Hebrews 4:12-13 tells us that the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.
And so I am going to keep my own words to a minimum today so that the word of God can do what the word of God needs to do. What we are doing this weekend in this solemn assembly is renewing our covenant vows. I probably should have spent some time explaining covenant to you before this because it is much more than walking and aisle and coming to Jesus. So I will lay out briefly for you the basics of what a covenant relationship with the living God consists of. It is really what the core of being a Christian is all about. The first thing we need to understand is that the only way that human beings can exist in reality is in a covenant relationship with God. Covenant is how the world works. Adam and Eve were created into a covenant relationship with God. God explained to them very clearly how life in God’s creation worked: If you obey my commands you will live but if disobey you will die.
What we see is God’s covenant world is set up as an “IF THEN” world. It is a world of consequences. And consequences are directly related to obedience or disobedience to the commands of God. Walk on the path of life and live. Leave the path of life and die. That is the way the world works and until we get that deep in our hearts we will be frustrated by everything that we encounter.
Because Adam and Eve chose death and not life every single human being of Adam’s race is born into a broken covenant relationship with God. We are all born sinners. We are born into death. We are born without humility, not praying, not seeking the face of God, and unwilling to turn from our wicked ways.
The way that we enter into a New Covenant relationship with God is stated like this in 2nd Chronicles 7: 14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. That is the bare minimum of what it means to come to Christ. You can say you trust in Jesus all day long but if you don’t humble yourself, pray, seek the face of God and turn from your wicked ways then your sins WILL NOT be forgiven no matter how many times you walk the aisle or how much grace you say you have. Salvation is not an intellectual process; it is an obedience process. Grace gives you the ability to humble yourself, pray, seek the face of God, and turn from your wicked ways. In fact, that is the bare minimum of what Grace must do for you to be saved.
The path of life is laid out clearly for us in the law of God. Deuteronomy 4:1 says it clearly: “And now, Church, listen carefully to these decrees and regulations that I am about to teach you. Obey them so that you may live, so you may enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. 2 Do not add to or subtract from these commands I am giving you. Just obey the commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you.
This is not salvation by works this is what you do to keep living after you have been born again. If you have been given the grace to enter the new covenant then these are the things that you must do to continue living. Grace puts you on the path of life. Grace causes you to pursue life. Grace leads to life. Life is found in obedience to the commands of God and no where else. Do these things and live. Period. No ifs ands or buts. No: I don’t like that law or that law is so mean, or that law is outdated, or that law doesn’t apply. The law of God IS the path of life. You fight against it you will die. The land that you live in will get sick.
Humble yourself, pray, seek the face of God, turn from your wicked ways toward the path of life that is the good news. You don’t have to stay on the path of destruction. You can be saved from the death that is your existence . Jesus said it very clearly: Repent for the Kingdom of God is right here, right now. Get on the path of life.
As I said covenant is always an “if then” proposition. If you humble yourself then you get the blessing of life. If you refuse then you get the cursing of death. I want to spend the rest of our time this morning going over the blessings and cursings so that you will get a better understanding of what God has laid out in his covenant.
Here are the basics of the path of life: “I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from the place of your slavery to sin. “You must not have any other god but me. “You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind, or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea. You must not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children; the entire family is affected—even children in the third and fourth generations of those who reject me. 10 But I lavish unfailing love for a thousand generations on those who love me and obey my commands. “You must not misuse the name of the Lord your God. The Lord will not let you go unpunished if you misuse his name. “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you. You have six days each week for your ordinary work, 14 but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your oxen and donkeys and other livestock, and any foreigners living among you. All your male and female servants must rest as you do. 15 Remember that you were once slaves to sin, but the Lord your God brought you out with his strong hand and powerful arm. That is why the Lord your God has commanded you to rest on the Sabbath day. Honor your father and mother, as the Lord your God commanded you. Then you will live a long, full life in the land the Lord your God is giving you. You must not murder. You must not commit adultery. You must not steal. You must not testify falsely against your neighbor. You must not covet your neighbor’s wife. You must not covet your neighbor’s house or land, male or female servant, ox or donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbor.
Those things are the basics of the path of life. The rest of the content in the books of the law are nothing more than a fleshing out of those 10 commandments. All of the law flows from these ten sayings. Jesus compacted the law even further when he said that all of the law and the prophets are summarized in two sayings: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and Soul. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself. This is what the law is about. The LAW IS LOVE.
You see when we practice biblical love we will be blessed. When we do not practice biblical love we will be cursed. Now I am going to let the bible explain what that means: I will be reading out of Deuteronomy chapters 26 -29.
“Today the Lord your God has commanded you to obey all these decrees and regulations. So be careful to obey them wholeheartedly. 17 You have declared today that the Lord is your God. And you have promised to walk in his ways, and to obey his decrees, commands, and regulations, and to do everything he tells you. The Lord has declared today that you are his people, his own special treasure, just as he promised, and that you must obey all his commands. And if you do, he will set you high above all the other nations he has made. Then you will receive praise, honor, and renown. You will be a nation that is holy to the Lord your God, just as he promised.”
I want to begin by declaring some covenant curses. I am going to make a statement and I want you to respond to each statement by saying: So Be It which is what the word Amen actually means.
God says: If you refuse to humble yourselves before him then: ‘Cursed is anyone who carves or casts an idol and secretly sets it up. These idols, the work of craftsmen, are detestable to the Lord.’ And the people said: So be it. 16 ‘Cursed is anyone who dishonors father or mother.’ So be it 17 ‘Cursed is anyone who steals property from a neighbor by moving a boundary marker.’ So be it 18 ‘Cursed is anyone who leads a blind person astray on the road.’ So Be it. 19 ‘Cursed is anyone who denies justice to foreigners, orphans, or widows.’ So Be it. 20 ‘Cursed is anyone who has sexual intercourse with one of his father’s wives, for he has violated his father.’ So Be it. 21 ‘Cursed is anyone who has sexual intercourse with an animal.’ So be it. 22 ‘Cursed is anyone who has sexual intercourse with his sister, whether she is the daughter of his father or his mother.’ So be it. 23 ‘Cursed is anyone who has sexual intercourse with his mother-in-law.’ So Be it. 24 Cursed is anyone who attacks a neighbor in secret.’ So Be it. 25 ‘Cursed is anyone who accepts payment to kill an innocent person.’ So Be it. 26 ‘Cursed is anyone who does not affirm and obey the terms of these instructions.’ So Be it.
Listen to the words of God: “If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the world. 2 You will experience all these blessings if you obey the Lord your God: 3 Your towns and your fields will be blessed. 4 Your children and your crops will be blessed. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be blessed. 5 Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be blessed. 6 Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be blessed. 7 “The Lord will conquer your enemies when they attack you. They will attack you from one direction, but they will scatter from you in seven! 8 “The Lord will guarantee a blessing on everything you do and will fill your storehouses with grain. The Lord your God will bless you in the land he is giving you. 9 “If you obey the commands of the Lord your God and walk in his ways, the Lord will establish you as his holy people as he swore he would do. 10 Then all the nations of the world will see that you are a people claimed by the Lord, and they will stand in awe of you. 11 “The Lord will give you prosperity in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you, blessing you with many children, numerous livestock, and abundant crops. 12 The Lord will send rain at the proper time from his rich treasury in the heavens and will bless all the work you do. You will lend to many nations, but you will never need to borrow from them. 13 If you listen to these commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, and if you carefully obey them, the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you will always be on top and never at the bottom. 14 You must not turn away from any of the commands I am giving you today, nor follow after other gods and worship them.
