is the kind of signs and wonders that this world needs.

Conclusion

Somethings have changed from two thousand years but any other things have remained the same. What hasn’t changed is our need for unity. Not uniformity but true unity, a unity bound together by the resurrection of Jesus and manifested in the way we treat one another. The great news is that each and every day we have an opportunity to witness to the truth of the faith through our unity.   

Introduction

You may or may not know that I took a number of years off pastoral ministry between my previous churches and coming to Queen Street Baptist Church. But of course we still needed to eat and so that meant I needed to get a job. 

At that point, I had been a pastor for fourteen years and had three theological degrees. You would be amazed at how many jobs that would make you unqualified for. There were plenty of job listings to look at. I got to the point that I pass over all of the interesting things like the pay and number of hours and go right to the qualifications. Many of them were not even an option for me.

One of the jobs I was able to get was as an associate editor at Faith Today. My marketing undergraduate degree plus my theological degrees helped. My experience as both a pastor and an editor helped. My writing experience, including in Faith Today, helped. Finally I found a job that I was qualified for.

That is great for the job market but what about for serving Jesus? What are the qualifications that are necessary? Are there any qualifications? Many people think so. I have heard many people claim that God couldn’t use someone like them. This is based on their lack of experience or knowledge or even because of mistakes made in the past. Sadly, the church has often reinforced these ideas, seeing certain people as more valuable than others, recognizing the potential of some more than others.

I would say that there are some qualifications for serving Jesus, but it is not what most people think. To understand this, we need to look to the Scriptures.

Normal People

The religious leaders who were interrogating Peter and John were surprised by them, not because they knew Jesus personally, but because of what they lacked: any formal training whatsoever. The word that is sometimes translated “unschooled” can have different meanings. It can mean someone who it illiterate, someone who is unable to do that basics of reading and writing. That would describe many people in the ancient world. In the context, it probably means something else, although Peter and John’s literary skills at the time would have been rudimentary.

It is more likely that they were being criticized for lacking any theological training. This is in contrast to the man we will eventually know as the Apostle Paul, who was trained by a famous rabbi before serving Jesus. Although trained by Jesus, Peter and John had not gone through any of the steps of a recognized education.

This brings us to the first qualification. Jesus is looking for normal people. Jesus is not just looking for PhDs in theology, although he can use them too. Jesus wants to use just normal, average people. 

I’m not saying that Bible college or seminary training is a bad thing. I am a strong advocate for formal theological training. But you do not have to wait for a certain piece of paper before you can start serving Jesus. God uses normal people.

You may have heard of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, one of the most famous of Baptist preachers. His conversion is described in this way:

“Spurgeon woke one January Sunday in 1850 with a deep sense of his need for deliverance.

Because of a snowstorm, the 15-year-old’s path to church was diverted down a side street. For shelter, he ducked into the Primitive Methodist Chapel on Artillery Street. An unknown substitute lay preacher stepped into the pulpit and read his text—Isaiah 45:22—“Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else.”

“He had not much to say, thank God, for that compelled him to keep on repeating his text, and there was nothing needed—by me, at any rate except his text.”

That man in the pulpit probably had no training was not a gifted speaker and yet it was through him that Jesus saved Spurgeon. By the way, Spurgeon became a pastor of what we would call a mega church today, all without attending seminary himself or being ordained.

But it is not just preachers that Jesus uses. We have been talking about the kingdom of God in past weeks. I don’t believe the kingdom grows primarily sermon by sermon but rather person by person or relationship by relationship. Many of the people who have been instrumental in our own spiritual journeys have been just those normal people Jesus uses.

It does not matter your age, gender, ethnicity, ability or education. Jesus is looking for normal regular people who will serve him.

Stubbornness

These normal people have been arrested. The religious leaders don’t want any more turmoil. The death of Jesus is still fresh in people’s minds. They just want Peter and John to shut their mouths and go about their business.

So the leaders tell Peter and John to just stop telling people about Jesus. But of course, they can’t agree to that. Peter and John know who they serve and it is not these religious leaders. Jesus has given them their orders and that is who they must believe. Jesus is Lord. Not one lord among many lords in their life but the Lord of lords who gets the final stay.

And that brings us back to the next qualification. And that is stubbornness. I was hesitant to call it stubbornness as we can all think of negative examples of stubbornness.

In fact we can see examples of pastors and churches in other communities during COVID-19 being stubborn in a bad way. They see it as obeying Jesus over obeying the government but that is not an accurate picture of what is going on. I see no government in North America targeting Christian churches for persecution, even if their decisions may sometimes make our ministry more difficult.

But there are times when we need to be stubborn. There are times that others attempt to lay their expectations on us, which may be incompatible with Jesus. At times, the pressure can be very great. Perhaps not threats of violence or imprisonment but pressure none the less. What was true for Peter and John is the same for us today: Jesus is Lord.

How do we know when to be stubborn and if it is good stubbornness? We need to ask the question: Does what I’m about to do reflect the fact that Jesus is Lord? It did for Peter and John. Does it for us?

Conclusion

I want you to imagine that you walk into Jesus’ office, applying for the position of one of his servants on Earth. He pushes a piece of paper across his desk with the list of qualifications. What does it say? The first is that you have to be just a normal, average person. No special skills or experience necessary. The second is that you have to be stubborn. Not just stubborn in general but stubborn in the way that communicates Jesus is Lord. 

There Jesus is sitting behind his desk, waiting to see if you will accept the offer. What will you do?  

Introduction

I will confess to you that I’m horrible when it comes to directions. Whenever we go on a trip, I completely rely on Amanda. My confidence in her surpasses that of any GPS. If I don’t have Amanda, I definitely rely on the GPS directions on my phone.

But what did people do before that? There were maps of course. But it is easy to get lost on a map. What if you have the map upside down? What if you don’t know where you are on the map?

For thousands of years people guided their way by the stars. I’m not talking about astrology but navigation. You find a star that is above where you want to go and then you follow that star until you get where you want. The problem is that all of those stars in the sky move. All except one. Polaris or the North Star does not move and it is right above the North Pole. If you want to go north, follow the North Star and you get to where you want, no matter what time of the year it is. If only we had something like that for life.

Actually we do. And his name is Jesus. Jesus is not just the founder of a religious system. Jesus is the whole thing. When I was considering Christianity, I was overwhelmed by everything I was being told. It was very confusing. I felt lost. But I encountered the person of Jesus. It was Jesus that gave me direction, even though there is plenty of other things that confuse me. It was Jesus that was my North Star. And I can say with confidence that I’m the first to figure this out.

Healed in Jesus Name

In this passage of Acts, we are still dealing with the fallout from the healing of the beggar who could not walk. We sometimes think of the ancients as ignorant and that we know better with our scientific background. But even the ancients knew that adult men who have never walked in their life normally don’t jump up and start walking. This is strange and they wanted an explanation. He had been begging for decades so we know that he was not someone planted there to pretend to be healed. How did Peter and John do it?

I don’t know what they thought the options were. Probably they thought they were using sorcery and that they had healed by the power of demons. The Old Testament had strict punishments for sorcerers. We do know that later Rabbinic traditions suggested that Jesus performed his miracles with magic. Notice that they didn’t deny the miracles took place.

So Peter answered those who were interrogating him on this topic. Notice that it says that Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit. What he was about to say was not just his own opinion. He says that the man was healed in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

What does that mean? We were taught at an early age to pray things in Jesus name. The way many of us interpret that is that we should tag on “in Jesus’ name” at the end of our prayers. The problem is that there are not many prayers in the New Testament that end with “in Jesus’ name, amen.” We will see later in this series what happens if people just try to use it as a magic formula.

Being healed in Jesus name is about the authority and power of Jesus. It is more than identifying the prayer as a Christian prayer. It is about Jesus working through his people, operating the Body of Christ, for his purposes. Peter and John didn’t use the power of Jesus for their purposes, Jesus used Peter and John for his purposes. That is what it means to heal in Jesus’ name.

This is not just about healing, it is about everything. Peter quotes Psalm 118:22 that refers to the stone that is rejected becoming the cornerstone. We are to imagine workers beginning to build a stone structure. A stone is brought forward and they decide it’s not good enough. Then the owner of the building steps forward and overrides the decision. Not only will the stone be used, it will be the cornerstone. What is a cornerstone? I found this definition on the web.

“In relation to architecture, a cornerstone is traditionally the first stone laid for a structure, with all other stones laid in reference. A cornerstone marks the geographical location by orienting a building in a specific direction.”

That cornerstone is Jesus and that is exactly what he was to the early church. He was not just the founder of a new religion, he was the cornerstone that orients the entire church into the proper direction.

Ministry in Jesus Name

So what about now? We live in a strange but exciting time in this COVID-19 world. For decades or longer we have been able to minister the way we have always done with just a few adjustments here and there. There was some comfort there. The way you led a Bible study in 1950 was not too different than the way you did it in 2000. Prayer meetings were the same. Worship music, despite some changes in songs and sometimes instruments, followed the same pattern. There was comfort in sameness.

Everything has changed because of COVID-19. For the first time, I cannot tell you what ministry will look like in just three months. I don’t know if in three months we will be back to congregational singing or if we will be back to worshiping at home with only online services.

When it comes to life in general, I have frequently spoken of a COVID fog. There is also a COVID fog for ministry. But we are not completely lost.

We have a North Star and his name is Jesus. Don’t look at any of those other stars because they are always changing. We will think we know where we are going but we will get lost.

But if we keep our eyes on Jesus we will be going in the right direction. Jesus is the cornerstone of this church. Not just that he is the first stone laid, but he determines the location and direction of the church. What does ministry look like in a COVID world? It is ministry in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

As someone interested in leadership, I would like to develop a five and ten year plan for ministry. But I can’t. But what I can do is seek to find out what Jesus wants from me and from this church right now. What does ministry in the name of Jesus look like right now.

In some ways this is an exciting time. For the first time we can’t look to the past to see what worked then. We can’t even anticipate what ministry will look like in the future. The only thing we can do is look for where Jesus is leading us right now. For those who don’t like change, this will be a challenge and will be uncomfortable. But it is our only option.

How do we do this? The first three steps are: pray, pray and pray. Then we look around us and look for signs of what God is doing around us. Instead of trying to get God to bless our good ideas we need to join in with what God is doing. That is ministry in Jesus’ name.

Conclusion

I will be honest with you, I wish things were easier. None of my seminary training prepared for the ministry world that we find ourselves in. But my hope is the same hope as Peter and John. Ministry in the name of Jesus Christ or Nazareth. Jesus is our cornerstone. Jesus is our North Star. With all of the things that have change, that has not changed. 

I don’t know what things will look like a month, a year or a decade from now. But I know who we need to look to and that is Jesus. Let us move forward as a church not in our own wisdom and power but in the name of Jesus. 

Introduction

At some point in 2019, just a few people contracted a virus that we now call COVID-19. At the time it probably looked like a small thing. I don’t even know how sick those first people got. I am sure that if you could go back and explain to them all that has happened around the world since, they would be shocked.

Think about how much our life has changed, not just in this city but around the world. When it first hit, many of us thought it was just a matter of washing our hands and not hand shaking. But now everything has changed. Everything from how we do groceries to how we do church is different. Did we ever think that we would not be able to sing in church or worse, not be able to have a potluck? Then there are all the travel restrictions and even if we get out of the country, there is two weeks of isolation. School for elementary and high school plus college and university looks completely different. There is so much that has changed for the entire world and just because of a small little virus. I’m not suggestion that there has been an overreaction, I am only saying that there have been far reaching changes over a very short period and it began with something that may not have looked that serious at the start.

Now why am I bringing this up? It reflects our experience but what does it have to do with the Bible. Some have tried to explain the pandemic using the Bible but I’m going to try and explain the Bible with the pandemic. What is the central message of Jesus? Many of us might say the cross and although Jesus talked about the cross, the focus of his preaching and his actions was on the kingdom of God. The kingdom is not just heaven, although it includes heaven. The kingdom is not just the return of Jesus, although it includes the return of Jesus. The kingdom of God is the reign of God, it is God’s invasion of the kingdom of this world and the slow spread of God’s rule. That’s what Jesus did and while the death and resurrection of Jesus were major parts of the kingdom, the spreading of the kingdom did not end with the return of Jesus to heaven.

The idea is that kingdom would spread across the world, from one person to another, transforming everything that it comes in contact with. Kind of like the pandemic but in a much more positive way. Both events began small and unassuming and become something major. What we are going to look at is how the church continues the work of the kingdom, both in Acts and today.

Kingdom in Acts

In the previous chapters of Acts, we have Jesus ascending into heaven and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Peter preaches his Pentecost sermon and the church is born. But now what? What is the connection between what Jesus did and what the church is about to do?

We see Peter and John, two of the closest followers of Jesus, on their way to the Temple to pray. Back then, as today, poor people would position themselves in places of high traffic in order to beg for money. This was a great place for this particular man, far greater than he could have imagines.

We are told that this man was lame from birth. Many of the people who relied on begging were people with disabilities. There was no government funding or programs to help people with disabilities. Either their families took care of them or they relied on the generosity of random strangers.

The man asked Peter and John for money. He didn’t get that, but he did get something else. Peter healed him in the name of Jesus. This man who had never walked before was now walking. This was incredible! But in our astonishment, we need to reflect on why the man was healed. Was it because God wants every person with a disability to be healed? And does this mean that the lesson for us is to heal every person with a disability that we encounter?

This healing was a very important event that had a very specific meaning. Healings were a significant part of Jesus’ ministry. Again, why did he do that? If was healings for the sake of healings, why did all of those, even those he raised from the dead, get sick and die again at some point in their life? The healings were signs that God’s kingdom was arriving. As a student of military history, I see it like the bombardment before an attack. These dramatic healings were meant to show that God was working through Jesus in power, causing the kingdom to come, on earth as it is in heaven.

The healing of this lame man was a sign that the same God who worked through Jesus was working through the followers of Jesus. Notice that the man was healed in Jesus’ name. That doesn’t mean that they tagged on “in Jesus’ name” to the end of their prayer. This healing was a continuation of the ministry of Jesus through the church. The point was not that a man who couldn’t walk now could walk, the point was the kingdom was coming. 

How do we know this? Look at the rest of the story. Peter preaches the kingdom without ever using that word. His message is that the people that witnessed this miracle need to respond by submitting to God’s rule, they need to enter the kingdom. And then he wraps it up with a reminder that Jesus is returning. That is the fulfillment of the kingdom. Right now the kingdom is coming and then the kingdom will have come. It is all about the kingdom.

Kingdom Now

What we have seen is that there is continuity between the ministry of Jesus in the Gospels and the ministry of the church in Acts. There is also continuity between the ministry of the church in Acts and the ministry of the church now. The theme that ties it all together is the kingdom of God. Our job is to work to spread the kingdom in our congregational and individual activity.

So what does that look like? Let’s go back and see what happened with Peter and John and the beggar. They encountered a poor man born lame and they did what God led them to do.

How would we respond? Some Christians would read the passage and insist that we should do the same thing and get that man healed. I do believe that God still heals. But I also have been doing a lot of research into the experience of people with disabilities. I have heard countless stories of awkward experiences of well-meaning Christians trying to heal people with disabilities that don’t want to be healed. Many people with disabilities are content with their physical state and it is not our job to reject them as broken. Even Jesus didn’t always assume that person with a disability wanted to be healed.

So what do we do? Our goal is the same as Peter and John, not to get the man on his feet but to spread the kingdom. What will it look for God’s will to be done, which is really the essence of the kingdom? It may be befriending the person. It may be inviting them into your home for a meal. It may be listening to their joys and their pains. It may be just being a Christian presence in their lives. There is no one size fits all approach. It requires sensitivity to God’s leading as to what God’s will is. What we need to ask is how the kingdom of God can flow into this situation.

We then take that question and apply it to every other area. We live in a world that is struggling through a pandemic. It is causing both fear and division. How can we as a congregation and as individual followers of Jesus blow the world to kingdom come?

Conclusion

People were watching those first Christians. Jesus was gone. Would this mean that the whole movement would fall apart? Would the disciples go back to their old lives and leave Jesus as just a footnote in their life story? Peter and John demonstrated that it was business as usual. Jesus was bringing the kingdom of God to earth and so were they.

People are watching us. This pandemic has hit the world hard and not just in total lives lost. What is the church going to do? Will the church fall apart? Will the church just focus on self-survival, leaving the rest of the world on its own?

We are on the same mission as Peter and John who were on the same mission as Jesus. Kingdom come. The COVID-19 virus infiltrated our world and changed everything. The kingdom of God is far more powerful than a virus and it can spread through us to the rest of the world, transforming everything we come into contact. Will we be kingdom builders?

This is such an interesting time. Covid-19 is a history defining moment. I often tell my kids, this is a turning point of their lives. It will shape how they live their life, much like in previous generations of pandemics, or wartime, or those who have survived natural disasters…there is one thing that is true for all of us in this time of Covid-19. Whether you are a child or a senior, there is a collective grief that we all are experiencing. 

We’re going through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and ultimately acceptance. But now it isn’t only the pandemic, we see protests about the racial inequality and systemic racism, we have the bombardment of politics both Canadian and American, we have natural disasters happening, fires and hurricanes. The human psyche can only take so much disaster and trauma. That is why so many experts are concerned about the mental health of people moving forward…there may be people who will have PTSD from 2020. 

There is a question that reverberates through my mind, where is God in all of this? We all have our own way that we will respond to God, and there are ways that we might identify our current situations with God. For some, what is happening in our world is a harsh punishment from an angry father because we’ve missed the mark, we deserve it because we’re sinful and wicked and annihilation is coming. We’re so wicked, that there is no hope for us and our world will continue to be destroyed until we repent of whatever it is that has upset God this time. For others, these are natural consequences of our fallen world, this is the results of what happened in Eden. This is the darkness of the world, and God is the light. That god is a loving a God and it’s guiding us and loving us through this difficult season. 

One thing can be very true, We often project our “daddy issues” or our “mommy issues” on to God. How we view God, is in some cases of how we view our own father or mother. Or maybe it’s the opposite, we look at God like the father or mother we always wished we had. But what shifts when we start to think of God not as a binary gender but rather as a loving parent? A parent that has both the qualities of fathers and mothers? There is a beauty in the balance, when we look to God to be our loving parent. 

There is one thing that is often true, when we are hurting or want comfort, the name that comes to most of us is “I want my mom or dad.” Depending on who you are closer to. In this time of Covid-19, natural disasters, human disasters and the gong show that seems to be 2020, I keep thinking about the fact that I want God as my mom…to comfort me, hold me,  protect me.

Jesus tells us in John 16:7, when he leaves that the Holy Spirit was sent to be our helper, our comforter, our advocate.These are things that I attribute to being a mom because these are things that I do. I’ve kissed booboo’s, chased away scary monsters in the night, I’ve held my child who cried because they felt excluded, and I advocated hard for my children with disabilities, and continue to do so even today. Yes these are things that a father can do and does do, but in my life, these are the things that I do as a mom. 

What if we instead of putting God in a box that includes that all that we now know as toxic masculinity, the idea that  “real men don’t cry” “real men dominate” “real men wear the ‘pants’ in the relationship” real men are tough, punishing, built like power body builders. That is toxic masculinity.  We can also point out that there are forms of feminism that are hateful and toxic too. These are the extremes of the gender biases that we hold on to. 

some of my most favourite scriptures are the ones that show Gods “softer” side, although I’d argue that it is just as difficult and challenging to show mercy than to show powerful forceful retribution..what if we looked at God as mother? Or parent, if mother is too far for you…I get it. But I am asking, how can God be a mother to us in our time of need. 

Genesis tells us that we are all created in the image of God, our maleness and femaleness is part of the image of God. That means that God contains all the range of attributes that all human beings have on earth. This is the place to fight against toxic masculinity, this is the place to fight against hateful feminism. This is the intersection where we find ourselves fully human, beautiful and flourishing by the power of the holy spirit. Living into the life that God has called us into, and allowing God to shape us into their likeness. Not in extremes but in the balance. 

Jesus’ life shows us that God is with those who suffered. Jesus is a suffering God, through everything that he experienced in his life. But God was with him always. Where is God in the midst of Covid-19, those who are oppressed racially, those who are mourning the loss of loved ones, or homes or anything else. God is here, in the grief we are experiencing.

How do we respond to our grief? Well, some of us deny that what we’re going through is even worth calling grief…it’s just an illness! Or a lost job. Except that this pandemic has caused us to lose our finances, to lose our ability to see our friends and loved ones and has robbed us of our physical closeness. Racial inequality leaves people isolated. Hate divides. Grief is there. 

Maybe we’re praying something along the lines of “God if you just heal my family member, or get me a job, I’ll do this for you” We bargain with God all the time, we try to do this give and take game with God, but God doesn’t play that game with us. God knows that there is joy found in suffering, in connection with the triune God. Patience is a blessing, eventually. 

Maybe you’re angry with God…that is something that good Christians don’t do, they don’t get angry with God?! I do. we need to accept that we can be angry, with others, with God, and anger is ok and justifiable. We sometimes shy away from anger, but anger helps us to deal with things, if we process the anger, and work through our anger. Yes, even Jesus got angry and overthrew tables at the temple. Anger is a valid and understandable response to grief. Being mindful that anger is not a pass to hurt others, rather it is an emotion that can guide us to the truth.

But Jesus also shows a gentler side when in Luke 13: 35 he says “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” Jesus isn’t afraid to use typically “feminine” images to show how he wants to help and interact with the people. I can hear disappointment in this statement, and perhaps even some righteous anger.

The next stage we may go through, We can get depressed. These past few weeks, I’ve heard from so many people that they feel like all their energy is gone, some feel hopeless, that Covid won’t end, that people of colour will always sustain abuse from our systems that are so slow to change, but that make it impossible for them to rise. 

People are missing physical connection with others, I can say for myself, physical contact is my love language…it’s been one of the difficult things about this..I want to hug my friends, hold a loved ones hand, rub the back of someone who needs comfort, and I want others to do that for me. This loss of physical connection is super difficult for me and it’s increased my depression. I’m not ashamed to admit that, because it’s not a sin to be depressed and to need to talk to a therapist and work through the hard stuff in our lives. I love Jesus, and I’m thankful for the medicine that keeps me balanced.

And finally, we come to acceptance…acceptance that we are not in control. The illusion of control is something that we as humanity love to think we have, but we don’t. We have choices, but control? Absolutely not. This took me a long time to figure out, through my battles with mental illness, to my struggles with perfection, to the way that I looked at God. These were all things that I had to come to a level of acceptance.

J R R Tolkein wrote the book, Lord of the Rings, and in it, Bilbo Baggins writes a book about his adventures and titles the book “There and Back again”  That is sort of what grief is like. This isn’t something you get over. You don’t get over the loss of a spouse, a child, a friend, a job. You will have moments of grief about that for the rest of your life.  You’ll go through these stages separately, together, in order, out of order, and all over again….But we can find solace in grief because the bible is full of the promise that God is near to the broken hearted, that he will protect us like a mother lion, and shield us as a mother hen. 

So where is God in the midst of covid-19? Where is God in the middle of protests, where is God in natural disasters? God is a suffering God, so God is right there with us. With the person fighting illness, with the tired nurses and doctors who are working to help heal the sick, God is there with our teachers and students, God is there with the oppressed and marginalized. God is there because God is a suffering God, God came to bind up the broken hearted, to heal the sick, to call people to life everlasting. 

I want to end by reading the words of a hymn called, Womb of life and Source of Being. I love the words of this because I’ve always grappled with the image of God, and how everything is so masculine and where I’ve been raised, this has never been questioned, it’s just a given. But as a woman, I’ve always wondered, how am I made in the image of God, if God is an old vengeful man going around smiting the earth? As I’ve read more, and studied through seminary, and searched the scriptures, I see that God is not bound by any kind of gendered theory, God is God.

Introduction

As some of you may know, one of my interests is blogging. A blog is a shortened form of web log and it is like a public diary or opinion column posted in the internet. I have been doing this for about fifteen years.

Most of the time when I publish a new post, I get about ten to thirty people reading it that first day. But one time, I actually had 30,000 people read the post. That is not for me to boast but to highlight something that happens all too often.

One day I was scrolling through my Facebook and I saw people sharing links to a number of different websites, all making the same claim. The claim was that the CEO of Starbucks had made a statement that he didn’t want anyone who supported traditional marriage, as opposed to same-sex marriage, as his customers. A lot of conservative Christians were up in arms and calling for boycotts of Starbucks in retaliation.

I knew that the the CEO of Starbucks was an advocate of LGBTQ rights. That was no secret. But it seemed to me rather odd that a CEO would publicly demand that less people purchase his products. It made no business sense.

So I began to do the research to see what he actually said. The quote came from a shareholder’s meeting. One shareholder expressed some financial concern about their support of same-sex marriage. All the CEO said was that if the shareholder was concerned about the financially viability of Starbucks, there were other companies that he could invest in.

The CEO said nothing about customers, he was only speaking to a shareholder. And even to the shareholder, he didn’t demand that he sell his shares, he just pointed out the obvious that people were free to invest in whatever company they thought was the best bet.

Some conservative opinion leaders took this and warped it for their own purposes of fighting the culture war against the liberals. I wrote a post exposing this deception, not seeking to defend Starbucks, but to state the facts truthfully and let people decide on their own. It went viral.

I share this to say that not everything we hear is accurate. This is sometimes referred today as “fake news.” Whether the falsehood is accidental or purposeful, it usually leads to an increase in conflict.

We are going to look at a miscommunication in the Bible that almost led, not to a boycott of a coffee chain, but the death of thousands of people.   

You Built What?!

This story takes place in the time of Joshua, who was the successor to Moses. This was a momentous time for Israel, as after forty years of wondering in the wilderness, they were finally taking the Promised Land. When we speak of Israel, we are speaking of twelve tribes. They had their own identities but they worked together to take the land. The invasion began on one side of the Jordan river and then moved across the water to take the main area of the Promised Land. They did a pretty good job against the Canaanites, in that they were able to settle the land. They were not completely successful, as we see in the book of Judges and there would be ongoing conflict in the years to come.

During this whole process, two and a half of the tribes really liked the one side of the Jordan. This was some of the first territory taken. They agreed to continue the fight with their fellow tribes but when it cam to allot the land, that was the area that they wanted. Everyone was agreed that this was a good idea. So when most of the fighting was done, each tribe went to their own territory.

But then trouble came. There were reports that the two and a half tribes had built an altar on their side of the Jordan. So what’s the problem with this? The Hebrews, in addition to strongly believing in only one God, also believed in only worshiping, in terms of sacrifices, in one place. During the time of King David, that would become Jerusalem but that hadn’t happened yet. At the time of Joshua, the only requirement was that it would be at the tabernacle, that mobile tent that preceded the temple. The tabernacle had the ark of the covenant and only there could sacrifices be made. 

There was always a danger that being on the other side of the Jordan, that the two and half tribes would separate and go their own way. Setting up their own illegitimate altar looked like the first step for these tribes to become unrecognizable as fellow Hebrews. The nine and a half tribes mobilized their troops and prepared for war. This time not against Canaanites but their fellow Israelites, They saw themselves as doing the work of God in this.

The problem is that this was a big misunderstanding. The altar that they built was never meant for sacrifices. They still affirmed the centrality of the tabernacle. They realized that being separated from the rest of the tribes was a danger, especially for the generations to come. So they built this altar to remind people that they serve the same God as those on the other side of the Jordan. The God who gave the land to the nine and a half tribes was the same God who gave the land to the two and half tribes.

But can you see what almost happened? Instead of sending messengers to inquire about the purpose of the altar, they gathered their armies and prepared to fight. Thousands of people on both sides almost died over a miscommunication.

You Said What?!

Some people think the Old Testament is completely irrelevant to our experience today. I believe that this passage is one of the most helpful stories for us as a church today. When we hear something we don’t like, we may not gather our armies, but we do come out fighting.

While this can happen to anyone, I have seen it particularly among Christians. Some thing is said. A look is given. A rumour is spread. We could look into the truth of the matter. But it would save time if we just assumed the worst and sought revenge. I have seen this over and over. On committees, among pastors, and within congregations. 

Jesus gives some very clear guidance about how to deal with conflict. When something happens between you and another person, you always confront the person directly, just the two of us. You don’t start the rumour mill. You don’t gossip in an attempt to destroy their reputation. You talk to them. It may be that you will need to take things farther and involve leadership. It may be that the person will realize what they have done and repent. Or it may be that it is just a big understanding. This has happened to me a number of times. I have confronted the person who seemed to have a problem with me. Once we talked it over, we discovered it was just a misunderstanding. The problem is that it is always easier to come out fighting. Seeking better communication requires work.

Conclusion

Stephen Covey, in his book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, tells a story of being on a subway. Covey was trying to concentrate on something but this father with two young children came aboard. The children began to misbehave and the father just sat there, seemingly oblivious to what was happening. Covey began to quickly lose patience. He had seen all that he needed to know. Here was a father not motivated to make his children behave properly in public. Covey confronted the man to correct him in his lack of parenting skill. The father seemed to awake as from a daze, apologized, and explained that they were just coming from the hospital where his wife and the children’s mother had just died. Covey didn’t have all the information he needed to judge.

The Israelites almost made a mistake by attacking their own out of zeal for the religious purity of their worship. It could have ended badly because of bad communication.

Look around. Someone here is going to say something or do something that is going to bother you. You will think that you have all the information but you won’t. Instead of coming out fighting, consider talking to the person and finding out what really is happening. It is the harder way but it is also the right way.

Introduction

I want you to imagine you were doing a public performance of some kind. It could be a speech, some music, presenting something you have made, whatever you are passionate about. You present your skills to the public. After the performance, someone comes up to you and says, “I was just filled with awe watching you.” How would you feel? The next person comes to you and says, “That was just awful.” Now how do you feel?

So is filling with awe a good thing or a bad thing? And just what is awe? And will our discussion about this be awesome?

We are told in this passage that the people who saw what was happening in the early church were filled with awe. Does that mean that there was a positive or negative effect on the people? And what would it mean for us to have an awful effect on our community? Is that something we even want?

The Early Church and Awe

What we have seen over the past few weeks is the birth of the Christian church. The Holy Spirit was poured out. Peter preached his Pentecost sermon and three thousand people were baptized. It was an exciting time.

In this passage we see how the church went from an event-filled day to the regular living of following Jesus. They gathered together to learn and to eat and to pray. We are told that the gospel message had such an effect on people that they sold their possessions and held everything in common. This was radical life-transforming beliefs. 

We are told that the apostles performed signs and wonders. This phrase “signs and wonders” was used earlier in that Joel prophecy and it appears numerous times in Acts.

What are signs and wonders? The sign part refers to the purpose of the event, the thing or person that is being pointed to. When you are on the highway, you look for signs for your exit not because the signs are pretty but because you want to go where the signs are point you. In this case, the signs of the apostles were pointing people to Jesus.

Then there is the wonders, sometimes translated at marvels. This is the reaction of the person who is witnessing the event. The Greek word originally referred to a monster. Monsters were seen as the activity on earth of the gods. The Greek word is the one that we get our English word terror. The idea of seeing signs and wonders in the church seems rather attractive until you realize what is actually happening.

Now we are not old the exact nature of the signs and wonders. It is likely that they were miracles similar to those performed by Jesus. It may be significant that the details are not given as we are meant to focus on the reaction to them.

The signs and wonders were not hidden from view but were witnessed by people outside the church. Remember that there were no church buildings for Christians to hide away from everyone. The people in the community were filled with awe. They literally felt awful.

What did this mean? We can feel in awe in different ways? There are times that I look up into the sky on a clear night and see all the stars and imagine how big they are and how far away they are and I am filled with awe. We used to live in a house that overlooked Georgian Bay. Because we had children that woke early, I saw many beautiful sunrises over that bay and I felt awe.

That is not the awe that these people felt at what the apostles were doing. The Greek word for awe is phobos, the word we get phobia from. It literally means fear. The Greek god Phobos was the son of the war god. Of course the meaning of the word expanded over time to something like our modern word awe. But it always meant an intense reaction to being in the presence of some great power. It was not fondness for that beautiful sunrise but perhaps being close to the edge of Niagara Falls but without any barriers.

Was this a positive or a negative experience for the people? The answer is yes. It was negative in that it must have been uncomfortable. It was challenging to who they were and what they believed. It demanded a response. It was positive in that it was pointing them to Jesus, someone who had the power to transform their lives. The people were filled with awe.

The Modern Church and Awe

Are we having an awful effect on our community? I mean, are people experiencing a sense of awe at the work we are doing as a church?

In our passage, that awe was created by signs and wonders. What are our signs and wonders? We may not see massive amounts of healings and other miracles but those things aren’t specifically mentioned in this passage either. Signs and wonders at their core mean the activity of God in our midst that point people to Jesus.

This is an extremely important question for us to be asking at this specific time in our church. For the past number of decades (or longer) we have been coasting along, doing our things, offering our ministries and programs. And then a few months ago COVID-19 hit. Not only did our programs come to a halt, we closed our doors to worship services on Sunday mornings. We need to ask if it mattered at all that our building was closed? Did people in our community notice that we were not open? Was there any sense of loss at what had happened? 

I’m thankful that I did hear from people inside and outside the church that noticed that we were closed and missed that we were open. There was a sense that God was working in our midst.

That is not to say that all of that came to a stop when our building closed. There were many things we couldn’t do but there were some things we could do. We were able to increase our giving to the food bank at a time when other people were hoarding food and donations were way down. I wish you could have seen the food bank volunteer’s face when they expected us to be giving a can or two of tuna and instead we had bags and bags of food. I would go so far as to say that there was a look of awe on their faces.

The goal of the church, our congregation and the church in general, is not just to have a pleasant time in our building. We are meant to have an awful effect on our community. The community should be looking at the church and recognize that God is at work, and yes, it should scare them a bit.

What this will look like, I can’t say. I can say that it probably will not be about duplicating all the things we liked about the past. For a long time, we were known as the Out of the Cold church. But we no longer host people over night. Many other things have changed and may not return to the way they were. But that doesn’t mean the signs and wonders will stop. Our job is to find out what God wants to do through this congregation as it is now, with the community we have now in the conditions we currently have. Everything was new for the early church and everything will be new for us in the post-COVID world as well.

Conclusion

We want people to look at our church and just feel awful. Not that we want them to be sick to their stomach but we want people to see the church as more than just a club of people who enjoy hanging out and talking about the old times. We want people to see that God is at work in our congregation. We want people to see signs and wonders. Wonders of the things God is doing and signs pointing to Jesus. We want people to have a sense of awe of what is taking place. This is an exciting time for us as a congregation as we get to rediscover these things for ourselves. The unknown may create a bit of terror in us, but that is okay. God’s power should be giving us a sense of awe as well.

Introduction

Have you ever had a recurring dream? It may not be exactly the same dream but it is the same sort of dream or it happens at the same place or it includes the same people. I have had a number of recurring dreams over my life, usually repeating frequently during a certain period of my life. Many of those dreams no longer appear but some of them still do.

One that I still have is about me walking or driving by my childhood home in Merritton. I actually do drive by that house from time to time, so that is not unusual. But what happens in this dream is that I will see my father in his usual spot looking out the front window. My father has been dead for over fifteen years. I will of course stop to see what is happening. And there is my mother. She has been dead for over ten years. In the dream I have this memory that they are supposed to be dead but there they are standing there, talking to me. I don’t challenge what I see because I don’t want to break the spell. I want to be able to enjoy their presence and imagine what it would be like if they were still with me. Then I wake up.

The disciples knew that Jesus had died. No one survives a Roman cross. There were witnesses to the actual death. Jesus was placed in a tomb and it was sealed. It was as final as anything gets.

But on the third day, people were claiming to have seen Jesus alive. This was not something like my dream about my parents. This want just one person having a dream about a good friend who died but hundreds of people claiming to have seen Jesus while they were awake. This message of the resurrection of Jesus was the core of early Christian preaching. And it should be for us as well.

Resurrection Then

Let’s position ourselves for this passage. We are still in the same sermon that Peter was preaching last week. God had poured out the Holy Spirit and Peter had explained it by quoting the prophecy of Joel. It is important to know that Joel’s prophecy always had an “end-times” element to it. Keep that in mind.