15 “But if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and do not obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overwhelm you: 16 Your towns and your fields will be cursed. 17 Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be cursed. 18 Your children and your crops will be cursed. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be cursed. 19 Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be cursed. 20 “The Lord himself will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in everything you do, until at last you are completely destroyed for doing evil and abandoning me. 21 The Lord will afflict you with diseases until none of you are left in the land you are about to enter and occupy. 22 The Lord will strike you with wasting diseases, fever, and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, and with blight and mildew. These disasters will pursue you until you die. 23 The skies above will be as unyielding as bronze, and the earth beneath will be as hard as iron. 24 The Lord will change the rain that falls on your land into powder, and dust will pour down from the sky until you are destroyed. 25 “The Lord will cause you to be defeated by your enemies. You will attack your enemies from one direction, but you will scatter from them in seven! You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. 26 Your corpses will be food for all the scavenging birds and wild animals, and no one will be there to chase them away. 27 “The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, scurvy, and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. 28 The Lord will strike you with madness, blindness, and panic. 29 You will grope around in broad daylight like a blind person groping in the darkness, but you will not find your way. You will be oppressed and robbed continually, and no one will come to save you. 30 “You will be engaged to a woman, but another man will sleep with her. You will build a house, but someone else will live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will never enjoy its fruit. 31 Your ox will be butchered before your eyes, but you will not eat a single bite of the meat. Your donkey will be taken from you, never to be returned. Your sheep and goats will be given to your enemies, and no one will be there to help you. 32 You will watch as your sons and daughters are taken away as slaves. Your heart will break for them, but you won’t be able to help them. 33 A foreign nation you have never heard about will eat the crops you worked so hard to grow. You will suffer under constant oppression and harsh treatment. 34 You will go mad because of all the tragedy you see around you. 35 The Lord will cover your knees and legs with incurable boils. In fact, you will be covered from head to foot. 36 “The Lord will exile you and your king to a nation unknown to you and your ancestors. There in exile you will worship gods of wood and stone! 37 You will become an object of horror, ridicule, and mockery among all the nations to which the Lord sends you. 38 “You will plant much but harvest little, for locusts will eat your crops. 39 You will plant vineyards and care for them, but you will not drink the wine or eat the grapes, for worms will destroy the vines. 40 You will grow olive trees throughout your land, but you will never use the olive oil, for the fruit will drop before it ripens. 41 You will have sons and daughters, but you will lose them, for they will be led away into captivity. 42 Swarms of insects will destroy your trees and crops. 43 “The foreigners living among you will become stronger and stronger, while you become weaker and weaker. 44 They will lend money to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, and you will be the tail! 45 “If you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and to obey the commands and decrees he has given you, all these curses will pursue and overtake you until you are destroyed. 46 These horrors will serve as a sign and warning among you and your descendants forever. 47 If you do not serve the Lord your God with joy and enthusiasm for the abundant benefits you have received, 48 you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. You will be left hungry, thirsty, naked, and lacking in everything. The Lord will put an iron yoke on your neck, oppressing you harshly until he has destroyed you. 49 “The Lord will bring a distant nation against you from the end of the earth, and it will swoop down on you like a vulture. It is a nation whose language you do not understand, 50 a fierce and heartless nation that shows no respect for the old and no pity for the young. 51 Its armies will devour your livestock and crops, and you will be destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine, olive oil, calves, or lambs, and you will starve to death. 52 They will attack your cities until all the fortified walls in your land—the walls you trusted to protect you—are knocked down. They will attack all the towns in the land the Lord your God has given you. 53 “The siege and terrible distress of the enemy’s attack will be so severe that you will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you. 54 The most tenderhearted man among you will have no compassion for his own brother, his beloved wife, and his surviving children. 55 He will refuse to share with them the flesh he is devouring—the flesh of one of his own children—because he has nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns. 56 The most tender and delicate woman among you—so delicate she would not so much as touch the ground with her foot—will be selfish toward the husband she loves and toward her own son or daughter. 57 She will hide from them the afterbirth and the new baby she has borne, so that she herself can secretly eat them. She will have nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns. 58 “If you refuse to obey all the words of instruction that are written in this book, and if you do not fear the glorious and awesome name of the Lord your God, 59 then the Lord will overwhelm you and your children with indescribable plagues. These plagues will be intense and without relief, making you miserable and unbearably sick. 60 He will afflict you with all the diseases of Egypt that you feared so much, and you will have no relief. 61 The Lord will afflict you with every sickness and plague there is, even those not mentioned in this Book of Instruction, until you are destroyed. 62 Though you become as numerous as the stars in the sky, few of you will be left because you would not listen to the Lord your God. 63 “Just as the Lord has found great pleasure in causing you to prosper and multiply, the Lord will find pleasure in destroying you. You will be torn from the land you are about to enter and occupy. 64 For the Lord will scatter you among all the nations from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship foreign gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods made of wood and stone! 65 There among those nations you will find no peace or place to rest. And the Lord will cause your heart to tremble, your eyesight to fail, and your soul to despair. 66 Your life will constantly hang in the balance. You will live night and day in fear, unsure if you will survive. 67 In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were night!’ And in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’ For you will be terrified by the awful horrors you see around you. 68 Then the Lord will send you back to Egypt in ships, to a destination I promised you would never see again. There you will offer to sell yourselves to your enemies as slaves, but no one will buy you.”
These are the terms of our covenant relationship with God. These are the terms of salvation. This is the “IF Then” of covenant.
Hear again the words of the Lord and the opportunity to renew covenant: “In the future, when you experience all these blessings and curses I have listed for you, and when you are living among the nations to which the Lord your God has exiled you, take to heart all these instructions. 2 If at that time you and your children return to the Lord your God, and if you obey with all your heart and all your soul all the commands I have given you today, 3 then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes. He will have mercy on you and gather you back from all the nations where he has scattered you. 4 Even though you are banished to the ends of the earth, the Lord your God will gather you from there and bring you back again. 5 The Lord your God will return you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you will possess that land again. Then he will make you even more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors!
6 “The Lord your God will change your heart AND the hearts of all your descendants, so that you will love him with all your heart and soul and so you may live! 7 The Lord your God will inflict all these curses on your enemies and on those who hate and persecute you. 8 Then you will again obey the Lord and keep all his commands that I am giving you today. 9 “The Lord your God will then make you successful in everything you do. He will give you many children and numerous livestock, and he will cause your fields to produce abundant harvests, for the Lord will again delight in being good to you as he was to your ancestors. 10 The Lord your God will delight in you if you obey his voice and keep the commands and decrees written in this Book of Instruction, and if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and soul.
“This command I am giving you today is not too difficult for you to understand, and it is not beyond your reach. 12 It is not kept in heaven, so distant that you must ask, ‘Who will go up to heaven and bring it down so we can hear it and obey?’ 13 It is not kept beyond the sea, so far away that you must ask, ‘Who will cross the sea to bring it to us so we can hear it and obey?’ 14 No, the message is very close at hand; it is on your lips and in your heart so that you can obey it.
15 “Now listen! Today I am giving you a choice between life and death, between prosperity and disaster. 16 For I command you this day to love the Lord your God and to keep his commands, decrees, and regulations by walking in his ways. If you do this, you will live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you and the land you are about to enter and occupy.
17 “But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, and if you are drawn away to serve and worship other gods, 18 then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live a long, good life in the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy.
19 “Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live! 20 You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life. And if you love and obey the Lord, you will live long in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
Let’s pray: Oh father be gracious to us and let us renew our covenant relationship with you. Cause us to see our sins and to turn from it. Cause us by your mighty grace and loving kindness to walk on the path of life in all that we do. Be our God and let us be your obedient people. In Jesus’ power and authority I ask these things. So Be It –Amen.
I want us to close with the song there is a redeemer. Then I ask you to go home and contemplate all that has been said today. Re-read Deuteronomy 27-29. Ask God to do whatever it takes to put you on the path of life and keep you there. Spend the afternoon seeking God’s face. If you live far away and want to stay here you are welcome to. Then come back tonight at 5:30and we will finalize our covenant renewal by partaking of communion. And at 6 we will break our fast.
There is a redeemer, Jesus, God's own Son,Precious Lamb of God, Messiah, Holy One,Jesus my redeemer, Name above all names,Precious Lamb of God, Messiah, Oh, for sinners slain.Thank you oh my father, For giving us Your Son,And leaving Your Spirit, 'Til the work on Earth is done.When I stand in Glory, I will see His face,And there I'll serve my King forever,In that Holy Place. Thank you oh my father, For giving us Your Son,And leaving Your Spirit, 'Til the work on Earth is done.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Let it rain
Hey Everyone,
I began to write something to send out a couple days ago but it turned a little darker than I had anticipated.(imagine that). So I decided to pass. I know I probably come across as a gloomy gus a lot of the time with my lamenting over the condition of the church. Maybe I am. However, I am also very positive in the long term; it’s getting through the short term that I have a problem with. I have to continually remind my self that “this too shall pass”.
I’d be a liar if I said everything was bad. There is a lot of good stuff going on. I just hope my days don’t run out before some of it starts to bear fruit. Ground prep takes a lot of time, money and energy and it’s a long, long time away from harvest.
It’s easy to forget how much risk a farmer takes in the spring with only an eye to the fall. He doesn’t know how much rain is coming. He doesn’t know what insects are coming. It doesn’t know if diesel fuel will be four dollars a gallon or 40 dollars a gallon. He invests in an uncertain future. He’s not really guessing, at least if he’s a wise farmer, he plans the best he can and hopefully learns to expect the unexpected.
I guess I am trying to be a farmer of words. I am planting words in people’s ears yes, but also on the printed page and the digital page. I made steps yesterday to acquire a plow, a video plow actually, a tool to use in my overall pre-planting phase of word farming. I worked out a deal to produce three promotional videos for my books. I’m pretty excited about it because it encompasses many things that I always dream about but never do and now suddenly the rubber is going to hit the road and I will be put in the position of having to produce something of value.
It actually came about rather suddenly. Tuesday, I was continually fighting a battle. I don’t know about you but some days everything seems like a battle. By the end of the afternoon I found myself driven to prayer. I really had no place else to go. Eventually, I sat down at the computer to do some prep work on publishing. I recently made all my books available for the Kindle reader on Amazon which was a big deal, not to mention time consuming and expensive deal. I’ll be honest I don’t know how farmers justify their initial expenses every spring without a written guarantee from the ground that it will produce in the fall.
Anyway, I started researching marketing tools that Amazon provides its authors and I found that I could develop an author’s page and I could place videos on my page like a commercial to enlighten the masses on what I had to offer. I watched a couple of things on other author’s sites and I thought: I can do that good of a job; and one of these authors had a major publishing deal.
It was then that it felt like the lid on my brain was ripped open and all of these ideas and concepts started bouncing around in my head. I did what I know to do best – I started writing. A couple of hours later I had rough copies of two scripts in my hand or on my computer (both actually). I found myself overwhelmed with joy. I was laughing. The dog and cat were joining me, laughing along with me (if whining and obnoxious meowing can be considered laughter).
Then I remembered a video production guy that I had met a few years ago. I tracked him down on facebook and sent him an email about a possible meeting. Within a couple hours we had set a tentative meeting for the next day.
Now, if you know me or even if you just read this weekly blog of mine regularly you know that I am, what shall we say, unconventional at best, outright bizarre at worst when it comes to my creative bent and these ideas that I have for videos are no exception. The basic concept is to recreate a TV show called The Final Word that is featured in two of the Corpus Christi books. With a stage setting sort of like the Charlie Rose show only It may turn out to be a cross between Charlie Rose and Monty Python. I know we are going to have Flannery O’Connor as a guest on one episode. Brian Whitehead will be the host. And he will be interviewing me on three different shows, one for each book.
I’m excited and scared to death at the same time. Shooting begins around the third week of February and I have got a bunch of stuff to get ready before then. It’s amazing what being able to walk in your calling can do for your sprits. I know my call, it is a multifaceted call but when my feet hit that path it feels like I come alive. I will do whatever it takes to make sure I get to where I need to go.
I will put in the risk of buying seed and pesticide and fertilizer. I will get the tractor tuned up and the plow blades sharpened. I will mend the fences. I will plow the ground. I will plant the seed. And if in the end the rain doesn’t come and the seeds don’t grow I will know that God will receive glory from my labor regardless. He alone is the determiner of whether seed produces fruit, 30, 60, or 100 fold. But seed won't grow if it isn't planted. My job is to do all the prep work needed to get the seed in the ground and trust in him in all things.
The words of Eric Clapton come to mind:
Let it rain, let it rain, let your love rain down on me.
Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain, rain, rain.
Of course I would add: not too much and not too little.
Grace and Peace,
Farmer Brad
I began to write something to send out a couple days ago but it turned a little darker than I had anticipated.(imagine that). So I decided to pass. I know I probably come across as a gloomy gus a lot of the time with my lamenting over the condition of the church. Maybe I am. However, I am also very positive in the long term; it’s getting through the short term that I have a problem with. I have to continually remind my self that “this too shall pass”.
I’d be a liar if I said everything was bad. There is a lot of good stuff going on. I just hope my days don’t run out before some of it starts to bear fruit. Ground prep takes a lot of time, money and energy and it’s a long, long time away from harvest.
It’s easy to forget how much risk a farmer takes in the spring with only an eye to the fall. He doesn’t know how much rain is coming. He doesn’t know what insects are coming. It doesn’t know if diesel fuel will be four dollars a gallon or 40 dollars a gallon. He invests in an uncertain future. He’s not really guessing, at least if he’s a wise farmer, he plans the best he can and hopefully learns to expect the unexpected.
I guess I am trying to be a farmer of words. I am planting words in people’s ears yes, but also on the printed page and the digital page. I made steps yesterday to acquire a plow, a video plow actually, a tool to use in my overall pre-planting phase of word farming. I worked out a deal to produce three promotional videos for my books. I’m pretty excited about it because it encompasses many things that I always dream about but never do and now suddenly the rubber is going to hit the road and I will be put in the position of having to produce something of value.
It actually came about rather suddenly. Tuesday, I was continually fighting a battle. I don’t know about you but some days everything seems like a battle. By the end of the afternoon I found myself driven to prayer. I really had no place else to go. Eventually, I sat down at the computer to do some prep work on publishing. I recently made all my books available for the Kindle reader on Amazon which was a big deal, not to mention time consuming and expensive deal. I’ll be honest I don’t know how farmers justify their initial expenses every spring without a written guarantee from the ground that it will produce in the fall.
Anyway, I started researching marketing tools that Amazon provides its authors and I found that I could develop an author’s page and I could place videos on my page like a commercial to enlighten the masses on what I had to offer. I watched a couple of things on other author’s sites and I thought: I can do that good of a job; and one of these authors had a major publishing deal.
It was then that it felt like the lid on my brain was ripped open and all of these ideas and concepts started bouncing around in my head. I did what I know to do best – I started writing. A couple of hours later I had rough copies of two scripts in my hand or on my computer (both actually). I found myself overwhelmed with joy. I was laughing. The dog and cat were joining me, laughing along with me (if whining and obnoxious meowing can be considered laughter).
Then I remembered a video production guy that I had met a few years ago. I tracked him down on facebook and sent him an email about a possible meeting. Within a couple hours we had set a tentative meeting for the next day.
Now, if you know me or even if you just read this weekly blog of mine regularly you know that I am, what shall we say, unconventional at best, outright bizarre at worst when it comes to my creative bent and these ideas that I have for videos are no exception. The basic concept is to recreate a TV show called The Final Word that is featured in two of the Corpus Christi books. With a stage setting sort of like the Charlie Rose show only It may turn out to be a cross between Charlie Rose and Monty Python. I know we are going to have Flannery O’Connor as a guest on one episode. Brian Whitehead will be the host. And he will be interviewing me on three different shows, one for each book.
I’m excited and scared to death at the same time. Shooting begins around the third week of February and I have got a bunch of stuff to get ready before then. It’s amazing what being able to walk in your calling can do for your sprits. I know my call, it is a multifaceted call but when my feet hit that path it feels like I come alive. I will do whatever it takes to make sure I get to where I need to go.
I will put in the risk of buying seed and pesticide and fertilizer. I will get the tractor tuned up and the plow blades sharpened. I will mend the fences. I will plow the ground. I will plant the seed. And if in the end the rain doesn’t come and the seeds don’t grow I will know that God will receive glory from my labor regardless. He alone is the determiner of whether seed produces fruit, 30, 60, or 100 fold. But seed won't grow if it isn't planted. My job is to do all the prep work needed to get the seed in the ground and trust in him in all things.
The words of Eric Clapton come to mind:
Let it rain, let it rain, let your love rain down on me.
Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain, rain, rain.
Of course I would add: not too much and not too little.
Grace and Peace,
Farmer Brad
Sunday, January 23, 2011
foundation series 23
I know that it probably seems like I get up here to just beat you up but I want you to know that is not my intent. I preach hard things with the hope that they will some how break into your inner being and start to grow. I am becoming more and more aware of what Paul in first Corinthians 1 calls: the foolishness of preaching. Unless the Holy Spirit takes my words and implants them in your hearts then there is nothing I can do. I can’t make you see the culture the way I see the culture. I can’t make you see the idols that abound in our lives. Don’t think for a moment because you don’t have any statues sitting around your house that there are no idols. Our world is filled with false Gods and they speak to us on every radio station and TV station both secular and Christian and we bow down to them and look to them to save us without even flinching or batting an eye.
I say all of that because in the book of Nehemiah chapter two we read something similar: And it came about in the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, that wine was before him, and I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence. 2So the king said to me, "Why is your face sad though you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of heart." Then I was very much afraid. 3I said to the king, "Let the king live forever Why should my face not be sad when the city, the place of my fathers' tombs, lies desolate and its gates have been consumed by fire?"
You see that is where my heart is at. You may not see it but I see the church, as a whole, lying desolate and its gates consumed by fire. I see it everywhere I look. I hear all the words about salvation and the greatness of God and then I see the culture that we live in and I understand that our words are hollow and empty because we have given up the powerful God of Scripture for the impotent forms of religion. I see the brokenness of our lives and our families and how we put on a good face and learn to try and speak positive things but under the surface we wonder why God doesn’t do anything. Maybe you’re not like that I don’t know. I’m just telling you my own experience.
Just like Nehemiah I ask my own King why should I not be sad about the way my family is, the way my community is, and the way my church is? What’s not to be sad about?
I believe with all the strength that I can muster that God has put before us this opportunity to fast and pray next weekend so that we may find that which our hearts desire. And I will be honest here; if deep down all you desire is more of yourself I believe you will find it next weekend. I believe next weekend will be turning point for each of us. It will be the time when we can look back and say that is when God began to soften my heart or it will be a time that we will remember that God solidified the hardening of our arteries.
We are being called to humble ourselves before the living God. Now I don’t want you to think that this will be a walk in the park. You can expect tempers to flair, you can expect fights, you can expect to be on your worst behavior because that is the way the enemy tries to destroy the things that God does. If he can make you think that fasting isn’t doing anything but getting you into more trouble then he can turn you in a different direction. If he can get you to believe that your prayers aren’t being heard because you aren’t worthy to be heard then he’s already won the battle.
Humble yourself next week and expect trouble. Pray and expect trouble. Set your mind now to persevere for twenty four hours; Crying out to God, humbling your self before God so that you can make a request to our King and receive a favorable response.
I want you to understand the context of this passage. The church is a mess. Nehemiah is still in captivity because of the wickedness of the church 90 years before. But in the midst of that captivity God is still giving grace. Nehemiah, by the grace of God, has been place in a position of serving the king. He obviously has a relationship with the king, so much so that the first time that Nehemiah looks sad in the king’s presence the King asks what he can do. As soon as he hears those words Nehemiah prays to God. Obviously it is a quick and quiet prayer, and then he blurts out: If it please the king, and if your servant has found favor before you, send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers' tombs, that I may rebuild it." 6Then the king said to me, the queen sitting beside him, "How long will your journey be, and when will you return?" So it pleased the king to send me, and I gave him a definite time. 7And I said to the king, "If it please the king, let letters be given me for the governors of the provinces beyond the River, that they may allow me to pass through until I come to Judah, 8and a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress which is by the temple, for the wall of the city and for the house to which I will go " And the king granted them to me because the good hand of my God was on me.