But Peter’s goal is not just to explain what had happened, Peter also need to tell the people how to respond. The last part of the Joel prophecy was “And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” It would be nice if Peter actually explained what that means and that is exactly what he does. It is interesting that the Lord in the Old Testament passage was YHWH, often called Jehovah, but here is identified with Jesus.

Who was this Jesus? Peter begins by reminding the crowd that Jesus performed miracles. This is important but by itself didn’t require people to follow Jesus. There were later Jews who believed Jesus performed wonders but that he did it by black magic. 

Peter then spoke of Jesus’ death. Peter puts some of the blame of the death of Jesus on the people in this crowd. We must be careful not to use this as support for condemning the Jewish people as “Christ-killers,” as has happened too often throughout history. There were some Jews in Jerusalem that had yelled, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” But not all did. In fact at this point, every single believer in Jesus was Jewish. This was not about blaming a specific race of people. But the death of Jesus was important. And yet the death of Jesus by itself was not enough. Certainly not enough to get people to follow Jesus. Can you imagine telling people, “We want you to follow our teacher. “Oh yeah, what did he do?” “He was executed. You really should follow him.”

Peter then goes on to explain that Jesus was raised from the dead. In fact, that is where Peter spends most of his time. Peter mentions the crucifixion in two verses and the resurrection in eleven verses.That’s how important the resurrection is. It is not just an add-on so that the crucifixion is not too sad. The resurrection is the core of the Christian message. Lots of people were crucified in the first century. Only one experienced the resurrection.

I love what Peter says: “it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.” Isn’t that amazing? This is saying that the work that God was doing in Jesus was leading to the inevitable resurrection. While from human perspective, it looked like Jesus was in real trouble, but the truth is that when it came to Jesus vs death, it never really was a fair fight.

Remember when I said that Joel’s prophecy has an “end-times” feel to it? The Jews saw the resurrection as an end-times event. The end-times had begun with the resurrection of Jesus and the pouring out of the Spirit.

We are told that around three thousand people believed and were baptized that day. They believed not because they felt guilty that Jesus had died but because they felt hope that Jesus had risen. It was this message of hope that spread Christianity across the known world.

Resurrection Now

That was two thousand years ago. What about now? How important is the resurrection of Jesus to us today? Well, we celebrate it once a year on Easter and so that’s something. But do we really give the resurrection its due?

Years ago when people would witness to me, their message was “Jesus died on the cross so you can go to heaven.” Many saw that as containing all of the sufficient information. That is not even close. If you search through Acts and Paul’s letters, you will find plenty of times where the cross is not mentioned but the resurrection is. I’m not trying to downplay the cross. I’m just saying that it is the resurrection that really makes Jesus unique.

How important is the resurrection to us? I can only speak for myself. The resurrection of Jesus is why I am a Christian.

Many people who claimed to be Christian in the past did unspeakable crimes in the name of the church.

But Jesus rose from the dead.

People today, pastors, Christian celebrities, church people in the spotlight, continue to do terrible things and smear the name of Jesus.

But Jesus rose from the dead.

There are many things in the Bible that I don’t understand and that even make me uncomfortable.

But Jesus rose from the dead.

I see the selfishness and greed in my own life, the multiple ways I miss the mark.

But Jesus rose from the dead.

It is the resurrection of Jesus that is my foundation and that gets me through all of the other stuff that threatens to discredit Christianity. We don’t have to know everything but we need to know that Jesus rose from the dead. Thankfully it is one of the best attested historical events that take place in the New Testament. The most important thing also has the most support. That is a good thing.

Conclusion

The resurrection of Jesus was the core of the Christian message at the birth of the Church. Much has changed in two thousand years in terms of context but the message is the same. The resurrection of Jesus is the message that gives us hope.

The resurrection of Jesus gives us hope as a church as we bounce back from some difficult times over the past number of months. We see that God is in the business of bringing life from death. It is true for the church and it is true for us. We have been given a message of hope. It is not just a recurring dream, a reflection of our deepest desires. It is truth that is based in history and that has the power to keep us going no matter what.

Introduction

I am the pastor of Queen Street Baptist Church. But I am not a lifelong Baptist. In fact I have been baptized twice in my life and neither time was in a Baptist church. I was raised in the Anglican church for a long time that’s all I knew about church. I assumed every pastor wore a robe and every church used a common cup with wine for communion. That’s what normal was for me.

But in my early twenties, I left my Anglican church and switched to a Pentecostal church. It was a radical culture shock. It was more than just the congregation was more than ten times the size of my old church or that they had padded pews. The pastors wore suits and when they prayed, they didn’t read set prayers but just prayed what came to mind. The strangest thing was communion. I didn’t know that some churches don’t have communion every Sunday. And instead of us going up to share a common cup of wine, they handed out little shot glasses of grape juice. It would take me a while to get used to this new normal.

While I was in seminary, I made the jump to the Baptist church. Some of my fellow students teased me that I only changed because they paid me. While I was happy to be paid, I quickly felt at home in the Baptist church and was able to draw on elements of my Anglican and Pentecostal heritage.

Why do I share this? Because although I self-describe as a Baptist pastor, I would also argue that every Christian is a Pentecostal Christian. Do I mean that you have to do everything or believe everything as a church that belongs to a Pentecostal tradition? Not at all. 

But the church began at Pentecost and it was defined by what took place at Pentecost. When the church begins to drift, we need to look back at Pentecost. That is what we are going to look at today.

Pentecost in Acts

When we start in Acts 2, we find a relatively small group of disciples. If you had asked them, they probably would have thought of themselves as a pretty diverse group. Everyone from a tax collector to fishermen. There probably was even some tension at times because of their differences. But when we look back at them now, they look like a pretty uniform lot. The Apostles were all Jewish Galilean men. There were some female disciples as well, but many of them were alike, with most of them named Mary. God was about to blow up this standard uniformity.

We are told that the Holy Spirit was poured out upon them. We may want to dwell on the miracle of that event, but I want to look at few things that easy to pass over. Our first hint is the description of the Jews who were there to witness this event. This table of nations previews the diversity that was coming to the church. These were not Gentiles, that is non-Jewish natives of these nations. Rather they were Jews who had emigrated to other lands and had returned to Jerusalem for the Feast of Pentecost. The conversion of these people would seed the church all across that area of the world.

If the table of nations was a hint of what was to come, Peter makes it explicit. After explaining that the ability to hear the speaking miraculously in different languages was not them being drunk, Peter launches into his sermon. Like a good preacher, he draws on the Scriptures. There were a number of Old Testament passages that speak of the Holy Spirit that he could have used. But he chose, presumably led by God, to preach from Joel. He quoted Joel’s prophecy about the coming of the Spirit. 

I would like to share with you how I often heard this passage. “In the last days the Spirit is poured out. Blah, blah. Dreams and visions. Blah, blah.” I saw this only as saying that the Spirit was promised and that the promise had been fulfilled. But there is so much more to this passage. Instead of focusing on what was happening, let’s look at who it was happening to.

The Spirit was being poured out on all flesh. But people could define “all flesh” in different ways. Then we see that the Spirit is given to sons and daughters. Men and women. Gender differences are broken down. Young men and old men. Age differences are broken down. Even upon slaves. Economic and social differences are broken down. 

It was not just the Spirit was coming it was that God was pouring out the Spirit on people without regard to any of the distinctions that were so important to the people.

It could be argued that the rest of Acts is a tup of war between God and people about how diverse the church could really be. Similar events to Pentecost are repeated when the Samaritans, the followers of John the Baptist and the Gentiles are brought into the church. You get the impression that the first Christians were saying that we really don’t want these people in the church but God keeps giving them his Spirit, overruling our preferences.

Pentecost Today

Thankfully it was the early Christians who made all the mistakes and struggled with prejudice. Since that time it has been smooth sailing as we welcome all people, no matter how different. Or maybe not.

Sixty years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr once said that Sundays at 11 am is the most segregated hour in America. The church even now, and yes in Canada, continues to struggle.

I mentioned my time in the Pentecostal church. I studied the origins of the Pentecostal movement. One of the key figures in the early Pentecostal revivals at the beginning of the 20th century was a poor, one-eyed black preacher named William Seymour. People of all backgrounds, black and white, rich and poor, came out to these revivals. Women were given opportunities for ministry that were forbidden in other churches. Whatever else you thought of the movement, it was definitely a time of breaking down barriers. But then they organized and institutionalized. Denominations split along racial lines. Rich and poor worshiped separately. Men and women were given different ministry roles. It was as if the Spirit hadn’t been poured out on all flesh.

But this is not a problem of just one movement. Every Christian tradition has struggled with this. In fact the church sometimes has not just struggled with it, they have celebrated it. The church growth movement of a few decades back argued that to grow a church, you need to gather people who are like each other and build a homogenous community. It is true that this method filled pews but it did not fulfill our biblical mandate.

I have been at churches that thought we were diverse. We had Canadians who were from England, Scotland and Ireland. If we were radical, we even had people from Wales.

I hadn’t realized what diversity could really look like until I came to Queen Street. On any given Sunday, you might find people in our praise team who were born in Japan, Philippines, Zimbabwe and Mexico. But it is not just ethnicity. We try to include people of all ages in our services and we have a long history of embracing women in ministry.

One area that I am passionate about is not just the welcome and inclusion of people with disabilities. Some people ask me what we do for disability ministry and I tell them we call it “church.” We don’t have a separate program, we include people with disabilities on our staff, deacons board and choir. Don’t get the mistaken idea that Queen Street is perfect. We have our struggles but we have seen enough of what Paul calls “the fellowship of the Spirit” to want more and more.

Conclusion

Are you a Pentecostal Christian? I hope you are. I don’t care if you speak in tongues or raise your hands in worship. Are you Pentecostal in the sense of being defined by the Holy Spirit that blows up barriers that we have worked so hard to erect. Peter could have said anything during his Pentecost sermon. I believe God wanted him to quote Joel. The Spirit on all flesh. On men and women, young and old, slave and free. The Spirit on every other distinction we might make. A diverse church can be a messy church. There is the danger of miscommunications and frustrations. But a diverse church is exactly what we have been designed to be. The good news is that it is not based on our preferences but the powerful work of the Holy Spirit.

Introduction

I want to be careful in what I predict, but I want to say that I hope that this is my final congregation of my pastoral career. I realize that I still have a lot of time before I retire, but the thought of going through the process again is not appealing. I have friends who are in a time of pastoral transition and I don’t envy them.

I will admit that the search committee for this congregation was very good and it was relatively painless. But I had one church I had applied for that both myself and friend of mine were in the running. I went for my interviews and had multiple conversations. Eventually the chair of the search committee called me and told me he didn’t that it would work with me. I was disappointed. But then a few weeks later, I was talking to my friend who had also applied, I was about to congratulate him when he congratulated me. He told me that they had just told him they were going with me. A week later they called me and invited me to preach for a call. It was all a bit stressful.

I am sure that it is stressful for a church to call a pastor. They nominate the best search committee they can. They look at resumes, talk to candidates and call references. Then based on one sermon, the congregation is supposed to vote on whether to call the pastor.

I can only speak from my perspective by saying that it is an anxious experience to preach that sermon and then wait for the congregation to vote. Can you imagine doing something similar in whatever career you have been involved in?

Why do I bring this up? Because we are looking at a passage very much related to this. The eleven apostles are looking to replace Judas and they need to choose who the twelfth apostle will be. There are two candidates, who will get it? And what does that mean for the one who doesn’t get the position?

Who Will It Be?

If we go back to the Gospels, we will see that Jesus chose twelve disciples or apostles. There was a larger group of disciples, but he gathered a special group of twelve. Why twelve? It wasn’t just for practical reasons. Yes twelve is big enough to share responsibility but small enough for Jesus to mentor. But that is not what was going on. Jesus was in a sense, reconstituting the twelve tribes of Israel. Not that each of these disciples was from each of those tribes but the twelve was meant to remind us of what God had done in the Old Testament.

Now one of those twelve apostles was Judas Iscariot. Judas betrayed Jesus by handing him over to the authorities. Of course Peter denied Jesus, which was serious as well. But Peter was reconciled to Jesus. Could Judas have been reconciled? Perhaps but Judas died before that could happen. This left the twelve as the eleven. It seemed important to get back up to the proper number, again not for having enough help but for the symbolic importance. But who could take the place?

There was no job posting requesting resumed from all interested parties. There was a very specific requirement. The person had to have been with them from the time of John the Baptist right until the resurrection. This was a limited number. To be clear, even if Paul had become a Christian by this point, he wouldn’t have been eligible for this position. That’s how strict it would be.

Based on this, two people were nominated as candidates for the twelfth apostle. There was Matthias and Joseph called Barsabbas also known as Justus. This second person is one of three people in the New Testament named Justus. Joseph would have been his birth name. He was then given the second name Barsabbas, meaning son of the Sabbath. He also had a Roman name, Justus. It was not uncommon for a Jew to also have a Greek or Roman name. Saul of Tarsus’s Roman name was Paul.

However, they needed twelve apostles and not thirteen. So they made the final decision by casting lots. That may seem like a strange way to choose someone for ministry. First, remember that they bathed this in prayer and trusted God was in this. Even so, the casting of lots was not between two random people but between two qualified people. Either person could have fulfilled the role well. In the end, it was Matthias who became the twelfth apostle.

I have often wondered about this Justus, and not just because one of my son’s is named after him. What was it like for him to get so close to becoming the twelfth apostle and to just miss it? Was he devastated they way we see contestants in modern reality show talent contests?

We don’t know exactly what happened to Justus. There are some later traditions about him, include his drinking poison and not being harmed, but we can’t know how accurate that is.

But we can know that Justus had a choice to make. Things may have not turned out the way he wanted but life still had to go on. He could have given up on serving Jesus out of disappointment or he could seek to serve Jesus in whatever situation he was in. The same choice is given to us.

When Life Happens 

Have you ever had something that you really wanted to happen? Perhaps it was admission into a school or an application for a job. It may have been an audition for a musical group. If only you could get this opportunity, everything would be all right.

But life happens. Sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you don’t. The question we have to ask is what do we do when we don’t get what we want.

We can get upset and decide to give up. If it’s not the way we want it, it can’t be any way. But truthfully, that is the way we expect children to behave. “I’m gathering my toys and going home!”

Another way is decide to thrive in the circumstance we are in. It is like driving down a road and coming to a fork. We want to take the left way but that road is closed. We can park our car at the fork and grieve that the way we want is closed or we can take the road that is open.

This is true for us as individuals but it can be true for us as a church as well. The path of ministry should not be according to our personal desires but according to the circumstances we find ourselves in. I was once pastoring a small church that every year did a VBS. One year we found ourselves with all the children who normally participated having aged out. There was grieving because VBS was an annual tradition. But I pointed out that those children were now teenagers and of youth group age. We eventually got a youth group going that was close to the size of our Sunday morning worship attendance. The key was not spend our time grieving at the opportunity lost but taking advantage of the opportunity that arrived.

Conclusion

What did Justus do when he got the news that he hadn’t been chosen to be the twelfth apostle? I don’t really know. He may have went home and felt like giving up. I’m sure that he was disappointed. But I hope that he continues to follow and share Jesus according to the opportunities still available to him. 

We face similar circumstances. We have hopes and dreams, both as individuals and as a congregation. Things may not work out the way we expect or even want. We can give up or we can embrace the new opportunities that come our way. The choice is ours.

Introduction

Have you ever been in the awkward experience of expecting someone to do something and you are not sure if they are going to do it? You are hanging on their every word and action, hoping that that they will get around to what you want them to do or say. It can be stressful.

When Amanda and I were getting married, we decided to have the publishing of the banns of marriage. This is when the pastor announces during a regular worship service that so and so are getting married. At the time I was a youth pastor in Brantford and Amanda was attending a church here in St Catharines. Since we were getting married here, we decided to have the banns read at her church. I came down to St Catharines to join her for church and to hear our banns published. So we sat down in the pews and prepared for our big moment. The pastor began the announcements and we got all ready and… nothing. That was okay, the congregational prayer was coming up and that would be just as appropriate. We got read and… nothing. The pastor began preaching and we had resigned ourselves that he had completely forgotten. But then in the middle of his sermon, he pulled out a piece of paper and read out our banns. He had forgotten but remembered during his sermon and actually made the connection quite well.

I get a similar feeling in the passage that we are looking at here. Jesus had been crucified and had risen on the third day. He had spent forty days with his disciples and was about to return to heaven. Before this happened, a conversation between Jesus and the disciples took place. They ask him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” Remember that many Jews saw the Messiah in very much “this world” terms. The Messiah was a Son of David, who like David would fight for his people’s freedom. Jesus had pushed that definition significantly. On the cross, Jesus had defeated the powers of sin. In the empty tomb, Jesus had defeated the powers of death. How much harder could it be to defeat the power of Rome? There is a sense, as the disciples see Jesus preparing to leave, of “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Did defeating the Roman Empire and restoring Israel to political independence just slip Jesus’ mind? Let’s take a look.

But Witnesses

You can’t blame the disciples for wanting the kingdom of Israel to be restored. They didn’t like paying Roman taxes and they didn’t like having Roman troops occupying their land. If a foreign power was occupying our country, we wouldn’t like it either. Add to that, the Old Testament has numerous examples of God actually restoring the kingdom of Israel and promises of doing it again. It really seems like a reasonable request.

And notice what Jesus says. Jesus doesn’t tell them that God will not do that. It is just that the timing of that event is not their business. When will it happen. Some think it is the modern state of Israel others that it is an eschatological event. The point is that it would not happen in their lifetimes.

In a recent sermon, I spoke to you about the “big but.” That often in the Bible one statement will be made, which may feel discouraging and then there will be a but something else that has hope. Jesus was not going to restore the kingdom of Israel on that day “but.” But what?

Jesus moves them from worrying about he was going to do with Israel to what the Holy Spirit was going to with them. 

We will look soon at the day of Pentecost, but we need to note here that what was to happen was Holy Spirit activity. It was not what they were to do with a bit of Spirit tagged on but what the Spirit was going to empower them to do.

And what were they supposed to do? They were to be witnesses for Jesus in Jerusalem, Judea  and Samaria.

What is a witness? I is not necessarily a professional evangelist. How do we normally use witness? A crime is committed and the police look for a witness so that they can find out the truth of the event. That is pretty much what the disciples are being asked to do. They are witnesses of their experience with Jesus and they are to share that with others.

Jesus then adds something to this. They are to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. In one way this is a geographical expansion. Jerusalem is the city where they are. Judea is the region that Jerusalem is in and Samaria is the one after that. But it is more than geography. It is also about comfort zones. Jesus could have said Galilee instead of Samaria. Galilee was further away and was Jesus’ home. But Galilee would have been just as, if not more comfortable than Judea. Samaria was a place where there was significant ethic tension. Jesus is saying that they should be witnesses to those they are most comfortable to those they are least comfortable with.

Today’s Witnesses

What does this mean for us? There are some differences between us and those original disciples. They were with and knew Jesus personally. They saw him face to face. Jesus gave them this command directly. But the principles are the same.

I know some Christians who are grieving the loss of influence that the church has in our society. Some can remember when stores were closed on Sundays and the Lord’s Prayer was mandatory for all students, Christian or not. They long for those good old days.

Some may be praying for a return to Christian Canada. How long O Lord until you return Canada to its Christian heritage? And yet Jesus’ words to the disciples remind us that God’s primary concern is not to wed political and religious forces. When we look to the New Testament, we have trouble finding any support the church having authority over society. It was never meant to be a top down situation.

We may long for a Christian Canada “but.” But what? The same “but” as before. But we are to be witnesses of Jesus. But that sounds kind of hard and uncomfortable. If we think that, we also need to remember that the Greek word for witness is martyr. The word didn’t originally mean people who die for their faith. Rather many of the early Christians who were witnesses, happened to die for their faith, thus transforming the meaning of the word.

Here in Canada it is unlikely that we will die for being witnesses for Jesus. We may offend some people, but they probably won’t kill us.

But what if you haven’t been to Bible college or seminary? What if you are not gifted as an evangelist? Jesus doesn’t command us to explain the theological details of how he saved us from sin. Jesus said to be witnesses. 

Think back to the crime example. If a person is a witness to a shooting, the police don’t demand that they be an expert in ballistics. They saw one person pull some kind of gun on another and pulled the trigger. That’s all they they need to testify.

Being a witness is about sharing your experience with Jesus. You don’t have to answer every potential question. You witness to what Jesus has done in your life.

And the Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria principle applies to us as well. We start with those who are most like us, with those we are most comfortable with. But then we move out beyond that circle, to those less like us. Then we get to the Samaritans, whatever group may really struggle with. Remember that there was real ethnic hatred, on both sides, between the Jews and Samaritans. If the disciples had to do it, and as we will see they did do it, then we have no excuses.

Conclusion

Jesus didn’t forget about the restoration of Israel. It didn’t slip his mind. Rather it was not his priority. His priority was for the disciples to be his witnesses. What is Jesus’ priority for us? It is the same thing as for the disciples. It is about being witnesses of Jesus. It is not about shoving religion down people’s throats. It is not about being push or abusive. But somehow, we are to live and speak in a way that people can tell that Jesus is at work in our life. The great thing about this is that this not done in our own strength or according to our own wisdom. There is a reason why Jesus tells them to wait for the Holy Spirit. By the power of the Spirit we can testify to the truth of Jesus to those that he brings in our path. Our challenge is to let him do that with us not just for those like us but for the Samaritans in our life as well.

Introduction

Do you enjoy traditional worship? Before you answer that, we better be clear on what we mean traditional. At this point in time after months of online services, any in-person worship taking place in a church building, no matter how recent the songs, may feel like traditional worship. But perhaps you liked when we only used the hymns from our Baptist hymnal. But then again, our congregation is older than that hymnal and many of the hymns in it. But pushing back farther, there was a time when many Christians preferred singing Psalms and what we consider the old classic hymns were considered too innovative and worldly.

If we go back four hundred years when the Baptists were still a new movement and the King James Bible was a new translation, they would be meeting in private locations rather than church buildings. Going back five hundred years to the dawn of the Reformation, the first Protestants were trying to figure which parts of Roman Catholic worship to retain. Going farther back, most Christians were part of the Roman Catholic Church.

If we keep pushing back on tradition, it will go back until we hit the first century. We will soon be starting a series on Acts, which will give us a look at the early church. But that is not what we are going to look at today. For the moment, we are going to focus on a worship service that is described in one of Paul’s letters. We don’t have all the details that we might want, but it does provide some principles that are very applicable to our current situation.

First Century Worship

Have you ever wondered what those first worship services were like? We probably apply our own preferences to what we think they looked like. If music is our passion, we assume that those services focused on music. If liturgy is our passion, we assume that those services focused on liturgy. If expository preaching is our passion, we assume that those services were focused on the sermon.

The truth is that we don’t know exactly what those services looked like. We do know what wasn’t there. There definitely were no church buildings and so these services would take place in homes, which were usually not that big. They also did not have seminary trained, ordained and paid pastors leading the services. There were leaders and some were gifted in teaching, but there was no clergy and lay divide.

But Paul does give a bit more information. He starts this passage with the exhortation to “Follow the way of love.” Keep that in mind, because everything he says after this is to illustrate that principle.

Now the rest of the passage may make you feel uncomfortable, especially if you don’t have any Pentecostal or charismatic tendencies. I completely understand that. I remember the first time I attended a Pentecostal worship service after growing up in an Anglican church. It was definite culture shock.

But what Paul is describing here is not a Pentecostal service, except for the fact that the church was born at Pentecost and all we do is in the shadow of Pentecost. He is just describing a worship service. It would have been the same in Corinth as it was in Rome as it was in Antioch.

What Paul does here is compare the use of speaking in tongues and prophecy. There are differences of opinion as to what these are. Some see tongues as the ability to speak foreign languages for missions and prophecy as the gift of preaching. I understand speaking in tongues as non-intelligible speech that is used as a personal prayer language and prophecy as Spirit-inspired speech used to encourage believers. Whatever the interpretation, the principle will be the same.

Paul argues that in the context of a worship service, prophecy is better than speaking in tongues. It is not that one is more spiritual than the other. It all comes down to what we want to accomplish in worship. Many people, even today, believe that the point of worship is for the individual to connect with God. That is not the point of worship. The point of worship is for the community to connect with God.

Speaking in tongues is a great way for an individual to connect with God. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, Paul claims that he speaks in tongues more than any of them. The only problem with it is that it only helps that one person. It can only benefit the rest of the worshiping community if there is an interpreter who can share the meaning.

But when someone prophesies, they are doing it in the language of the people gathered. Because of that, all of the people are edified and everyone is drawn into the presence of God. Prophecy is not better than tongues but it benefits more people than tongues.

Remember how Paul started? “Follow the way of love.” His guidance for worship is not for each individual to seek what is best for them but to follow the way that is most loving toward others.

Twenty-First Century Worship

How do we apply this to our current context? The point is not that we need to add in more prophecy or take a strong stand against speaking in tongues. In many ways, what Paul is talking about here has very little to do with those spiritual gifts.

The foundation for all that Paul says here is an attitude of love toward one another. How do I know? Right before this passage is 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter. People mistakenly believe it is about love in the context in worship. It is actually all about the love Christians are supposed to show toward each other. So if you thought that you only need to show 1 Corinthians 13 love to one person, you are out of luck. 

What Paul is saying here is that our guiding principle for worship is not personal preferences but rather love for other people. I understand that this is hard because I have my own personal preferences. But the way of love is the way of Jesus.

What does this look like for us? For one, it may help us to not hold our preferences on style so tightly. This is something that both people who prefer hymns and those who prefer newer songs need to hear. As we prepare to return to in-church services, it also guides us through that. Our personal preference might be that each one of us sing loudly our favourite songs. But if the loving thing toward others is to avoid congregational singing, that is what we need to do. It is the same idea when it comes to wearing masks. I hate wearing masks. But if that is what is needed to help other people, that is what I need to do. Paul makes it extremely clear here that worship is not just about what we personally prefer. It is first of all about God and secondly about what is loving toward others. Our personal preferences come a distant third.

Conclusion

I started by asking if you liked traditional worship. If we push back tradition as far as it will go, we get to an interesting place. It brings us to the exhortation of “Follow the way of love.” From what we can tell, the Corinthian Christians preferred speaking in tongues as their public way of worship. But tongues without interpretation is by definition, completely individualistic. While we at Queen Street Baptist Church may or may not speak in tongues, the temptation is the same. And here I am speaking for myself as much as anyone. We want what makes us feel good, even in, or especially in worship. Paul corrected the Corinthians by reminding them that it is not about them, it is about their brothers and sisters in Christ. At some point in worship, whether during a song or a prayer or some reading, we will encounter something that isn’t what we like. That’s the moment we have to ask what is best for the community rather than for ourselves. If you don’t like it, just keep repeating, “Follow the way of love.”

Introduction

An important part of our church mission statement is that we are a people worshiping God in Jesus Christ. I don’t think that there is anything controversial about that. I would be surprised if someone tuned into this worship service and was shocked that we were worshiping God.

But what does worship look like? Worship will look different in an Anglican church from a Pentecostal church from a Quaker church.

People have strong opinions about styles but it is not the style that is important. We need to look deeper, we need to look to the foundational principles of what it means to praise God.

When I think of praise in the Bible, I automatically think of the Psalms. And when I think of praise in the Psalms, I automatically think of Psalm 100.

We are going to take a few minutes to reflect on this Psalm, not just to admire the beauty of the words but to look at the principles of praise that are found within it.

Joyful Songs

Many people equate praise and worship with music and singing. As we are going to see, praise is more than just singing, but music can be an important part of worship.

I can’t even begin to guess at how many hymns and songs of praise have been written across the nations and across the centuries. There is no way that there is a complete list, unless it is on God’s heart. People have been drawn to singing and playing music as a means of connecting with God. We see in Acts that when Paul and Silas were arrested and in jail, that they sang hymns. That would seem like the least relevant activity but it was natural for them. They had a joy beyond their circumstances and that joy naturally overflowed into singing.

While many of our hymns were European in origin, there were forms of Christian music that originate in North America. Spirituals, were songs sung by Africans brought as slaves to the United States. They combined African traditions, biblical passages and their experience as slaves into beautiful and lively songs of praise. An example is that of Swing Low Sweet Chariot. It draws on the story of Elijah, as well as themes of the underground railroad, that brought escaped slaves right here to St Catharines, only a fe blocks away.

It is natural for people to sing. I have heard many stories of people who struggled with dementia. Even when they may have forgotten their own family members, one of the last things to go were their favourite hymns.

The Psalmist tells us to shout for joy. Are you comfortable shouting for joy? Why or why not? The key is not the volume of our voice but the joy that is the motivation. Shouting on its own is not beneficial, but shouting for joy is. Worship the Lord with gladness, come with joyful songs. What is being described here is not singing as a religious duty but singing as a result of what God is doing in us. The example that Paul gives us in jail tells us that the joy is not based on our circumstances. Joy is not the same as happiness, which depends on what is happening. Joy is something deeper, something deeper than even our emotions. Maybe all we can do is whisper for joy. Then whisper for joy. Worship as you are able.

Knowing God

At the time I’m preaching this, we haven’t been singing together in our building for months. Many of us are eager to return, to see each other in person and to sing out those great songs of faith. Unfortunately, when we do get back together, we will not be able to sing. Congregational singing is one of the most dangerous activities for spreading the COVID-19 virus. We will have music, but the congregation will not be singing. At least not at first.

Let’s confess together that this will disappoint us. There is something to grieve here. I have been talking with many pastors about these restrictions. There have been a number of reactions. One is: “Forget the restrictions. Asking Christians not to worship is like asking fish not to swim.” Some of those churches who kept singing have now found a third of their congregation with COVID-19. Other pastors have said, “What’s the point of gathering if we can’t worship?” They are holding off opening their buildings until singing is permitted and safe.

Both of those reactions are making the same assumption: worship equals singing. We have just seen that singing is a great way to worship, but it’s not the only way to worship.

As we continue in Psalm 100, we see that there are other was of praising God. The Psalmist says to know that the Lord is God. Knowing? What does knowledge have to do with praise? In fact there are many Christians who believe that knowledge is a stumbling block to praise. There are those who call seminary, the place where pastors get their theological training, “cemetery,” because it is where passion for God goes to die. Theology is the enemy of passionate worship. Or is it?

The Psalmist spends as much time talking about the importance of knowing God and our relationship with him as he does on singing. Having true knowledge of God can be just as much praise as singing.

Pauls says this: “ And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.” (Philippians 1:9)

Paul makes this interesting statement: “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:17-19)

Here Paul’s prayer is that we would grasp, or as some other translations have, comprehend, the love of Christ. Paul says this surpasses knowledge, not to criticize knowledge, but to point out that we know the love of Christ in a different way that we know two times two equals four.

This is not about having university degrees or bookcases full of books. It is about having knowledge of God, more than vague belief, in such a way that we can stand firmly in worship.

Gates of Thanksgiving

The Psalmist then moves to talking about the gates of thanksgiving. Those are the gates that we must enter through to praise God. Is it possible to praise God without being thankful at all?

I fully understand that there are times it is difficult to find something to be faithful. When I was in the darkest time of my life, I was challenged to write down one thing I was thankful for every day. There were days that were so bad that the only positive thing I could find was that I was still breathing. There were other days that so much good had happened that it was difficult to pick just one. Thanksgiving is the gate.

It is our gate for prayer as well. Paul says: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” (Philippians 4:6)

Our challenge is to cultivate a life of thanksgiving, being aware of our blessings. So when we meet together we could focus on the restrictions and limitations. Or we could be thankful that we can be together, hearing from the Word of God and being able to pray for one another.

Conclusion

We are a worshiping people. Not just because it is part of our church mission statement but because we are followers of Jesus. Psalm 100 lays the foundation for what worship is all about. It includes but it is not limited to singing. We sing when we can and when we can’t, we can’t. That won’t stop us from worshiping. There are other options. We can come together knowing who God is. Our knowledge can be an act of praise. We don’t just have a hunch that the Lord is God. We know it. And we can praise by being thankful. Not just when we are in a church building but seven days a week. We can become attuned to God’s blessings and thank him for it. That thanksgiving can but doesn’t need to be in the form of a song. What we are soon to experience when we regather is not so much a limitation of our worship as an expanding of worship into new forms.

Introduction

Different people have different starting points for how they live their lives. Some begin from a place of reflection or of theory or of impulse. While I appreciate all of those things, I prefer more guidance and direction. I want to be told what to do, not necessarily how to do it, but at least to be given the expectations of what I am to do.

Jude begins his letter with some pretty bizarre and esoteric stories. It is not surprising that some Christians avoid his letter, likely for that reason. But then he ends his letter with some very practical advice. It is like he takes us high up into the heavens and then brings us back down and grounds us on solid earth. In a few verses here, he reminds me of the practical theology of his brother James.

In this passage, Jude says a number of things but it can be distilled into three categories: looking up to God, looking into ourselves and looking out for others.

Up to God

What is Christianity? As our culture becomes more and more secular, we need to consider who we are and why we exist. One of the reasons why the church is tolerated in our society is that people can see the church creates community, promotes mental health and provides charity toward those in need. Those are all important things. But what many people in society are saying, and this out of the motivation of seeing the positive, is that even if there is no God, the church still has value. And yes we could still do some good things even if we were wrong about God.

But that is not what the church is really about. The Westminster shorter catechism says this, and please excuse the masculine language:

Q. What is the chief end of man?

1. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.

Our starting point is not what we can do to make society better but our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. I have heard stories about numerous pastors who have lost faith in God but have decided to remain in the ministry. I respect their desire to continue to make a difference, but church without God is not church.

When Jesus was asked about the most important commandment, yes he did say we are to love our neighbours. But he prefaced that by saying that we are to love the Lord our God. It is out of our relationship with God that everything else is fuelled by. I’m not saying that atheists can’t do good things, but for the church to be the church, we need to start with God.

How do we do that? We worship God. Not just in singing. The beautiful thing about God is that he created us all different and he has given us a lifetime to discover the ways we can connect with him. For some, worship is about singing out our favourite praise song. For some, it is taking a walk through the woods and being immersed in God’s creation. For some, it is opening up a theology textbook and worshiping God with our minds. The danger is when we are so convinced by our own way that we reject other people’s way. What is important is, as the catechism says, that we glorify God.

One part that is not negotiable, whatever our worship style, is that we pray. Jude tells us to pray in the Holy Spirit. What does that mean? Some Christians think this is about ecstatic and exuberant prayer. I think it is closer to what Paul says: “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.” (Romans 8:26) It is an acknowledgment that God has given us his Spirit and the Spirit is part of God. This gives us a link far beyond just speaking words. The Spirit helps us to pray and we can call upon the Spirit as we connect to God through the Spirit.

In to Ourselves

Not as explicit, but still found in this passage, is the importance of looking into ourselves. Meaning that our life matters and that we are to have what Jesus calls, abundant life. This is not the health and wealth gospel that claims that we deserve certain blessings because we are Christians. It is about experiencing peace and joy, despite the circumstances that are going on around us. Jude tells us to keep ourselves in the love of God. Isn’t the basic human need just to be loved? Yes we find love in human relationships, but people fail us. God’s love will never fail us. We can rest in God’s love, confident that it will never fail. This reminds me of another passage from Paul, in the same chapter as his word in the Spirit and prayer.

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

That is something that can provide a peace that no other source can provide. Jude also speaks of looking forward to the mercy of Jesus Christ. This is about hope. Hope is the confidence that what we see now is not the final word but something better is coming. Jesus is coming. We don’t know when. It may be long after we die. But Jesus is coming and when he does, everything will be made right. We have a solid foundation for hope.

Out to Others

I have heard people describe Christianity as being a personal relationship with God. There is some truth in that, but it neglects our relationship with others. It was never meant to be about just me and God. 

Jude tells us to look forward to the mercy of Jesus but then have mercy on others. Yes, he does have warnings about being careful toward those who can make us stumble, but it is in the context of reaching out to those who are struggling. Jude is speaking specifically about struggles in the faith but it can beyond that.

I have been very interested in research on those who have left the church and have left the faith. One of the reasons that has been voiced is that the church is not a safe place to ask hard questions. As soon as someone asks a question, it is shut down or is labelled as heresy. I will admit that I had my questions shot down in the past, not with well thought out responses, but with “we don’t talk about that.” 

I will say that for as long as I am the pastor here, I will encourage a culture of safety and of curiosity. There is no question that is off limits. 

When we see people struggling, we are not to watch passively. But active help doesn’t mean enforcing our opinions. That kind of “help” never changes anything other than driving the person away. We must focus on love, compassion, listening and prayer. What Jude wants us to see here is that we are all in this together.

Conclusion

What does it mean to be a Christian? It is about both being and doing. Being a Christian is our identity in Christ. But it includes that which we do. Jude helps us to understand what we are to do. We are to look up to God. We are to look in to ourselves. We are to look out to others. If you think of being a Christian as sitting on a three legged stool, it does not take much to understand what would happen if we remove one of the legs of the stool. Two legs is not sufficient. That doesn’t stop people from trying it. But don’t! Keep these three aspects of the faith in balance and we can live the healthy Christian life.

Introduction

What were the most theologically significant events in Jesus’ life? That’s easy, just follow the holidays. What are the two biggest holidays for the Christian Church? Christmas and Easter, representing Jesus’ birth and his death and resurrection. Those are the events we really need to know. But what about the ascension? The ascension? What is that? It is the day that Jesus returned to heaven.

Not only is that day theologically important, it does have its own feast day. It is called the Feast of Ascension or Ascension Day. While Baptists don’t tend to make a big deal of it, traditionally it has been an important day. In fact it is very likely that Ascension Day was celebrated before people started celebrating Christmas.

Ascension Day is normally celebrated forty days after Easter, because according to Acts, Jesus spent forty days on earth post-resurrection before returning to heaven. Ascension Day was actually two days ago but many churches, at least those that recognize it, celebrate it on the Sunday after. Which is today.

I don’t normally feel the need to preach an Ascension Day sermon but today I am wrapping up a series on the Gospel of Luke that I started over four years ago. And Luke ends his Gospel with the description of the Ascension, an event I have always found interesting and overlooked. 

The Ascension

The ascension is extremely important, I would say almost as important as the death and resurrection. And yet we rarely talk about it, at least in Protestant circles. Why is that?

The ascension is only described in two books of the Bible and both of them written by Luke. I would suggest that it is referenced in other books but it is only Luke that describes the actual event.

That is not to say that Matthew, Mark and John didn’t believe in the ascension. These Gospels were written some time between twenty and sixty years after the events. But you don’t get the impression that they saw the possibility that any of their readers could just bump into the risen Jesus, as he was still just hanging around Jerusalem. The assumption is that he is gone. And the Apostle Paul, when he describes his encounter with the risen Jesus after the ascension, comments that it was a unique experience because of its timing. Jesus was not still around in the way he was, even for those forty days after his resurrection.

We also see in the Gospels that Jesus often predicted his second coming. He would say “And when the Son of Man comes” and by that he meant himself, that would require that he be gone. If we were having an hour long conversation and in the middle of it I blurted “I’m back!” you would be surprised because I hadn’t gone away. The fact that Jesus is described as coming back at some time requires that Jesus would leave before that event. That is the ascension.

Luke doesn’t give much detail about what happened. He simply says that Jesus was carried up into heaven. What does that mean? If we had a high powered drone that could travel through space, what would it have seen? Imagine that Jesus, after leaving our atmosphere, was able to travel at the speed of light. He would have travelled approximately 2000 light years by now. There is a planet called Einstein’s planet, a planet bigger than Jupiter, that orbits the star Cygnus. It is about 2000 light years away, and theoretically Jesus could just be arriving there.

Except that’s not what we believe. Jesus is not still flying through space, he is at the right hand of the Father. 

So what actually happened? We must remember that heaven has at least two meanings. One is the sky and one is the place where God is. Some ancients probably thought they were the same place. So Jesus did rise into the sky, but at some point he shifted into the realm where God dwells. This is not a planet on our universe, but an entirely different dimension. The disciples may have thought it was just beyond the clouds but it is both farther and nearer than that.

What Does It Mean?

This is all very interesting but at some point we have to ask what this means. What actually is going on here? I have attended quite a few rock concerts in my life. At some point in the concert, it seems to end, the band says goodbye and they leave the stage. It looks like it is over. But we all know that it isn’t over. They will just stay backstage for a few minutes while we stand and clap and shout the name of the band. Then, as was already planned, the band comes out and plays a few more songs as their encore.

Is that was the ascension is all about? Is it about Jesus going back stage for a couple thousand years before he comes out and performs his encore? His return is important but I don’t think that is all that is going on.

We are not given a lot of details but it looks as if Jesus’ ministry is still continuing, just in a different form. When Stephen is being killed for his faith in the book of Acts, he sees a vision of Jesus in heaven. Jesus is standing at the right hand of God. Standing not sitting. If his work was done, we would expect him to be sitting but he is standing. Jesus still had some work to do. In 1 John, we are told a bit more about the ongoing ministry of Jesus. We are told he is our advocate with the Father. We don’t fully know what that means but it looks like Jesus is still active.

And we can pray to Jesus as well. Sometimes people say that the only option for prayer is to pray to the Father in the name of the Son by the power of the Spirit. That is a fine formula but there are examples in the New Testament of people praying to Jesus. Plus praying in the name of Jesus doesn’t mean tagging “in Jesus name” on the end of the prayer. It presumes a more active role for Jesus. Finally, if the Son is just as much God as the Father, why couldn’t we pray to Jesus?

Basically, the picture we are given is that we have a good friend on the inside and he is actively working on our behalf. This is good news, especially in these troubled times.

Conclusion

What in the world, or what out of the world, is Jesus doing right now? Is Jesus on vacation? Did he find his thirty-three years on earth so exhausting that he needs a couple thousand years of rest? Not likely.

The best explanation that I can give, is something that many people during this pandemic can identify with. Jesus is basically working from home right now. He is in heaven at the right of the Father, but he is working and not resting. He can’t fully understand what he is doing, but he is working on our behalf. 

One day it will be time for him to stop working from home and go back to the office. The office is planet earth. He will return and begin the next chapter of his ministry. 

The ascension of Jesus Christ is important and we need to give it the due it deserves. Jesus in heaven provides blessing for us beyond what we can imagine.

Introduction

As many of you know, I am a chaplain in the Canadian Armed Forces reserves. I have long been interested in the military and their way of doing things. I even see a number of intersections with the military and the church. I don’t think I am too far off the track, as there are many military metaphors in the Bible, including in Paul’s letters. I think there was a reason why William Booth created a Christian organization called the Salvation Army.

One of the things that I find interesting about the military is about how they get things done, especially their use of orders. What does a general say to those under them when they want to get something done? Do you think they just send out a message, “Go and do some army stuff.” That would not be very effective.

There is actually a very organized way of doing orders in the military. I am not going into the details of all the parts, but I do want to share what I consider to be the two most important parts: the commander’s intent and the desired end state. Let me give an example. In the Baptist church, the pastor definitely doesn’t give orders. But if I did, this is how I would go about in terms of our support of the food bank. My intent would be that we would be actively supporting our local food bank. The end state that I would like to see is that by the time everything is done, we would have collected a certain amount of food and money. How that happens is not necessarily my concern. I would just want to know that my intent was turned into the desired end state. But again, as a Baptist pastor, I do not give orders.

But Jesus does give orders. What we are going to look at is what is called the Great Commission. This is slightly different from the more familiar version in Matthew. 

In terms of what we have been saying, the commander’s intent in the Great Commission is that the gospel would be preached widely. The desired end state is that every follower of Jesus would fulfill their role of being his witnesses. Now let’s take a closer look.

What

So as followers of Jesus, we are expected to share the message of the gospel. But to do that, we need to know what the actual content of that message is. I’m surprised at how much misunderstanding there is when it comes to the nature of the gospel. Three parts are given to us in this passage regarding the message we are to share.

Many Christians would define the gospels as Jesus dying for our sins. But that is not where Jesus starts in his description of the message. In fact he starts where we might not expect. He talks about the law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms. What is that? Those are the three categories that the Jews used to describe what we call the Old Testament. I thought Jesus was about the New Testament and not the Old? The point that Jesus is making is that everything in the Old Testament was moving toward Jesus. The appearance of Jesus was not a last minute attempt to fix a sudden problem. If we look closely, we can see all sorts of hints that God had been planning this for a long time. This reminds us that God is the God of history, God is in control in ways we can’t understand. By remembering that this is where salvation army has been leading, we see the activity of Jesus in a fresh way.

The next part of the message is about the death and resurrection of Jesus. The death and resurrection of Jesus. Remember what many people think is the gospel, that Jesus died for our sins. That’s fine as far as it goes but it also includes the resurrection. A number of years ago I was in a leadership training program and we had to preach a five minute evangelistic sermon. The hardest job the instructors had was to get people to preach both the death and the resurrection. Everyone wanted to preach the cross! But of you think about it, we would have no idea if Jesus’ death did anything if he didn’t rise from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus must be included in the message.

So far we have looked at what God has done. But part of the message is how people need to respond. Another part of the message is the call to repentance. The gospel is not a history lesson, filling in facts about what God has done in the present. The gospel includes our need to repent. When Jesus first started his ministry, Mark tells us that he preached the gospel. Obviously that gospel didn’t include his death in resurrection, but it did include a call to repent and to believe. But what does it mean to repent? For some people, repentance is about praying what’s called “the sinner’s prayer.” The problem with this is that type of prayer has really been around since the revivalism in the last couple of centuries. It is something God uses, but you won’t find it in the Bible. Is repentance about feeling really sorry about some bad thing we did? It can include feelings of regret but it is not about emotions. This is how I see repentance and believing. You are driving in the wrong direction in your car. You realize that the direction you are going is not going to get you to your desired destination. Repentance is slowing down and doing a u-turn. Believing is putting your foot down on the accelerator and going in the right direction.

This is our message, that God has been at work all through human history, the Jesus died and rose again and that people are called to repent.

How

That is the what of the message but what about the how? It is not about methodology. Some people are convinced that their methodology is the right way. It is all about door knocking and handing out tracts. It is all about feeding the poor. It is all about medical missions overseas. All of those can be good, but I don’t think Jesus has a preference for the method, as long as it is done ethically. But that doesn’t mean that Jesus has no thoughts on the how.

Jesus tells his disciples that he is sending them. In other words, it is not about minding our own business and hoping someone approaches us. We are to be sent. The church is meant to be apostolic, with apostle meaning “sent one.” What does that look like? It could mean international missions, but probably not for most of us. We want to know where we are sent to, but our first question should be where we are sent from. We are sent from the gathering of the believers. But that’s not how we want it. What we want is for people to come into our church building and hear the message that is preached inside. But what Jesus wants is for us to go out from the gathering. We are to be Christians not just at 57 Queen St but everywhere we are. It is ironic that I am preaching this at a time when we can’t gather physically together and we are forced to be the church in our own neighbourhoods. It seems to be a rather apostolic situation that we are in.

Here is the other part of the how. We are to do this in the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus tells the disciples to stay in Jerusalem until they receive the power of the Spirit. We don’t have to wait for that event as the Spirit has already been given to the church. When it comes to the Spirit and sharing the gospel, we often think of the boldness to share beyond our comfort zones. That is part of it but there are other ways the Spirit helps us. Sometimes the Spirit helps me to keep my mouth shut. How does that help? Sometimes our words are more hurtful than helpful. We are provoked by a statement and we want to respond strongly but the Holy Spirit may prompt us to shut our mouth. I have had numerous statements make it right up my throat and then die as I was convicted to keep them to myself. The point of all this is that Spirit helps us in all ways, in what to say and what not to say.

Conclusion

We have been given our orders. The commander’s intent is that the gospel is shared widely. The end state is that followers of Jesus will be his witnesses in the world. We are given a lot of latitude as to how we do this. We need to keep the message correct. God has always been at work in the world and scripture testifies to this. Jesus both died and rose from the dead. The response to this message is not just mental assent but repentance. The how is to go. It is not to stay in our holy huddle and hope some good comes. We are sent ones. We are an apostolic church. And God does not leave us unprepared. We are empowered by the Holy Spirit. How we witness for Jesus will look different for all of us. But doing it is our Great Commission.

Introduction

I want you to imagine that the risen Jesus was coming to visit you. Not a dream or a vision, but appearing to you physically. What would you do to prepare yourself? I suspect that one of the things that you would want to do is to get ready to listen. I doubt that you would be playing on your phone or doing housework as Jesus began to talk. You would especially want to hear those first words, assuming that Jesus wouldn’t waste any words. What would be the first things he said to you? Would you write them down? Record them on your phone? You definitely would take them to heart as this was a special moment.

For us, this is just imagination. But for another group of disciples two thousand years ago, this was reality. Jesus did appear to them physically and he spoke words to them. “Peace be with you.” But what did he mean by that? Was it just a generic greeting? Like when we see someone and say, “How are you doing?” Most of the time we are not seeking information about their quality of life, we are just being polite. Was Jesus just being polite? Or was he really offering peace to the disciples? And what would that even look like? That is what we are going to take a look at.

Peace For the Disciples

Let’s situate ourselves for a moment. At this point in the story, there had been rumours about the resurrection. Some women had claimed to have received a message from angels that Jesus was alive. And then Jesus began to appear personally, first to Simon Peter and then to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Things were getting real.

Now Jesus was appearing to the Eleven. His first words to them were “Peace be with you.” But what did that mean? Jesus never wasted his words, so it is unlikely that it is just a greeting. He probably was offering peace. But why and how?

The immediate need for the disciples was that they were scared seeing a man who had just been dead. Imagine if one of your close friends who had died suddenly showed up at your house. You would be rattled. The disciples feared he was, and pardon the expression, a holy ghost. So perhaps Jesus was saying “Peace be with you” to calm them down, helping them not to panic. We do see that Jesus reassured them that he was no ghost. He had a physical body, one that was even able to consume food. By the way, this is an important passage for us. The New Testament tells us that at the resurrection, we will receive bodies like Jesus, and this tells us that our bodies will be physical and not just spirits, and that we will even be able to eat. But is this all Jesus was interested in, to calm a momentary panic?

The truth is that the disciples would quickly realize that Jesus was not a ghost but their need for peace would not disappear. The resurrection of Jesus was the start of a new chapter, not just for them, but for the entire human race. They would need the peace of Christ.

The concept of peace is extremely important in Luke’s Gospel. In fact the word peace appears in Luke more than twice as often as all the other Gospels combined. This is an important them and it is not just about being afraid of ghosts.

What do you think of when you think of a peaceful life? Perhaps relaxing on a deck at a cottage far away from civilization, the only noises are the sounds of nature. That sounds wonderful but that is not the biblical concept of peace. Peace in Hebrew is shalom and it refers more to wholeness and it does not depend on the circumstances around us.

Think about what the future held for these eleven disciples. Persecution, arrest, prejudice, hatred, hardship, and ultimately martyrdom. And yet Jesus’ words, “Peace be with you” still stand. How? Because of the resurrection. In the resurrection, Jesus had defeated death. Paul quotes the Old Testament in mocking death, “Where, O death, is your victory?

    Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55). The resurrection of Jesus had created a new peace that could not be destroyed by physical circumstances. It was this peace that gave the disciples the strength to die the martyr’s death.

Peace For Today

Has life gotten any easier in the past two thousand years? Yes our technology and medical knowledge has grown exponentially. But there has been a price. Imagine two thousand years ago if a disease broke out in Wuhan province in China. The people living then in North America would not have known. It is possible that even people in the Roman Empire would not have known. Technology connects us in a way that everything everywhere affects everyone. It is not that life is better or worse, it is just different.

We are in the midst of a pandemic. People fear catching the virus. People fear losing their jobs. People fear a wider economic collapse. We need peace. Eventually this pandemic will be over and we will be in the new normal, whatever that may look like. But relationships will still break down. People will receive scary medical diagnosis. People will struggle with mental illness and addiction. We will still need peace.

Jesus walks into the midst of us, whatever our circumstances, and says “Peace be with you.” And he means it. He is not just being polite. He is offering peace. He is offering shalom. 

The peace might not look how we expect. It may not include a radical change in circumstances. But it will be the same kind of peace he offered the Eleven. It will be peace that will be closely connected to his resurrection and his victory over death. It is very much like the old song, “Because he lives, I can face tomorrow.” Not because my life has gotten easier or more pleasant. Because he lives. The Eleven went through some scary times and so will we. But Jesus Christ is risen from the dead and he offers peace. It is ours for the taking.

Conclusion

I would never want to dismiss the emotions that we face when things are rough. The Bible doesn’t condemn those emotions, in fact it takes those feelings and turns them into Psalms. Even Jesus felt those emotions in the garden of Gethsemane the night before his crucifixion. All I am saying is that despair doesn’t get the final word. The final word is peace.

Jesus appeared to a group of scared and confused disciples. He didn’t make their lives any easier. In fact, he made their lives infinitely more complicated. But Jesus did give them peace.

That same Jesus gives us peace in the midst of our circumstances. Whether it is a worldwide pandemic or just a really bad day, Jesus offers peace. That peace is based in the resurrection. The resurrection that Jesus has already experienced and the resurrection he will one day share with us.

Introduction

How did you come to know Jesus? Was it one big moment of coming to understand Jesus or was it a long process? I was once stopped by some evangelists who wanted to check to see if I was really a Christian. They asked how I became a Christian. I responded that it was a long process and they quickly interrupted me by saying it is not a process, it is one moment of conversion. Unless you can name the date and time of your conversion, you are not a Christian. 

The truth is that there are examples of that in the Bible of such conversions. Paul is one example. He was travelling along the Road to Damascus and Jesus was revealed to him and there was a big change that happened all at once. Even then, I would say there was a journey for Paul of knowing Jesus more throughout his life.

But there is another road that is described for us by Luke and that is the road to Emmaus. This was a very different experience than the road to Damascus, one that you may be able to identify with.

The Two Disciples

The story begins with two disciples, one named Cleopas and one left unnamed. They were travelling from Jerusalem to Emmaus. For a long time, I never saw the significance of this. Why were they travelling from Jerusalem to Emmaus? It was because they believed that the story of Jesus was at an end and there was no point remaining there. But even with that choice, they still were discussing the recent events. As they were talking, another person came along side them and joined in the conversation. We know that person to be Jesus but they didn’t know that yet. Why didn’t they know? Some people have thought it was become they were overcome with grief. Others that they just didn’t happen to look up. But the passage actually says they were kept from recognizing Jesus. I think that their sight was supernaturally adjusted to match their attitude of their heart. They were not ready to see Jesus. They explained to Jesus the recent events concerning their master, not realizing they were speaking to their master. There is a couple of things that we should notice about their account. They say they “had hoped” that Jesus was the Redeemer. This suggests that they no longer had that hope. And this even though they had the testimony of the women that Jesus was alive. That was not enough to reignite their hope.

That is when Jesus steps in and leads them in their journey, their real journey of faith. He does two things to reveal himself to them. The first is that he takes them through the Scriptures. They basically have a Bible study on the road, a Bible study specifically about how the whole Old Testament pointed to Jesus. This brought them closer to knowing Jesus, they didn’t want him to leave them after they reached their destination. Jesus joined them and then they participated in something important, the breaking of bread. Jesus took the bread, gave thanks and broke it. It was at that point that the disciples recognized Jesus.

What was it in the breaking of bread that caused them to recognize Jesus? The key is found Luke 9 and the feeding of the five thousand. In that passage, Luke uses the same phrase, that Jesus took the bread, gave thanks and broke it. What happened right after that? The next passage is when Jesus asks the disciples who they say he is. Peter confesses that Jesus is “God’s Messiah.” That is the first recognition by a human of who Jesus is. Immediately after that is the story of the transfiguration, where Jesus is revealed in his glorified state. In Luke 9, the breaking of bread leads to the revelation of Jesus. Now in Luke 24, the same thing is replayed on a different scale. Jesus was revealed in the break of bread. And what did they do next? They went back to Jerusalem to tell the rest of the disciples what had happened. Hope had been reborn.

Our Discipleship

How do we get to know Jesus? What are the means by which Jesus reveals himself to us? Depending on who you ask, you will get different answers. Some will tell you that it is only in the Bible that we find Jesus. I recently heard a Christian reject stories of people in other countries finding Jesus through dreams because God only uses the Bible. There are other Christians who will emphasize the role of personal experience. The Bible only gives you head knowledge, what you really need is a personal experience of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit.

What this story tells us is that God uses both. The disciples on the road to Emmaus were taken through the Scriptures and they experienced Jesus through the breaking of bread. It is not an either/or situation.

This is how I came to know Jesus. As I told those evangelists, it was a process over many years. Part of that process was being raised in the church as a young person. Part of it was recognizing God in all of creation. Part of it was talking to Christians. Part of it was reading through the Bible for myself for the first time. Part of it was through experiencing very dramatic answers to prayer. Was it a head thing or a heart thing? It was both. And it took a long time. In fact I would say that I am still on that journey. I continue to study the Bible and I continue to experience Jesus through life circumstances.

What about you? Where are you on your Emmaus journey? Are you still trying to figure out this Jesus? That’s okay. The two disciples began their journey by walking in the opposite direction of Jesus. Have you come to the conclusion that Jesus is special in some way, but are not sure how? That’s good as well. Have you believed that Jesus died for you and that he rose again but are still trying to figure how Jesus fits in everyday life? Join the club. 

Jesus reveals himself to us through the Word and through experience. Study the Scriptures and watch for what Jesus is doing in your life.

Conclusion

I love the story about the Emmaus road. I love it because it is not about super-Christians but is about normal people trying to figure out faith in a confusing world. I especially love it because it shows Jesus travelling along with them, meeting them where they were at, slowly showing himself to them.

We all have to take the road to Emmaus. The journey is longer for some of us than others. What matters is that we don’t take the journey alone. Jesus walks with us and one day we will see Jesus as he really is.   

Introduction

Have you ever heard that saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is”? This is a good general rule of thumb. For example, if you receive an email saying that someone from another country, who you don’t know, has left you one million dollars, you should be suspicious. Would it be good if a stranger gave a million dollars? Sure. Is it likely to happen? Not really. It is good for us to have a critical mind, especially in this world where we receive a constant stream of offers by email or phone. It probably is too good to be true.

But that doesn’t mean that everything that sounds really good is not true. It is possible for something to be good and true. We need to train ourselves to distinguish between the false and the true. This is especially true when it comes to the story of the resurrection of Jesus. We tell people that Jesus died on a cross, which is pretty believable, but that he also rose from the dead on the third day. How do we expect them to respond? It kind of sounds too good to be true. And yet it is true. Let’s take a look at the story.

The Message of the Women

We are going to back to the story and look at the experience of the first witnesses of the resurrection. Jesus had been crucified and had died on that cross. It must have been a devastating to his disciples. They had put all their hopes on Jesus and now he was dead. Jesus died on a Friday. There was nothing that could be done on Saturday because that was the Sabbath and Jews were forbidden to work. So this brings us to Sunday morning. Remember that there were no funeral homes to prepare bodies and so everything rested on friends and family. 

When you think of disciples of Jesus, what image comes to mind? You probably think of some guy with a beard in a robe. But not all of Jesus’ disciples were men. This was radical as rabbis were expected to only have men as disciples. But these women were disciples. They followed Jesus, they learned from him and they were prepared for ministry by him. That is discipleship. Some of these women arrived at the tomb to prepare the body. What they found shocked them. The stone that blocked the entrance to the tomb had been moved away. Inside the tomb, there was no body. That would be hard enough but then two angels spoke to them, announcing Jesus was risen from the dead as he had promised. The women seem to believe the message. There is no hint of doubt, just the normal fear of being in the presence of the holy. This was not a message that they could keep to themselves, so they rushed back to the Eleven. These were the twelve disciples that were known as apostles, minus Judas who had betrayed Jesus. They explained that the tomb was empty and that Jesus was risen from the dead.

And the apostles didn’t believe the women. We think of this group as the elite of the larger groups of the disciples, how could they doubt? The angels had stated, as we know from reading the Gospels that Jesus had predicted that he would rise from the dead. Why wouldn’t they believe those words? The apostles did believe that Jesus would rise from the dead, just not yet. They believed that all of God’s people would rise on the last day and that then Jesus would rise with everyone else. But that day had not come. What about the third day references? Well Jesus was always saying something mysterious, it probably was some symbolic thing.

Peter at least was willing to go and check things out for himself. He ran to the tomb and saw that it was empty and that the linen that had wrapped Jesus’ body was just lying there. Did he believe at that point? Luke tells us that Peter wondered about what had happened. He still didn’t fully believe. And this is Peter, that Jesus made the rock of the church. We know that eventually the Eleven, including Peter, would believe. But at the moment, the resurrection of Jesus seemed too good to be true.

The Message of the Church

Bringing things to the present, let us think about the message of the Church. What is our message? Is it that you should try to be a good and nice person? Of course we should try to be that but that is not the message of the cross. Paul summarizes the gospels in this way: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4) Not just that Jesus died for our sins but that he also rose again. In fact when we look at Paul’s preaching, in Acts and his letters, sometimes he leaves out mention of the cross and just focuses on the resurrection. The resurrection was so central to Paul’s preaching that at one point, a Greek audience thought he was preaching about two gods, one called Jesus and one called the Resurrection. 

That is still the same message of the Church today. There is room for us to disagree about many doctrines but the one that must stay central is that Jesus rose from the dead.

If you asked people on the street if they believed that Jesus died on the cross, the majority of them would agree. If you asked those same people if Jesus really rose from the dead, that number would go down significantly. It seems, as we have said, too good to be true. Because if Jesus really rose from the dead, then Jesus was who he said he was, and he could share his resurrection with us. Hope is a dangerous thing. Will people dare to help?

We, as the Church, need to share the message of the resurrection. How will people respond? Some are going to struggle. I had many conversations with my dad where he would say, “When people die, they stay dead!” That was a stumbling block for him. If the women at the tomb had trouble convincing the Eleven who knew Jesus personally, how much more will people today struggle?

And yet this is the very message that we need to share. How do we share it? We do it through word and deed. In our conversations with people, as we talk about the things we believe, we need to share that we believe that Jesus rose from the dead. This is not a side issue for us, this is the gospel. Yes we believe that Jesus rose. Yes in this modern day with scientific advances, we still believe. But people need more than words. We need to live our life as if Jesus really rose. The resurrection of Jesus should transform how we live and die. The resurrection of Jesus changes everything. Even if others struggle with it, they should look at us and conclude that we really believe what we say we believe.

Conclusion

Jesus died on a cross for our sins. But he also rose again. It was women that first saw the empty tomb and passed the message on to others. Even the apostles struggled to believe. Is the resurrection of Jesus too good to be true? It is definitely good but it is also true. The resurrection of Jesus is not just a symbol to make us feel good. It is a fact of history. A fact that changes everything. We have been given this message to share with others. Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. 

Introduction

On the day that we call Palm Sunday, Jesus entered into Jerusalem. This is often called the triumphal entry because it looked like Jesus was at the height of his ministry. People were cheering, they were throwing their cloaks and waving their palm branches and it looked like some of them were ready to crown Jesus as king. If we didn’t know the rest of the story, we would think that Jesus was about to experience the best week of his like.

But we do know the rest of the story. We know that the road to Jerusalem was also the road to the cross. This is an example of seeing one thing on the surface but something different happening deeper down.

The same principle is true when we look at the cross. It is possible to see one thing when we look at the cross and yet there being a deeper meaning that not everyone sees. Let’s take a look.

What People Saw

I want you to transport yourself almost two thousand years ago into the past. There you are at Golgotha, the place of the skull where Jesus is being crucified. He was already nailed to the cross when you got there. Jesus’ body is battered and broken from the beating he received before he was even crucified. Things are looking pretty grim but it is only going to get worse.

It gets to be about noon. It should be the brightest time of the day as the sun is at its highest. But instead of it getting brighter, it is getting darker. The sun seems to fail and the place becomes dark, almost like light. This is no normal darkness. It looks like the powers of darkness are finally winning. Darkness is a universal symbol for evil. I’m a big fan of the Lord of the Rings. In the story, as the evil being Sauron is looking to become victorious over Middle-earth, darkness covers the land. It gets to the point that there is only a sliver of light at sunrise and sunset. It looks like something similar is happening in Jerusalem. The land has become dark because evil is about to win.

Suddenly you are transported to the Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple is much more than a place of worship. It is where heaven touches the earth. It is the place where God’s presence dwells so that it is the only location where sacrifices can be made. You are at the Holy of holies, the most holy spot, the place where only the high priest can be. Then you hear the sound of fabric ripping and you look up to see the curtain being ripped in two. Is this God’s punishment? Is God so angry for the crucifixion of his Son that he is cutting off all contact with humanity, removing his presence from the Temple. This looks terrible.

Then you are back at the cross. Jesus looks worst than he did before. His breathing has gotten more laboured. It takes every ounce of his strength to lift his body for that next breath. It won’t be long now. Then, somehow, Jesus gets the strength to say something. You listen carefully. “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Jesus has given up. Even Jesus could only fight the inevitable for so long. Jesus is dead.

Everything you have seen over this time from noon until three in the afternoon has been discouraging. The reign of darkness. The ripping of the current. Jesus giving up on the cross. How can anyone build a faith on this.

What Really Happened

Now let us return to those events and attempt to go deeper. Something was happening on the surface but perhaps there was more to the story.

We may think of darkness as being a sign of evil winning but it doesn’t have to be that way. In the Old Testament, most of the references to the sun failing and darkness appearing are about the Day of the Lord. What is the Day of the Lord? In the Old Testament it was acknowledged that things were not the way they were supposed to be. The right suffer and the wicked prosper. The Day of the Lord was to be the intervention of God into history. Theologians would call this an eschatological event. I’m not saying the crucifixion of Jesus was the Day of the Lord. The New Testament tells us that the Day of the Lord will be when Jesus returns. But the crucifixion of Jesus was the first stage of the Day of the Lord, the necessary first act. It was intervention by God to begin to deal with the evil in the world. Darkness may be scary for many of us, but from a biblical perspective it is also a sign of hope, a sign that God is acting in history to ultimately bring the destruction of evil.

Then we have the ripping of the curtain in the Temple. We already saw that the Temple was much more than our church buildings are today. It was the only place that one could truly worship and experience God’s presence. The ripping of an important item like the curtain could look bad. It could look like God turning his back on humanity. But it doesn’t have to be. This was not about God removing access to his presence but rather expanding access. No longer would people require the physical Temple to experience God. Now people would have direct access to the Father through Jesus. In many ways, Jesus is our Temple, he is Emmanuel, God with us. This is good news, literally. At this moment we are not able to meet physically together because of the current pandemic. We are watching or listening to the service online instead of meeting in the building. This is disappointing to us. We have a beautiful church building with amazing woodwork and stained glass windows. That is fine but our building has nothing to do with us connecting with God. You can be sitting in bed, wearing your pyjamas and still experience God as much as if you were sitting in a pew wearing your Sunday best. Why? Because of Jesus. Jesus gives us full access to god, anytime and anywhere.

What about Jesus giving up on the cross? First, we need to remember that Jesus didn’t try and survive the cross and failed. Jesus began his journey to Jerusalem with the full intention of giving his life for our sake. In terms of what he said on the cross, listen carefully to the words. “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Those are powerful last words and they are not words of defeat. What does it mean to commit his spirit. What Jesus was doing was handing over his life to the Father for safekeeping. It would be like us going for a long trip and handing our prized possession with our closest friend so that we would know it would be safe for us until we return. Jesus handed his life over to the Father but the Father was going to give it back to him on the third day. Jesus’ words were not of defeat but of complete trust.

Conclusion

If I had to sum up the message of Christianity, it would be that things are not what they seem. This is true of the Christmas story. It is true of Jesus’ ministry. It is true of the triumphal entry that we think of on Palm Sunday. It is especially true of Jesus on the cross. We read in the Apostle Paul’s letters that many struggled with the message of the Gospel. The reason was that a crucified Messiah just didn’t make sense. Being crucified was a clear indication of defeat and failure. And that is reasonable, at least at first glance. But when we look closer, we see that things are not as they seem. Through the foolishness of the cross, God’s wisdom was made manifest. When we look closer at the cross, we can see God’s plan and we can receive all of the blessings that go with it.

Introduction

In many ways, the current pandemic is happening at a terrible time. Not that there is ever a good time. But we are approaching Easter, the high point in the Christian calendar. COVID-19 is threatening to disrupt our Easter celebrations. None of us want that.

In another way, it couldn’t have come at a better time. People often ask about how God could allow suffering. The Christian answer is that God joins us in our suffering through the Son of God on the cross. Yes Jesus died for our sins but Jesus on the cross is also about entering into solidarity with our suffering. When we suffer, we look to the God who suffers with us.

What we are going to look at is the journey to the cross and Jesus’ experience on the cross before his death. This is done in front of different kinds of people and in their responses, we see the different ways we can respond to suffering.

Despair

After Jesus was condemned by the Romans, he was led to the place of his crucifixion. Jesus was so weak from his beatings that he required the help of a man named Simon to carry the cross. On that way Jesus encountered a group of women wailing and mourning. In one way, it is good that they were doing this. What was happening to Jesus was terrible. He was not just an innocent man, he was God incarnate. These women knew that this was wrong and so they passionately grieved this injustice. This is a good response if it is temporary.

The danger is that some people never get beyond the initial despair of the suffering. People get stuck. I experienced this a bit in my own life. Both of my parents are dead. My dad was sick for three years, he received treatment and he did far better than the doctors expected. We were prepared for his death. My mother, however, only learned that she had cancer a couple of weeks before she died. She moved in with us but was taken to the hospital after just one day and she never came out. Even years after her death, I would catch myself saying, “I’m not okay with this.” Things should have been different. I’m still working through some of my emotions about her death and that was eleven years ago. Grieving and mourning that things are not the way they are supposed to be is good but parking our mind in the place of despair is not healthy. During our current crisis, I can feel the pull toward despair. We should be concerned about the pandemic but we should fight against the long despair.

Mockery

The women were grieving what was happening to Jesus. Some of the other people had a different response. These people responded with mockery. Instead of having pity on Jesus, they sneered at him. This included both Roman soldiers and some of the Jews that were nearby. Crucifixion was a unique means of execution in that it was designed to be public. Part of the deterrent was not just the painful death but the humiliating nature of it. The Romans hoped that people would make fun of those who were dying. If that seems bizarre to us, we need to remember that it was not that long ago that whole communities would gather to watch an execution. One article I read said “An estimated 20,000 watched Rainey Bethea hang in 1936, in what turned out to be the last public execution in the U.S.” 

People still respond in a similar way. In many ways this is the flip-side of the previous response.   If despair is the turning inside of our strong emotions, mockery is the taking out of our emotions on other people. People may even react this way to protect themselves from those inward feelings.

Does this still happen today? Spend some time on social media during this current crisis. There are some pretty mean-spirited things being said. I’m not talking about those who make jokes about it. You can see that people are making biting comments that are intentional attacks on other people. My observations, both as a pastor and as a regular guy, is that a crisis will either bering out the best or the worst out of people. It is like that urge to take out our anger on someone else, even if they are undeserving, is just under the surface. When we are under pressure, it can feel good in the moment to hurt someone else. But in the end, it is not beneficial for anyone.

Calling Out to Jesus

In desperate situations, there is the temptation to take out our feelings on ourselves or on other people. But there is a third option and it is found in my favourite part of this passage.

Very often in Easter paintings, you will see a hill with three crosses. That is because Jesus was crucified with two criminals. One of the criminals mocked Jesus, just like the Roman guards and Jewish leaders did. But the other criminal, he had a different response. First he rebuked the other criminal for his comments, knowing that Jesus was an innocent man. Then the one criminal did something amazing. He called out to Jesus in faith. That may not seem strange since most of us have done the same thing. But this criminal saw Jesus at his lowest point. He saw Jesus nailed to a cross, soon to experience death. By calling out to Jesus in that state, that was a real act of faith. Listen carefully to what he said. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” There was no theology test. There was no opportunity to impress God with good works. It was simply a request, a pleading for Jesus to remember him in his kingdom. Remember the trial before Pilate and Herod and how they heard that Jesus was a king but didn’t believe it. This criminal, by speaking of the kingdom, is truly believing that Jesus is a king. A king on a cross but a king nonetheless. 