I want you to understand something; if we are humble before God and his presence is with us then we do not have to be on the defensive we can be on the offense. We can press forward with great hope regardless of who is in charge in the land, regardless of whether or not we are sent into captivity. The outcome of our nation is not important. What is important is our humbleness before God. The greatest nations in the world will come tumbling down if they are not humble before God.
Another thing that I want you to get in your heads is that we do not have a pagan king on the throne: Jesus Christ sits on the throne and as much as we can’t see it right now he is ruling and reigning until his enemies are all placed under his feet. But he will not use sin to advance his kingdom. That is why we are being called to humble ourselves before God next week because until that happens, until we see our true condition and fall on our faces before God – God will not give us favor with the King.
God is not in a hurry to advance his kingdom. He builds his kingdom slowly and surely. He builds a solid foundation and on top of that strong foundation he builds a kingdom that will last for all eternity. He is not going to skimp on building materials. He is not going to use faulty supplies. Even if he has to wait two or three generations for good supplies to come in it doesn’t matter to his overall plan. And so if a generation arises that doesn’t know the Lord, God will wait. If the church refuses to humble itself before its maker then God will wait. He is not opposed to killing off a generation before he starts a new phase of construction on the kingdom.
But when the generation arises that is humble before God then he will move at what seems like great speed. Here in less than 10 minutes God opened doors that provided an opportunity for years of jobs, materials; all at no expense to Nehemiah. The door is opened and all he has to do is walk through it. And he does.
I want you to see next weekend as an opportunity to knock on the door and beg it to be opened. Or if you prefer you can see it as the king, Jesus Christ is knocking on our door seeking to come in. Will we open the door with humbleness and let the king come in and eat with us and abide with us and provide for us all that we need to restore our lives and families and the church or will we stay hard hearted and refuse to let him in?
I want to spend the rest of the time today reminding you that our King as been given all authority in heaven and earth. It is something that we obviously do not understand as a church because we are weak and pitiful in the midst of a pagan culture.
It’s interesting to me that two different words are translated authority one should be translated power and the other to rule over and exercise dominion. The word power is used for the authority of Pharaoh. But even more importantly it is used in Genesis chapter 3 verse 22 of Adam and Eve right after the fall: Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever." The phrase stretch out his hand uses the power word for authority: that he might use his rebellions power, his self appointed authority. That is the essence of the fallen world that we live in. Men and women boys and girls born with a desire to be their own authorities; Nobody tells me what to do.
The other type of authority we see in scripture is that of advancing dominion of the one true king; it flows out of being under rightful authority, being under God and his law. That is the type of authority that our King has.
Hebrews chapter 12 reminds us: that since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. 4You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; 5and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, "MY SON, DO NOT REGARD LIGHTLY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE LORD, NOR FAINT WHEN YOU ARE REPROVED BY HIM; 6FOR THOSE WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE DISCIPLINES, AND HE SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES." 7It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? 10For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. 11All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. 12Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, 13and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. 14Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. 15See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled; 16that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal. 17For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears. 18For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched and to a blazing fire, and to darkness and gloom and whirlwind, 19and to the blast of a trumpet and the sound of words which sound was such that those who heard begged that no further word be spoken to them. 20For they could not bear the command, "IF EVEN A BEAST TOUCHES THE MOUNTAIN, IT WILL BE STONED." 21And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, "I AM FULL OF FEAR and trembling." 22But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, 23to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel. 25See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven. 26And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, "YET ONCE MORE I WILL SHAKE NOT ONLY THE EARTH, BUT ALSO THE HEAVEN." 27This expression, "Yet once more," denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. 28Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; 29for our God is a consuming fire.
This is where we are at, today. God is shaking his kingdom. The ones that remain will remain for ever the ones that can be shaken out will be consumed by the living god who is a consuming fire.
Jesus Christ has been given all rule to exercise dominion over the whole earth. He will not fail in his task because he has been obedient to the father in everything, even in laying his life down. It is obedience that leads to godly rule and dominion.
And therefore, the church today is in bondage, a slave to the lender.
It doesn’t have to be this way. There is still time to humble ourselves before God. There is time to turn this thing around, it will be turned around, the only question is will God use us to do it or will he consume us and move on to another generation?
You see when Jesus came on the scene the people who heard him were amazed because was teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes. What that tells me is that if you are walking in obedience your authority will be noticed by ever day people. The church is ridiculed today, it preachers laughed at because it is without authority. In essences, our preachers are no different than the scribes and Pharisees. They only have empty words – Good words yes but words that are empty of any authority.
People instinctively know when authority is present. In Matthew 8 we read this: when Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, imploring Him, 6and saying, "Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented." 7Jesus said to him, "I will come and heal him." 8But the centurion said, "Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9"For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, 'Go!' and he goes, and to another, 'Come!' and he comes, and to my slave, 'Do this!' and he does it." 10Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who were following, "Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel. 11"I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; 12but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." 13And Jesus said to the centurion, "Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed." And the servant was healed that very moment.
I don’t know if you caught it or not but Jesus said basically this: there are going to be people in the kingdom from all over the place but there will be a lot of people who spent their lives in church that will be cast into hell. That’s a big deal.
In chapter 9 of Matthew we read this: they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralytic, "Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven." 3And some of the scribes said to themselves, "This fellow blasphemes." 4And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, "Why are you thinking evil in your hearts? 5"Which is easier, to say, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up, and walk'? 6"But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins"--then He said to the paralytic, "Get up, pick up your bed and go home." 7And he got up and went home. 8But when the crowds saw this, they were awestruck, and glorified God, who had given such authority to men.
The great temptation in all of this is to grab authority on you own strength. That is what adam and eve did in the garden. Instead of serving the father and exercising dominion under God they attempted to speed of the process and take authority for themselves. They wanted to be served and not serve.
We see that in the disciples in Matthew 20: 20Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to Jesus with her sons, bowing down and making a request of Him. 21And He said to her, "What do you wish?" She said to Him, "Command that in Your kingdom these two sons of mine may sit one on Your right and one on Your left." 22But Jesus answered, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?" They said to Him, "We are able." 23He said to them, "My cup you shall drink; but to sit on My right and on My left, this is not Mine to give, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by My Father."
24And hearing this, the ten became indignant with the two brothers. 25But Jesus called them to Himself and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. 26"It is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, 27and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; 28just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."
That is where the authority of the Kingdom of God comes from. You see Jesus Christ has been given all authority in heaven and on earth but he is still serving his father. He is doing his father’s will not his own.
In first Corinthians 15 Paul tells us that in Christ all will be made alive But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ's at His coming, 24then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. 25For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. 26The last enemy that will be abolished is death. 27For HE HAS PUT ALL THINGS IN SUBJECTION UNDER HIS FEET But when He says, "All things are put in subjection," it is evident that He is excepted who put all things in subjection to Him. 28When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all.
You see Jesus is ruling and reigning fighting against all the enemies of God and when he finally completes his work some day then he will hand the kingdom over to its rightful owner – God the Father. Even Jesus will bow in submission to God the father. That is where authority comes from. That is what obedience is all about.
We can keep going the way we are doing our own thing, playing church and believing in the form of godliness or we can stop fooling around, humble ourselves before God and show that humbleness by laying down the sin which so easily besets us and begging God to let us walk in the authority of obedience.
Unless we are ready to lay down every thing that god calls sin then we are not ready and not able to advance the rule and dominion of the kingdom of God. As long as we are of the world in the way we live our lives we will never be in the kingdom of God.
May God give us the grace of humbleness in the coming week. Let’s pray.
Oh Father, please don’t let next weekend be a game we play. Cause us to be humbled before you. Break us Lord. Save us from ourselves. Pull us into obedience and submission to you and your will. In Jesus power and authority that flows from his obedience I ask these things. So Be It.
Here the word of our Lord from Matthew 28:
“I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. 19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 20 Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
I say all of that because in the book of Nehemiah chapter two we read something similar: And it came about in the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, that wine was before him, and I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence. 2So the king said to me, "Why is your face sad though you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of heart." Then I was very much afraid. 3I said to the king, "Let the king live forever Why should my face not be sad when the city, the place of my fathers' tombs, lies desolate and its gates have been consumed by fire?"
You see that is where my heart is at. You may not see it but I see the church, as a whole, lying desolate and its gates consumed by fire. I see it everywhere I look. I hear all the words about salvation and the greatness of God and then I see the culture that we live in and I understand that our words are hollow and empty because we have given up the powerful God of Scripture for the impotent forms of religion. I see the brokenness of our lives and our families and how we put on a good face and learn to try and speak positive things but under the surface we wonder why God doesn’t do anything. Maybe you’re not like that I don’t know. I’m just telling you my own experience.
Just like Nehemiah I ask my own King why should I not be sad about the way my family is, the way my community is, and the way my church is? What’s not to be sad about?
I believe with all the strength that I can muster that God has put before us this opportunity to fast and pray next weekend so that we may find that which our hearts desire. And I will be honest here; if deep down all you desire is more of yourself I believe you will find it next weekend. I believe next weekend will be turning point for each of us. It will be the time when we can look back and say that is when God began to soften my heart or it will be a time that we will remember that God solidified the hardening of our arteries.
We are being called to humble ourselves before the living God. Now I don’t want you to think that this will be a walk in the park. You can expect tempers to flair, you can expect fights, you can expect to be on your worst behavior because that is the way the enemy tries to destroy the things that God does. If he can make you think that fasting isn’t doing anything but getting you into more trouble then he can turn you in a different direction. If he can get you to believe that your prayers aren’t being heard because you aren’t worthy to be heard then he’s already won the battle.
Humble yourself next week and expect trouble. Pray and expect trouble. Set your mind now to persevere for twenty four hours; Crying out to God, humbling your self before God so that you can make a request to our King and receive a favorable response.
I want you to understand the context of this passage. The church is a mess. Nehemiah is still in captivity because of the wickedness of the church 90 years before. But in the midst of that captivity God is still giving grace. Nehemiah, by the grace of God, has been place in a position of serving the king. He obviously has a relationship with the king, so much so that the first time that Nehemiah looks sad in the king’s presence the King asks what he can do. As soon as he hears those words Nehemiah prays to God. Obviously it is a quick and quiet prayer, and then he blurts out: If it please the king, and if your servant has found favor before you, send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers' tombs, that I may rebuild it." 6Then the king said to me, the queen sitting beside him, "How long will your journey be, and when will you return?" So it pleased the king to send me, and I gave him a definite time. 7And I said to the king, "If it please the king, let letters be given me for the governors of the provinces beyond the River, that they may allow me to pass through until I come to Judah, 8and a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress which is by the temple, for the wall of the city and for the house to which I will go " And the king granted them to me because the good hand of my God was on me.
I want you to understand something; if we are humble before God and his presence is with us then we do not have to be on the defensive we can be on the offense. We can press forward with great hope regardless of who is in charge in the land, regardless of whether or not we are sent into captivity. The outcome of our nation is not important. What is important is our humbleness before God. The greatest nations in the world will come tumbling down if they are not humble before God.
Another thing that I want you to get in your heads is that we do not have a pagan king on the throne: Jesus Christ sits on the throne and as much as we can’t see it right now he is ruling and reigning until his enemies are all placed under his feet. But he will not use sin to advance his kingdom. That is why we are being called to humble ourselves before God next week because until that happens, until we see our true condition and fall on our faces before God – God will not give us favor with the King.
God is not in a hurry to advance his kingdom. He builds his kingdom slowly and surely. He builds a solid foundation and on top of that strong foundation he builds a kingdom that will last for all eternity. He is not going to skimp on building materials. He is not going to use faulty supplies. Even if he has to wait two or three generations for good supplies to come in it doesn’t matter to his overall plan. And so if a generation arises that doesn’t know the Lord, God will wait. If the church refuses to humble itself before its maker then God will wait. He is not opposed to killing off a generation before he starts a new phase of construction on the kingdom.
But when the generation arises that is humble before God then he will move at what seems like great speed. Here in less than 10 minutes God opened doors that provided an opportunity for years of jobs, materials; all at no expense to Nehemiah. The door is opened and all he has to do is walk through it. And he does.
I want you to see next weekend as an opportunity to knock on the door and beg it to be opened. Or if you prefer you can see it as the king, Jesus Christ is knocking on our door seeking to come in. Will we open the door with humbleness and let the king come in and eat with us and abide with us and provide for us all that we need to restore our lives and families and the church or will we stay hard hearted and refuse to let him in?
I want to spend the rest of the time today reminding you that our King as been given all authority in heaven and earth. It is something that we obviously do not understand as a church because we are weak and pitiful in the midst of a pagan culture.
It’s interesting to me that two different words are translated authority one should be translated power and the other to rule over and exercise dominion. The word power is used for the authority of Pharaoh. But even more importantly it is used in Genesis chapter 3 verse 22 of Adam and Eve right after the fall: Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever." The phrase stretch out his hand uses the power word for authority: that he might use his rebellions power, his self appointed authority. That is the essence of the fallen world that we live in. Men and women boys and girls born with a desire to be their own authorities; Nobody tells me what to do.
The other type of authority we see in scripture is that of advancing dominion of the one true king; it flows out of being under rightful authority, being under God and his law. That is the type of authority that our King has.
Hebrews chapter 12 reminds us: that since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. 4You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; 5and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, "MY SON, DO NOT REGARD LIGHTLY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE LORD, NOR FAINT WHEN YOU ARE REPROVED BY HIM; 6FOR THOSE WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE DISCIPLINES, AND HE SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES." 7It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? 10For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. 11All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. 12Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, 13and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. 14Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. 15See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled; 16that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal. 17For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears. 18For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched and to a blazing fire, and to darkness and gloom and whirlwind, 19and to the blast of a trumpet and the sound of words which sound was such that those who heard begged that no further word be spoken to them. 20For they could not bear the command, "IF EVEN A BEAST TOUCHES THE MOUNTAIN, IT WILL BE STONED." 21And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, "I AM FULL OF FEAR and trembling." 22But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, 23to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel. 25See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven. 26And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, "YET ONCE MORE I WILL SHAKE NOT ONLY THE EARTH, BUT ALSO THE HEAVEN." 27This expression, "Yet once more," denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. 28Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; 29for our God is a consuming fire.
This is where we are at, today. God is shaking his kingdom. The ones that remain will remain for ever the ones that can be shaken out will be consumed by the living god who is a consuming fire.
Jesus Christ has been given all rule to exercise dominion over the whole earth. He will not fail in his task because he has been obedient to the father in everything, even in laying his life down. It is obedience that leads to godly rule and dominion.
And therefore, the church today is in bondage, a slave to the lender.
It doesn’t have to be this way. There is still time to humble ourselves before God. There is time to turn this thing around, it will be turned around, the only question is will God use us to do it or will he consume us and move on to another generation?
You see when Jesus came on the scene the people who heard him were amazed because was teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes. What that tells me is that if you are walking in obedience your authority will be noticed by ever day people. The church is ridiculed today, it preachers laughed at because it is without authority. In essences, our preachers are no different than the scribes and Pharisees. They only have empty words – Good words yes but words that are empty of any authority.
People instinctively know when authority is present. In Matthew 8 we read this: when Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, imploring Him, 6and saying, "Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented." 7Jesus said to him, "I will come and heal him." 8But the centurion said, "Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9"For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, 'Go!' and he goes, and to another, 'Come!' and he comes, and to my slave, 'Do this!' and he does it." 10Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who were following, "Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel. 11"I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; 12but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." 13And Jesus said to the centurion, "Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed." And the servant was healed that very moment.
I don’t know if you caught it or not but Jesus said basically this: there are going to be people in the kingdom from all over the place but there will be a lot of people who spent their lives in church that will be cast into hell. That’s a big deal.
In chapter 9 of Matthew we read this: they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralytic, "Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven." 3And some of the scribes said to themselves, "This fellow blasphemes." 4And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, "Why are you thinking evil in your hearts? 5"Which is easier, to say, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up, and walk'? 6"But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins"--then He said to the paralytic, "Get up, pick up your bed and go home." 7And he got up and went home. 8But when the crowds saw this, they were awestruck, and glorified God, who had given such authority to men.
The great temptation in all of this is to grab authority on you own strength. That is what adam and eve did in the garden. Instead of serving the father and exercising dominion under God they attempted to speed of the process and take authority for themselves. They wanted to be served and not serve.
We see that in the disciples in Matthew 20: 20Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to Jesus with her sons, bowing down and making a request of Him. 21And He said to her, "What do you wish?" She said to Him, "Command that in Your kingdom these two sons of mine may sit one on Your right and one on Your left." 22But Jesus answered, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?" They said to Him, "We are able." 23He said to them, "My cup you shall drink; but to sit on My right and on My left, this is not Mine to give, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by My Father."
24And hearing this, the ten became indignant with the two brothers. 25But Jesus called them to Himself and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. 26"It is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, 27and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; 28just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."
That is where the authority of the Kingdom of God comes from. You see Jesus Christ has been given all authority in heaven and on earth but he is still serving his father. He is doing his father’s will not his own.
In first Corinthians 15 Paul tells us that in Christ all will be made alive But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ's at His coming, 24then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. 25For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. 26The last enemy that will be abolished is death. 27For HE HAS PUT ALL THINGS IN SUBJECTION UNDER HIS FEET But when He says, "All things are put in subjection," it is evident that He is excepted who put all things in subjection to Him. 28When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all.
You see Jesus is ruling and reigning fighting against all the enemies of God and when he finally completes his work some day then he will hand the kingdom over to its rightful owner – God the Father. Even Jesus will bow in submission to God the father. That is where authority comes from. That is what obedience is all about.
We can keep going the way we are doing our own thing, playing church and believing in the form of godliness or we can stop fooling around, humble ourselves before God and show that humbleness by laying down the sin which so easily besets us and begging God to let us walk in the authority of obedience.
Unless we are ready to lay down every thing that god calls sin then we are not ready and not able to advance the rule and dominion of the kingdom of God. As long as we are of the world in the way we live our lives we will never be in the kingdom of God.
May God give us the grace of humbleness in the coming week. Let’s pray.
Oh Father, please don’t let next weekend be a game we play. Cause us to be humbled before you. Break us Lord. Save us from ourselves. Pull us into obedience and submission to you and your will. In Jesus power and authority that flows from his obedience I ask these things. So Be It.
Here the word of our Lord from Matthew 28:
“I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. 19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 20 Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Driving with the Brakes on
Hey Everyone,
I heard an old Del Amitri song yesterday from the mid 90’s that I hadn’t heard in a long time. The words to the chorus always stirred something in me: When you're driving with the brakes on When you're swimming with your boots on, It's hard to say you love someone And it's hard to say you don't.