Look carefully at Jesus’ response. “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” The man calls upon Jesus and Jesus responds with grace. He asks no more of the man than that he join him in paradise. Paradise is a Persian word for garden and this is a reference to the Garden of Eden. Not that they go back to the physical Garden, but that they would go to a place where they could enjoy an Eden-like state. They would be back in the real presence of God.

During our crisis, we can fall into despair or we can attack other people. Or we could call upon Jesus. We acknowledge we are helpless in our own strength and fall upon the grace of Christ. If the criminal could have faith in Christ crucified, how much more can we have faith in Christ risen from the dead.

Conclusion

We will eventually get through this crisis. But there will be another one around the corner. It may not be global, like the Coronavirus, but something will come. How will we respond?

It is normal for us the grieve and mourn in difficult times. The danger is if we get stuck there. We may be tempted instead to take out our frustration on other people. We can mock people or make biting comments. That never helps. The criminal on the cross gives us the best response. Let’s just throw ourselves on Jesus’ mercy. We don’t have to have all the answers. I don’t think that the criminal had even a clue that Jesus would rise on the third day. But he did believe Jesus was a king and that he had a kingdom and he wanted to be included in that kingdom. That is enough for us as well. And remember, when we do that, paradise awaits.  

Please note the video and audio contain the entire service and not just the sermon.

Introduction

Last week we took a look at Jesus’ religious trial. There we saw that during his interrogation, it was revealed that Jesus was in fact the Messiah and the Son of God. This was important for the religious authorities to condemn Jesus. Now we are going to switch to Jesus’ criminal trial. This will include an interrogation by Pontius Pilate and Herod. In many ways this will be a different kind of trial. But in another way, it is similar. At this trial, we will see another dimension to Jesus’ identity: that he is king. That is not to say that either Pilate or Herod will believe that, but even in their disbelief, the truth is revealed. So let us continue the story of Jesus on trial.

The King on Trial

We have already seen Jesus’ religious trial by the Sanhedrin. He was found guilty of blasphemy based on his claims to be the Messiah and even worse, the Son of God. Shouldn’t that be enough? The problem is that the Jews were under Roman occupation and one of the things that the Romans did was to revoke their right to impose capital punishment. Did they still sometimes execute people outside of Roman law? Yes, but this was during the Passover with Jerusalem full of pilgrims. They were not prepared to take the chance.

What they needed to do was to hand Jesus to the Romans and let them execute Jesus. The problem was that the Romans didn’t care about Jewish theological disputes. They were used to Pharisees and Sadducees bickering with each other, who cares if there was another group entering the debate? 

The religious leaders knew this and that is why they worded their accusation in a specific way. Jesus was not just a religious messiah, he was a self-proclaimed king. Now there were kings of certain peoples within the Roman Empire. But each of those kings received their title and authority from Caesar. Anyone who tried to be a king outside of imperial permission was a rebel and a traitor. 

During this trial, Jesus acknowledges that he is the king of the Jews. Even so, Pilate was not ready to act on this. We see here not compassion but weakness of Pilate’s character. He was afraid of a Jewish revolt and he would rather just release Jesus. Then Pilate discovers that Jesus is from Galilee and not Judea. Pilate ruled Judea but Herod had jurisdiction over Galilee and Herod happened to be in town. This was Pilate’s chance to pass on responsibility.

Remember that the accusation is that Jesus king of the Jews. This Herod is the son of Herod Great, the one who had tried to kill Jesus as a baby. Herod the Great was given the title king of the Jews by Caesar. This Herod, while having political power over Galilee, was not given the title king by Caesar. We find that Jesus gives vague responses to the Sanhedrin and Pilate but he says nothing to Herod. Herod has Jesus dressed up as a king, mocked and beaten. Then Jesus is sent back to Pilate.

Pilate is still not interested in executing Jesus. He does have a man named Barabbas, who is guilty of insurrection and deserves death. Ironically, Barabbas is Aramaic for son of the father. Yet the crowd demands that Jesus be crucified. We are meant to see here not that the whole city was against Jesus but that the religious leaders were inciting them. Pilate didn’t fear the Sanhedrin but he did fear a popular riot. That’s the kind of thing that would get Pilate fired. So Pilate released Barabbas and handed over the true Son of the Father to be executed. Jesus is found guilty as the king of the Jews and that is the sign that would be put above his cross.

The King of Our Life

What does this mean for us, other than out of curiosity of the details of Jesus’ trial? This is actually very important, specifically Jesus’ role as king. Before the church had the Nicene Creed or even the Apostles Creed, it had a very simple creed: Jesus is Lord. That may seem rather simple and yet that creed is what got a lot of Christians into trouble. In general, the Romans didn’t care about the religious beliefs of the people in the Empire. You could believe pretty much whatever you wanted. But along with everything else, you had to at least confess Caesar as Lord. The problem with Christians saying that Jesus was Lord is that they were saying at the same time that Caesar was not Lord. That was the ultimate act of disloyalty and it is what led to persecution. The Romans and the Christians agreed that only one could sit on the throne. They just disagreed on who was sitting on that throne.

This is very relevant for us. As Canadians, we have a Queen but her role is much different than that of Caesar. We may respect her but we do not live our lives in obedience to her. But that is not to say that there is not a game of thrones. There is one throne in our life and there are competing claimants. There is money, relationships, influence, power, pleasure and many more. They are always fighting to sit on that throne. But we have the same creed as those early Christians. Jesus is Lord. Jesus is King. Jesus is not interested in sharing the throne. He is either on it or off it. Which is it?

This is not a popular message. We value our freedom and autonomy. We don’t want to submit to anyone. And yet this is exactly what is demanded of us as followers of Jesus. Jesus is not just Saviour, he is Lord and Saviour.

What if we realize that we are struggling with letting Jesus have the throne? Realizing it is the first step. Look at the twelve apostles and you will see that they struggled as well. This is not the time for condemnation, it is the time for surrender.

Once we do this, we realize that Jesus is not a brutal dictator but is a benevolent monarch. His lordship leads us to peace and joy. The things that Jesus wants for us are only for our own benefit.

Conclusion

At his trial, Jesus was revealed as King, as well as Messiah and Son of God. Jesus is the King of the Jews. He is also King of the Christians. Jesus is King whether we acknowledge it or not. But it goes so much better for us when we submit to his lordship. What a friend we have in Jesus and that Jesus is King. We can be friends with the King. Why wouldn’t we want that? Pilate and Herod did not respond in faith to Jesus as King. How do we respond?

Introduction

As a young person, I loved comic books. For quite a while I had a number of thousand of comics. I started by reading army comics but eventually moved onto superheroes. While I no longer collect comics, I still enjoy superhero movies.

If you pay attention to these characters, you will realize that they are not all the same. Take for example, two of the most popular superheroes: Batman and Superman. These two are very different. The differences go beyond one having superpowers and the other not. It goes down to their identity. 

For those not familiar, Batman’s real name is Bruce Wayne. There was nothing about him that would demand that he would become the Batman. But after witnessing his parents’ murder, he trained and took on the identity of Batman. Bruce Wayne chose to become Batman.

Superman is different. What is Superman’s real name? That’s complicated. He was born Kal-El on the planet Krypton but was sent to Earth when his home planet exploded. He was raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent and became known as Clark Kent. Superman is both Kal-El and Clark Kent in a way different from Bruce Wayne’s secret identity. Superman is both alien superhero and human reporter. He doesn’t pretend to be something he is not.

What does this have to do with Jesus? Jesus also had a secret identity. It was one they kept to himself for most of his earthly ministry. In fact when the demons would try to reveal his identity, he would shut them up. But that identity could not be kept secret forever. The truth came out at his trial.

The Son of God on Trial

As followers of Jesus, we probably have a pretty good idea of who Jesus was and is. When we call ourselves Christians, we are affirming that Jesus was the Christ or the Anointed One. But things were not so simple during his earthly ministry. Jesus didn’t have business cards printed with the job title of “Messiah and Son of God.” In fact, when Jesus referred to himself as anything, it was as “the Son of Man.” The Son of Man had a double meaning. It was a reference to a prophecy in Daniel that spoke of one like a son of man who was given authority by the Ancient of Days. It had a messianic meaning. But Son of Man also meant just human being. So it was safe for Jesus to use. His followers would gradually discover that he was the Son of Man of Daniel but those who did not know him, would see him as another human being. Every once in a while, there would be someone or something that knew who Jesus really was. Jesus actively sought to guard his secret identity. But now Jesus was on trial.

There were actually two trials. One was a religious trial and the other the criminal trial. The Romans would charge him with sedition, that is being a political threat to Rome’s rule. The religious leaders were charging Jesus with blasphemy. But to do this, they had to establish what Jesus was claiming about himself. In the trial, Jesus was directly asked about who he was.

First he was asked if he was the messiah, another world for Christ or Anointed One. Jesus knew that they were not asking out of a desire to know the truth. They were looking for a charge by which they could condemn him. He called them on their disbelief and then he referred to Psalm 110, which was a messianic Psalm. “The Lord says to my lord: Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” They would have understood that reference. This Psalm refers to two lords. One is the Lord, the God of Israel. Jesus identified himself with the other lord, which by this time was understood as more than just another human leader. So they asked Jesus if he was the Son of God, a much more serious charge than just the Messiah. Jesus gives a strange answer. He doesn’t want to play their game but he is not going to deny who he is either. So when they ask if he is the Son of God, something they don’t believe, Jesus suggests that they are actually confessing his true identity. This is similar to something the Apostle Paul would say later that all people will eventually confess Jesus, whether in belief or disbelief.

The Son of God For Us

Some people may have believed that Jesus was only a human teacher that some interesting things to say. But now the secret was out. Clark Kent had taken off his glasses and the truth was revealed. But what does that mean for us?

It would be very easy for us to overlook this passage of the religious trial and only focus on Jesus before Pilate. But what happens here is crucial for us to understand everything that would happen next, especially Jesus’ death on the cross.

What if Jesus was only Clark Kent? What if Jesus was just a human being? We would see him as an innocent man that was unjustly accused of a crime. We would look at him and pity him. We would see this as a tragedy that should never have happened. We might even question why God would allow this?

This is why Muslims deny that Jesus was crucified. They see Jesus as a righteous man and that God rescued him from the cross because of how good Jesus was. God would not allow such an act of injustice to a great prophet.

But this passage points us in a different direction. While Jesus was human and there was injustice here, there was more to the story. Jesus was both Clark Kent and Kal-El. Jesus was both human and divine. Jesus was the Son of Man, he was the Messiah, he was the Son of God. While the religious leaders thought they were in control, they were mistaken. God was intervening on behalf of the human race. A sacrifice was about to made that could only be done by one who was both human God. Jesus was about to bridge the divide between God and humanity by his death on the cross. The powers of death and sin were about to be defeated. And that could only take place because of who Jesus was.

What Jesus says to the religious leaders here moves the cross from being a meaningless to tragedy to being the means of salvation.

Conclusion

There are those who believe that Jesus is like Batman, that he was a normal human who was thrust into special circumstances and chose to take on a role. Jesus much more like Superman, and not just in the sense of power. When most people look at Clark Kent, they see the mild mannered reporter who was raised in Smallville, Kanas. But there is much more to Kent, he is a strange visitor from another planet. When people looked at Jesus, they saw the carpenter from Nazareth. But there was more than meets the eye. Jesus was also the Messiah and Son of God. It was because of this secret identity that Jesus could accomplish what he did on the cross. If Jesus wasn’t who he said he was, then the cross means nothing and we are lost. But Jesus was who he said he was and that means that the enemy has been defeated.

Introduction

It has been pretty rare for me to ever get first place in any competition. This was especially true in school when it came to any physical activity. I was a pretty scrawny kid. We were doing a number of different exercises one day in gym class and they were ranking how each student did. Not surprisingly, I was near the bottom in every category. Then it was time for the flexed arm hang. I was nervous because I didn’t have great arm muscles. What I didn’t realize was that I didn’t need much muscle because I was so skinny. I far surpassed every other student and then just chose to let go because I was bored. It was nice to finally come in first for something.

What about the apostles? If there was a competition for the top apostle, who would it be? For many of the apostles, all we have is a name. Among the twelve, there was a top three: Peter, James and John. Jesus invited them to be with him in some of the special moments of his ministry. I suspect that if we had to pick a top candidate, many of us would go for Peter. That would make sense. His original name was Simon, but Jesus renamed him Peter, which means rock, after he was the first human to recognize Jesus’ true messianic identity.

Peter lived up to this name as God used him ins some unique ways. It was Peter who preached at Pentecost, the birthday of the church, where the Spirit was poured out and three thousand people believed and were baptized. God also chose Peter to be the one to preach to Cornelius, which was the official extending of the church to the Gentiles. Considering the vast majority of the church today is Gentile, that was a major event.

That is not to say that Peter was perfect. He said some stupid things from time to time. But what we are going to look at today is more than the slip of the tongue. This is a story about the time that Peter really messed up.

Peter Denies Jesus

At this point in the story, Jesus has been betrayed by Judas and has been arrested. They all knew what this could mean and even the danger to the disciples by extension. But Peter was Jesus’ good friend and he couldn’t just sit back. So instead of going into hiding, Peter began to follow what was happening, but at a distance. He wanted to know what was going to happen to Jesus. But waiting in the middle of the night is not the most comfortable activity. It gets cold at night. So Peter came together with some others to warm himself by the fire. One of the female servants recognized him as one of the people who had been with Jesus. Have you ever been a position where you were discovered and you have that sudden surge of panic? That’s what happened with Peter. So even though he would not be afraid of a servant girl, he quickly denied knowing Jesus. If this was all that happened, we could easily forgive Peter. All of us have been caught off guard and said the wrong thing in the moment. But some time later a man accused him of being with Jesus. Once again, Peter denied Jesus. Then another man kept insisting that since Peter was a Galilean, he must have been an associate of Jesus. Peter continued to deny that he knew Jesus. Just then the rooster crowed. And Peter remembered that Jesus had warned him that he would deny him three times before the rooster crowed. At that time they were moving Jesus from one place to another and their eyes met. Jesus had known exactly what had happened. Try to put yourself in Peter’s place. Imagine what he felt at that moment, knowing that he had denied Jesus not once but three times, and that Jesus knew about it. 

Why did Peter do this? There is no reason to suspect that Peter had any ill intent toward Jesus. The way he wept bitterly after this shows that he deeply regretted his actions. It is likely that it was simply a matter of self-preservation. He was scared enough about Jesus being arrested, he didn’t want to join him. He was afraid for his life and his survival instinct kicked in. Imagine if an armed person walked into this church and announced that anyone willing to deny Jesus were free to leave and that he would shoot the rest. While we may hope that we would stand strong, it would be hard.

We have recently looked at the betrayal by Judas. What is the difference between Judas and Peter? Both actions were terrible. Both probably felts some regret. But in Judas’ case that led to despair and his death. For Peter the regret led to eventual reconciliation with Jesus and a second chance to show his loyalty to Jesus. Tradition tells us that Peter eventually followed Jesus to the cross, although in case being crucified upside down.

We Deny Jesus 

There have been people throughout the generations who have had their faith put to the test. Some of them passed and some of them stumbled. This continues to be the case in many areas of the world. Being a Christian in the West costs us very little. For others it is a loss of family, loss of job or even a loss of life. Some have to make the same choice as Peter, whether to stand for Jesus or to keep themselves safe. For most of us that is not our experience.

But this passage is still relevant for us. It is still easy for us to be put in a situation where we can deny or stand with Jesus. This can happen in two ways.

One is that of active denial. It may not be as simple of being asked if we are a Christian, although it could be. Someone may ask what we do Sunday mornings and we could say family time instead of church. It may be acting like a non-Christian so that we don’t stand out as being different. I can share a personal example. When I first came back to personal faith, I gave up drinking out of spiritual conviction. Soon after I found myself at a party and I was offered a drink by someone I didn’t know. I said no. But instead of letting it go, they asked why. While I didn’t have to give a sermon, I could have said that this was because I had recently become a Christian. Instead I said that it was for health reason. I had no health issues. It was a lie because I didn’t want people just meeting me to see me as the “Jesus freak.” That was denying Jesus.

More often, it may be passive denial. Passive denial is when an opportunity comes up to bring in a faith element, that we just remain silent. There is no lying, just a rejecting of the opportunity. No one around, other than ourselves and God, knows what had just happened. People make a statement that all churches are money hungry and have no interest in helping the poor and we remain silent. People say that Christians are all hypocrites and we remain silent. People may even know us for decades without knowing that we are Christians. It is not about shoving religion down people’s throats. It is not about debating every atheist we meet. Sometimes it is just lighting one candle in a dark room. It can be just responding gently to the opportunities that God gives us.

Conclusion

I have shared that I have made my own mistakes in my life. Perhaps you have made mistakes. Perhaps you have denied Jesus by what you have done or what you have not done. We could just give up. But Peter didn’t just give up. Peter regretted what he did and then was reconciled to Jesus. He brushed himself off and tried again. God is the God of second chances and third chances and fourth chances. There are two things we need to get from this passage. One is for to choose to stand up for Jesus rather than to deny him. The second is that when we fail, we don’t give up but determine to stand the next time. If Peter can do it, so can we.

You don’t know me but I’m one of Jesus’ disciples. Not just any disciple, but one of the big twelve. I was there from the beginning. I can’t even begin to tell you what it was like spending all that time with Jesus. He was like no one else I had ever met. He was not just another rabbi or religious teacher. Jesus was like having God walking around with us.

Jesus had so much power. He could calm storms, walk on water, cast out demons. Jesus could even raise the dead. With that kind of power he could have had anything he wanted.

But Jesus had only two things that were important: pleasing his heavenly Father and showing compassion to other people. The people knew this and so they would follow us everywhere. I know that some of them had no interest in what Jesus was teaching, they just wanted their miracle. They may have fooled some people but they didn’t fool me. They definitely didn’t fool Jesus. But instead of turning them away in anger, he still helped them. He healed them. I think I might have been a bit more picky about who I would heal.

We had been doing the ministry thing for a while in Galilee and then Jesus got it in his head that he had to go to Jerusalem. We all knew what that meant. We had met some conflict with the Pharisees and Sadducees in Galilee but the closer we got to Jerusalem, the greater their power would get. It would become dangerous for us and even more so for Jesus. But there was no changing Jesus’ mind. When he decided something, that was it.

So we arrived in Jerusalem. There was quite the welcome. At first I thought maybe things wouldn’t be as bad as I feared. Some of the pilgrims for Passover were calling for Jesus to be their king. This could be promising. But things quickly went down hill from there. It may have had something to do with that incident at the temple. Overturned tables and all that.

We arranged for the Passover meal and we met together. I had experienced many Passover meals but none like that. Jesus took the bread and broke it and compared it to his body. He took the cup of wine and compared it to his blood. It is not what we wanted to hear. Passover was supposed to be about how God saved his people and yet Jesus was using it to talk about his death. There was also a strange conversation with Judas. I didn’t understand it at the time but soon figured out what was happening. I never quite trusted that guy.

We finished our meal and went to Gethsemane. Jesus wanted to pray. I always appreciated that about him. Jesus was the closest person to God that I ever met and yet he always took time to pray. It was hard to see Jesus so upset.

After we finished praying, we saw a crowd of people coming toward us. I recognized one of them right away. It was Judas. I thought it was strange that he wasn’t with us. Judas led the crowd right up to Jesus and gave the signal with a kiss. Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss! A kiss is supposed to be a sign of affection but he used it for betrayal. I wanted to punch him the face or do worse. A couple of us had swords and we were ready to use them. In the crowd were temple guards, all armed. There was no way we could beat them in a full on fight. But I was so full of anger. Jesus never did anything but good and here they come to arrest him like a common criminal. What could I do? I could kill Judas but the people behind the plot wouldn’t care. It would just save them from having to pay off Judas. Then I spotted him. The servant of the high priest. Of course the high priest wasn’t there. But he sent his servant to represent him. It was this servant that was leading the crowd. I couldn’t stop the arrest but I could make a statement that they would long remember. The easy thing would have been to stab in the stomach or cut off the head. That would lead to my instant death. So I had a better idea. I would slice off his right ear. Like Julius Caesar once said, “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.” I edged toward him and pulled out my sword and with a swoosh his ear was on the ground and he was crying like a little baby. I was pretty happy with myself but then I looked to Jesus. He looked very disappointed. Not only did he rebuke me, he put his hand on the ear of the screaming servant. The man became quiet and when Jesus removed his hand, the servant was healed.

Why would Jesus do something like that? These people were coming to arrest him. This was not for a night in jail, we knew that this was leading to crucifixion. We all had seen people dying the slow death on the cross. This servant represented the man that wanted Jesus dead the most. A slice of the servant’s ear was far less than what he really deserved. And yet Jesus healed him.

I was filled with anger at the injustice that was taking place and I longed for revenge. Jesus was filled with compassion and longed to bring healing. I later realized that this was the very last act of healing that Jesus did during his earthly ministry. And it was done to one who was arresting him.

In a way Jesus was also bringing healing upon me. Jesus had been teaching about forgiveness all through his ministry. He even linked God’s forgiveness of us to our forgiveness of others in a way that made me very uncomfortable. I thought that I got it but I didn’t. I was willing to forgive but only those who I thought deserved my forgiveness. Forgiveness was a response to sufficient regret for hurting me. But this servant showed no such regret and even went on to complete the arrest. Yet Jesus was still willing to show compassion.

I remember Jesus teaching us about loving our enemies. He really meant that. He meant that for us but demonstrated it in his own life. This is a hard truth.

What about you? Are there people you struggle to forgive? Are there people who have hurt you or have disappointed you and you feel as if they don’t deserve your forgiveness? Do you long for revenge for the hurt they have done to you? Do you wish you could cut off their ear or worse?

Jesus shows a different way. Instead of revenge, he points toward healing. Could you bless the person who hurt you, without any sign of regret from them? Don’t feel guilty if that sounds hard. Remember, I’m the guy with the sword. But sometimes the right way is the hard way. That is the case here as well.

Think about the people that have hurt you. Think about what you wish you could do to them. Now imagine what Jesus would do if he was in your place. Then let Jesus forgive them through you. It won’t be easy. trust me. But it is the Jesus way. 

Introduction

Bad things are going to happen to us. You may have some bad things happening now. If not, you have in the past and you will in the future as well. Get used to it. One of my pet peeves is the teaching that Christians are immune from suffering, that God will always protect us from bad things. That was not the case with the Old Testament prophets or the New Testament apostles. That was definitely not the case with God’s Son Jesus Christ.

Having established that suffering will come, how does God expect us to respond to suffering? Does he want us to stand firm, heads held high, not a hint of emotion? Does he want a smile of joy or even a laugh in the face of suffering? Do we fear that if we react to what we are experiencing that we will damage our Christian witness? I will tell you that the current generation is not looking for a false strength but is looking for authenticity. But our response should be just based on what people want. We need to look to Jesus.

As already mentioned, Jesus experienced suffering and the Gospels give us details as to how he responded. What we read may surprise us.

Honesty

Something bad happens or has the possibility of happening. How do we respond? Do we rush to embrace it? Do we actively seek bad things so that we can become more spiritual? That may seem strange but many people have done it. One early church father sought martyrdom as a young man and so his mother hid his clothes to prevent him. 

We need to go to Jesus to find the proper response. We know that throughout the Gospel, Jesus has been heading toward Jerusalem, knowing that it would lead to the cross. We may assume from this that he was eager to be crucified. After all, it was through the cross that he would provide atonement and the means of salvation. He should be excited to be attached to that Roman cross.

But what we find is that Jesus, the night before the crucifixion, asks the Father if there is a way he could avoid it. Jesus knew what crucifixion was like, not just through divine knowledge, but through human observation. “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me.” The cup is often a symbol of suffering in the Bible. Jesus was not excited about suffering, in fact he was anxious. No sane person would want to be crucified. Jesus was honest with the Father.

We need to be honest to God about how we feel about our suffering. Don’t get caught up in what sounds unspiritual. Tell God that you don’t want bad things to happen to you or your loved ones. Tell him you want the cup of suffering to pass from you. I don’t say this in a triumphalist manner as if we can tell God what to do and he will obey. God is not a genie. But we are in relationship with him and we can be honest about how we feel.

Emotions

This leads nicely into the next example we get from Jesus. I have noticed that many people, especially those from western European descent, attempt to keep a strict control over their emotions. The British speak of “the stiff upper lip.” I have been to many funerals where the family have apologized for crying over the loss of their loved one as if showing the emotion was bad.

What does Jesus do? We see a Jesus who is very emotional about what is about to happen. The other Gospels are even more explicit about what Jesus is feeling, even saying that Jesus was “sorrowful unto death.” Jesus was very upset. The reference to sweating as drops of blood doesn’t mean that he sweat blood but that he was sweating so much, it was like he was bleeding. There is no sense of embarrassment about showing emotions or a hint that this was somehow unspiritual.

Each of us have different personalities. For some of us, emotions come easy and for others, we keep things to ourselves. My children have commented that they have never seen me cry.  It is not because crying is bad, that is just my personality. So I am not saying that you are a strong introvert that you should start wailing loudly to total strangers. What I am saying is that we should not fear our emotions. Nor should we think we are being bad Christians if we show the anxiety or fear that we are experiencing. Show your emotions in whatever way is right for you, whether to your church family or your closest friend. Jesus did it and so can we.

Obedience

We see in this passage the most human side of Jesus. He frees us to be honest about our emotions. But he shows us something else as well. We see that as much as Jesus was dreading the cross, he submitted himself to his Father’s will. Jesus was able to embrace his own anxiety and yet chose to follow the path that God put in front of him. He was obedient, not because it was easy, but because it was God’s will.

Fear is normal and healthy but it does not have to make our choices for us. I remember the first time I went rappelling. I am very scared of heights and was not afraid to express it. It is not the height so much as the falling to my death that is the problem. As I stood at the top of the cliff, I felt that full force of the fear. But then I took a step. And then another. I chose not to be controlled by my fear. There have been many things that have been unpleasant in my life that I would have preferred to avoid. But with God’s help I was able to push through and to do what I felt God was calling me to do. Feel free to ask for the cup to pass but in the end let God’s will be done.

Conclusion

The question is not whether or not difficult times will come, the question is how will we respond. The answer is to respond like Jesus. Be honest that you don’t like the circumstances. Be open to share your emotions, in whatever way is right for you. And in the end, submit yourselves to God, trusting in his strength. This is what Jesus did as he faced the cross and was soon to experience unimaginable physical, emotional and spiritual suffering. How does God want us to respond to suffering? He wants us to suffer like Jesus.

Introduction

The mission statement for Queen Street Baptist Church says “We are a welcoming community, growing spiritually, worshiping God in Jesus Christ and sharing God’s saving love.” The third part of that says that we exist to worship. There is nothing controversial about a worshiping church. It is something that we just take for granted. But what does it even mean to worship?

When people discuss worship, it is usually in terms of style. What instruments should we use? Organ and piano or guitar and drums? Do we sing Psalms, traditional hymns, 1980s chorus or contemporary songs? Do we use a choir or a worship team or a single worship leader? These discussions are fine but they are not the heart of worship.

During this year we are going to look at worship from different perspectives. What we really need before we ever get to our personal preferences is to look at what the Bible says. The Bible provides some very clear teaching on worship and Ephesians is a great place to start. First of all, this one of the most worshipful letters by Paul. But beyond his example, he give explicit teaching on worship.

The Contrast

In this passage, Paul contrasts two ways of living: the unwise and wise. His warning is not to live foolishly. The foolish way is a lack of understanding of God’s will. The one example he gives is that of drunkenness. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the Ephesian church specifically struggled with alcohol. Rather, being drunk is a powerful example of the foolish way. In my younger days, I had more than my share of drunken experiences. I didn’t think I was that bad. But when I got past that and found myself the only sober one in a group, I realized how people are when they are drunk. 

Not only is drunkenness an image of foolishness, it is also a comparison to what Paul is about to teach on. Why do people get drunk? For me, it was because my way of getting past my inhibitions. I was willing to do things after a few beers that I wouldn’t normally. For others, alcohol is a way to cover up the pain they are experiencing, whether physical or emotional. The point is that people do not get drunk for the sake of getting drunk. They are seeking the results that drunkenness brings. There is a sense in which alcohol seems empowering. Of course alcohol always fails on its promises and getting drunk never has a benefit. But this is something the Ephesians were familiar with and it provide exactly the contrast that Paul was looking for.

Worship

Paul doesn’t just warn against the foolish life, he points to the wise life and that is a life of worship. Instead of being drunk with wine, we are to be filled with the Spirit. This is more than just replacing the bad with the good. Just as alcohol has been known to give courage to do something difficult, so does the Spirit, although always with good results. The Holy Spirit is empowering in a positive way, enabling us to do what we need to do. This includes worship. The Holy Spirit helps us to worship. Worship is supposed to be Spirit-led. That is not necessarily the same thing as charismatic or Pentecostal worship. You don’t have to raise your hand or dance for the Spirit to be present. The first time I experienced the Spirit in worship was in the Anglican church I grew up in when I suddenly saw the liturgy with fresh eyes, seeing the beauty of Jesus in the familiar words. It can look different for all of us and we should never try and put the Holy Spirit in a box.

Then Paul says something that may be confusing to us. He says that we are to speak to one another with psalms and other songs. Why would he say that? Worship is to God alone. It is true that we only worship God but there is a community aspect to worship. Yes it is possible for you to worship God alone in your home or your car or out in the woods. That is a nice supplement but it is not the ideal. The best possible situation is passionate worship to God in the presence of other people. The expectation is that we will be blessed by each other’s worship. Some of the most powerful worship experiences I’ve had in this church have been hearing you sing out your praises. You are not singing to me but you are blessing me with your worship. This is so important that in 1 Corinthians 14, Paul criticizes speaking in tongues in a worship service. There is nothing wrong with speaking in tongues as Paul did that himself. But when a person speaks in tongues in a worship service, it is between them and God and it provides no blessing to the others. Worship is meant to have both a horizontal and vertical element. There are people who love God the Father but can’t stand their brothers and sisters in Christ. That is not right. Worship should be a blessing to both God and people.

Paul tells us to give thanks to God the Father. Thankfulness is central to Christian worship. Sometimes it is difficult to feel thankful. That does not mean that we only worship when we have had a good week. Some of the best worship we can offer is a sacrifice of praise. We come together, acknowledging that life has been hard and God has felt distant but choosing to worship anyway. The Psalms are our example. The Psalms were the hymnbook of ancient Israel. Do the Psalms pretend that everything is all right? They are graphic in their honesty about personal suffering and yet still offer thanks to God.

All of this is done through the name of Jesus Christ. It is because of Jesus that we always have something to be thankful. It is because of Jesus that we have access to the Father. It is because of Jesus that we are adopted into God’s family and that his Father is our Father.

Did you notice what Paul did in this passage? He explicitly includes the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Worship is supposed to be trinitarian in nature. I love songs, old and new, that remind us that we worship a Trinity. The Spirit empowers us to give thanks to the Father in the name of the Son. That is a beautiful image.

Conclusion

Christians have long argued about worship and will continue long after we are gone. But what is important is not the style. That is a secondary issue. Paul lays out exactly what we need to know about worship in this passage. Worship is a trinitarian experience that is done in community with fellow believers. It includes the Father, the Son and the Spirit. It also include a joining together in community. We join our voices together to worship the God who is three in one. Let us put aside our personal preferences and give thanks to God for all that he is done. God is worthy of our worship.

Introduction

When I think about my time growing up in church, it is interesting to note what stands in my mind. It is not so much Sunday school lessons as it was going to the altar to receive communion, or as we called it, the eucharist. I was raised Anglican and we celebrated the eucharist every week. In fact in that tradition, communion was more central to the service than the preaching of the Word. Even though I didn’t fully understand it, there was something powerful about that experience.

Most Christian traditions highly value the receiving of communion, whether weekly, monthly, quarterly or some other schedule. It is a spiritual act that touches all of our senses.

While we might appreciate communion, we should not see it just as one moment in time, that act of eating the bread and drinking the cup at a certain point in the worship service. It is actually an event that ripples through time, touching points in the past, present and future. That is what we are going to look at we examine Luke’s account of the institution of the Lord’s Supper.

Passover

If the disciples had day-timers or calendars and we took a peek at what they had written down for this particular evening, it would not have said, “Institution of the Lord’s Supper.” They were expecting something but it was not the start of a sacrament that would be celebrated by the Christian church for thousands of years.

What they were anticipating and what was taking place was a Passover meal. And it was a meal, not just bread and wine. Only a few parts of the Passover meal are brought over into communion.

But what is Passover? It goes back to an event over a thousand years before Jesus gathered with his friends. The Hebrews had been slaved in Egypt and God raised up Moses to lead them into freedom. It was a specific miracle that pushed Pharaoh into letting them go. God caused the death of the first born male of every Egyptian family. But how would the angel of death know what was an Egyptian and what was a Hebrew household? They were to slay a lamb and spread the blood over the door. It was by the blood of the lamb that they would be saved. 

That is exactly what was about to happen with Jesus, the one whom John the Baptist called “the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world.” Now none of this lamb imagery is found in this passage, but it is the subtext. The parallels wouldn’t have been lost on the disciples.

Jesus took parts of the Passover meal, the bread and the cup, this probably being the third of the four Passover cups, and used these images of redemption to illustrate what he was about to do. This time the move was not from physical slavery but from spiritual slavery. And all this by the broken body and shed blood of Jesus.

New Covenant

Jesus makes another Old Testament reference in this passage. He speaks of the new covenant. That is not as familiar to us as the Passover but it is just as important. The great prophet Jeremiah spoke these words: “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.” (Jeremiah 31:31) Jeremiah was active around the time the people of Judah were being conquered by the Babylonians and being sent into exile. Jeremiah preached the unpopular message that this exile was because of the people’s sin. But this was not the end, restoration was coming. Part of that restoration was that the law would be put on the people’s heart. Living for God wouldn’t just be a matter of following the rules, it would be the result of life transformation from the inside. Jesus connects this with the sacrifice he was about to offer on the cross. The people were about to enter a new chapter, one foretold centuries before by Jeremiah.

The Cross

So far Jesus has pointed back. He has looked to the Passover at the time of Moses and the prophecy of the new covenant by Jeremiah. Now he looks to events closer in time. This was happening the night before Jesus was to die. And this would not be any execution. This would be a crucifixion. When we think of the cross, we automatically think of Jesus. But many thousands of people died on the cross. The disciples would have seen many people dying on a cross. They may have passed some as they entered into Jerusalem. Crucifixion was designed to be the maximum discouragement to getting on the wrong side of the Romans. Would they would have saw on those crosses would be broken bodies and shed blood. 

Jesus took the bread and the cup from the Passover meal, food that normally brings joy, and he used it to point toward the cross. What would happen to the bread and wine is what would happen to Jesus’ body. None of the disciples wanted this to happen but it was why Jesus came to Jerusalem, why he came to earth. It was going to be through the cross that salvation would come.

The Kingdom

Jesus points to what would happen the next day but then he points farther in the future. He connects this meal with the fullness of the kingdom of God.

Now the kingdom of God began to appear with the ministry of Jesus. Each miracle and healing, each message to the crowds, was part of the coming of the kingdom of God. The church today continues in the spreading of the kingdom of God. But it doesn’t take a theologian to notice that God’s reign is not complete on earth. There are far too many things that go against God’s will. Too much injustice and suffering.

The kingdom of God will only come in fullness when Jesus returns. This event, both in the Gospels and in Revelation is described using the imagery of a meal, of a wedding feast.

Jesus says, as he gave them the cup, that he would no longer drink of the cup until the kingdom of God comes in fullness. 