I wonder sometimes if that is how I live my life. I wonder if that is how I treat my Lord; never committing myself fully, always holding something back. Never laying my life down on a level where I can’t pick it up again at a moment’s notice and regain control. Is that love? Is that salvation or is that looking out for number one?
If I treat my Lord like that, well, it probably only gets worse as we go down the relationship chain, which is probably a lot like the food chain. I think of these things as I get closer to the day we have set aside for our Solemn Assembly before God on the 29th and 30th of this month. I have high expectations mixed with high doubt. The story of my life I guess.
But in the midst of all of this I am more aware than I have been in a long, long time of the spiritual warfare that is all around us. And in one of those rare moments of clarity I understand that this is no game, this isn’t a rehearsal, this is it. This is war; no matter which direction I choose to look. It is war even if I close my eyes and pretend it’s not. And here I am trying to be a navy seal with my boots on, rushing to the front lines with my foot on the brakes.
I think about the last 10 years and all that has gone on to get me to where I am, and at the same time all that has gone on to get me to stop moving ahead and I understand that I have a calling, we all do, but the enemy is working overtime to try and make that calling come up short. With every trick that he can muster he is trying to get me to put my foot on the brake more and more. He tries to get me to put on heavier and heavier boots. He tries to make me conclude that I really don’t love.
Most of the time those attacks come in the form of relationships. In the midst of relationships it doesn’t take much for me to be discouraged and let the train get derailed. In fact, a five minute conversation a couple years ago nearly caused me to lay down my pen and stop writing. It took me a year to recover from that. And now I’ve just about made up all that lost ground but it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t cheap. There was a great cost to me, financially and personally. Growing up is always expensive.
It’s easy in the midst of what we see as ‘just life’ to miss the fact that there is something deeper than relationships going on – there is warfare. The enemy knows every nook and cranny of our dysfunction and he uses that information often times to get us to put the brake on with the hopes of stopping our journey.
If that doesn’t work, well , there are other methods. In my own life, I see it as people I try to minister with, get sick or get distracted to the point where they are unable to work with me. I see it in the mail system not working properly. I have been trying to work with a marketing person since before thanksgiving but one thing after another has kept us from beginning a new phase of operations. It began when books I sent her never arrived. I sent another set of books at the same time to someone else and they were there in no time at all. But her Priority package obviously wasn’t somebody’s priority because it is still floating in the mail system somewhere. She finally received the second package after Christmas. We made plans to talk last week after she had read the books. Then she went into the hospital. I haven’t heard from her in over a week and that tells me she is not doing better.
I know that we have all been thoroughly entrenched in the humanistic concept that there is no meaning or connection to events that occur in our lives, they are random and non personal. I would disagree. Because this is God’s world everything is personal because he is personal. He created this world to be personal and meaningful. Everything has meaning even if we can’t see it, it means something to God. It was planned by God.
It’s easy to forget that. It’s easy to believe the lie of impersonal. It’s easy to believe that nothing matters. It’s hard to remember that we are called from before the foundation of the world for good works that were especially prepared for us.
It’s time to begin to remember.
Back to Del Amitri’s song, the bridge offers me some hope and encouragement when it says: But unless the moon falls tonight, unless continents collide, nothing's gonna make me, break from her side. I know (mostly because the word of God that does not change tells me) that nothing and no one can pluck me out of the father’s hands. Nothing has the power to keep me from the calling that God has placed upon my heart. It will be completed exactly as God planned. The enemy’s plans will be foiled.
In case you forgot how the story ends: God Wins and nothing that he has planned will be thwarted even by me driving with the brakes on and swimming with my boots on.
I find myself more grateful for that everyday.
Dysfunctionally yours,
Brad
I heard an old Del Amitri song yesterday from the mid 90’s that I hadn’t heard in a long time. The words to the chorus always stirred something in me: When you're driving with the brakes on When you're swimming with your boots on, It's hard to say you love someone And it's hard to say you don't.
I wonder sometimes if that is how I live my life. I wonder if that is how I treat my Lord; never committing myself fully, always holding something back. Never laying my life down on a level where I can’t pick it up again at a moment’s notice and regain control. Is that love? Is that salvation or is that looking out for number one?
If I treat my Lord like that, well, it probably only gets worse as we go down the relationship chain, which is probably a lot like the food chain. I think of these things as I get closer to the day we have set aside for our Solemn Assembly before God on the 29th and 30th of this month. I have high expectations mixed with high doubt. The story of my life I guess.
But in the midst of all of this I am more aware than I have been in a long, long time of the spiritual warfare that is all around us. And in one of those rare moments of clarity I understand that this is no game, this isn’t a rehearsal, this is it. This is war; no matter which direction I choose to look. It is war even if I close my eyes and pretend it’s not. And here I am trying to be a navy seal with my boots on, rushing to the front lines with my foot on the brakes.
I think about the last 10 years and all that has gone on to get me to where I am, and at the same time all that has gone on to get me to stop moving ahead and I understand that I have a calling, we all do, but the enemy is working overtime to try and make that calling come up short. With every trick that he can muster he is trying to get me to put my foot on the brake more and more. He tries to get me to put on heavier and heavier boots. He tries to make me conclude that I really don’t love.
Most of the time those attacks come in the form of relationships. In the midst of relationships it doesn’t take much for me to be discouraged and let the train get derailed. In fact, a five minute conversation a couple years ago nearly caused me to lay down my pen and stop writing. It took me a year to recover from that. And now I’ve just about made up all that lost ground but it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t cheap. There was a great cost to me, financially and personally. Growing up is always expensive.
It’s easy in the midst of what we see as ‘just life’ to miss the fact that there is something deeper than relationships going on – there is warfare. The enemy knows every nook and cranny of our dysfunction and he uses that information often times to get us to put the brake on with the hopes of stopping our journey.
If that doesn’t work, well , there are other methods. In my own life, I see it as people I try to minister with, get sick or get distracted to the point where they are unable to work with me. I see it in the mail system not working properly. I have been trying to work with a marketing person since before thanksgiving but one thing after another has kept us from beginning a new phase of operations. It began when books I sent her never arrived. I sent another set of books at the same time to someone else and they were there in no time at all. But her Priority package obviously wasn’t somebody’s priority because it is still floating in the mail system somewhere. She finally received the second package after Christmas. We made plans to talk last week after she had read the books. Then she went into the hospital. I haven’t heard from her in over a week and that tells me she is not doing better.
I know that we have all been thoroughly entrenched in the humanistic concept that there is no meaning or connection to events that occur in our lives, they are random and non personal. I would disagree. Because this is God’s world everything is personal because he is personal. He created this world to be personal and meaningful. Everything has meaning even if we can’t see it, it means something to God. It was planned by God.
It’s easy to forget that. It’s easy to believe the lie of impersonal. It’s easy to believe that nothing matters. It’s hard to remember that we are called from before the foundation of the world for good works that were especially prepared for us.
It’s time to begin to remember.
Back to Del Amitri’s song, the bridge offers me some hope and encouragement when it says: But unless the moon falls tonight, unless continents collide, nothing's gonna make me, break from her side. I know (mostly because the word of God that does not change tells me) that nothing and no one can pluck me out of the father’s hands. Nothing has the power to keep me from the calling that God has placed upon my heart. It will be completed exactly as God planned. The enemy’s plans will be foiled.
In case you forgot how the story ends: God Wins and nothing that he has planned will be thwarted even by me driving with the brakes on and swimming with my boots on.
I find myself more grateful for that everyday.
Dysfunctionally yours,
Brad
Saturday, January 15, 2011
foundation series #22
I’m going to take a break from Nehemiah this week to spend some time elaborating on the concept of a Solemn Assembly. For those of you who weren’t here last week I announced that the Southern Baptist Convention had called churches to participate in what scripture calls a Solemn Assembly; a day of prayer and fasting with an eye toward corporate repentance of sin and humbling ourselves before our God.
I want to continue on in the same direction by looking at the concept of fasting. First, let me say that there is no direct command of God to fast in the scripture. However, there are many examples of fasting both in the old and new Testaments. Where then does the concept come from? I believe that it flows out of the concept of humbling yourself before God which is commanded repeatedly in scripture.
One of the places that it is commanded in the proclamation of the Day of Atonement found Leviticus 23 starting with verse 27: The day of atonement shall be a holy convocation for you, and you shall humble your souls and present an offering by fire to the LORD. 28"You shall not do any work on this same day, for it is a day of atonement, to make atonement on your behalf before the LORD your God. 29"If there is any person who will not humble himself on this same day, he shall be cut off from his people. 30"As for any person who does any work on this same day, that person I will destroy from among his people. 31"You shall do no work at all. It is to be a perpetual statute throughout your generations in all your dwelling places. 32"It is to be a Sabbath of complete rest to you, and you shall humble your souls; on the ninth of the month at evening, from evening until evening you shall keep your Sabbath."
Where does one get the concept of fasting from the concept of humbling? I think the key place is found in Deuteronomy 8 verse 3: He humbled you and let you be hungry.
What we see in this passage is that one of the ways God humbles stiff necked people is by letting them go hungry. It’s not too far of a stretch from that to understand that one of the ways we can demonstrate our humbleness is by causing ourselves to go hungry.
Now the act of fasting is not in and of itself an act of humility. Jesus shows us this in Luke 18 starting with verse 9: And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: 'God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get. But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, the sinner!' I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted."
The key reason that we are being called to not work and not eat is to be humbled before God. One way to be shown that you were not really a part of Israel was to work when God said not to work because it showed that you were not humble before God therefore you were not a part of the kingdom of God.
This is not some thing that we do for fun. This is not about us and what we want or what we like. It is important that we understand that life is not about us and what we want. Life is not about having fun and enjoying yourself. Life, real life, is about dying to the rebellion in your heart and submitting yourself in every way to God.
The gospel is not some lucky charm to keep you from harm so you can live life the way you want to and do what you want. That attitude is what has got our culture in the mess that it is in. The truth is for the most part in this culture we are just selfish little babies with no desire to ever grow up.
The call to a solemn assembly is a call against all of that. Maybe this week you have felt the bristles stick up on the back of your neck at the thought of having to do something against your will. I would encourage you to look a little closer at that what is it telling you about your spiritual condition. Maybe you have already come up with a list of excuses and finagled ways you can get around what has been asked of you. Again I would encourage you to take a closer look at what that is saying about your spiritual condition. There are no rules in scripture to tell us what is or isn’t fasting because fasting isn’t the point, humbleness before God is.
This is no joke. This is no exercise in futility. This is about how serious you are at being humble before God. When push comes to shove what are you willing to give up to follow Jesus? If you’re not willing to give up a little food and some TV watching what does that say about your heart?
I will admit that I am more than a little concerned about this whole process. I’m concerned about what it will reveal of our hearts and our spiritual condition. I’m afraid that we will fail the test. I’m just being honest here. I don’t know how deep our faith goes. Even as I say that I realize that I’m showing my own lack of faith in what God can do. What have we seen him do here? Has there been in any lasting change in our lives? Are you any different today than you were last year? Are you closer to God? Are you seeing your families change? Has anything changed at all?
I don’t know about you but I’m tired of the status quo. I don’t want my life to stay this way for the rest of my years. I don’t want to have to wonder if my children are believers or not. I don’t want to wonder if people ever really change or not. I want to see God move in my life and in my family’s life. I want the power of God to be displayed among his people once again – That may be something that NONE of us has ever seen. I’m not talking about some so called Holy Spirit thing or a revival where you get all excited for a couple weeks and then things go back to the way the used to be. I want to see real change, real growth, right here right now and for me that is what this call is all about.
God is not changing us because for the most part we do not want to change. We have no desire to stop rebelling because we think it is no big deal. I am here today to tell you that you don’t know what the power of God looks like. You don’t know what God manifesting him self in our presence looks like because none of us has ever experienced it. I’m not saying we’re not saved I’m saying that we’re newborns in the faith. We’re babies and we want to stay babies and I say that for the church in America as a whole. We like being children. We like not having responsibility. We just want Jesus to be like Calgon and come take us away. But God has called us to be disciples. He has called us to grow up.
I want to relay a story I heard, not because it is written from a Christian perspective but because it shows the heart of a child and the results of discipline on a child’s life.
A mother was teaching her daughter to play a piano piece called "The Little White Donkey" by the French composer Jacques Ibert. The piece is really cute—you can just imagine a little donkey ambling along a country road with its master—but it's also incredibly difficult for young players because the two hands have to keep schizophrenically different rhythms.
The child couldn't do it. The mother and daughter worked on it nonstop for a week, drilling each of her hands separately, over and over. But whenever the child tried putting the hands together, one always morphed into the other, and everything fell apart. Finally, the day before her lesson, the child announced in exasperation that she was giving up and stomped off. "Get back to the piano now," The mother ordered. "You can't make me." "Oh yes, I can." Back at the piano, the daughter made the mother pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. The mother taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then she hauled the child’s dollhouse to the car and told her she would donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if the child didn't have "The Little White Donkey" perfect by the next day. When the child said, "I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?" The mother threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When the child still kept playing it wrong, the mother told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn't do it. The mother told the child to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.
The mother rolled up her sleeves and went back to the Piano bench. She used every weapon and tactic she could think of. The two worked right through dinner into the night, and the mother wouldn't let the child get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom. The house became a war zone, the mother lost her voice yelling, but still there seemed to be only negative progress, and even the mother began to have doubts.
Then, out of the blue, the child did it. Her hands suddenly came together—her right and left hands each doing their own perfect part—just like that.
The child realized it the same time the mother did. The mother held her breath. The child tried it tentatively again. Then she played it more confidently and faster, and still the rhythm held. A moment later, she was beaming. "Mommy, look—it's easy!" After that, she wanted to play the piece over and over and wouldn't leave the piano. That night, she came to sleep in her mother’s bed, and they snuggled and hugged, cracking each other up. When the child performed "The Little White Donkey" at a recital a few weeks later, parents came up to me and said, "What a perfect piece for your daughter—it's so spunky and so her."
What is the point in all of this? To become a disciple you have to work, but we are all born with a rebellion in our hearts that makes us never want to work on anything accept what we want. We all want to do our own thing. But that is not what God called us to. You see salvation is not about you staying a baby your whole life. God who is a loving father is not going to let you stay a baby. Just like that lady teaching her child to play the piano God is going to do whatever it takes to get you to become a disciple. The goal is to be a mature person just like Jesus. God knows what is best for us and if we are his children then all our fits and screaming and yelling, all of our rebellion will not, cannot stop him from making us disciplined. We can either go easy or hard but if we truly are God’s child we will go. Why? Because a father that loves his child disciplines his child. He doesn’t give them what they want; he gives them what they need.
This concept of fasting and setting aside an entire day for God is meant to bring us a little more into the discipleship of Christ. It’s not about seeing how little you can do and still be accepted it is about humbling yourself before God as an acceptable sacrifice. The call to fast is a call to not eat. Why? So that we will feel hungry for a prolonged amount of time. The hunger is to remind us how much we are to be hungering and thirsting after righteousness and every word that comes from the mouth of God. It is to remind us of where our life comes from and it is not from food; man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
There is a story in the book of first Samuel chapter 4 that reveals the condition of the church in our day and age and why we need to humble ourselves before God. Israel was at war with the Philistines, much like we are at war with humanists, or liberals or whoever we think isn’t doing things right. 1 The Philistines attacked and defeated the army of Israel, killing 4,000 men. After the battle was over, the troops retreated to their camp, and the elders of Israel asked, “Why did the Lord allow us to be defeated by the Philistines?” Now instead of humbling themselves before God and saying, “Please God deliver us,” they got the bright idea to bring the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord from Shiloh sayin: If we carry it into battle with us, it will save us from our enemies.” What were they doing? They were looking to the form of godliness to save them. They went and got the Ark and came back with two evil sons of Eli who were priests. When all the Israelites saw the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord coming into the camp, their shout of joy was so loud it made the ground shake!
The enemy heard all the excitement and asks: “What’s going on? What’s all the shouting about in the Hebrew camp?” When they were told it was because the Ark of the Lord had arrived, they panicked. “The gods have come into their camp!” they cried. “This is a disaster! We have never had to face anything like this before! Help! Who can save us from these mighty gods of Israel? They are the same gods who destroyed the Egyptians with plagues when Israel was in the wilderness. Fight as never before, Philistines! If you don’t, we will become the Hebrews’ slaves just as they have been ours! Stand up like men and fight!” You see the philistines didn’t run away. The shouts of war in the Israelite camp over an idol only served to make the Philistines fight harder.
So the Philistines fought desperately, and Israel was defeated again. The slaughter was great; 30,000 Israelite soldiers died that day. Let’s put that in perspective, in ONE day the Israelites lost 5 times more men than the US has lost in the entire Iraq/Afganistan war combined. In one day, they lost the equivalent to more than 50% of the entire Vietnam War. We don’t know what blood wars are in our culture. When the killing was done the survivors turned and fled to their tents. The Ark of God was captured, and Hophni and Phinehas, the two sons of Eli, both priests were killed.
A messenger rushed to tell Eli, who was ninety-eight years old and blind, about the loss and the death of his sons. When the messenger mentioned what had happened to the Ark of God, Eli fell backward from his seat beside the gate. He broke his neck and died, for he was old and overweight. He Eli’s daughter in law heard what happened she went into labor and gave birth. She died in childbirth, but before she passed away she named the child Ichabod (which means “Where is the glory?”), for she said, “Israel’s glory is gone.” She named him this because the Ark of God had been captured and because her father-in-law and husband were dead. Then she said, “The glory has departed from Israel, for the Ark of God has been captured.”
My friends, I believe that this is where the church is today- the glory of God has departed. There is too much sin in the church for God to walk in our midst. Saying that reminds me of a passage that is for the most part ignored in our day and age. It is Deuteronomy 23:12-14: "You shall also have a place outside the camp and go out there, and you shall have a spade among your tools, and it shall be when you sit down outside, you shall dig with it and shall turn to cover up your excrement."Since the LORD your God walks in the midst of your camp to deliver you and to defeat your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy; and He must not see anything indecent among you or He will turn away from you.
Listen to me: God is not concerned with our poop is he? No. He is concerned about us and he won’t walk in our midst today because we have too much spiritual poop lying around. His glory has departed. The glory has departed because like the Pharisees we clean up the outside maybe we stop cussing, or stop drinking, or stop going here or there but we don’t really do anything about the rebellion that is inside us. We don’t stop rebelling against God and his law.