I mentioned that the cup that Jesus raises in this passage is probably the third cup. The fourth cup in the Jewish tradition represents the end of days. This is the cup that Jesus is waiting to drink, the cup that will be available when he returns.

We may not think about it when we celebrate communion but this meal is closely tied not just to the cross but to the return of Jesus. When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we are testifying that we believe that Jesus will return and make things right in this world.

Conclusion

We have seen that this table ripples through time. There is one more point in time that I want to draw your attention to. That is right now. We are about to receive the bread and cup from this table. If we wish, it can be a mindless ritual, something we just do traditionally on the first Sunday of the month. But that would be unfortunate.

We can also choose to see in this table a picture of God’s plan of redemption, going back thousands of years to the exodus, touching us now and being fulfilled when Jesus returns. We can allow this event to wash over us, transform us, inspire us and encourage us. We can rejoice that we participate in the new covenant and that we work together for the kingdom of God. We can find comfort in know that someone loved us enough to allow his body to broken like a piece of bread, his blood to be shed like wine being poured out of a cup. This table is not just something tagged onto the service, it is the reason we have to be worshiping God in the first place.

Introduction

When we think of the story of Jesus, what do we think of? Some of us may automatically go to the crucifixion and resurrection. One of the reasons we have been doing this series on Luke is to show that there is much more to the story.

At the same time, the crucifixion and resurrection were central to the early church’s preaching. When we look at Paul’s letters, we see plenty of references to the crucifixion and resurrection, but nothing of the miracles and very little of the teachings.

At this point in Luke we are just entering what is called the passion narrative. While we think of passion as that which excites us, it originally meant suffering and this the beginning of that chapter of Jesus’ life.

As we read through the Gospels, we see that Jesus’ intention had always been to go to Jerusalem to die. But how was that going to take place? Was Jesus just going to have a peaceful ministry and show up one day in Jerusalem and politely ask the Roman authorities to crucify him so he could pay the penalty for sins? It was much more complicated than that.

What we find in this passage is that there were three parties interested in the death of Jesus. We are going to take a look at who they were, why they wanted this and how it affects us.

Satan

I can’t say as I preach about Satan very often. Many people struggle with believing in a personification of evil. One of the reasons is that we have gotten this picture of the devil as a horned and hoofed being dressed in red and holding a pitchfork. It seems like the villain of a fairy tale. The reason some struggle with believing in the devil is that there are some Christians who blame everything on the devil. You stepped on a piece of LEGO? The devil must have put it there.

Yet both the Old and New Testaments seem to hold to the existence of the devil. We are not given a name for him. The devil means slanderer and Satan means accuser. They are titles that describe what he does. 

In case we think Satan is not important to the story of Jesus, we should remind ourselves that the ministry of Jesus begins with Satan trying to tempt Jesus. Although that fails, we are told that the devil left Jesus until an opportune time. That time has come in our passage.

We will look at what this means for Judas, but why did Satan even care? It seems Satan was well aware of who and what Jesus was. The Gospels often show that the demons recognized who Jesus was before the disciples. Satan was the one who accused the people of God. Jesus was the one who was going to give his own righteousness to the people of God, thus defeating the devil. Satan needed to stop Jesus. Ironically, by initiating the death of Jesus, Satan was bringing about his own destruction.

What does this mean for us? There is a spiritual element to all that goes on. Paul in his letters reminds us that when we are in conflict with others, it is the spiritual forces that are our real enemy. We should not look for a demon under every rock, but we should be aware that there is more going on than what we see people doing. This is why prayer is so important. we need to pray for both strength and discernment. There are forces that do not want us to succeed in building God’s kingdom. Ignoring Satan will not help anything. Nor will dwelling on Satan. Jesus gives us the pattern. Be prepared and aware but do not be obsessed.

Priests and Scribes

I believe that there is a Satan but I do not believe that most acts of evil are done directly by spiritual forces. Most of the bad things that happen, the things that are truly evil, are done by good old flesh and blood humans. That is not to say that spiritual influence is absent but people are directly involved.

One of the themes that we find in the Gospels is the conflict that Jesus has with certain people. Some people have suggested that it is the Jews in general that were the problem and who were the ones that sought Jesus’ death. That is wrong for a number of reasons. One is that Jesus and the apostles and the rest of his followers were all Jewish. Secondly, we find that the priests and scribes were afraid of the reaction of the crowds to their attempt to kill Jesus. Those crowds were Jewish.

So why did the priests and scribes want Jesus killed? They were believers in the Jewish God who loved the Hebrew scriptures. Jesus was a believer in the Jewish God who loved the Hebrew scriptures. It sounds like they were on the same team. 

The problem is that some of the religious leaders were intimidated by Jesus. He had a way of connecting with the people and teaching about God in a way that they couldn’t compete. They saw Jesus as a threat to their authority and influence over the people. The priests were known as those who did whatever was required to hold onto power, even compromising with the Romans. Realize that the Jewish high priest was not selected by the Jews but by the Romans. The message that Jesus was teaching, of complete faithfulness to God no matter what the cause, was dangerous to their position. Jesus needed to be taken out. The time of Passover was the time to do it because this was a time when there was a lot of religious fervour it there was a greater chance Jesus could get the people whipped up into a frenzy and cause problems.

And for us? There continue to be those who oppose the work of Jesus. This includes those inside the church. Church history tells us of many times that church leaders opposed that which was right and sought the death of Christians who tried to remain faithful. Like the priests and scribes, much of it was about political power and not religious zeal. Outside the church there are also those who oppose Jesus. There are people today who are claiming that Christianity is not just wrong, it is dangerous. Some are calling for an end to religious freedom so that society can move forward without religious shackles. Like the spiritual forces, we need to know these things exist.

Judas

This brings us the person we may most identify with the death of Jesus: Judas. The other parties involved were bad but in some ways, Judas was worse. There was more of an emotional impact Judas was not an ongoing enemy. Judas was a disciple. He was a friend. None of us wants to be hurt but being hurt by someone close to us is that much more painful.

Why did Judas do this? Luke tells us that Satan entered him. But I don’t think that we should think of this as a possession where Satan took over his body and forced him to do something against his will. I suspect this is more like Satan giving him the nudge to do something that was already there inside him. We are told that Judas approached the priests and scribes and agreed to do this for a certain amount of money. Some have suggested that it was purely a matter of financial greed. Everyone has their price. That may be true but there may have been something else on as well. Some suggest that Judas was trying to push Jesus to be more forceful in his messianic objectives and arranging for Jesus to be arrested would force him to use his powers more openly. We are just not told. What we do know is that there was some sort of unholy alliance between Satan, the religious leaders and Judas.

We think of Judas as the arch-villain but in some ways he could be any of us. Peter tempted Jesus to avoid the cross and denied Jesus three times. Many Christians throughout the ages have betrayed Jesus in one way or another. Perhaps different than Judas, but like Judas we have betrayed not from the outside but from the inside. The story of Judas is not there for us to point fingers and condemn but for us to look on the inside and ask what it would take for us to do the same. Judas demands some serious internal reflection on our part.

Conclusion

One of my favourite moments in a recent superhero movies is when one of the characters says, “We’re in the end game now.” In someways that is what this passage is about. Different parties, spiritual and human, outside and inside, are gathering together to plot the death of Jesus. The pieces are moving into position. Jesus is going to die. What they thought they were doing for their own good was ultimately leading to Jesus’ victory over all the powers of evil. That doesn’t excuse their actions but it gives perspective.

What this means for us is that in smaller ways, this story is replayed every day. There are spiritual forces still opposing the work of Jesus. There are those outside of the church that opposing the work of Jesus. There are forces at work within us that could lead to opposing the work of Jesus. Be aware and let us prepare ourselves.

Introduction

For those of you who are sports fans, you may know the anxiety of whether your favourite team is going to win. The situation may be that your team losing by a significant margin and you are hoping for a last minute comeback or it may be a very close game which could go any way. If there is a team that you have become loyal to, it is impossible to watch passively, just enjoying the skill of all the players. You are invested in it and you have very strong opinions about who will win.

If you are not a sports fan, you may face something similar at election time. You have a particular party or candidate that you very much want to win. The early returns start coming in and it may not look good for your choice. You keep watching, hoping that something will turn around and the one you want to win will be elected.

There are other contexts in which we can feel this anxiety of things not looking good but we hope the right side will ultimately win. Think about the world around us. There is significant unrest all around us, from politically to economically to environmentally. At times it is looking pretty bad, both globally and locally. We might wonder if the side of righteousness has any chance of winning. 

This is a theme that is prominent in the Bible. The Scriptures do not shy away from the fact that it looks like evil and injustice are winning at the moment. But the Bible continually reminds us of the hope that we have. It is not just a vague hope that somehow something might get a bit easier. It is a hope that everything will change at a specific event: the return of Jesus. And that is what Jesus talks about in this passage.

Jesus Looks to the Future

Luke 21 and the parallels in Matthew and Mark are some of the confusing passages in the New Testament. The reason is that two events are mixed together. One is the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and the other is the coming of the Son of Man. There are reasons for this. One is that the temple was so important that to the disciples it seemed to signify the end. The other is that the destruction of the temple pointed forward to the end.

Jesus paints a picture of how bad things are going to get. The destruction of the temple is only a foretaste of how bad the world can become. Jesus does this not to depress the disciples but to provide the context for what would take place. What would take place? The coming of the Son of Man.

Who is the Son of Man? The Son of Man is Jesus. So why didn’t Jesus just say that it would be him coming on the clouds? In the Gospels, Jesus regularly calls himself the Son of Man. What does that phrase mean? It literally is a way of speaking of a human being. This was Jesus’ preferred self-description. He didn’t go around calling himself the Son of God or the Messiah. It was mostly the Son of Man.

This was a way of giving a hidden message of who he was. The religious leaders couldn’t complain about him using that phrase because technically they were all sons of man. There was nothing controversial about it. At least not exactly. But when Jesus calls himself the Son of Man he is thinking about more than himself as a human being. He is thinking about a prophecy in Daniel 7. Let’s take a look.

Daniel Looks to the Future

Before looking at the prophecy, it is important to understand the context in which Daniel lived. The book of Daniel takes place after the first destruction the Jerusalem temple and in the time of the Babylonian exile. In fact Daniel is one of those exiles. Things were looking really bad. Not only was the temple gone and the people sent out of their country, life was a challenge in Babylon. There was a price to pay to remain faithful to God as we see in numerous stories in Daniel. It was a very dark time.

In this context, Daniel received a prophecy of the future. Daniel saw the Ancient of Days, which is God. He then saw the defeat of the powers of evil that had rebelled against God. Finally there was the appearance of someone like a son of man. No details are given. All we know is that this some sort of divine being that looks like a human being. All authority is given to him and he sets up a kingdom that can never be destroyed. This would be a meaningful prophecy for Daniel who lived in a world where everything was upside down and the righteous rather than the wicked suffered. Daniel was told that God’s side would ultimately win and that part of that would include one who was like a son of man. 

It is clear by the reference to the Son of Man coming on the clouds that Jesus is identifying himself with this figure and that his return would be the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy. Jesus, after his death, resurrection and ascension, would one day return to earth, evil would be defeated and the kingdom of God would come in its fullness.

In regular language, the good guys will finally win.

We Look to the Future

So what do we do with all this? There are a couple of responses we could do. One thing would be for us to try and find hidden codes in the Bible and try to calculate the date of when these things will happen. I do not recommend that.

Another thing we could do is embrace a completely passive posture. We could take the attitude that things are bad now and they won’t be fixed until Jesus returns, so we might as well sit back and wait for the end. Trying to make a difference in this world would be no more than rearranging the chairs on the Titanic.

Some Christians take that view but that is not what the Bible says. The Bible says that we are to build God’s kingdom now, even though it won’t come in its fullness until Jesus returns. We are to fight for justice and for truth. We should seek to take care of the environment. We should seek to end human trafficking. We should seek reconciliation between those who are in conflict. We should seek to care for the poor and the hungry. What we do now matters. 

Doing the right thing now is not a waste of time just because the final victory happens at the second coming. By building the kingdom now, we are demonstrating our faith that we really do believe that our side is going to win. Giving up now would be the opposite.

Conclusion

The Bible talks a lot about the return of the Messiah. It is not a side doctrine that can be safely ignored. Daniel, in the wake of the destruction of the first temple, looked to the future of the coming of one like a son of man coming in the clouds. Jesus, anticipating the destruction of the second temple, looked to the future of his own return as the Son of Man coming in the clouds. 

What this means for us is that even when the contest between good and evil looks the most uncertain, we can be assured that our team, the people of God, will win. That victory will take place when Jesus returns. But until that day, we do what we can to build God’s kingdom here. Every act of goodness on our part is a statement of faith of how we believe God will bring things to a conclusion.

Introduction

When I was a student in elementary school, I was not good at sports. But there was one thing that I was good at and that was running. When you are the smallest kid in the class, you get good at running. But I need to be clear, I was only good at sprinting. I could put a lot of energy and speed into a very short race. Based on my speed, I was once put into a longer race at a match. I knew it wouldn’t go well and I was right. I came last and it wasn’t even close between me and the second last runner. I just didn’t have endurance.

That is not to say that I was doomed to lack endurance. As an adult, I decided to start running, this time not for speed but for distance. It was pretty sad at first. I was able to get about half a block before cramping up and having to switch to a walk. But I decided to be persistent. Slowly, I could run farther and farther. I didn’t enjoy it but I could see the improvement each day. Endurance was growing.

Physical activity is not the only area that we need to build endurance. It is just as important, if not more, to build spiritual endurance. The passage that we are looking at concludes with a warning to stand firm or to endure. What was true for them is also true for us.

Warnings to the Disciples

What is this passage about? Many people think it is about the end of the world. But it is not, at least not exactly. When we read it in context, it is actually about a historical event, one that has already taken place. We see right before this passage, the disciples admiring the Jerusalem temple. Its existence was a point of pride for the Jewish people. It was much more than a physical space to worship. We cannot compare it to modern church buildings. It was the place where God’s presence dwelt. It was the only place that sacrifices could be offered. It was the foundation for the Jewish religion.

Jesus makes a prediction that this temple will be destroyed. It had already been destroyed by the Babylonians centuries before. It had been rebuilt and it was hoped it would last forever. But Jesus announces that it will indeed be destroyed again. His prediction was accurate. Approximately forty years after Jesus spoke these words, the Romans destroyed the temple.

The warning that Jesus had for the disciples were more than about a destroyed a building. Jesus knew that his sacrifice on the cross would replace the sacrifice of the animals in the temple. The followers of Jesus would be able to continue to worship and the loss of the temple would not affect them the way it would other Jews.

However, the events surrounding the destruction would affect the Christians. It was not just the destruction of the temple, it was all of the other things that would go along with it. Jesus warns about false messiahs that would appear with claims of their own truth. There would be persecution by governing authorities. In some ways worse, there would be betrayals by friends and family. What Jesus described did indeed happen. The Jewish historian Josephus, gives us a detailed account of those years. He tells us about the self-proclaimed messiahs that appeared. He also provides disturbing details of what happened in Jerusalem before the temple was destroyed. The apostles Paul and Peter were executed by the Romans just a few years before the destruction of the temple. 

Why did Jesus tell the disciples these things? Was this just to impress them with his predictive powers? Many of the people he was talking to would be there to experience what he was talking about. Not only did Jesus know the future, he also knew human nature. It was one thing for the disciples to be physically present with Jesus, hearing his words directly, observing his miracles. But what happens when Jesus returns to the Father? What happens when the pressure is turned up? What happens when the temple falls? What happens when the Romans begin to persecute Christians? What happens when they are in danger even from their friends and family? It was not going to be easy to remain faithful. Jesus is in effect giving them a forty year head start for them to begin their endurance training. They can’t wait for the Romans to tear down the temple before they get strong in their faith. They need to prepare for the hard times now.

Warnings for Us

What does this mean for us? We live in a completely different historical situation. Not only are we not in first century Judea, we don’t experience any of the same religious opposition. Is this just historical trivia?

I would say that this is extremely relevant for us right now. First of all, Jesus didn’t wait until things got really bad before warning his disciples. We can’t discount the warnings just because we feel fairly comfortable now.

Even now though, there is pressure for us to compromise in our faith. We have brothers and sisters around the world who are facing persecution. Church buildings are being torn down and Christians are being imprisoned. We are not experiencing that kind of persecution, but what pressure is there?

Our society is hostile to the message of Jesus. Have you ever wondered why in movies and TV shows, it is acceptable to use Jesus’ name as a swear word but it is considered offensive if Jesus is used in any positive way? That is a hint of the spirit of the age. Christianity is tolerated as existing but the pressure is there for us to keep our faith private and never allowing it to affect what we do in the real world. And this despite it being completely acceptable for other worldviews to help shape public policy. No one else has to keep their beliefs private.

But the danger is not just from without. There are plenty of things that can lead to Christians stumbling and not finishing well. Sometimes it is the church’s own fault. The message of health and wealth, that Christians will always prosper and never suffer and has shipwrecked many people’s faith. Both the Bible and reality tell us that we will suffer in this life. But if we go into our spiritual life assuming life will be easy, we will stumble when life gets hard.

Jesus’ warning for followers to stay strong is not just theoretical. I have seen people stumble in their faith. By this I don’t mean struggling with doubts and questions. I believe those are a healthy part of faith. What I’m talking about are those who are overcome by the pressure to give up and then walk away from Jesus. It happens.

A runner doesn’t start endurance training the day of the marathon. All of us have to prepare ourselves for the trials of tomorrow today. How do we do that? We need to have a solid theological foundation. We also have to work at the spiritual disciplines. We need to spend time with Christians who help us to grow. We need to pray and worship and spend quality time with God. But be warned, endurance training is never easy. 

One of the things I’m concerned about is the common Christian way of discerning God’s will. Many believe that if something comes easy, it must be God’s will and if things are difficult, it must not be God’s will. That is not what we find in the Bible. Heroes of faith rarely experience smooth sailing. As they remain faithful, they hit obstacle after obstacle. Spiritually, we will experience the same pain as the person moving from being a couch potato to becoming a marathon runner.

Conclusion

When it comes to the life of faith, what matters is not how we feel in the moment but how we finish. We may be comfortable right now, but there is no reason to believe that will continue to be the case. We cannot wait until the hard times come before we start to get ready. Jesus gave the disciples forty years to prepare for the destruction of the temple and all of the suffering that would accompany it.

We need to begin our endurance training now if we haven’t already. Spiritual endurance training is as fun or as easy as sitting back and soaking up the blessings. But a person who practices running will do much better in the marathon than the person who practices eating donuts. What are we doing to build our spiritual endurance? What are we doing to make sure we finish well? The point is not demand perfection immediately, but it is to start doing something. 

Introduction

This is our first Sunday of the New Year. But why do we have a New Year? Is it just for dating purposes or is there something else? If it is just to change the number on the calendar, why do so many people have celebrations? It is interesting that most cultures have new years traditions, even if we begin that year at a different time. The Chinese are famous for their new years celebrations, and their’s starts on January 25. The Roman calendar, which our current calendar is based on began with the first of March. 

The Jews also have a new years celebration, which in Hebrew is called Rosh Hashanah. You won’t find that term in the Bible. New years is actually called the Feast of Trumpets in the Old Testament. It is a short passage that we might not even notice as a new years passage at first glance. But if we allow it, this passage can transform not just how we see new years but how we see life in general. The Jewish new year is not January 1, it actually takes place in September-October. But it is still relevant for us as we begin our new year.

Old Testament New Year

The Jewish calendar is different from us. That is why holidays such as Hanukkah start on different days from year to year. The new year began on the first day of the seventh month. This was not a random point in the calendar. Readers of the Bible will recognize the importance of the number seven. But it is more than just that. At this point the harvest had just been competed. The agricultural season had just been completed. In many ways, it is very much like our Thanksgiving celebrations. What would it mean if we combined New Years and Thanksgiving? How would it change how we look at both of those holidays?

I mentioned that even though Jews today call it Rosh Hashanah, in the Bible it is called the Feast of Trumpets. That is because one of the key events of this celebration was the blowing of a trumpet. What do you think of when you think of the blowing of a trumpet? I think of a call to action. I can imagine an outnumbered force being destroyed by an enemy. Then suddenly up on the hill there is a trumpet call and the cavalry comes riding down to the rescue. A trumpet call should be the sound to call us to do something. But that is not what happens here.

The trumpet calls the people to literally do nothing. The Hebrews experienced a rhythm of taking rest, experiencing Sabbath every seventh day. Now on the first day of the seventh month there is an extra Sabbath, another day of rest. It is significant that Hebrew word for rest, Sabbath, is related to the Hebrew word for seven. Even God rested on the seventh day.

What is important here is that the new year begins not on a day of extra work to ensure a productive year but on a day of rest. Think about how this is all put together. Israel has just finished gathering in the harvest. God had demonstrated his faithfulness by providing for them. They are now making a decision to start the year not from the posture of striving but from a posture of faith. By deciding to take another day of complete rest, they are stating their belief that God will continue to provide. They are saying that the year that is beginning is not determined by how hard they work but by how faithful God is. That is not to say that they won’t work hard, there is a place for that. But beginning with rest was a way of saying they understood where their priorities should be. The blowing of the trumpet was a reminder to both God and the people that they were in relationship and that this would be a year that they would experience together.

Our New Year

We are not Jews and we don’t celebrate the Feast of Trumpets as described in the Old Testament, so what does this mean for us? I believe that this passage challenges us not just on our view of the new year but how we live. What is the most common thing to do at the start of the new year? If not formal New Year’s resolutions, there is at least some vague awareness of what we want to accomplish this year.

This definitely describes who I am. I want to be more effective and efficient in all that I do. When I hear the trumpet call, I want to roll up my sleeves and get to work. I want to begin the year from the posture of striving to work harder.

But this passage challenges me to rethink what I value. What if when I hear the trumpet call, I put everything down and just rest? What if instead of taking on a posture of striving, I take on a posture of trust and faith? What if I change my motto from “I gotta get things done” to “God’s got this”? 

Not only this, what would happen to us as a congregation? The easiest way for us to measure things as a church is to look at the people in the pews and the money in the plate. But what if what really mattered was the faithfulness of God and our willingness to trust God? That is not to say that we don’t try to be effective in what we do or seek excellence in ministry. This is more a shift in realizing that God is much more than our mascot. The Hebrews gave thanks for the previous harvest and trusted God would do the same this year, trusting enough to take another day off. 

We have to ask if God was truly faithful to us last year? Did we see God come through, providing for us not just financially but in every way? And are we trusting that God will do the same thing this year? Are we stressed out that things will go wrong or are we trusting that God will take what we do and bring it together for his glory?

Conclusion

If we fast forward to the New Testament, we come to prophecies of the return of Jesus. And what accompanies that return? The blow of a trumpet. Some scholars have made connections between the Feast of Trumpets and the return of Jesus. This is reasonable as when Jesus returns, it will be the end of the striving and the embrace of an eternal Sabbath. 

How does the way we start our new year communicate what we believe about God? Do we get ourselves worked up because we see everything on our shoulders? Or can we begin with some Sabbath, some rest because we are trusting in what God has done in the past and what God is going to do in the future? Let the trumpet blow, and let’s take it easy as we rest in faith.

Introduction

We live in a time when people are very careful about spoilers. If you are not familiar with spoilers, it is the careless sharing of information about a novel or movie that spoils the ending for people who do know the whole story. It would be like telling people ahead of time that the Titanic sinks. Or maybe not.

What about the story of salvation history? About the story of God’s plan for humanity? We are not left wondering how things will end. It is not a mystery. The ending of the story is revealed to us. It is not revealed to spoil the story, in the sense of ruining it, but for the purposes of giving us hope. This is one of the purposes of the book of Revelation.

The Point of Revelation

I was a part of two different denominations before becoming a Baptist. The first never talked about Revelation, the second talked about Revelation all the time. For many people, the entire purpose of Revelation is to give us clues about the end-times. It is a source book for us to search for hidden meanings to discover details about how God will wrap up human history. The problem with this is that it only sees the original audience as having a role in passing on the book to future generations. That is Revelation had no value for the original audience because the end of the world didn’t happen in their life-time. 

That is a bad way to interpret the Bible. Biblical books must be intelligible to the original audience before it can make sense to us. When we read the book of Revelation as a whole, we see that it is not just a collection of future predictions. Instead it is written to actual churches existing at the end of the first century, seven of them in the area that we now know as Turkey. Everything that we read in Revelation was written first for them and made sense to them, even though it also has meaning for us.

Who were these early Christians that this Revelation was given to? They were followers of Jesus who were attempting to live out their faith in a hostile world. It was a time when Christianity was emerging from Judaism and was losing the legal rights it had as a Jewish sect. The Romans didn’t care if people worshiped Jesus, as long as they were willing to acknowledge Caesar as lord, something they could not do. Christians were facing the choice of staying faithful and experiencing persecution or compromising their faith. 

It would be possible to just tell those Christians to hold steady, and that message is there. But more is shared than that. Revelation acknowledges that the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer but it also states that is not the final word. We have heard that same message over and over throughout our tour of the Bible over the past year. This time more detail is given.

God is not a victim of history, he is the Lord of history. Time is moving in a certain direction and God has a plan for it.

All of this means that the contemporary audience who will find Revelation relevant are not those who are students of prophecy or those trying to calculate the date of Jesus’ return. Rather those who will find this book relevant are those who find life difficult, who are paying a price for following Jesus. With that in mind, let’s see where that takes us.

The Conclusion of Revelation

Revelation outlines the ongoing battle between good and evil, something we are familiar with from what we see on earth. What we discover is the battle that takes place on earth is reflecting a similar battle that is taking place in heaven. For a season, God allows the power of evil to seem to thrive but that chapter will come to an end. Ultimately, evil will be conquered.

This brings us to Revelation 21. The end of the story is not just the punishment of the devil, it is about the meeting of heaven and earth. What we find is that our hope is much more than going to heaven when we die. What is described is heaven coming to earth. We are told that something more intimate than us going to God is coming. Rather God will come to us. God will come and be with us, his presence will be experienced in a way that we can’t imagine. This is the promise of Emmanuel, God with us. That process began with Jesus coming into the world but will be fulfilled when Jesus comes back and hands over the kingdom to his Father. 

Hear this through the ears of that first audience. As they suffered for their faith and God felt far away, they are being reminded that God is not ignorant of their experience and he is coming to them.

It is not just that God will come to his people, rather he will come to heal suffering. He will wipe away tears. Not that he will have an angel do it for him but that God will do it. We think of the resurrection as God bringing healing of our sick and weak bodies. But what is described here is the healing of all creation. Everything that didn’t work right will be fixed and made to operate the way it was designed. We don’t have full understanding of how this will all look and we don’t need the details. What is important is that God has a plan and he moving us toward the consummation of that plan. This brought hope to the first audience of Revelation and it should bring hope to us. Do you have tears that need to be wiped? Do you have pain that needs to be relieved? That day is coming.

Conclusion

This Revelation was first given to Christians almost two thousand years ago. The reason was not to get them to calculate details or even to get them to focus on the end of the world. The purpose was to give them hope, not to just endure suffering, but to remain faithful no matter the circumstances. 

It is the same message for us. We may not be having the same life circumstances as those first Christians, but life is definitely not always easy. Revelation provides perspective. It gives us the big picture. No longer is life about random events of pain. We are in the midst of a battle between good and evil that is taking place in both heaven and earth. At times it looks like evil is winning but spoiler alert: God wins in the end. And because God wins, we win also.This is our source of hope.

Introduction

One of the things that I have enjoyed about Christmas are the nativity scenes. I like how we can bring together all the characters and participants in one place. And if you think about it, they all have their own special role. Obviously Jesus has to be there. And of course Mary is extremely important as this is about the birth of Jesus and you need a mother for a birth. Even though it is unlikely that the shepherds and the wise men were there at the same time, they are important as witnesses to the birth of the King. The Bible doesn’t say that angels were there at the birth, but we understand that they testify to the heavenly origin of what took place. Even the animals play their role as they symbolize the humble start to Jesus’ life, something that marked the rest of his ministry.

But what about Joseph? Would we even miss him if he wasn’t there? You don’t need a father to be present at the birth of a child. More than one father has dropped their wife off at the hospital and then picked up mother and child the next day.

But when it comes to the story of Jesus, Joseph seems even more unnecessary. Is’t the whole point of the virginal conception that a human father was never needed? This is reflected on our Christmas carols that have very few references to Joseph. It seems as if we could go through the Christmas story, remove all references to Joseph and our story would still be pretty much intact.

Or would it? I am going to argue that Joseph had a vital role in the Christmas story, far beyond providing transportation for Mary to get to Bethlehem.

Joseph and His Role

Only Matthew and Luke give us accounts of the announcement of and birth of Jesus. Luke focuses on Mary and provides the story from here perspective. Matthew focuses on Joseph and provides the story from his perspective. This should be our first clue that Joseph is important enough for Matthew to share his story, with very little mention of Mary.

Here is the story as recounted by Matthew. Joseph and Mary were engaged. This was much more than a modern engagement. Their engagement was the first step of a marriage commitment and it was so important that you needed a divorce to break it. There was no just leaving someone at the altar. During that time between the two stages of the marriage, Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant and it was not his. Presumably Mary told this to Joseph, which would have been an awkward conversation. I don’t know that her claim that the pregnancy was by the work of the Holy Spirit helped things as well. Joseph, as the wronged person in this situation, could have humiliated Mary and even had her punished for what would have been considered adultery. Instead, Joseph decided to quietly divorce her. He couldn’t go through with the wedding, because he could never trust Mary. But he didn’t want to ruin her life either. Joseph was just trying to be a good guy.

Before Joseph could do this, an angel appeared to him. It is important to note that the angel addresses him as “Joseph, son of David.” That is key to everything that happens afterward. God has established a line of kings from the family of David. That seemed to have come to an end with the Babylonian exile, centuries before the time of Joseph. There had been prophecies that God would once again restore the Davidic throne. But how could that happen? While there were descendants of David, there seemed little hope that that this could be any more than a naive dream. Joseph, while having the genetic link to David, was not particularly kingly. He didn’t live a royal life and probably didn’t advertise his pedigree.

The angel tells Jospeh not to divorce Mary as her story of the origin of the baby is true. And that is where we stop the story. Good for him for sticking with his fiancee.

But that is not the end of the story. This story ends with Joseph naming the baby Jesus. We pray to and sing songs to Jesus but do we ever think that it was Joseph that named him, based on the revelation of the angel, Jesus? But this is much more than giving an alternative to “hey you” to the baby. By naming the child, Joseph was formally adopting Jesus as his son. Joseph was not just Mary’s babysitting assistant. Joseph was really the father of Jesus, even if they were not genetically related. This is important because the Messiah was to be of the line of David and this connection was made through the adoption of Jesus by Joseph. You might think that adoption isn’t a strong enough connection. However, the ancients thought of things differently. We call the Roman emperors the Caesars. But none of them were directly related to Julius Caesar. That all began by Julius Caesar adopting Octavian, who became Augustus Caesar. As someone who was raised by an adoptive father and who is raising three adoptive children, I understand the strong bond of adoption. It doesn’t matter that my dad, myself and my son are not genetically related, the line is intact.

What we see here is that Joseph, even though he seems to be not as important to the story, it is crucial to the Christmas story. Many years later a blind man in a crowd will yell out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Luke 18:38) That statement only makes sense because of Joseph. Not only did Joseph name him Jesus, it was through his adoption that Jesus became a Son of David.

We Have Our Role

What we have heard is enough. It is good for us just to have seen how God used Joseph in his plans for Jesus to be Israel’s Messiah. But there is more.

I suspect that there are those of us who are trying to figure out what our role is. Are we just to show up on a Sunday and sit in a pew, or is there something more? Perhaps we are doing something but we wonder if any of it really matters. We look at what other people are doing and are not sure how we compare. We may feel completely overlooked.

We have already seen that it would be easy for us to pass over Joseph’s role and yet he is one of the most important people in the story. Each of us are essential as well.

It has nothing to do with formal titles or official ministry positions, not that they are wrong. But God is not limited by those things. God can use anything and anyone, no matter how people perceive it from the outside. I suspect that Joseph never thought of his family lineage as that helpful and yet it changed the world.

What is it about you that God can or does use? It may be your family background. It may be your experiences, for the good or for the bad. It may be your skills. It may be your eagerness and passion. It may be your financial resources.

But what if you don’t compare to how that other person is being used? Good, because we are not supposed to compare. Joseph didn’t have to be like Mary or the wise men, he just had to be like Joseph. You have a special role in the kingdom of God and you have a special role in this local congregation. Some people may not notice but that is okay. Most people don’t know the importance of Joseph. What is important is that you use what God has given you.

Conclusion

This Christmas you are going to be thinking about different characters in the Christmas story. we will sing about many of them in our carols. It will be easy for us to forget about Joseph but we should not. Not only did Joseph name Jesus and adopt him into his family, he is our reminder that God can does use anyone for his glory and his purposes. Our importance is not based on how much people notice us but by how we fulfill the role that God gives us. I’m thankful for Joseph and what he did for Jesus and how he inspires us in our own ministry. When we look at the nativity scenes, give adoration to Jesus, knowing that he is the Son of God, the Son or David and the Son of Joseph.

Introduction

I have had a number of conversations with people recently about the emphasis on the message of God’s love in the church. No one is arguing that God’s love is unimportant. But we can observe that there has been a shift from seeing God as a harsh judge to God as a loving parent. The only problem with this is that we can interpret that love through modern lenses and see only what we want.

Those who see this may be concerned that an overemphasis on love can lead to “Christianity Lite.” That is we create a faith that is only about the warm fuzzies and makes no demands upon our lives. That is certainly not the faith presented in the New Testament.

Today we are looking at the first letter of John. This is a deeply theological letter and about as far away from “Christianity Lite” as you can get. In fact John is really on a heretic hunt in this letter. At this point there are more people in the church than just that first group of disciples. There are some dedicated followers of Jesus but there are some people who are just there and others who are actually dangerous. John’s purpose is to distinguish who is a real follower of Jesus and who isn’t. He presents a number of tests to determine who is who but by far, he focuses most of his time on the love test. We might not think of love as a “heresy detector” but in many ways that is what John is doing. Our major concern today may not be heresy but the principles he teaches are extremely applicable to our situation today.

God is Love

I said that this letter is deeply theological and you can’t get much more theological than reflecting on the nature of God. What is God like? Some people believe you can only say negative things about God. By that, they mean that we can only say what God is not like but God is so different from us that we can’t actually say anything about what God is like.

I’m not convinced of that as the Bible does make some positive statements about God. One of the clearest is found in this letter: God is love.

We need to be clear what we mean by this. It is not just that God is loving, meaning that one of the actions he may choose to do or not do is to love. John is saying that God is love in his nature. This is such a deep statement. It points back to the mystery of the Trinity. Long before the creation of humankind, there was eternal love between the Father, Son and Spirit.

Everything that God does comes out of his nature as love. Even the things that we don’t understand or make us feel uncomfortable. This is why Jesus summarize the Law and the Prophets as love for God and love for people. Christianity is unique in that it is the only religion that has love as its foundation. That is not to say that other people are not loving but the concept around which all of Christianity revolves is love. If you take love out of Christianity, it collapses on itself because God is love. This is a radical teaching and yet it was imperative for John to make this clear before moving on.

God Demonstrates Love

What is love? If you asked many people, they would say that love is an emotion. Many songs and movies are all about falling in love. But the problem with falling in love is that you can also fall out of love. There is nothing wrong with those emotions and we should enjoy them while they are there. But love is much more than that.

We have seen that God is love. But if God only felt love, it would not do us much good. So how does God show love?

In human relationships, people often show their love for one another by giving gifts. Of course gifts can be empty of love. I always hated when I have had jobs where I was obligated to get a gift for a person. Picking a gift is hard enough for me, it is much harder when it is done out of pure obligation. But I actually enjoy it when I am getting a gift for a person I love that reflects who they are. I know them and I know what they enjoy. What matters is not the dollar amount but how it reflects our relationship with each other. The same principle is there with God.

God shows his love by giving us gifts, the most precious gifts that he has. The first gift is very appropriate in this season of Advent. The Father shows his love by sending his Son. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not because God thought it would be a fun holiday, but because he loved us. Jesus came into this world not just to be a beautiful baby but to grow up and pay the price for our sins. God didn’t have to do that but he loved us that much. As John says in his Gospel, “For God so loved the world.” That is not just love, that is so love.

That gift would be enough. But as the late night infomercials used to say, “Wait there’s more!” The Father also sends the Spirit. Why do we need the Spirit if we already have the Son. Jesus on the cross changed everything. But that is a past event. We cannot witness it ourselves today. But by the power of the Spirit that we access the benefits of the cross. The Spirit is so important that Jesus said it was actually better for him to return to the Father. The Spirit was to be our ongoing connection with God. The Spirit plugs us into what happened in the past and is a promise to us of what the future holds.

If you don’t get what you want this Christmas, remember that we have already received the Son and the Spirit from the Father and all that because of his wondrous love.

God Expects Love

That God is love and that he demonstrates his love is all true apart from how we feel about it or respond to it. God doesn’t need us for those things to be true. But what John is doing here is not just giving a theology lessons. He is laying the foundation so that he can administer the test. Are we real followers of Jesus? The test is how we respond to what we have just learned.

So we should respond by loving God back. we do that by worship and numerous other things. But that is not enough. In some ways it is easy to love someone we can’t see. We can come to a worship service, sing out our favourite hymns and not have to deal with all the challenges a regular relationship brings.

John is very clear about this. The love test is how we treat other people. Remember Jesus had already made the connection between loving God and loving our neighbour. If we want to show to God we need to start by showing love toward people.

There are people who are very religious, who love the rituals and the rules. They love the challenge of not only following the commandments but enforcing them on others. Their theology is so solid, they can win any argument. But when you talk to them, there is no hint of love. They are the people who would be quick to condemn the priest and the Levite in the parable of the Good Samaritan but would also be just as quick to avoid helping a person in need.

According to John, it is simply impossible to love God and yet not show love toward people. Attempting to love God and not loving people is like trying to draw a square circle. It cannot be done.

But you might be thinking that it is hard to feel love for some people. Join the club. There are lots of people I don’t easily feel love for. Thankfully we are not commanded to feel love, we are only commanded to love. The feelings are not important. What is important is what we do. We cannot of course make a difference in every person’s life. But we can look at the opportunities we have and the resources at hand. If showing love was made illegal, would there be enough evidence to convict us? Are we going to stumble and miss opportunities? Yes we will, just as the heroes of the Bible did. The important things is, are we going in the right direction?

Conclusion

Some people think love is an easy topic and want something deeper. You can’t actually get deeper. Love goes all the way to the nature of God. God is love. God’s relationship with humanity is all about love in action. The Father sent to Son to this world to save us. The Holy Spirit was also given to us to make that sacrifice real to us and to give us the strength to live a life of faith. What will we do with this? The answer is both simple and difficult. We are to love each other. Not just those who are loveable and not just when the feelings are there. As God put love in action, so must we. If we say we love God then how we treat others has to be consistent with that. Brothers and sisters, let us love one another.

Introduction

One of the frequent sayings from my childhood was the phrase, “Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me.” I can’t think of a more incorrect statement. As I look back over my life, I can’t remember much of the times that I was physically hurt by sticks, stones or anything else. But I can remember the harsh words that were said to me. The memories are so vivid that I can picture the actual places where those conversations took place.

Was I just an overly sensitive child? I don’t think so. Our society in general has recognized that words have power. We are trying to educate people in how they use words. Bullying in school, while still having a physical aspect, is often more about the words that people use. There are countless examples of young people who have died by suicide because of the relentless barrage of mean-spirited words. Words have power.

Christians shouldn’t be surprised. How did God create the world? He spoke. It was through words. Words have both creative and destructive power. The Bible has much to say about our words, including James’ letter. James observes that tongue is such a small part of our body and yet it is able to affect things far beyond its size. James couldn’t have imagined it, but think about how much influence our finger tips have in this age of social media.

that is not to say our tongues and our words are bad. They can be and are used for good purposes. We use our tongues to praise God. “O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise.” The problem is that we can immediately go from speaking blessings to God to speaking curses to people created in the image of God. How often has someone seamlessly shifted from singing the doxology to gossiping about the person in the next pew? The way James puts it makes so much sense. What is used for one thing shouldn’t be used for the opposite reason. Imagine I invited you over for dessert and then informed you that the spoon you are about to use is what I use for cleaning the kitty litter. We would never do that. So why do we do that with the our mouths?

What I would like to do is look at four ways that we shouldn’t use our words.

Thoughtless Words

Not all harmful words come from a wicked heart or evil motives. In fact some of the most painful comments come from people who are trying to be helpful. The first category are thoughtless words. Sometimes we see a situation and we feel the need to bring meaning to it through our words. Feeling that it is better to say something than nothing, we say the first thing that comes to mind. That may not be the most appropriate thing to do. Some of the most painful words spoken to us have been by well meaning people. We experienced this when we lost our first child in miscarriage. People tried to explain why God had allowed this, as if they had the inside information, but it only made things worse. The same thing happened when our children were diagnosed with autism. People felt the need to explain why God let that happen. The truth is that they didn’t know but they felt the need to fill the silence. Those words hurt.

There are few things that need that have to be said. First is that silence is okay we do not have to fill the void. Simple presence is more than enough. Secondly, we need to be aware of our own ignorance. Don’t try to explain something that you really don’t know about. Thirdly, ask yourself if the person really needs to hear what you want to say. If it is not going to help them, don’t say it. Finally, think before you speak. It is simple but difficult to do. Still we must try.

Discouragement

I was originally going to call this criticism but that is not quite accurate. There is a place for healthy criticism in the right relationship and in the right context. Discouragement is something else. These are the kind of people who hear someone say something and immediately jump to why it won’t work or why it is a bad idea. They feel it is their duty to prevent everyone from making mistakes. There is a time to discourage when someone is doing something obviously dangerous or foolhardy. But what I’m talking about are those who either are so against change or who are too insecure to see other people achieve something that they need to bury every new idea in a heavy does of discouragement. There is no listening with an open mind, no contemplation that maybe this person maybe successful. Everything it is negative and the conversation needs to be focused on the problems. What if we listened to the ideas and brainstormed how we could overcome the challenges? What if we encouraged people to take risks and think outside the box? We may feel some misgivings when someone shares something with us. But we don’t have to share all our concerns right away. We can listen and learn.

Gossip

The previous examples of bad words often come from a person’s personality rather than bad motives. They are impulsive or negative by nature. But gossip takes us into a new area. Gossip is sharing information about a person that shouldn’t be shared. More than that, the information is shared to make us feel better about ourselves. “So and so is getting a divorce. At least our relationship is not that messed up.” “So and so has really gotten in debt. I’m so glad I’m not that foolish with money.”

The church has been susceptible to this because it can easily be done under the guise of “prayer requests.” How do we know where a prayer request ends and gossip starts? Do you talk about the person for thirty minutes and pray for one? Do you have permission to share? Do the details really add anything to the ability to pray? Remember that God does not require us to supply all of the information for him to answer the prayer. He already has that information. The real test is, do you feel the sense of thrill when you tell the story? If you do, it may be time to shut the conversation down. When it comes to gossip, there are two important responses. One is not to do it, which should be obvious. The second is not to listen to it. Passive participation is still participation. There is a place to say, “I don’t need to know this” and walk away. Gossip has destroyed many churches and it should be avoided as a terrible danger.

Lies

Our final category may seem straightforward but we need to talk about it. We should not speak lies about other people. “Thou shalt not bear false witness” is one of the Ten Commandments. Why is that? God’s nature is truth. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Jesus accused those who lied to him as being children of the devil. The word devil literally means slanderer. People, both ancient and modern, have had their lives destroyed by lies.

But the opposite of lies is not just the truth, it is the truth with love. If someone is a bad singer, you don’t have to go and tell them they are a bad singer. Just because something is true doesn’t mean that we have to say it. There are many times when just the plain truth is not loving. That doesn’t mean that we should lie to make people feel better either. There is a way that we can speak the truth in love. The simple test is the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Speak as much truth and in such a way as you would want others to speak to you.

Conclusion

James has some strong warnings about how we use our words. He says, “It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.” You can’t be any plainer than that. James understood the power of words. James was the half-brother of Jesus. In the Gospels, we see that not only did James and the brothers not affirm Jesus, they openly mocked him. It wasn’t until the risen Jesus made a special appearance to James that he believed and became one of the most important leaders in the early church. Was James thinking of his foolish words when he wrote his letter? Whether or not he was, we should be thinking of our words. We pray prayers, sing hymns and read Bible passages. Will we use that same instrument to tear apart those around us? May it not be so! 

Introduction

When our children were younger, many of their questions began with “How many sleeps until…?” Many of the questions were quite trivial and I started to just make up numbers. Then one day, one of the children asked, “How many sleeps until I die?” That shook me. I had no clue of my own mortality at their age but they must have been more aware because of my role as a pastor and my involvement in funerals.

When we look around this room, there is a wide variety of experiences represented here. But the one thing that unites us all is that we will all die. We will have a last drive in a car. We will have a last hug with a family member. We will have a last meal. We will have a last breath. There is no getting around it.

Some people have come to grips with the fact that they will die. Woody Allen is reported to have said, “I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Have you ever wondered why it is so devastating to receive a terminal diagnosis? We already know that we are going to die but receiving a timeline makes it more real. We are forced to face reality.

Last week we looked at 1 Thessalonians, which was one of Paul’s first letters. There he seems to expect that Jesus would return in his life time and that he would not experience death. This week we look at 2 Timothy, Paul’s last letter and we see Paul coming to terms with his impending death. We will look at what that means for how we live and how we die.

Paul Near the End

Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus are called the pastoral letters because we see Paul’s pastoral heart. Timothy and Titus are two young men that Paul has discipled and mentored. Now that Paul is nearing the end of his life, he sends these letters as his last opportunity to pour into their lives.

Paul lived a hard life throughout his ministry. When we read about Paul’s conversion in Acts, we see that Paul was warned right from the beginning about how much he would suffer. Paul came into conflict both with non-Christians and Christians that didn’t like the way he did things. He would pour his heart and soul into churches only to watch them make foolish mistakes. Paul experienced poverty as well as physical and emotional pain.

Despite all these difficulties, Paul remained faithful to the Jesus that called him on the road to Damascus. It was common for thought leaders to boast of their accomplishments to support their arguments and although Paul could boast in that way, he would rather boast in his suffering. Staying faithful in the hard times was much more rewarding than receiving human praise. Paul has hopped from one difficult point to the next. But now he is nearing the end. Although Paul has spent much time in prison, he knows that his execution is at hand. This is the time of the Emperor Nero, who was known for his killing of Christians.

How would you feel if you knew that your death was imminent? For Paul, it is not dwelling on the fear of the execution but of reflections of the way he lived.  Paul had fought the good fight, he had run the race, he had kept the faith. Notice what Paul says here. He doesn’t compare himself to Peter, James or John. He doesn’t list the number of churches he planted or give the final amount of money he collected for the poor in Jerusalem. It was not a contest in which he could compare his achievements to another. He was given a fight to fight and a race to run and he did it. Did Paul have any regrets in his life? I’m sure that he did, but he doesn’t dwell on that. What matters was that he was called to follow Jesus and he was faithful to that task.

Having reflected on the past, he looks to the future, the future beyond his death. Paul knows that he will stand before Jesus, and specifically Jesus as the righteous judge. The idea of a judgment day may fill us with terror but it does not for Paul. Paul has confidence in this judge, that he is fair and just. Paul also knows that he is righteous because of Jesus and not because of his own effort. At the same time, his actions will be judged and Paul is content to leave that to Jesus. He will receive the crown of righteousness, not because he is the great Apostle Paul but because he, like other Christians, have longed for the presence of Jesus.

How We Live Matters

The idea of death should naturally point us to how we live our life. I recently rewatched the movie Saving Private Ryan. It is a story about World War Two and a group of soldiers sent to rescue a Private Ryan who is behind enemy lines but is to be sent home. Most of those soldiers who go after Ryan are killed, including the Captain that was leading them. Just before the Captain dies, he grabs Ryan and says, “Earn this!” We are then brought back to today and the now elderly Ryan is standing before the Captain’s grave in France. Ryan asks his wife desperately, “Tell me that I’m a good man!” Ryan wasn’t rescued because he was better than anyone else, but out of gratitude for the price that was paid for his life, it was essential that he not waste what was given to him.

That is very much the motivation for living the Christian life. Jesus died for us, not because we had earned it or had done something special. But having been brought into God’s family by the death of Jesus, we need to respond appropriately. The Christian life is not just about duty. It is not as simple as following the rules in the hope of impressing God. Living the Christian life is about living a life of worship. This is what Paul calls elsewhere, offering our bodies as a living sacrifice. We lift up people as heroes who die for Christ, and we should. But equally important are those who live for Christ and in some cases that is more difficult.

We will be on our deathbed at some point and we may have the opportunity of reflecting on how we lived. At that point it will be too late to change but it is not too late right now.

How We Die Matters

We are all going to die. It might be by accident or by disease. It may be in old age or at a far too young age. As a pastor, I have had many opportunities to watch as people transition from this life to the next. For some people the process of dying is filled with fear. For others, it feels natural and they are ready to meet Jesus. How we die matters.

We will stand before Jesus, the righteous judge. The judgment will not be whether we deserve eternal life. That judgment came upon Jesus himself. The judgment will be on how faithful we were with what God gave us. The standard won’t be Mother Theresa or Billy Graham. The standard will be what God called us to do, what gifts he gave us and what opportunities came our way. We don’t have to live in gear of that. Jesus is a righteous judge who can be trusted.

And we will receive a crown of righteousness. Some people take passages like this and develop an extravagant concept of heavenly rewards based on how we performed here on earth. I will confess that I am skeptical of this. I think being with Jesus will be reward enough. The crown of righteousness reflect the righteousness that we already have in Christ Jesus. The crown was given in ancient times to the winner of an athletic contest. We are not competing against other Christians. It is only about our own life and death. The point is that we can trust Jesus to do the right thing and to acknowledge our faithfulness.

Conclusion

You may have hated this message. You may have wished that we could just ignore death. That is not possible. Our friends and family will die. We will die. But before we die, we will live. We get to choose how we will live. We can choose to fight the good fight and to run the race. We can choose to be faithful to Jesus, not out of fear but as an act of worship. Paul had a sense of peace when he looked to his death. Can we say we have that same peace?

Introduction

There is a lot of work that goes into sending military troops on deployment. There is more to it than just providing transportation and supplies. Rules of engagement must also be developed. What are rules of engagement? They are very specific rules on how the troops are to respond during a conflict. Can they fire on the enemy the moment they are seen? If the enemy attacks civilians? If the enemy fires on our troops? Can they respond with full force or just minimum force? How are they to respond if attacked by hostile civilians?

Rules of engagement can be frustrating. There have been times when Canadian peacekeeping troops have been forced to only watch during a genocide because their rules of engagement specified that they could intervene only if they were attacked. They were helpless to stop the violence and this of course has led to emotional trauma. On the other hand, rules of engagement are important because they take out all the guesswork. You can’t have each soldier or officer making up their own rules as to when they are going to respond in force.

Something similar is helpful for us as followers of Jesus. Yes there is much flexibility in being a Christian and there is variety in how we live out our faith. But there are rules of engagement that are applicable as we interact with God, fellow believers and those without faith. Paul provides some helpful rules for followers of Jesus in his letter to the Colossians.

Make Prayer a Priority

Paul begins by stating that we are to devote ourselves to prayer. Not just that we are to make some time but that we are to devote ourselves to prayer. This assumes confidence that there is a God that we can communicate with through prayer. We may have put aside some time for prayer but are we really devoted to prayer? This does not mean that we have always to be in a formal prayer meeting. We can be praying no matter what we are doing.

What should the content of our prayer look like? Paul specifies that we are to be watchful and thankful. Those two things go together. How can we be thankful for what God has done if we don’t notice what God has done? Look for the ways that God is working in your life and thank him for his blessings, small and great.

Paul also asks for prayer for himself and his colleagues as they share the message of Jesus. The church is to pray that there will be opportunities to proclaim the story of Jesus and to be able express that message in a clear way that people would understand. By the way, this is a reminder that none of us is too good to need prayer or to ask help from our fellow Christians.

There are many people we can pray for. We can pray for our pastors, teachers, missionaries and evangelists. We don’t even have to know all their names. Pray for those who are working at the expansion of the kingdom of God, whether locally or globally. Not just our own denomination but for all those who are called.

Act Carefully

I have very much enjoyed my time in the military and I am proud to wear this uniform. One of the things that I appreciate about the uniform is that it is a sign to others and reminder to self about the proper conduct of a soldier. While we should always act properly, we realize that when we are in uniform, our activity reflects on all of the military. It is not something to be taken lightly.

I have had some conversations with some Christians who tell me why they don’t have a Jesus fish on their car. It is not that they are are embarrassed to b a Christian but because they are not nice drivers and don’t want to make Christians look bad. Perhaps it would be better to just drive better than to hide who we are following.

Paul specifically asks us to be wise in how we act, especially toward those outside the church. How do we know if we are around someone outside the church? We don’t, that is why we need to always act wisely. I remember what it was like before I was a Christian and I would observe Christians, even hoping they would mess up. I didn’t expect perfection but I was hoping for some evidence that what Christians were saying was not what they really believed. I was disappointed and discovered that Christianity was true, even if Christians do stumble along the way.

We are also to make the most of every opportunity. This does not mean forcing our views on every person we meet. But rather looking for opportunities. There are many people not interested in Jesus and many that are. Be watching for the opportunities where people are showing interest. We would normally make the most of opportunities in other areas of our life, we should do the same with faith.

Speak Well

We need to be careful with how we act and this includes how we speak. We live in an interesting world with social media. We can express our strongest opinions without any humility and not fear the consequences. We can vent anger and insult people to the best of our ability. We may even feel justified because we believe our views are correct. But this is not the way we are to use our words.

Paul tells us to make sure our conversation full of grace. Grace means giving people a gift even if they don’t deserve it. This means we are not just nice to people we agree with or like. Grace is for everyone. We are in a strategic time. In a time of public outrage over every little thing, followers of Jesus can be countercultural by having conversation full of grace.

A good example actually came from a non-Christian celebrity. Recently Ellen Degeneres was seen sitting beside former president George Bush, both of them having a fun time. Many of Degeneres’ supporters were outraged that she would be nice to someone on the opposite side of the political spectrum. She responded that when she tells people on her show to be kind to one another, she means everyone and not just those they agree with. She stood firm on her position to be friends with people different from her.

That is a lesson every follower of Jesus should learn from. I have seen Christians openly mock in the nastiest of ways those they disagree with. It is important for us to stand up for what we believe is true but that never gives us the allowance to be nasty. What would happen if the headline of the newspaper every morning was the nastiest thing you said the day before? That would probably make us careful in what we say. But it shouldn’t take that to make us be respectful and loving toward people that we speak with. We should always be seeking to build people rather than tearing people down.

Conclusion

When a soldier is deployed to serve in a specific way, they will be handed a card outlining their rules of engagements. Do this and don’t do this. They can never plead ignorance. Everyone knows how they are to act in a specific situation.

We are deployed into this world as followers of Jesus. We too have been issued rules of engagement. we are to make prayer a priority. Prayers of thanksgiving and prayers for wisdom for others. We are to act carefully. We may not wear uniforms but we are identifiable as followers of Jesus. We need to act in such a way that honours Jesus’ name. We must speak well. Many Christians fear that that they don’t have all the answers. That’s the least of our problems. Our first priority must be to speak kindly and respectfully to all. Especially when we don’t feel like that. Follow these rules of engagement and we will have a successful deployment.

Introduction

Christians, especially conservative Christians, often claim to stand for “family values.” What those values are sometimes are rather vague. But the disturbing thing is that one can get in the media spotlight and preach family values and come home and not value family. There have been many unfortunate reports of bad relationships, especially husbands and wives, within the church. Some children have left the church after seeing what their supposed Christian fathers and and mothers acted like at home.

Now it is not as if the Bible is silent about family relationships. There are certain issues that we have to look for principles but when it comes to the family, there is direct teaching. Unfortunately, some of those teachings have been twisted and used in the opposite way that were intended. One of those passages is “Wives submit to your husbands.” Many have interpreted this as “Men, you are in complete charge and women, you better get used to saying yes dear.” Some husbands have used this verse as support for abuse, claiming they were using their biblical mandate to make their wives submit.

We need to ask the question: Is the Bible helpful or unhelpful for creating healthy relationships between husbands and wives? I am going to argue that it is helpful but only as it is interpreted correctly.

Role of Wives

Before getting too far into the teaching of husbands and wives, I like to look at where certain Bibles place Ephesians 5:21. That verse speaks of mutual submission between all Christians. Many modern Bibles place passages as paragraphs with their own subtitles. Some Bibles will include verse 21 in the previous section and some will include it with the sections on husbands and wives. Think of the consequences of this. One is saying that mutual submission is a completely different topic from the submission of a wife to a husband and the other is saying that the submission within a marriage is in the context of our mutual submission. Since even chapters and verses are a much later invention, we must use our wisdom to help in our interpretation.

I can say with confidence that submission within the marriage is in the context of mutual submission. How do I know? Because in the verse “Wives submit to your husbands,” the word “submit” is not found in the Greek. Verse 22 borrows “submit” from verse 21, tying these two verses together tightly. It is not only wives that are to submit.

Even having said that, there are many women who will dislike this teaching. They will see it as another example of Paul’s anti-woman bias. First I would say that Paul’s attitude toward women is much more complex than people claim. Secondly, this passage hints at the important role Paul saw women as having.

In the ancient world, women had very few rights. The men had full authority and only their needs or wants were taken into consideration. Normally if there was instruction given about marriage, it would only be given to the husbands because they are the only ones who mattered. “Make your wife do this, make your wife do that.” But that is not what Paul says at all.

Paul first of all addresses the wives. He is doing two things here. he is assuming that women are present in an equal capacity with men at the church gathering where the letter was being read. He is also leaving it up to the wives to follow his instruction. He doesn’t demand the husbands enforce this. It is completely up to the wives.

It also says that wives are to submit to husbands as the church submits to Christ, which assumes only as much as the husband is Christ-like. This is not a command for a wife to submit to abuse, physical or emotional, from a mean-spirited husband. It also does not assume that women have to be the most submissive, since the model is the church, which is made up of men and women. We are all meant to live a life of submission in certain situations.

Role of Husbands

When I first heard this passage taught, usually be men, I assumed what Paul said was “Wives submit to your husbands and husbands make sure that they submit.” But that is not what Paul says. Paul says for husbands to love their wives. That seems unfair. Wives have to work at submission while husbands get the passive experience of love. That is not what Paul is saying. Paul doesn’t say feel love for your wife. What Paul says is that husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church. Did Jesus simply look at the first believers and feel warm affection for them? Jesus acted out his love for them. If we don’t get it, Paul spells it out to us that Christ gave himself up for the church. That means in plain language that he gave up his life for us. Those men who see this passage as being about giving them exalted authority better re-read it. The calling of husbands to be Christ-like is about becoming completely selfless. Let’s think more about how Jesus died. Was Jesus overpowered by the Romans? Were they stronger than he was and he became a victim of their might? That is not the impression the Gospels give of the death of Jesus. Jesus gave himself up to his accusers, you could even say that Jesus submitted to death since he had the power to prevent it.

So what kind of love are husbands to have toward their wives? It is a selfless and submissive love, the same kind of love that Christ has demonstrated to us. This is not the love where the wife is expected to fetch the slippers for her husband but the love of Christ washing the feet of his disciples. It is about a relationship of a mutual love and submission.

Conclusion

Why is all of this important? It is important for two reasons. One is that it is important for there to be a healthy family life. Paul will go on to describe healthy relationships with children and other members of the household and will be equally radical. I have roles that people respect, such as pastor, chaplain and Bible teacher. But he see my most important and most challenging roles as being a husband and a father. I feel the burden that God wants me to be just as if not more faithful in my home life than in my other roles.

In addition to this, this is important because the husband and wife relationship is a picture of the relationship of Christ to the church. No wonder people struggle with being in relationship with Jesus when they have never seen a healthy relationship. There is a circular argument here in that Christ and the church are the model for the marital relationship and the marital relationship is a picture of Christ and the church. When we see the healthiest possible marital relationship, one marked by mutual love and submission, we see a glimpse of how we as the church can related to Christ.

Introduction

In general, human beings work in extremes. This includes our attitudes toward conflict. On the one end of the spectrum are those who love conflict. It is not necessarily because of hatred or anger attitudes. It may be because they value precision and accuracy. It may be because they lack patience. It may be because they have self-esteem issues and they build themselves up by trying to prove others wrong. You have met these people. You may be one of these people. They are always listening to conversations for the slightest mistake so they can jump in and correct the foolish person. They thrive on demonstrating how wrong the person is, not just for helping the person, but for the personal satisfaction and perhaps for those watching.

The other extreme are those who will avoid conflict at all costs. The scariest examples are what happens when people witness someone beating up another. What do they do? They pull out their phones, not to call for help, but to record the violence for social media. They don’t want to get involved. These are the people who live by the mantra, “It’s none of my business.” Sometimes it isn’t their business but other times it is. A more common example may be when we see someone we are in community with doing something that is dangerous or unhealthy. Rather than being accused of sticking our nose where it doesn’t belong, we keep our mouth shut. Again, sometimes it is wise to remain silent. But the determination of whether we intervene should not be our fear of conflict.

There has to be a way of finding the happy medium. We shouldn’t fight every battle but we shouldn’t fight no battles either. Interestingly we can learn from a conflict between two of the most important figures in the early church.

Paul and Peter

Every conflict has a context and what we are going to look at has a specific context. Christianity began as Jews who followed Jesus as the Messiah. Eventually God decided that Gentiles, that is non-Jews, could be welcomed in the church. God chose Peter, one of the most important of the twelve apostles, to be the one to preach to and welcome the Gentiles. This happened but not without some pushback from some of the more conservative Jewish Christians. Despite Peter’s role in this event, Peter became known as the apostle to the Jews, while Paul became known as the apostle to the Gentiles. Still there were points of overlap in the ministry of these two giants of the church.

This brings us to Antioch. Paul was here and so was Peter, although Paul uses his name Cephas. The majority of the church would have probably have been mostly Gentile Christians. However, they knew that they were one Christ. Even though Jewish traditions put up barriers between Jews and Gentiles, especially for table fellowship, those barriers had been torn down in Christ. Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians could sit at the same table, enjoy a great meal and celebrate their common faith. Peter was very much a part of this, eating with his Gentile brothers and sisters.

That’s when some Jewish Christians arrived from Jerusalem. These were conservative believers, who probably were not as happy about the coziness between the Jews and Gentiles. We are not told whether they said anything but we are told that when they arrived, Peter began to withdraw from the Gentiles. Peter, despite being one of the top leaders in the church, reacted out of fear of what they thought. Because he was a leader, some of the other Jewish believers began to withdraw as well. Paul observed all of this. Even Paul’s beloved friend Barnabas began to stumble. He accuses them of hypocrisy. A hypocrite in the ancient world had a very specific meaning. It meant an actor. someone who put on a mask and pretend to be someone they weren’t. In this case, Peter and the other were pretending they had fully welcomed the Gentiles but their actions around the Jewish visitors revealed that to not be the case.

What was Paul to do about this? Paul makes it plain that he rebuked Peter to his face and in front of the rest of the church. That was a bold move. Did he pull him aside privately first? Was the public rebuke a final resort? We are not told. We are only told that Paul felt passionate enough about this issue that he was going to correct the top apostle in front of the rest of the church.

Confronting One Another

How does this affect us? Does this mean that we should all stand up right now and rebuke those around us who have done things that annoy us? I would suggest not.

The truth is that living in community means that we are going to be around people who do things that get on our nerves. The church is a family and families have frustrating members. That is the way life is. So this is not permission to let loose on everything that bothers us.

I would suspect that there were other things about Peter that Paul didn’t like but it was on this that he took a stand. Why was this such a big deal that Paul would do something so risky?

Paul’s mission was to preach to the Gentiles and to reassure them that they were as much a part of the people of God as anyone else. What Peter was doing, especially with his prominent role, was sabotaging that message. Peter was in danger of damaging the unity the church. The unity of people in Christ is central to the gospel. We use the phrase in weddings, “What God has joined together, let no one separate.” The same message is important for the church. God had acted dramatically to join Gentiles and Jews in Christ and it was wrong to cause division. Paul had no choice but to act boldly in such a circumstance.

When we encounter a situation, we have to decide the proper way to proceed. I once had a guy in my youth group who was rebuked by an adult in church for wearing earrings. The adult may have disliked the earrings, but that is not a gospel issue. Maybe you don’t like tattoos or would prefer people dress a certain way. There are all sorts of issues that we may have opinions on but not all of them are deserving a confrontation.

But there are times something needs to be said. These are things that revolve around the gospel. It could be, like the case of Peter, something that threatens the unity of the church. However, I wouldn’t start with a public rebuke. The best thing is a private conversation. You may find that you don’t have all of the information. You may need to pull a leader into the conversation. When there is a need for confrontation, we need to fall on the side of grace. Be willing to take a stand but do it carefully on the things that really matter.

Conclusion

I will confess that I err on the side of avoiding confrontation. I don’t like having the hard conversations with my children, much less people in my congregation. But I have had to have some of those talks. I didn’t thrive on the excitement of correcting a mistake. I went into it with fear and trembling, knowing that there could be unfortunate circumstances. And yet there are certain things that we just need to take a stand on. Be very careful in what you choose to confront. Find a trusted Christian, perhaps someone apart from the situation, and seek their counsel. You may find that you just need a thicker skin and you may find it is time to take that stand.

Introduction

If you wanted to achieve a certain goal, gain a certain level of effectiveness, what would you seek? I would suspect that most of us would seek a position of power and strength. We would want to have as many resources as possible and attempt to minimize weakness. We would connect strength with success and weakness with failure.

This seems to make sense. It even seems to make sense in church ministry. What would be the best way to have a successful church. We would want lots of money for sure. We would also want plenty of people. But not just any people. We would want people with good jobs and excellent leadership skills. We would want people gifted to give ministry and not in need to receive ministry. We would want people to come in and say to themselves that these people have it all together.

The problem with all of that, as logical as it seems, is that it does not reflect the teachings of the Bible. This is found in the Old Testament and the story of Gideon. Gideon was called by God to lead Israel against its enemies. But God, against all common sense, needed to get the Israelite army small enough, so that it could be clear that it was God’s power at work.

This is even more pronounced in the New Testament. The message of the Gospel turns everything we knew upside down. Defeat becomes victory. Weakness becomes strength.

We are going to look at this idea in terms of how it affects us individual but even more so as a congregation.

Clay Jars

I once read an interesting comparison between Christianity and Islam. Most often we compare individual doctrines but this looked at the different contexts for their origins. In many ways Islam started from a position of power. A good comparison is between Muhammad cleansing the Kaaba in Mecca and Jesus cleansing the Temple in Jerusalem. Muhammad conquered Mecca, and cleansed the Kaaba of its idols and established as the place to worship Allah and consolidated his power in Mecca. Jesus entered in Jerusalem on a donkey, cleansed the Temple and then was executed on a cross by the authorities as a result. The early years of Islam were of conquest. The early years of Christianity were of persecution.

This is not meant as a criticism of Muslims or Islam but as an observation that Christianity emerged out of and developed within a context of weakness.

What does this have to do with a passage from 2 Corinthians? Corinth was a city in Greece that respected strength and power and wisdom. These values passed into the church and the Christians there desired to impress people with their strength.

But Paul reminds the Corinthians that God had a completely different way of working. God didn’t choose the strong, he chose the weak. Paul compared the people of God to jars of clay. There were different kinds of materials for containers. Something could be made of stone or of metal or of clay. The stone and metal vessels would last but the clay vessels, which were most common, would often break. When a jar of clay broke, there was no putting it together with crazy glue. It would just be dumped onto the garbage heap. If you had some young kids coming for lunch today, would you put out your fine china or your dollar store dishes? Vessels of clay were the dollar store dishes of the day. They were easily broken and easily replaced. People didn’t value them.

Yet it was vessels such as this that God chose to place his glory. God chose people whom society didn’t value and placed his power in it. This didn’t transform the clay into metal. The weakness remained so that God’s strength could be seen.

Paul illustrates this from his own experience. When Paul boasts, he doesn’t boast the type of things we would put on a resume that look impressive. Paul boasts of his suffering, not to prove how resilient he is but how great God is when he works through weakness.

The church is a giant jar of clay that doesn’t look impressive to our culture but within is the power of God.

A Human Church

The gospel that Jesus preached was about the coming of the kingdom of God. This kingdom could have come in any number of ways. But God chose to use the church to spread the kingdom after Jesus returned to the Father. Worse than the church, a human church. Humans are weak. Not just physically but morally and emotionally. I’m a student of history and I have read so much about the ways that the church has stumbled over the centuries. Critics point at this and see proof that there is no God. I look at the same evidence and am humbled that God would choose to work in people like us. We mess up and God picks us up and moves us forward.

Some of you may feel like you are at the top of your game. But I suspect many of us are all too aware of our weaknesses. I once was filled with pride about how lucky God was to have me on his team. That didn’t last long and I was quickly humbled. Not punished but reminded of my own limitations.

You may be sitting there thinking you have nothing to offer but your weakness. Great, that is exactly what God is looking for. God is looking for the weak so that his strength can shine through.

This is true for us as individuals but it is also true for us a congregation. We may not have all of the strength that we think we need, but that doesn’t limit God. In fact, it is possible for a church or a church-like organization to be effective without God. If you throw enough money and gifted people into a project, you are going to find success. But that is not God’s plan for the church.

I have been at smaller churches than this and have been amazed at the spectacular ways that God worked through them. What was the most beautiful is that no one suspected that these congregations did it on their own strength. It was obvious that God’s strength was at work in their weakness.

In saying this, I need to make a clarification. When we say that it is all about God’s strength, it doesn’t mean that we have no role. We can’t stop tithing so God will be glorified in using less money. We can’t stop volunteering so the Holy Spirit can do all the work. We are jars of clay but we are still jars. Jars and other vessels were still used, even if they were weak. They were used for their purposes in appropriate ways. The same is true for us. We need still need to give of our treasure, time and talent. What this is saying is that we cannot look at the sum total of what we have and say that is the upper limit of what we can accomplish. God will use our clay efforts but he is not limited by them.

Conclusion

It is easy to get discouraged, as individuals and as a church. We see what we have and think we are not good enough. We are far too limited to be effective in any meaningful way. We are just simple jars of clay. We may be jars of clay but we are not simple. God’s power is at work in us. God uses us as individuals and God uses us as a congregation. We will stumble and have troubles. But all the more for God’s power to shine through our cracks.

Introduction

One of the biggest shocks to happen to me took place around fifteen years ago. My mother sat me down and revealed to me that I was adopted. Now my adoption story is a bit different than most. My mom was my birth mom but my dad adopted me. He was not my step-dad, as he went through the legal procedures to adopt me as his own. As far as I’m concerned, he is my real dad.

I had no idea in that moment that I would eventually adopt three children of my own. Nor could have I have anticipated what it would be like for me having two biological and three adopted children. I don’t see a division between them, they are all my children. While I can’t speak for them, I don’t get the sense that I’m “just” their adopted dad. I’m their dad and that’s it.

For some people, there is shame in adoption. We think of it in the negative sense, in that someone didn’t want us. But in the ancient world it was the opposite. Instead of seeing adoption as someone not wanting the person, it was about someone wanting the person enough to adopt. It was honourable to be adopted and in some ways it had a higher status than biological children. With biological children you get what you get. But with adoption, you chose specifically the person you wanted to adopt into your family.

I find it interesting that this is the image that Paul uses in this passage to describe our relationship with God. Let’s dig deeper.

Paul and Adoption

It is important for us to understand the context of the letter to the Romans. The original church in Rome was made up of Jewish believers in Jesus. Eventually some gentiles were added but then the Emperor kicked all of the Jews out of the city, leaving just the gentiles. The gentile Christian church grew and grew. Eventually the Jews were allowed back, including the Jewish Christians. This is important because the situation that Paul is addressing is the conflict between the Jewish and gentile Christians. Each of them thought they had an advantage over the others.

The first part of the letter to the Romans is Paul explaining that one group does not have an advantage over the other, that we all start from the same place. The passage that we are looking at is the good news that both groups have the same opportunity to have a relationship with God.

Central to Paul’s theology is the Holy Spirit. Christians receive the Holy Spirit when we become believers. But for what purpose? We can imagine a master wanting to keep tabs on his slaves by imprinting some marker on them. Is that the reason? Is the Spirit there to let God know when we mess up, so that we can live in fear of the next thing that we will do wrong?

Paul tells us that it is not a spirit of slavery but a Spirit of adoption that we receive. God is not a master looking for more slaves, God is a Father looking for more children. That is wonderful news. But reality is that we don’t always feel that way. We may feel unworthy to be God’s children and we may fear that God feels the same way.

Paul tells us that the Spirit helps us to cry, “Abba, Father.” This is an interesting prayer. Our Bibles are in English, translated from Greek. But Abba is neither English nor Greek. Abba is an Aramaic word for father. It is the same word that the Gospel writers tell us that Jesus used to pray to his Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before his crucifixion. At that moment, Jesus was at his lowest point and he cried out to Abba, Father.

I don’t think it is a coincidence that Paul uses these words for us. What Paul is saying is that even at our lowest point, we can call out to God, not as slaves fearful of punishment, but like Jesus calling out to his Father. Our relationship with God is not defined by circumstances.

Obviously we are different from Jesus. Jesus is the true Son of God, sharing his nature, the second person of the Trinity, the one through all creation came into being. He is the natural Son and we are the adopted children. But we are not second-class. In fact we are co-heirs with Christ. We share with Jesus what the Father has for his family. Before we get too excited about how we are going to spend our inheritance, Paul specifies that we share in both Christ’s suffering and his glory. That was the experience of Jesus, our big brother, and that is what we as his brothers and sisters will experience as well.

Our Adoption

When you think of your relationship with God, what is the primary image that comes to mind? Is it worshiper, servant, follower, disciple or something else? Those are all good and they are biblical. But this passage challenges us to consider our relationship with God in terms of being his children.

This can be a challenging step for some people. Some people have amazing relationships with their parents and some less so. There may be abuse, neglect, abandonment or more. We may feel as if parents are unreliable and that we need to do things in our own strength. We may see parents only as those that demand of us and not those who give.

However, the Father that Jesus reveals to us is not like that. He is a loving Father that gives and gives. He doesn’t just tolerate us as his children, he cherishes us.

But what if we don’t feel like that? What if we don’t feel worthy? What if God feels far away or we don’t like the way our life is turning out?

I think that Paul is assuming all of those things in this passage. By pointing us to Jesus’ most difficult time. By reminding us that God’s Spirit testifies our spirit. The assumption is that we are going to have to be reminded of our status with God. It is like the Spirit reaches into our wallet pulls out the adoption papers to remind us who we really are.

Our relationship with God is not based on emotions, even though it includes emotions. We hear stories of spouses who divorce because they lost the feelings of love. Our relationship with the Father is nothing so fickle. Feelings will come and go but that does not affect the relationship. There are times that my child and I feel closer to each other than others, that never destroys our relationship. Remember that even our big brother Jesus could say, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Enjoy the feelings when they are there but don’t get reliant on them.

Conclusion

For some people, the thought of being told they are adopted is a nightmare. Yet today, if you are a follower of Jesus, I need to tell you that you are adopted. You may have looked to God in the past as an angry judge ready to condemn the slightest infraction. But I want you to know that God is your Father, he has adopted you as his sons and daughters and he loves you.

One of the reasons that God gave his Spirit to us was to remind us of this. The Spirit is, among other things, our certificate of adoption. The Spirit seeks to remind both with and without emotions that we are in God’s family. Let that truth surround you and shape the way you live as a Christian.

Introduction

Is it a good thing or a bad thing to argue? That depends on what you mean by an argument. If you define an argument as an angry exchange that produces more heat than light, then arguments can be bad. As a parent, I will say that I have observed many arguments between our children. But I will say that most of that is just bickering. Both sides are tired, annoyed, frustrated and they are really venting emotion more than anything. But this is not limited to children. I was once at a meeting and two deacons began to argue. It was not a rational debate, in fact they weren’t even talking about the same thing. The rest of us watched in shock as they yelled at each other.

But an argument doesn’t have to be that. Another definition of argument is “a reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong.”

If we believe in something very strongly, whether it is care for the environment or adequate funding for education, we should be able to set forth our case. These are the reasons that this issue is important and these are the steps that need to be taken. People might disagree but it doesn’t have to end in a shouting match. I have had people try and convince me of something, I was not convinced, and yet we were able to walk away as friends.

The Apostle Paul believed strongly in the Gospel. He believed that Jesus was the Messiah and that Jesus had risen for the dead. Not only would Paul assert that these things were true, he would give reasons why it was true. That is what we are going to look at and we will try and learn from his example.

Paul in Thessalonica

Paul is known as the apostle to the gentiles, that is the non-Jews. He was called specifically to people who were non-Jewish. But his strategy when going to a new city was to go to the local synagogue and preach Jesus there first. There were two reasons for this. There was always the possibility that some Jews would follow Jesus and they would make a great core to the new church that was being planted. But also at the synagogue were gentiles, who were followers of the Hebrew God but who had not converted to Judaism.

We will get into the relevant principles soon, but what Paul was doing there was not the equivalent of us showing up at the local synagogue here and insisting that they believe in Jesus. What Paul did fit with who Paul was and the context of the synagogue. Paul came not as an outsider but as an insider. Paul was trained as a Pharisee and he could trace his Jewish lineage. Paul had every right to come into the synagogue and talk to them about maters of faith. Also, the synagogue was a place where people debated interpretations of Scripture. That’s what they did. They would pick a passage of Scripture and debate back and forth and people would decide who had the strongest case. This is the positive sense of argument and the rabbinic writings are filled with these conversations.

Paul didn’t come to tell them to leave one religion and join another, to leave Judaism and join Christianity. He wanted to show them from their own Scriptures that believing in Jesus was the next logical step from what they already believed.

How successful was Paul? Some got angry and there was a disturbance in the city. But there were others, both Jews and gentiles, who were persuaded and became followers of Jesus.

I have heard many times that you cannot argue someone into the kingdom of God. That may be true but God has used the arguments of people to help them on the journey of coming to faith. Paul’s experience at Thessalonica is an example of that.

Us and Our Friends

What does this mean for us? Should we argue with our friends and family? That depends on how we define argument. No we shouldn’t yell at them and attempt to badger them into becoming Christians. But we should put forth our case the best we can and pray for God to work through our efforts.

One of my favourite authors is C.S. Lewis. The reason for this is that identify with his journey from atheism to Christianity. How did Lewis go from being an unbeliever to a believer? Was it simply reflections by himself in his room? No, C.S. lewis had friends. One friend was Owen Barfield. Barfield had many discussions with Lewis, pointing him to a reality beyond this material world. Lewis described this as ‘the great war.’ Lewis came to see his atheism as false. But what the role of Jesus. One evening, Lewis went on a walk with J.R.R. Tolkien, author of Lord of the Rings, and Tolkien gave him a rational way of understanding Jesus. Lewis had friends who were not afraid of an argument.

Please don’t visit your neighbour and say, “My pastor told me to yell at you.” I’m not saying that. But if you had to put forth the case for why Christianity is true, what would you say. You don’t have to have all the answers, but you should at least understand why you believe it.

However, setting forth the case is not just about providing intellectual reasons for the truth of the Gospel. There are non-verbal ways of arguing the truth of Christianity. We can do it by acts of kindness. We can do that by fighting for justice. We can do that by simply not being a jerk.

If Christianity is true, it should affect us in some way. It should also affect the way we treat other people. It doesn’t mean that we are perfect, but it does mean that people can see God at work in us.

I had a group of friends in late high school and early university. They were my drinking buddies. During university I became a Christian. I tried to share my faith but I will confess that I wasn’t good at it. We lost touch for a few years. Most of these friends ended up being faithful Christians. I won’t say that it was because of me. But one of my friends told me years later that they saw something in my life that spoke to them. That was one piece of their journey.

We need to reflect on what we are doing to shine both the truth and love of Christ into the lives of our friends and family.

Conclusion

Paul made it a habit to visit the synagogues and reason with them about Jesus. They were his people and he cared about them. Some responded positively and some rejected him. But he did it anyway.

We can do the same thing, not by visiting synagogues but by being with the people that are natural for us to be around. Our friends and family. We need to argue with them. Not by yelling and screaming but by putting together a compelling and attractive argument for why Christianity is true. It will include having intellectual reasons for the faith but it will also be by how we live out our faith. How Paul talked to the Jews in the first section of Acts 17 is different from how he talked to the Greeks in Athens later in Acts 17. What is important is that we are true to ourselves and our context.

Introduction

What comes to mind when you hear the words born again Christian? I know what I hear. I think of a person who lived a really rough life, far from God. Probably involved in drugs and having a lengthy criminal record. The person encounters Jesus, has a dramatic conversion and a radical change in lifestyle. This is based on testimonies I have both heard and read.

I also think of a couple of sermons that I heard at the church I grew up in. One I heard just before I left the church was a message on why the minister never wanted to be born again. Since I knew the Bible talked about being born again I thought that was odd. About a decade later I visited the church. They had a new and younger pastor and he basically preached the same message, very critical of the idea of being born again.

Some people have very positive ideas of being born again and some people have very negative ideas of being born again. Since the concept is found in the Bible, we need to have some understanding. Whether you identify as born again, we need to understand what Jesus means by this.

Jesus and Nicodemus

The teaching on being born again is not found in a vacuum. It takes place in a conversation between two real people. When we think of the people Jesus spent time with, we think of the “sinners,” the prostitutes and tax collectors. That’s true but he spent time with religious people as well. One of those was Nicodemus who was a Pharisee. he would have been someone trained in the Hebrew Bible and the rabbinic traditions. It was Nicodemus who initiated this conversation. If I had to predict what their talk would look like, it would have been a friendly debate on the interpretation of a Bible passage. Most of the rabbinic writings are just that, and both Jesus and Nicodemus had experience in that exercise. But that’s not what happened.

Jesus instead states that one must be born again to be in the kingdom of God. This is not really based on an Old Testament passage so it left Nicodemus out of his element. What does born again even mean? Obviously Nicodemus didn’t understand. You can’t go back into your mother and go through the birth process again. Was Jesus making fun of Nicodemus?

Jesus goes on to explain that this second birth is a birth in the Holy Spirit. Nicodemus was aware of the Holy Spirit. Special people in the Old Testament were empowered by the Spirit for certain tasks. But Jesus is talking about something more general. Everyone in the kingdom of God is to be born of the Spirit. That was pretty radical. It left no room for the hierarchy that the religious elite thrived on. According to Jesus, everyone must be born again. This is a difficult teaching.

What Does Being Born Again Look Like?

So Jesus expects all of his followers to be born again. But how does this fit with our expectations of a sudden conversion from a very sinful life? Should we encourage our children to have a life of crime before becoming a Christian so they can be truly born again?

A number of years ago I was leading a youth group event at a Salvation Army church. I was approached by some fundamentalist Baptists. They weren’t impressed that I was a pastor and so they challenged me as to when I became a Christian so they could test whether I was born again. I told them it was a process and they quickly stopped me. They said being born again was a specific moment and it I couldn’t identify it, I was not a Christian. I disagreed.

I was reading a commentary by N.T. Wright. He compared this to people who frame their birth certificate and hang it on their wall. The details of the where and when are important and they want everyone to know. But those who do not display their birth certificate should be doubted as to whether they were really born. The evidence is plain. The same is true for those who are born again.

But this leaves us with what being born again looks like. There are some people who are raised in the church and who just transition from their parent’s faith into their own faith. There are those who are converted from unbelief and who experience an immediate transformation in their life. There are others who are converted but who spend a lifetime struggling with their sins.

When I became a Christian I tended to emphasize the sudden transformation. If you are born again, all the old struggles of the past were gone. You may look like you did before but there was a radical inner transformation. The problem was when I saw Christians stumble. Does that mean that they were never Christians? Or does it mean that this transformation idea is false?

I have continued to wrestle with what it means to truly be a follower of Jesus. I have recently been reflecting on a dental analogy. If you had really crooked teeth, there are a couple of things you could do. You could go to a denturist and have all of your teeth pulled and replaced with false teeth. That is one way. Or you could go to an orthodontist and get braces. I had an overbite as a teenager. I had two teeth removed and the orthodontist would tighten my braces to close the gap. It was not pleasant and it took a long time. My question is: Is God a denturist or an orthodontist? Does he instantly replace the old with the new or does he do the long and painful work of fixing what is there? It seems that he is both and we are not to judge the experience of another.

I have heard the testimonies of people who were instantly delivered from any desire for alcohol. I have also heard the testimonies of those who can only take one day at a time and continue to fight against the temptations.

If we think of a continuum of holy living, what is important is not where they are on that line but what direction they are going. There may be a person who is highly respected but each day is becoming more greedy and selfish. Another person may have plenty of struggles but each day is becoming more and more like Christ. I use this not so much to judge others but to test myself. Do I see myself moving in the right direction, even if I have some struggles still?

Remember those ministers who preached against being born again? The problem they had was that they saw it as an experience after which God is done with us. But God is not the doctor who delivers but rather the parent who raises. I was never tempted to think once our children were born that all the work was done. It was just beginning. The same is true for being born of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit has a lifetime of work to do in us.

Conclusion

We tend to see born again Christians as a subset of Christianity. While I understand that as we identify born again Christians with a certain style, according to Jesus there are born again Christians and non-Christians. That doesn’t mean you have to use the label born again Christians. I will acknowledge there is plenty of baggage that goes with the label.

What Jesus wants is more than people who identify with a specific religion. Jesus wants people born not just of the flesh, but born of the Spirit. That new birth doesn’t have to be accompanied by a dramatic experience or the praying of a certain prayer. Nor do you have to identify the time and place of that new birth. What matters is that you see the evidence of the Holy Spirit working in you. You might not be where you want to be but that is okay. Development after natural birth takes time, why should second birth be any different?

Introduction

What is the most important role in the church? Is it the preacher? While I hope my preaching is helpful, I could call in sick right before a service and you could still have an inspiring and God-honouring worship service. Is it the musicians? Some churches don’t use musicians at all. What if we had great preaching and music but didn’t have any friendly people to welcome visitors? What if we didn’t have any people who were able to give financially so that we can use this building and run programs in this community? What if I showed up on a Sunday morning but none of you came? It wouldn’t matter how much work I put into my sermon.

We tend to create a hierarchy of roles, seeing some as more important than others. We may even compare ourselves, seeing our selves as less than other. Or perhaps seeing ourselves as better. The truth is that we all have a role to play in the church. The question is never whether our role is important, it is always about how serious we take that role.

Of course, this could all be just my opinion. Maybe I’m just trying to motivate people to get more involved. What we really need is to do is look at the Scriptures to understand what Jesus has to say about this.

Jesus and His Followers

We are told that Jesus was proclaiming the Good News of the kingdom of God. Of course he was. He was the Messiah and the Son of God. He came to see the kingdom of God break into the world. Jesus could do anything and he could do it by himself. But he didn’t.

We are told two things in this passage. Jesus was assisted in his ministry by two groups. There was the twelve (male) apostles and a group of women. We may instantly fall into the pattern of creating that hierarchy of roles. We have the twelve who are doing real ministry and then we have the women who are there as helpers.

But please notice some things. The twelve are unnamed in this passage, not even Peter is identified. But when it comes to the women, Mary, Joanna and Susanna, are all mentioned by name. That doesn’t mean that the men are unimportant, but it does mean that the women are just as important.

This is actually an ongoing theme for Luke both in the Gospel and in Acts. Luke tends to pair men and women. If you see an event with men, you will see close to that, a similar story featuring women. Luke goes out of his way to be inclusive, reminding us, even in the face of societal pressure, that the kingdom of God is for everyone.

We actually have more information about these women than we have for many of the apostles. Mary Magdalene was an important figure in the early church. Despite popular opinion, she was not a prostitute. The early church combined a number of women in the Gospels to create a composite character that they call Mary Magdalene. Joanna’s husband was the steward of Herod and thus in an important position. Joanna, and likely the others, had financial resources that they used to support Jesus in the ministry. We think of the apostles as so important but when you look at what they actually accomplished during Jesus’ ministry, the women were definitely not second rate.

We have among Jesus’ followers both men and women, both rich and poor. Jesus chose to use all of them and none were more important than the others. They were just different. That is exactly the kingdom of God that Jesus was preaching.

The Church and Our people

What does a successful church look like? Is it about a certain number of people in the pews? Is it about a certain amount of money in the offering plate? Those things are not unimportant but they are not what defines a successful church.

If we follow Jesus’ example, and I think we should, it is about people using what God gave them in the way God calls them. Are there different roles? Yes there are, we cannot all do the same thing. If every person in our congregation had the same gifts and served in the same way, we would be a very unhealthy church.

I look at the rest of the staff at our church and I’m thankful they are gifted in ways that I am not. I cannot do what they do and I don’t need to. But this is not for paid staff. It is for everyone who is part of this congregation. We need preaching and worship music. But we need projection of the lyrics and people to run the sound board. We need people to greet and people to sit on committees. And it is not just formal positions. Some of the most influential people are people who are not officially recognized but are constantly responding to the Spirit’s guidance and doing and saying exactly what they need to do.

I am not here to demand more, more, more. There are some people here who are doing more than they should be doing. What I am saying is that everyone has a role. If you call this your church home, you are essential to the health and effectiveness of this church. I want you to think about what God has given you and how you are using those gifts. If you haven’t been given musical ability, I’m not going to guilt you into joining the worship team. Perhaps you have certain skills. Perhaps you have financial resources. Perhaps you have loads of time that you are trying to fill up. Perhaps you just have a heart for other people. We need you. Jesus need both the poor fisherman and the rich woman. They were equally important and so are you. Don’t spend your time envying other people or denigrating your own gifts.

We understand this in every other area of life. Sports teams are based on people having different roles. Can you imagine a hockey team firing their goalie because they haven’t scored enough goals? Businesses have different roles. I used to work for a warehouse and we need the marketing department and the receiving department and the shipping department, as well as the people picking orders. None were more important than others. We needed to work together as a team.

The same is absolutely true about the church. We all have a role. Not a collection of important and unimportant roles but a diversity of equally important roles. We need to work together to be the church God’s wants us to be.

Conclusion

Jesus is the greater leader that ever lived. We would be foolish to not try and learn from the way he lead. Jesus gathered a group of twelve men from different backgrounds and he used them in a specific way. But he didn’t limit himself to the twelve. Not only were there various other disciples, he also had as his followers a group of women, some of them quite wealthy. Together they support Jesus and his ministry. I believe this is a model for how the church should operate.

The church needs you. All of you. Some of you are volunteering way beyond your time and energy. Thank you. This is not about guilting people into doing more and more. The only question I have to ask you is how are you using the gifts that God has given you for the work he is doing in this church? Do not compare to another, simply look at what you are gifted for. There is a place for you and if you are not participating, we are not the church that we could be.

Introduction

I would like to ask you a question. Is it good or bad to feel fear? I would like to suggest that you cannot answer that with yes or no. The answer is rather that it depends. Especially when they were younger, our children with autism didn’t feel fear. I watched Logan run across a busy street right in front of cars. I watched Abby stand on the railing of a second story deck with no fear. We wished that they had more fear. But there are times when fear is not healthy. There have been times that I have wanted to do something, knew it was the right thing to do but came up against a barrier of fear. In those moments, I wished I had less fear.

What about fearing God? There was a time when a compliment would be, “He is a good, God-fearing man.” By that, we meant that the person had a healthy respect of God. But that at times moved into an unhealthy fear, seeing God as an abusive parent who could fly into a rage at any time. The pendulum has swung the other way and now we don’t talk about fearing God. Instead God is either our buddy or a kindly old grandpa. Nothing to fear.

Human views of God will change with the fashions but we need to focus on what the Bible says. And what the Bible says may surprise you.

Jesus Calms the Storm

The story we are looking at is one of the most popular miracle stories of Jesus. There is something about it that captures our imagination. The water in which the disciples were sailing was known for its sudden storms. While some of the disciples were experienced fishermen, they also knew how bad things could get. They probably knew people who had drowned in those very waters. We can see the dark clouds moving in quickly, the waves steadily rising. The boat gets pitched back and forth, it is looking really bad. And what is Jesus doing? He was sound asleep, resting comfortably on a cushion. Put yourself in the disciples’ position. How would you feel if you were fearing for your life while Jesus is enjoying a nice nap? Finally they couldn’t take it anymore and they woke him up. The disciples expressed their concern and Jesus responded by telling the wind and waves to stop. We need to pause for a moment. Jesus didn’t pray to the Father asking him to stop the storm, the way we might if we were in the same position. Jesus addressed the wind and waves directly and commanded under his own authority. It says that Jesus rebuked the storm. He then rebuked the disciples. Did they really think, after all that they had seen and experienced, that Jesus was going to let them drown?

Now the typical way to preach this story is for us to reflect on the storms in our life, how Jesus seems to be asleep but that we still need to trust that Jesus will calm our storms. I have preached that message before but I’m not going to do that this time. Instead I want to focus on what happens immediately after the miracle. The disciples move from fearing the storm to fearing Jesus.

Jesus Creates Awe

What is the picture of Jesus that you have in your head? Is it gentle Jesus holding a young child or petting a little lamb. Our concept of Jesus often about his tenderness. But there is more to Jesus than that.

After the miracle, the NIV says that the disciples were terrified. Terrified of what? There was no reason to fear the storm. They were terrified of Jesus. The NRSV says “they were filled with great awe.” That may be a better translation.

What do we mean by awe? It has a wide range of meanings. You may be in awe of my ability to tell puns. But if I revealed a Soviet-era nuclear bomb underneath the communion table, there would be awe of a different kind.

The word awful means full of awe. Originally it mean being in awe in both a positive and negative sense, You could be in awe of what a great crop there was or you could have been in awe of what a bad crop there was. Over time awful shifted to being just about the bad things. We have an awful headache or we have awful neighbours. But there was still this idea of being in awe of the good. That is how the word awesome developed. My child did awesome at school. That means something different than my child did awful in school. Technically, awful and awesome have the same meaning, but one is reserved for the good and one is reserved for the bad.

What about Jesus? Since Jesus just saved their lives, they were in awe in a good way. But they were still frightened. Healing a deaf person or a leper was one thing, but having the authority to command nature? The disciples ask, “Who is this?” That’s a good question. Who indeed could do such a thing.

They were in awe of Jesus, but it was more than just having respect. There are people I respect that I don’t fear. The Greek for this passage says that they feared a great fear. Repetition is used for emphasis. The Greek word is the one we get the word phobia. I have claustrophobia. When I watch television and I see a person trapped in a confined space, I have a physical reaction. I have acrophobia and when I imagine myself at the ceiling of this sanctuary, I experience vertigo.

The disciples feared Jesus, not because they thought he would hurt him but because they knew they were in the presence of great power. It’s the feeling that we might have if we stood right at Niagara Falls or near a nuclear reactor.

You may notice in your Bibles that there is some confusion about the ending of the Gospel of Mark. Everything after Mark 16:8 is a later addition. Most translations make note of this. Why was an ending added on? Because Mark 16:8 ends with “they were afraid.” That is no way to end a Gospel, especially after the resurrection of Jesus. So a better ending was added.

However, I would suggest that is the perfect way to end a Gospel that has just described the resurrection of Jesus. Death has just beed defeated! That is power that we need to be in awe of. It is literally an awesome event.

Conclusion

I want to conclude by asking if we have lost our sense of awe. I remember just over twenty-five years ago, having a dramatic answer to prayer. It really scared me because I felt seen and known by God. I knew God knew everything but now that everything included me. It led to a radical change in my life. But over time, I can get use to God. It’s time to sing another worship set, time to say certain prayers. I know God is there but I have gotten comfortable with his presence. I have lost the awe.

How do we remember the awe? It may be different for each of us. I would say be watchful for the things that God is doing in our world, our community and our life. Take a walk in nature. Make yourself available for a ministry in which you need to rely on God’s strength. Ask God to reveal what he is doing around you.

Don’t be afraid of God in the sense of seeing him as someone looking for any excuse to strike us dead. But regain the sense of awe, fear God in the sense of him being an awesome God. Remember who God is and what he has done in your life.

Matthew 6:7-15

Introduction

If there is one part of the New Testament that is well known, at least for certain generations, it is the Lord’s Prayer. In movies or television show, if they want to show a generic Christian, they might have them recite the Lord’s Prayer. Even though it was first said by Jesus, it doesn’t include his name and so is less controversial than some.

I grew up attending a church that recited the Lord’s Prayer every week. Even if I hadn’t, I would have known it because I grew up in a time when it was said every morning at school. To be honest, I only appreciated it because it held off our lessons for a few minutes.

Have you ever wondered why schools did that? Of all the Bible passages, why the Lord’s Prayer? I can’t know for certain but I suspect that it was because the Lord’s Prayer has been the cornerstone for spiritual development for centuries and thus is part of our cultural heritage. I also suspect that the Lord’s Prayer captured the Christian message and the things that we value.

The days of saying the Lord’s Prayer in schools are long gone. But the Lord’s Prayer has much still to teach us.

The Prayer Part

The danger with the Lord’s Prayer is that it can easily become just a ritual. We can recite the words without ever taking time reflect on what we are saying. The truth is that the Lord’s Prayer is more than just a bunch of words, it is a model for us to create our own prayers. I see three buckets that are found in this prayer.

The first bucket is about our relationship with God. Too often we launch right into the stuff we want but prayer should be about our relationship with God. Prayer is a vital part of spiritual formation. Jesus teaches us to proclaim God’s holiness and to pray for the coming of his kingdom. The kingdom of God is one of the main topics of Jesus’ teaching. It could be argued that for Jesus, everything was about the kingdom of God. What is the kingdom of God? This passage explains it nicely. God is reigning as king in heaven. We understand that. We should be praying that as God reigns in heaven, so should God be reigning on earth. That begins with us, obeying God and submitting to his rule. The kingdom God is completely intertwined with our relationship with God.

The second bucket is about our own needs. It is not unspiritual to ask God to meet our needs. The Psalms are full of prayers asking for God’s intervention. Not only did Jesus teach us to do this in this prayer, Jesus modelled this type of prayer in his own prayer life. There are three things that are to be prayed for. We pray for our physical needs, for forgiveness from God and for protection from temptation. Why should we pray for ourselves? Isn’t that selfish? Have you noticed that airline safety presentations always tell you to put your air mask on first before helping others. We need to be cared for before we can help others. We want to give food to others? Then we need to pray for our own daily bread. We can’t give what we don’t have. So go ahead and pray for your needs. It is the way that Jesus taught us.

The third bucket seems a bit hidden in the prayer but it is important. As we pray for God’s forgiveness, there is an expectation that we will forgive. This bucket is about our relationships with others. Even though some people talk about a personal relationship with God, the biblical model is that we belong to a community that has a relationship with God. How we relate with others actually matters to God. 

These three buckets fit nicely with Jesus’ teaching that we are to love God and love our neighbours as ourselves. We should pray each of these things, whether in the worlds of the Lord’s Prayer or in our own words.

The Action Part

Have you ever been in a situation where you are waiting for what the speaker is going to say next? The person has said something provocative and we are waiting for them to bring it home with how that should affect us. Jesus has just taught on the Lord’s Prayer, one of the most incredible prayers that has ever been prayed. Jesus could have said any number of things as application. He could have told the disciples to pray this three times a day. He could have told his disciples to fast an hour before and an hour after they pray this prayer. But Jesus didn’t say any of the things that we might expect.

Instead, Jesus zeroes in on that part about forgiving others. If you look at the prayer, it looks like that is a minor part and yet that is where Jesus focuses his attention.

Jesus seems to be saying that if we don’t forgive others, God won’t forgive us. There is a reason why we often stop reading before that section. When we confront Jesus’ words, we begin to push back. There are two reasons for this. One is that it messes with our theology and the second is that we just don’t want to do it.

Let’s start with the theology aspect. What do we do with this passage? Doesn’t God have unconditional love for us? Won’t God just forgive us, apart from anything we might do or not do? We don’t want God’s forgiveness to be tied to our actions. If we were to ask Jesus why he would include forgiving others as a prerequisite for receiving forgiveness, I suspect that Jesus would respond with, “Why are you fighting so hard to hold onto the right to refuse forgiveness?” Think about it, what do we gain by refusing to forgive someone? Is there a benefit? The people I meet who refuse to forgive are those who seem the most miserable. There is nothing attractive about unforgiveness.

I need to make clear what I mean by forgiveness. I am not saying that Jesus calls us to be best friends with a person who has hurt us. It is not about putting ourselves in an unsafe position. Forgiveness is about letting go of the hatred and bitterness. It is about handing them over to God and refusing to be ruled by the hurtful actions of another. For some people it is about forgiving someone who damaged a family heirloom, for others it is about forgiving someone who abused them. Each situation is different. But Jesus calls us to forgive. If we had any doubts, in Matthew 18:21-35, Jesus devotes an entire parable to this topic.

Instead of worrying if lack of forgiveness with keep us from heaven, ask what it would take for you to forgive the person you need. You may need help from other brothers and sisters in Christ but it is important.

Remember I said that it looks like this command is a minor part of the Lord’s Prayer, it really is not. We are to pray for the kingdom to come. When we forgive, God’s reign is active in our lives. When we forgive, we are avoiding that temptation to hold onto bitterness. It is everywhere.

Conclusion

Prayer is great and it is central to the Christian faith. But prayer is not about saying a few “magic” words. Prayer is meant to be connected to the rest of our life. At some point we have to get off our knees and put into practice what we have just prayed. The work is not finished after we have said the amen. I want you to think of one person that you are having trouble forgiving. Whenever you think of them, you can feel the bitterness rising up. You may need to confront them with your hurt but that may also not be possible. Pray to God for strength to forgive and pray for the person, not that God wold smite them but that God would bless them. Do whatever it takes to forgive. The only thing you have to lose is the weight of bitterness.

Introduction

I have come to the conclusion that people are willing to put up with a certain amount of confusion and chaos if they know that some where there is a plan. You wouldn’t want someone tearing down walls and ripping up carpet in your home unless you knew there was a specific plan of what your renovated house would look like.

I am student of military history. While it sometimes happens, the worst thing an army can do is just fight for the sake of fighting. There has to be a plan, some ultimate goal that this battle is working toward. The D-Day landings at Normandy were not just to make Hitler mad. They were part of a plan to create a second front to relieve the Soviets and to eventually move into Germany.

The same principle is true in our life on this world and our understanding of God. There is a lot of chaos in this world. There is injustice and violence and many indicators that things are not the way they are supposed to be. Sometimes people look at all of this and give up on God. The reason they give up on God is not because the world is too confusing but because they have lost confidence that God has a plan.

Just like all the other areas of life, whether renovations or military offensives, we can deal with the momentary confusion if we know there is a plan, we can do the same thing if we know God has a plan.

Here is the good news for you today. God has a plan.

The Old Testament Plan

You may not know this but our Christian Old Testament has a different order for the books than the Jewish Bible. Whereas our Old Testament ends with Malachi, theirs ends with 2 Chronicles. Listen to how the Bible ends for Jewish people.

In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and also to put it in writing:

“This is what Cyrus king of Persia says:

“‘The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of his people among you may go up, and may the Lord their God be with them.’” (2 Chronicles 36:22-23)

It ends with a reminder of the Babylonian exile and then God moving in the heart of the Persian king to allow the Jewish people to return to Jerusalem. The exile is over. In some ways, it is a satisfying conclusion.

Except for there are still a lot of problems with the world. It is great that the exile was over, but there was still a lot of problems for the Jewish people, not to mention all of us Gentiles. The end of a 70 year exile doesn’t fix all our problems.

This brings us to Malachi. We don’t know much about Malachi other than his name means “My Messenger” and he is thought to be the last of the prophets. Sort of.

In the conclusion of his book, Malachi looks to two future events. One is the day of the Lord. This is something that is found in many of the prophets. The day of the Lord is something like what we would call judgment day. The Hebrew people knew that the world wasn’t working the way it should. They say the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer. What got them through it was that they believed there was a plan and that plan was the day of the Lord. It would be the day everything would be made right. So yes, they looked forward to the end of the physical exile, but they also looked forward to the day of the Lord that would fix far more than the end of the exile ever could.

The second event that Malachi mentions is the return of the prophet Elijah. Elijah was one of the greatest of the Old Testament prophets and one of the few to perform miracles. Elijah was taken up back in 2 Kings. Malachi indicates that Elijah would return before the great day of the Lord. It would be one of the signs that the plan is moving as expected.

The immediate result of this prophecy to the original audience was encouragement to stick with the plan. They might not live to see either event but God still had a plan and that made every difference in the world.

The New Testament Plan

Malachi is our bridge from the Old to New Testaments. I should say that it wasn’t Christians who changed the order but the Jews who translated the Bible from Hebrew to Greek.

Malachi prophesied that before the day of the Lord, Elijah would come. Has Elijah returned? The answer is yes and no. It is no in the sense of the individual with Elijah’s DNA has not physically returned to earth. The answer is yes in that someone has fulfilled his role.

The Gospels indicate that John the Baptist came to prepare the way of the Lord and that he did this in the role of Elijah. In Luke we read:

And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. (Luke 1:17)

Jesus himself said, “And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come.” (Matthew 11:14)

You see, John the Baptist was not just an interesting prophet with some quirky ways of doing ministry. In many ways, John the Baptist was the hinge between two chapters of history. John came not just to baptize, but to prepare the way of the Lord. That Lord was Jesus. It was Jesus that was going to make all the difference. We will get into detail about the words and deeds of Jesus in the coming weeks.

For now, I want to see how this informs our understanding of the day of the Lord. In the Old Testament we are told that the day is coming but almost no other details. In the New Testament (1 Thessalonians 5:2) we are told that the day of the Lord is actually the return of Jesus Christ to this world. On this day, the resurrection will take place. On this day, there will be judgment. The wicked will be punished and the righteous will be rewarded. Basically, everything wrong will be made right on this day. This day is the future for us, just as it was for Malachi. The difference is that Elijah has come through the ministry of John the Baptist. The way of the Lord has been prepared. Jesus Christ, God’s own Son has come, died and is risen. The plan is moving forward. We don’t know when the plan will be completed but it is moving according to God’s schedule.

Conclusion

What does this mean for us? Although we have more information, in many ways we are like Malachi’s original audience. We are just people trying to make it through a difficult world. There is a lot of chaos and confusion. We have no idea what tomorrow brings. If that is all there was, life would be pretty difficult to accept. But there is something more. The plan. God has a plan. Some people get all worked up as to what God’s plan is for us as individuals. I would suggest that we focus on God’s plan for the world and for history. The world is more than a series of random unfortunate events. The world is the setting in which God is unveiling his plan. Knowing Jesus, we have some more insight into the plan. We are still going to have difficult days but at least we know there is a plan and the plan is good.

Introduction

Have you at any time in your life imagined what it could be like to build your dream house? What would it look like? Personally I love the style of old houses. They have such character. Amanda and I have often found ourselves driving through neighbourhoods admiring those beautiful old houses. When Amanda and I were first married, we rented the second floor of a beautiful house built in the mid-1800s. It was great but there were problems. It really needed a major updating as it came with all the problems of a 150 year old house. So if I could build my dream house, I would take an architect to see an old house and ask them to duplicate that but with all of the updates of a new house. Your dream home might look different.

What about God’s dream house?

God has indeed had a house, a house he designed himself. It was the Jerusalem temple. There is a problem though. It was destroyed. Twice. But that doesn’t mean that God is done with his house building business. We are going to look at a story that took place after his temple was destroyed the first time and try and connect that to the way house building is done today.

Haggai and the House of God

During our time in the minor prophets, we have been jumping around a bit in time. Let’s try and orient ourselves to understand what is happening. The Babylonians had invaded Judah, had captured Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. This was terrible as the temple was the only place that sacrifices for worship could be made. To make things worse, the Babylonians exiled many of the Jews elsewhere in their empire so that they would not be tempted to revolt.

As predicted by the prophets, Babylon’s days were numbered. Their empire was taken over by the Persians. Whereas the Babylonians ruled by fear, the Persians ruled by earning the loyalty of their subjects. The Persians allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and even provided some of the supplies for the rebuilding project. This sounds perfect.

The first thing that the Jews did was rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. When that it was done, it was time to rebuild the temple. But the project stalled. Have you ever been a part of a project like that. All sorts of plans are made but then things just seem to come to standstill. I’m sure you have driven by many such building projects that just seem to get abandoned.

However, when God is the boss, this situation is not acceptable. God spoke through the prophet Haggai, addressing everyone, but specifically Zerubbabel and Joshua. Before the exile, leadership was done by the kings but things were different now. Zerubbabel was a descendant of David but he was not a king. He was a governor who was appointed by and was accountable to the Persians. Joshua was the high priest, a role that had taken on more responsibilities with the end of the kings. One way to look at this was that Zerubbabel held the secular authority and Joshua the religious authority. Together with Haggai, they were to rally the people into a renewed building project so that the temple could be once more. I love how this experience is described. God stirs up the spirit of the people. Its not that they didn’t have what they physically needed, but they were discouraged and unmotivated. God took those very same people and stirred their spirits so that they were able to complete the job that God had commanded them to. Just so you know that temple eventually did get built and the people were able to offer sacrifices once more.

Ways to Build the House of God

As Christians, the focus of our worship is not the Jerusalem temple. Even while the temple still stood, Christians were beginning to redefine what the temple of God really is. One of those interpretations is the church. By church, I don’t mean the building but the people. Today people equate churches with buildings but the earliest Christians worshiped in homes and not special buildings. I suspect that the early Christians would have been surprised to know that we would one day worship in a building such as this. Why did they see the church as the temple? The temple was the place where God dwells. When Christians gather together in worship and fellowship, God is present through his Holy Spirit. No matter what building we are in, when we are together, we are in a sense the temple or house of God.

The question we need to ask is: In what ways might God stir our spirits to build up the house of God? The house of God is not just built once, it is maintained continually by the work of men and women. How can we build this house of God?

1. One way is by the giving of our tithes and offerings. I hate talking about this because I still hear accusations of the church being money-hungry. The truth is that we cannot continue to do what we do without your generous giving. Whether you are giving to a specific mission need or helping to pay the utilities, your financial contribution is helping to build the house of God.
2. At a previous church, there was a man who came to me and told me that he didn’t have much money to give but he could give of his time. And this exactly what he did, he was one of our most faithful volunteers. We are always in need of people to help in different ways. Most congregations have a small minority of people doing the work. That is not the way it should be.
3. One of the things I noticed about our story is the way God used Haggai, Zerubbabel and Joshua. The prophet, the priest and the governor. Each had a different skill to bring to the project. We are all gifted by God in some way. We will be judged by God, not based on how much we did, but by how faithful we are with the gifts that God has given us.
4. I’m putting this point here, but it could have gone first. What did Jesus say when he cleansed the Jerusalem temple? “My house shall be called a house of prayer.” Would people call this house a house of prayer? The beautiful thing about prayer is that you do not need money or good health to pray. I would love to see an army of prayer warriors.
5. The final way we can build up the house of God is by investing in relationships. I mentioned that the temple can mean the church. This is taken from 1 Corinthians 3 and in that chapter, Paul warns people who are destroying the temple. By destroying, he means people who are creating division and are disrupting the unity of the church. There are two ways we can be destructive: by actively hurting people and by passively ignoring people. We need to invest in relationships. We need to reach out and welcome new people and support the people who are already here.

Conclusion

We have an amazing building here in which we are able to worship God. In recent weeks, we have been working hard to maintain this building. We renovated areas to become more effective and addressed areas where there were problems. What would it look like if we were to do the same thing not to the church building but the church? Many years ago, God spoke through Haggai and stirred up the spirits of Zerubbabel and Joshua and the rest of the people. What would it look like if God stirred our spirits. I will say that there is not one person here who doesn’t have a role in building God’s house here in this place. Our roles may look different but they are all essential. Listen to God. In what direction is God stirring your heart? 

Introduction

My children are often trying to convince me to play video games with them. I mostly refuse as I don’t want to sit in front of a TV and play a game. But they also know there is a way to convince me and that is the offer to play a Virtual Reality or VR game. Instead of watching the game on a monitor, you wear goggles and headphones that immerse you in the game. When you look around, you don’t see the things that are really around you, you see what the game wants you to see. Justus and I have done this numerous times and I will tell you that when hordes of zombies come running at me, my heart is beating fast. It is hard to convince myself that I am only in a game and that the zombies aren’t real. What I see affects what I feel.

You may never play VR games but there is a principle here that affects us all. We react to what we see happening in the moment. The immediate is reality and that is what shapes our feelings and our responses. But what if what we are seeing in the moment isn’t the full story? What if there is more to reality than meets the eye?

There was a time when I was sure that I had cancer. I looked at myself in the mirror and only saw skin and bones. The x-rays showed that there was something definitely wrong. I was preparing myself for my own impending death. It seemed logical based on what I was seeing in the moment and yet there was more to the story. I was only seeing part of the picture. The truth was that I didn’t have cancer and I wasn’t dying, even though the symptoms were real. Only time and further investigation would bring the full truth to light.

I don’t know what you are seeing in your experience right now. But what if there was more to the story than what you are seeing in the moment? That is what we are going to look at.

Habakkuk

The prophet Habakkuk doesn’t give us a specific date for when he prophesied, although it is likely during the time of the Babylonian aggression. Really all we need to know is found in the second verse: “How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save?” You could say that the rest of the book is a commentary on that question. Habakkuk was living a time when life was hard, where there was violence and injustice. Good people were hurting and God seemed to be silent. Can any of us identify with that?

The rest of the book is a back and forth between Habakkuk and God. It is similar to what Job longed for, the opportunity to interrogate God over the presence of suffering in the world. Have you ever imagined having such a conversation. Being able to ask God why he allows certain things. It likely wouldn’t be a calm philosophical conversation but more of a venting with intense emotions. The book of Habakkuk is a reminder that we have the relationship with God to ask the tough questions. In fact, there are no questions that are off limits. We should never see asking questions as a sign of being unspiritual or lack faith. The Bible is consistent in telling us that we are to be real with God and that is exactly what Habakkuk did.

This brings us to the conclusion of the book. Habakkuk comes to the same understanding that we find in many of the Psalms. Suffering is real and there are bad things that happen. Habakkuk names them, specifically using cultural expressions of prosperity. When all of the things that are normally understood to be a part of good life are gone, then we come to the role of faith. It is such a small word but it is exactly the word we need in such times: “yet.” What does yet mean? Yet acknowledges all of the stuff that goes before it and then boldly states that it will not be defined by that reality. Yet is like a high wall that refuses to let despair break through. Yet. Yet what? Even though all of those things might be real, yet Habakkuk will rejoice and trust in God. Logic may seem to lead to giving up but faith helps us to see a different reality.

Even as Habakkuk was so descriptive of how bad things can be, he is equally descriptive of the alternative reality. Instead of curling up into the fetal position, God makes us like a deer upon the high places. A deer is made for such places, they can confidently find all the right places to step. The heights are still dangerous, but the deer is in its natural element and is not controlled by fear. What Habakkuk is saying is not that suffering is unreal but that suffering is not the full picture. There is more than meets the eye.

What We See

Can we identify with Habakkuk? We are not in the exact same position. We don’t have a foreign power threatening our freedom. But there are more than enough negative voices trying to shape our view of reality. Whether it is news from around the world or the things happening to our friends and family. Can you feel the negativity washing over you some days? Friends or family are sick or dying. People are struggling financially. We see the struggles in our community with the homeless and drug addicts. Last week, I went through our local park and saw some many people struggling with poverty, addiction and mental illness all wrapped together. To be honest, it looked to me like a hopeless situation. I could have easily given into despair.

We are not to pretend that suffering is not real. We are not put our religious blindfolds on and pretend that everything is okay. Habakkuk knew that the Babylonians were still a menace.

We need to be aware of the suffering and not ignore it. But we need to also remember that little word: “yet.” Yes there are some troubling things happening either to us or to our community. Yet there is a God who is real and who cares. This God wants to remind us that we see is only part of the picture. There is much more going on that we cannot yet see.

The best example of this is Jesus on the cross. Use your imagination to transport yourself back across time and space to the time Jesus was nailed to the cross. To just look at that moment, it would be enough to completely give up. God’s anointed one has been defeated and executed. It is all over. And YET on the cross Jesus was defeating the powers of sin and on the third day he would be raised, defeating the powers of death. Do you see how the yet makes a difference?

Christians use the cross as our symbol because it is the reminder that God is in the business of insert a yet in the midst of suffering.

Conclusion

If the passage we have read has seemed vaguely familiar, you may have heard of a book called Hinds’ Feet on High Places, written by Hannah Hurnard. The title is taken from this passage of Habakkuk. I found an interesting quote from that book.

“O Shepherd. You said you would make my feet like hinds’ feet and set me upon High Places”.

“Well”, he answered “the only way to develop hinds’ feet is to go by the paths which the hinds use.”

Our preference might be that God makes us strong while we are in a comfortable place. However, that does not seem to be the way works. If we want to be that deer with that sure footing, we will have to go to the high places where sure footing is required.

You may be going through a difficult time right now or you might be overwhelmed by the suffering of others. If you have gotten one thing out of this message, my prayer is that you would remember the word “yet.”

Introduction

Have you ever been asked to do something that you don’t really want to do? I don’t mean something that is just not quite your thing, like being invited to a movie that looks boring. I mean something that makes you want to run the other way.

Back before I was a pastor, I was attending a local church. I had been praying that God would provide an opportunity to be involved in some sort of ministry. I had no idea what it might be. Not long after that prayer, the youth pastor approached me and asked me if I had ever considered helping out with the youth group. You would think that I would recognize this as an answer to prayer and jump at the opportunity. But that was not the case. I didn’t get along with teenagers when I was a teenager, I didn’t want to try it as an adult. So I offered the Christian lie, I said I would pray about it. I didn’t pray about it and that youth pastor didn’t forget about it. He didn’t realize that I just didn’t lack interest in working with teens, I was interested in not working with teens. Finally, he convinced me to come to one of the youth meetings to check it out. I thought this would a good way for me to get out of this, I could try it and then let him know it wasn’t for me. So I quietly slipped in and sat at the back. Then to my horror, the youth pastor announced that I was now one of the adult leaders! I was stuck doing exactly what I didn’t want to do. What I didn’t know was that this ministry would be very influential in my future pastoral ministry.

Have you ever felt like God was calling you to do something? I don’t mean something pleasant like starting a beach ministry in Hawaii. Have you felt like God was calling you way outside your comfort zone in such a way that you want to run in the opposite direction? If so, you are not alone.

Jonah’s Running

We have been looking at the minor prophets and Jonah is likely the most well known of the prophets. We may not remember anything he said, but we can remember what happened to him. Most people, whether inside or outside the church, have some vague idea of a guy who is swallowed by a big fish. This is a favourite story for Sunday school lessons. However, this is not a children’s story. It is something that goes deep to human nature and is relevant to all of us.

Jonah was a prophet. We think of prophets as predicting the future but that was only a small part of what they did. The main role of a prophet was to call people to repentance. They would remind the people of the holiness of God, point out the areas where they have fallen short and call them to get their life back together.

Jonah received the call to preach, which shouldn’t have surprised him. He was prepared to preach to anyone, whether they were from the north in Israel or the south in Judah. But God didn’t have a Hebrew audience in mind. God wanted Jonah to go to Nineveh. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria and Assyria was a nation that was giving Jonah’s people a hard time. They were not just aggressive, they were violent and all the nations feared them. There would have been a mix of emotions going through Jonah’s head. He likely was fearful for his own safety, as this would be like going into the heart of ISIS territory in the middle east and preaching. But there was also ethnic hatred. Jonah was all for God bringing judgment upon the people of Nineveh but saw no need for them to be preached to. Let God rain down balls of fire upon Nineveh and wipe them out. Jonah hated the people of Nineveh. Think about the different examples of ethnic hatred that exist today and try and imagine what Jonah was feeling.

Jonah may have believed that God would keep him safe in Nineveh, but he was not going to preach to “those people.” So he ran away. More accurately, he sailed away. He got on a ship headed for Tarshish. We don’t know exactly where this was, some thinking it was in Spain others that it was the island of Corsica. Either way, it was the opposite direction of where God wanted him to go. What we find in this passage is that Jonah’s escape didn’t go as well as he had hoped. To spoil the story for you, the fish spit up Jonah, he ended up preaching in Nineveh and was disappointed when God showed mercy in response to their repentance. But for this morning, we are going to focus on Jonah’s initial reaction of running away.

Our Running

My question to you is: What are you running from? Is there something that you know you should be doing but you are attempting to avoid it with all your might? Maybe you identify it as something God is pushing you to do or perhaps it is just something you know must be done.

This has been the story of my life, although I have never been swallowed by a fish. After I had given up on atheism, there were all kinds of calls for me to take the next step and become a Christian. I was working for some Christians and quit the job to get away from the message. I did my best to avoid any Bible talk. At one point I was listening to a classic rock radio station, thinking it was safe, only to hear the singer of Grand Funk Railroad give his testimony of how he became a Christian. I couldn’t escape Jesus anywhere.

I eventually became a Christian and a number of years later I felt like God was calling me to become a pastor. I acknowledged it but then put it on the shelf. I’m not sure what I was afraid of, but I was unwilling to take the necessary steps. Then one Christmas, I was visiting my parents and I said grace before our meal. When I opened my eyes, my dad was crying and insisted that I become a pastor, even though he wasn’t religious at all. God wouldn’t let me go my own way.

What is your story? It may be very different from mine. Maybe the call is to reconcile a relationship. Maybe the call is to breakdown a prejudice toward a certain group. Maybe the call is to be involved in some sort of Christian ministry. The call may even be to make that first time commitment to Jesus. The first question is what are you running from. The second is why are you running? There is a reason, take some time to figure it out. Then ask the final question: What would it take for you to turn around? Jonah, who is probably the least obedient prophet in the Bible, eventually got to where he was supposed to be. What would it take for you to get there?

Conclusion

There are things that are appropriate for us to run from. Run from temptation, run from injustice, run from selfishness. But we should run from the thing that God is calling us to. Only you and God know the thing that you are running from. Learn the lesson of Jonah. Running ultimately only hurts us. Eventually it is time to stop running and embrace our call. Let’s do what has to be done before God calls out the big fish.

Introduction

What are your thoughts on restorations and renovations? Do you love them or hate them? It might be a little of both. They can be inconvenient and they can be expensive. But when it is done, there is such a satisfaction, remembering where things were at and enjoying where things are now. This could be as simple as restoring an old antique or doing a major renovation of a building.

Our church building is in the midst of some renovations and we have plans for more. Even though some things are a bit of a mess, we can already get a glimpse of where things are going. I can feel some anticipation of what things are going to look like when we are done.

I bring this up because God is in the restoration business. Yes at times in the Bible we find a call to rebuild and restore the physical structure of the temple. But God is in a different kind of restoration business, one that would affect us even if we had no church building. This is a message that Amos the prophet, powerfully shares with us.

Amos and Israel

If I had to summarize the message of most of the biblical prophets, it would be something like this: God’s people have lost their way, judgment is coming but God will also bring restoration to the people. I encourage you to read through the prophets look for those specific themes.

Amos was a contemporary of Isaiah. Although he was from the south in Judah, his ministry was in the north in Israel. So this is before the Assyrians attacked and destroyed Israel. It was a time of peace and prosperity. Instead of using that as a reason to be thankful to God, they embraced injustice and took advantage of the weak. The prophets told them to change their ways but Israel wouldn’t listen. Judgment was coming, a foreign army would come and destroy Israel. This would be the Assyrians.

Judgment wasn’t the final chapter of the story. Restoration was coming. God would rebuild David’s kingdom. That was a radical message as the north hadn’t been ruled by David’s line for hundreds of years. But David represented the time when things were the way they were supposed to be. Amos uses the imagery of a physical structure in disrepair but that is meant to point to something bigger. What looked like a ruined building, that is the covenant relationship of the people with God, would be rebuilt and restored.

Amos uses this amazing language to describe how great the restoration would be. Using agricultural imagery that his people would understand, he shows that life will be amazing. This is not prosperity relying upon human strength and wisdom but prosperity resulting from God’s work in them. Over and over, he speaks of rebuilding. But is not about buildings. It is about the people of God being in right relationship.

Those who heard these words would have struggled to believe them. Some who rejected God, would claim they don’t need God to prosper. They can get there in their own power. Others who saw where the injustice was going, believed that judgment was around the corner but that would be the end. Amos preached a message that included both judgment and restoration.

Restoration and Our Life

So what does this mean? The passage that we have looked at, specifically is about the future of Israel. But it affects us because worship the same God that is spoken of here. What we find in this passage is that our God is a God who is in the restoration business. It is a part of what he does. Can we find hope in that?

My experience is that God is still in the restoration business. I have seen it in my own life, in the lives of family and in the lives of people I have met through ministry. I have seen God take people from difficult times to a completely new life. I need to be clear, when I say restoration, I don’t mean a return to the way things were before. We sometimes watch videos of restorations of antiques. They don’t recreate the exact way it looked before. They replace parts, do a bit of a redesign, take the best of the old and make something new. That is kind of what God does with us. We need to ask, do we really believe that God can restore us? Are we somehow too far gone for God? It might feel like that sometimes but God is greater than that. No matter where we might be in our life, God is able to restore. we might not be able to predict what that would look like, but he can do that. I remember being in one of my lowest places over twenty-five years ago as a student at Brock University. If you would ave told you where I would end up, I would have laughed in your face. God can restore us, no matter where we are at. That is what we do.

Restoration and the Church

You may believe that God can restore individuals but can God restore the church? The Baptist church began as an attempt to restore itself to the model of the early church. It’s part of our DNA.

You may think there is nothing to restore as we are doing just fine. I happen to be optimistic as well. In a time when many congregations are just trying to keep the doors open, we are actively looking at new ways to minister effectively. It is a nice place to be.

But let’s ask the question, if the God of restorations was to do a work in this church, what would it look like? I can tell you what it wouldn’t look like. It would not be to simply return to the ways of the past. We live in a different world and there is no turning back.

What was it about this congregation that drove the first people to meet and that has kept us going for almost two hundred years? I have read our church history and we have mixed bag that has included some conflict and some cranky people But in that I have seen a pioneering spirit. This was present for the first Baptists meeting in Homer, then over on Church St and those who built a building here on Queen St. Neither a fire nor a church split could stop them. This congregation was actively planting church missions around the city. This congregation was the first to host Out of the Cold. We look to our past and celebrate their courage.

But what would this look like today? How could that adventurous spirit manifest today? We joke that don’t like change and that we like to keep to our traditions. But our tradition is actually to change and to courageously step into new experiences. I like that kind of tradition.

This is not about me as a pastor charting a dozen new directions. It is about believing together that God is still in the restoration business and that local church congregations are one of his specialties.

Conclusion

Can you remember have that special project done? Maybe you did the work yourself or hired someone to do it. You remember the rough shape it was in and then all of a sudden things were transformed. I think we get joy in that because our heaven Father loves that same process. But instead of working on antiques or basements, he works on people. He works on individuals and he works on communities. He does some amazing work, as you may have seen for yourself. When it comes to yourself and our church, I ask you once again: Do you believe that God can do it again?

Introduction

There are many things that I appreciate about Canadian society but one of them is definitely democracy. I wouldn’t want to live in a country where only one person or only a small group of people had all of the say. While we may sometimes complain when election time comes and we have to watch all the party politics, the fact that we have the freedom to be annoyed in that way is pretty amazing.

Democracy means rule by the people. But we have to remember that even in democracies, “people” have been defined in different ways. Even here in Canada, it has only been a hundred years since women had the right to vote. First Nations people were not allowed to vote until 1960! Unfortunately, this is part of the democratic tradition. Democracy was first attempted in ancient Athens. But not every Athenian had the right to participate. You had to be a free male, who was from Athens and who owned land. This excluded a lot of people.

What does this have to do with the church? Democracy is meant to be the model for the church, although not so much for rule, but for participation. But who are the people who are allowed to fully participate? In Israel, there was a hierarchy of who was allowed to do what. Of the twelve tribes, one tribe, Levi, had access to temple service. Of the tribe of Levi, one family, the descendants of Aaron, had the opportunity to be priests and offer sacrifices. Outside of this, there were a select few who received the Holy Spirit, which would empower them as prophets or other special roles. Even worshipping in the temple was controlled. Non-Jews could only go so far, Jewish women a bit farther and then the Jewish men There was a special elite and many were excluded from full participation.

That is not the way that it is supposed to be in the church. Not that we are better than Israel but we live in a different time. So what is the determination of who participates? It is pretty simple. It is the Holy Spirit that desires. That is exactly what we are going to look at today.

Joel’s Prophecy

Joel is a part of the minor prophets. Minor doesn’t mean that he is unimportant but he is part of a collection of twelve shorter prophetic books that are much smaller than Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Like the other prophets, he spoke to a troubled situation, called upon the people to live in obedience and pointed toward a future hope.

What Joel actually prophesies is quite radical. He speaks about a coming of the Holy Spirit. Before this, the Holy Spirit came upon only a select few for specific roles. Joel and his prophetic colleagues would have been a part of this small group. But Joel looks to a time when the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon a wider audience. But Joel gets more specific.

It would be radical enough to say that more people would receive the Holy Spirit, but Joel says that all the traditional categories will be broken down. According to Joel, the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon all, regardless of gender, age or economic station. I’m sure some of the original audience would have wondered if that might be too generous of a gift. Do we really want all those people to have the Spirit? Wouldn’t we really rather a more exclusive club? Not according to God.

This prophecy both looks back and looks forward. It looks back to Numbers 11 and the time of Moses. Moses was the great prophet and Joshua was extremely loyal to him. Two men named Eldad and Medad were prophesying by the power of the Holy Spirit. Joshua wanted Moses to stop their prophetic activity. “But Moses replied, ‘Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!’” (Numbers 11:29) It is the hope of Moses that is prophesied by Joel.

Joel also looks forward to Acts 2 and what we know as Pentecost. On that day, the Holy Spirit was poured out on Jesus following Jews and Peter identified this as the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy. What’s more, Acts records similar events happening to the Samaritans and the Gentiles. Both of those groups were disliked by some Jews and they would wish them to be excluded. However, the Holy Spirit had other plans. The result is that we live an era where all who follow Jesus receive the Holy Spirit and live in fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy.

What the Church Looks Like

But practically, what does this look like? Should we be constantly having dreams and visions and prophetic utterances? I do believe that God still speaks today, although the measure has always to be the revealed Word of God. However, even for the biblical prophets, most of what they did was a lot less flashy than we would expect. Most of what they did was to point people back to God and call people to radical obedience.

The emphasis in Joel’s prophecy is not so much what they are doing as who is doing it. Joel points to a time of radical inclusiveness. Not a time when people would be tolerated but a time when people of all backgrounds would participate equally. Gender, age and economics continue to be battlegrounds, even though the Holy Spirit made his decision thousands of years ago. I have asked before what we would choose if God asked us to write down what kind of people we would like him to send us. The truth is that we would have certain preferences, there would be people that are more attractive than others. And yet the church was designed for radical inclusiveness. We should have millionaires and street people worshiping together. We should have professors and people with developmental disabilities serving together. The Holy Spirit is offered to all, regardless of background or category.

What attracts me to this church is our diversity. I love the generations, ethnic groups, economic backgrounds, abilities and so on that are represented here. We are united by the Holy Spirit, living out Joel’s prophecy. We are not perfect but I see glimpses of the way church is supposed to be. I often hear about Spirit-filled churches. I’m all for that, but I would ask what kind of people are being filled with the Spirit? Does everyone look and act alike? Joel looks to something more inclusive.

Conclusion

Jesus made this statement about marriage, “What God has joined together, let no one separate.” How might that apply to the church? Joel looked to a time when the Holy Spirit would be poured out on all kinds of people, breaking the traditional barriers. There are two ways to respond. We could reject that and try to rebuild the barriers and insist that there was a certain proper type of people. Or we can embrace God’s plan and celebrate our diversity. The truth is that both the New Testament and church history documents Christians fighting this tooth and nail. It is not comfortable and it is not easy. But it is truly beautiful. The unity of the church is not based on merit or achievements but common participation in the Spirit. Let’s not just submit to that, let’s rejoice in it.

Introduction

One of the fun things about being a parent is watching my children develop in their gifts and talents. Each one of our five children have an area in which they excel. The important thing as a parent is not for me to compare them but to celebrate their unique talents.

I get to experience the same thing as a pastor. Thankfully not all of us have the same talents, otherwise we would be pretty stick with what we could do. I love discovering the areas where people are passionate and gifted. Now if only I could figure out what I was good at.

Would you believe that even God has a specialty? That may seem strange when you think of God being able to do absolutely everything. While never limited by his ability, God has certain areas that seem to rise above the rest. If I had to state what God’s specialty was, I would have to say that it is bringing life from death.

We automatically think of that in the sense of literal life and death. After all, the foundation of Christianity is the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus really did die and he really did return to life. He shares that miracle with us. We really will die and we will one day share in his resurrection. This is very important.

But God’s resurrection power is not limited to the afterlife. God’s specialty includes bringing life from death even outside of the literal death and life. God takes people who feel dead inside and fills them with abundant life. I like this verse: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10) It is something more than just simply being alive.

Ezekiel 37 and the vision of the dry bones is one of the more dramatic illustrations of this principle. Let’s take a look and try to understand how this affects us.

Ezekiel and the Dry Bones

Ezekiel is a pretty wild book with some spectacular visions. It really keeps us on our toes as we try to interpret it. The basic historical context is important. Ezekiel was active during the time of the exile. Jerusalem the city and the temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians. Many of the Jews had been exiled into Babylon, including Ezekiel. It was a very dark time for the Jewish people. Not only had they lost their political independence, they had lost their temple, the one place they were able to fully worship God. It must have been absolutely devastating.

This didn’t mean that God had abandoned them. We find numerous prophecies in Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel about God’s plan for restoration. But sometimes you need more than just words and that is where this vision comes in.

Ezekiel was shown a valley filled with dry bones. That would be horrible for any of us to experience. We see such scenes in movies and it seems like the least desirable place to be. It was worse for Ezekiel. None of us would want to see bones but the Jews had very strong beliefs about the burial and care for the dead. It was very important for bodies to be buried, and to be buried in the proper way, as soon after death as possible. We see this in the Gospels with the hurry to get Jesus in the tomb after his crucifixion but before the Sabbath started. The fact that the bodies are only bones and that the bones are very dry tells us that the bodies had been left unburied for a long time. This was a place of horror for a good Jew like Ezekiel.

God asked Ezekiel if these dry bones could live. The obvious answer was no, but Ezekiel tossed the question back to God. God then had Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones. We think of prophecy as predicting the future but most often it is simply the proclaiming the truth of God. In this case, the truth was that God would bring them back to life. Sure enough, bones attached to bones, and they were covered with muscle and skin. They looked a lot better but they weren’t truly alive. Then God had Ezekiel prophesy that breath would enter them. It did and they became a mighty living army.

This is both amazing and really weird. In truth, it was an elaborate picture of what God would do with Israel. At that time, Israel was in a bad place, little more than a pile of bleached bones. But this was not the end. God was going to bring them back together. Not only would they be regathered, but God would breathe into them. There is a play on words here. The Hebrew words for breath, wind and Spirit are all exactly the same. Just as breath entered into the dead bodies bringing them to life, the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon Israel, bringing them back to spiritual life. This was an incredible miracle dramatically made real to Ezekiel to give him and his audience hope.

The Church

I could try and apply this to us as individuals. When we feel dead, God brings us back together and breathes new life into us. I could but I won’t. I would prefer to talk about the church.

The passage in Ezekiel is about the people of God, in that context, the people of Israel. The people of God today includes us as a local congregation. What does this mean for us?

In the Ezekiel passage, we discover a scene that looks completely hopeless. Both the pile of dead bones and the state of Israel during the exile.

I don’t see us in anywhere the same situation. I am very hopeful about the future of this church and am excited about what I am seeing and the ministry that is taking place.

And yet we face the same things that most churches face, a limit to our resources. This includes money, people, time, building, etc. We can see what we want to become but are not sure, with our current limitations, we are going to get there. There are two things from the Ezekiel passage that I want to focus on.

The first is that you cannot judge based on what you currently see. Ezekiel, when he first saw the pile of bones, couldn’t have anticipated that soon there would be a mighty and living army standing in front of him. In the same way, Ezekiel living in Babylonian exile couldn’t have anticipated that in less than a century that the Babylonians would be conquered and that not only would the Persians allow the Jews to return to Jerusalem, they would even help pay for the rebuilding. There was nothing in the present situation that would hint at the great things coming.

For as long as I have been involved in church, people have looked at the present state and have tried to extrapolate to the future. That would be fine, except that leaves out God’s specialty of breathing in new life.

That brings us to the second thing and that is the change comes by the power of the Holy Spirit. As Baptists, we tend to speak of Jesus more than the Spirit. Yet Jesus told his disciples that it was better that he leave because that meant they would receive the Spirit. God makes it clear to Ezekiel that the hope for Israel was in the coming of the Holy Spirit. We have the Holy Spirit in us as individual believers and in our gathering of worship. The Holy Spirit is here and powerful enough to do anything. The Holy Spirit is available to guide and provide, to lead and equip. Do you feel discouraged by what we lack? What about what we have? We have the Spirit. If the Spirit could give life to dry bones, he could do much more with this living and loving congregation.

Conclusion

I used to belong to a tradition that put a lot of emphasis on revival. Unfortunately, their definition of revival was more frequent and longer worship services with louder sermons. I still believe in revival but my definition has expanded. Revival is about God breathing his Spirit into the church, producing new life that spills out all over the place. God can revive anything. Even us. This is his specialty. God loves to breathe his Spirit and bring transformation and the present state of affairs has very little to do with it. Please join me in inviting the Holy Spirit to do his work among us.

Introduction

Even a quick glance at entertainment, TV shows, movies or music, reveals that people are on a quest to experience love. There may be some disagreements about what that love looks like and how it is found, but we are agreed that there is something called love that is worth finding.

So where do we experience this love? Some fictional romances like to offer an ideal setting but the truth is often more messy.

What about experiencing the love of God? Perhaps some people have experienced the love of God on top of a mountain looking at a beautiful sunrise. But is often in the difficult times that we discover God’s love. This is true in the Bible as well.

We are going to look at God’s love but we are going to do it by looking at the little read book of Lamentations. If you are having a bad day, don’t just start reading random verses from Lamentations. Some of it can be pretty rough. A lamentation is a funeral song. It is not a eulogy, such as when give highlights of the good memories of the deceased. The dictionary gives this definition: “the passionate expression of grief or sorrow; weeping.”

Many Canadians, shaped by British culture, are uncomfortable with this kind of lament. At many funerals, I have had people apologize simply for having their eyes well up with tears. However, this is not the way it is everywhere. In many places, people give full expression to their grief. This is true for the ancient Hebrews as well. I suspect it is more emotionally healthy to express the grief.

So who has died in this book of Lamentations? It is not a person but the city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was not just any city, it was the one place that God had chosen to dwell. It was the place of the only legitimate temple. The Babylonians had smashed the walls and destroyed the temple. There is nothing equivalent in our experience of what the destruction of Jerusalem meant to the people. The only natural response was to offer a funeral lament, to give full vent to their grief and sorrow. But in the midst of this, we get a reminder of God’s love. Let’s take a look.

God Loves Us

One of the things that I like about the Psalms is the raw expression of emotion. Many of those are Psalms of lament. Lamentations is an extended and intensified version of what we find in the book of Lamentations. The language is equally graphic.

The phrase, “He has broken my teeth with gravel” has always stuck with me. I can picture an aggressor pushing an innocent man’s face into the gravel, smashing him into the ground until all that is left are bloody gums. Not the image we like to think of in church. What is worse is who is responsible. The “he” in that phrase has a specific identity. It is the same “he” that is described as causing all sorts of pain throughout the chapter. The he is God. How could God be responsible?

God had given his people warning after warning, chance after chance. The prophets came and told the people to return to obedience, to trust in God, to care for the needy. No matter what, the people wouldn’t turn from their wicked ways. Finally God sent prophets, including Isaiah and Jeremiah, telling them that destruction was coming. The destruction of Jerusalem, including the temple, was God’s discipline toward his people. Yes it was the Babylonians who physically did it, and they would be punished for their abuses, but God willed that it would happen.

It all seems overwhelming and could be quite depressing. Then we hear these words: “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope.” It is almost like in the midst of despair that a vague memory came to mind. Like a dim candle in a large dark room. We are left hanging on those words. What is it that come to mind?

What he remembers is the Lord’s great love. What kind of love is this? Unlike English, other languages have multiple words for love. There is a word that would be used for a love felt between two people. This is not that word. This word is hesed. It is not the emotion of love. Other ways to translate it include kindness, mercy and covenantal faithfulness. The emphasis is on the activity rather than the feeling of love.

The author has hope not because of a belief that God feels a vague sense of love toward his people. Rather, he has hope because of God’s great love that is demonstrated in action. Less than a century later, the Babylonian empire would lie in ruin, the walls of Jerusalem would be rebuilt and a new temple would stand on the mount. There is hope in God’s great love. This has been made even clearer to us in the coming of Jesus Christ. John 3:16 explains the coming of Jesus in the context of “For God so loved the world.” Jesus’ death on the cross was the ultimate example of love in action. It is also the perfect act of compassion by God, as through the incarnation, God experienced human suffering, he suffered with us. That is love.

So What?

So God loves us. That is nice but so what? How does that affect us? Should are only reaction to this morning be to walk out and think that was an interesting lecture on God’s love?

I remember the first time that I had a real sense of God’s love. I won’t go into the details other than to say that I was suffering under the consequences of my own stupidity. In the midst of that, God reached down in response to a weak prayer by this undeserving wretch. I was happy about the answer to prayer but I was also shaken. Realizing that God had mercy on me, I couldn’t continue business as usual. It was not something to simply tuck into a memory book, What should our reaction be?

There are two ways for us to respond. One is to be thankful. Much of our worship should emerge not out of duty but out of thankfulness. The Psalms often look back to the actions of God in the past. Our hymns and songs look to what Jesus did on the cross and what he has done in our lives. Probably one of the most frustrating experiences is when people are ungrateful. Have you experienced that? Can we turn around and be ungrateful toward God after all he has done for us? Live a life of gratitude. Not only is a proper response, it is also the most emotionally healthy way to live.

But our response shouldn’t just be toward God. We should take the love that we have received and share it with others. we can’t control who we feel love toward. Thankfully, it is not feelings we need to share. It is love in the sense of kindness. Love in action. Helping people in practical ways. You have perhaps heard of Hasidic Jews, that comes from that same word hesed. What if there was something called Hasidic Christians, who were known for showing hesed or loving kindness to all? One of my favourite verses is Micah 6:8. “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” That word mercy is the same as the great love in Lamentations. What we have received, we share with others.

Conclusion

Are you having trouble feeling God’s love? Imagine the writer of Lamentations.  Imagine him looking at the smoking ruins of Jerusalem. Imagine him seeing the pile of rubble that was once the great temple. And yet he could remember God’s great love. God loves us. God loves you. He as demonstrated that most powerfully through Jesus Christ. No matter what else is going on, Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead and he offers the benefits of that to all of us. That is loving kindness. Because of that, we can have hope, no matter what is happening. God’s great love is present and real no matter what the situation is. Great is his faithfulness!