Until the church humbles itself before God: God will not show up. If you started coming to church because of pain in your life but the only thing that has changed in your life is that you now get up and come to church that is not salvation. That is not change. Until you stop living the way you used to; until you stop rebelling against God in whatever nice and orderly way you rebel against him you will never find the God who is strong enough to save you from yourself.
As long as your stomach, your sports, your job, your life is more important than God, then guess what: You do not have salvation because the first command that leads to salvation is HUMBLE yourself; we also call that repent. I want you to understand that a saved person is not his own, nothing about him is his because he has been bought with the blood of Jesus Christ. YOU HAVE BEEN BOUGHT. You are not your own. You are the property of the Almighty God.
If you are God’s property then you have two choices: You can humble yourself now and be changed or you can stay stiff necked and let God humble you. I would recommend the first if at all possible.
I would encourage you to use the next 13 days to begin the humbling process. Search your heart, confess your sins, confess the sins of the church as a whole, confess the sins of your community. Make a list put it on paper. Beg God to change our hearts so that he can once again walk in our midst. Cause right now he’s saying: I can’t get next to you the way you are.
Let’s pray.
Oh Father, have mercy on us. Use the coming days to humble us before you. Have mercy oh God so that you can once again abide in our midst. Change our hearts oh God.
In Jesus name I ask these things. Amen.
Here the word of the Lord from the book of James chapter 4: "GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE." 7Submit therefore to God Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
8Draw near to God and He will draw near to you Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. 10Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you. ……Go in peace.
I want to continue on in the same direction by looking at the concept of fasting. First, let me say that there is no direct command of God to fast in the scripture. However, there are many examples of fasting both in the old and new Testaments. Where then does the concept come from? I believe that it flows out of the concept of humbling yourself before God which is commanded repeatedly in scripture.
One of the places that it is commanded in the proclamation of the Day of Atonement found Leviticus 23 starting with verse 27: The day of atonement shall be a holy convocation for you, and you shall humble your souls and present an offering by fire to the LORD. 28"You shall not do any work on this same day, for it is a day of atonement, to make atonement on your behalf before the LORD your God. 29"If there is any person who will not humble himself on this same day, he shall be cut off from his people. 30"As for any person who does any work on this same day, that person I will destroy from among his people. 31"You shall do no work at all. It is to be a perpetual statute throughout your generations in all your dwelling places. 32"It is to be a Sabbath of complete rest to you, and you shall humble your souls; on the ninth of the month at evening, from evening until evening you shall keep your Sabbath."
Where does one get the concept of fasting from the concept of humbling? I think the key place is found in Deuteronomy 8 verse 3: He humbled you and let you be hungry.
What we see in this passage is that one of the ways God humbles stiff necked people is by letting them go hungry. It’s not too far of a stretch from that to understand that one of the ways we can demonstrate our humbleness is by causing ourselves to go hungry.
Now the act of fasting is not in and of itself an act of humility. Jesus shows us this in Luke 18 starting with verse 9: And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: 'God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get. But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, the sinner!' I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted."
The key reason that we are being called to not work and not eat is to be humbled before God. One way to be shown that you were not really a part of Israel was to work when God said not to work because it showed that you were not humble before God therefore you were not a part of the kingdom of God.
This is not some thing that we do for fun. This is not about us and what we want or what we like. It is important that we understand that life is not about us and what we want. Life is not about having fun and enjoying yourself. Life, real life, is about dying to the rebellion in your heart and submitting yourself in every way to God.
The gospel is not some lucky charm to keep you from harm so you can live life the way you want to and do what you want. That attitude is what has got our culture in the mess that it is in. The truth is for the most part in this culture we are just selfish little babies with no desire to ever grow up.
The call to a solemn assembly is a call against all of that. Maybe this week you have felt the bristles stick up on the back of your neck at the thought of having to do something against your will. I would encourage you to look a little closer at that what is it telling you about your spiritual condition. Maybe you have already come up with a list of excuses and finagled ways you can get around what has been asked of you. Again I would encourage you to take a closer look at what that is saying about your spiritual condition. There are no rules in scripture to tell us what is or isn’t fasting because fasting isn’t the point, humbleness before God is.
This is no joke. This is no exercise in futility. This is about how serious you are at being humble before God. When push comes to shove what are you willing to give up to follow Jesus? If you’re not willing to give up a little food and some TV watching what does that say about your heart?
I will admit that I am more than a little concerned about this whole process. I’m concerned about what it will reveal of our hearts and our spiritual condition. I’m afraid that we will fail the test. I’m just being honest here. I don’t know how deep our faith goes. Even as I say that I realize that I’m showing my own lack of faith in what God can do. What have we seen him do here? Has there been in any lasting change in our lives? Are you any different today than you were last year? Are you closer to God? Are you seeing your families change? Has anything changed at all?
I don’t know about you but I’m tired of the status quo. I don’t want my life to stay this way for the rest of my years. I don’t want to have to wonder if my children are believers or not. I don’t want to wonder if people ever really change or not. I want to see God move in my life and in my family’s life. I want the power of God to be displayed among his people once again – That may be something that NONE of us has ever seen. I’m not talking about some so called Holy Spirit thing or a revival where you get all excited for a couple weeks and then things go back to the way the used to be. I want to see real change, real growth, right here right now and for me that is what this call is all about.
God is not changing us because for the most part we do not want to change. We have no desire to stop rebelling because we think it is no big deal. I am here today to tell you that you don’t know what the power of God looks like. You don’t know what God manifesting him self in our presence looks like because none of us has ever experienced it. I’m not saying we’re not saved I’m saying that we’re newborns in the faith. We’re babies and we want to stay babies and I say that for the church in America as a whole. We like being children. We like not having responsibility. We just want Jesus to be like Calgon and come take us away. But God has called us to be disciples. He has called us to grow up.
I want to relay a story I heard, not because it is written from a Christian perspective but because it shows the heart of a child and the results of discipline on a child’s life.
A mother was teaching her daughter to play a piano piece called "The Little White Donkey" by the French composer Jacques Ibert. The piece is really cute—you can just imagine a little donkey ambling along a country road with its master—but it's also incredibly difficult for young players because the two hands have to keep schizophrenically different rhythms.
The child couldn't do it. The mother and daughter worked on it nonstop for a week, drilling each of her hands separately, over and over. But whenever the child tried putting the hands together, one always morphed into the other, and everything fell apart. Finally, the day before her lesson, the child announced in exasperation that she was giving up and stomped off. "Get back to the piano now," The mother ordered. "You can't make me." "Oh yes, I can." Back at the piano, the daughter made the mother pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. The mother taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then she hauled the child’s dollhouse to the car and told her she would donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if the child didn't have "The Little White Donkey" perfect by the next day. When the child said, "I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?" The mother threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When the child still kept playing it wrong, the mother told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn't do it. The mother told the child to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.
The mother rolled up her sleeves and went back to the Piano bench. She used every weapon and tactic she could think of. The two worked right through dinner into the night, and the mother wouldn't let the child get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom. The house became a war zone, the mother lost her voice yelling, but still there seemed to be only negative progress, and even the mother began to have doubts.
Then, out of the blue, the child did it. Her hands suddenly came together—her right and left hands each doing their own perfect part—just like that.
The child realized it the same time the mother did. The mother held her breath. The child tried it tentatively again. Then she played it more confidently and faster, and still the rhythm held. A moment later, she was beaming. "Mommy, look—it's easy!" After that, she wanted to play the piece over and over and wouldn't leave the piano. That night, she came to sleep in her mother’s bed, and they snuggled and hugged, cracking each other up. When the child performed "The Little White Donkey" at a recital a few weeks later, parents came up to me and said, "What a perfect piece for your daughter—it's so spunky and so her."
What is the point in all of this? To become a disciple you have to work, but we are all born with a rebellion in our hearts that makes us never want to work on anything accept what we want. We all want to do our own thing. But that is not what God called us to. You see salvation is not about you staying a baby your whole life. God who is a loving father is not going to let you stay a baby. Just like that lady teaching her child to play the piano God is going to do whatever it takes to get you to become a disciple. The goal is to be a mature person just like Jesus. God knows what is best for us and if we are his children then all our fits and screaming and yelling, all of our rebellion will not, cannot stop him from making us disciplined. We can either go easy or hard but if we truly are God’s child we will go. Why? Because a father that loves his child disciplines his child. He doesn’t give them what they want; he gives them what they need.
This concept of fasting and setting aside an entire day for God is meant to bring us a little more into the discipleship of Christ. It’s not about seeing how little you can do and still be accepted it is about humbling yourself before God as an acceptable sacrifice. The call to fast is a call to not eat. Why? So that we will feel hungry for a prolonged amount of time. The hunger is to remind us how much we are to be hungering and thirsting after righteousness and every word that comes from the mouth of God. It is to remind us of where our life comes from and it is not from food; man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
There is a story in the book of first Samuel chapter 4 that reveals the condition of the church in our day and age and why we need to humble ourselves before God. Israel was at war with the Philistines, much like we are at war with humanists, or liberals or whoever we think isn’t doing things right. 1 The Philistines attacked and defeated the army of Israel, killing 4,000 men. After the battle was over, the troops retreated to their camp, and the elders of Israel asked, “Why did the Lord allow us to be defeated by the Philistines?” Now instead of humbling themselves before God and saying, “Please God deliver us,” they got the bright idea to bring the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord from Shiloh sayin: If we carry it into battle with us, it will save us from our enemies.” What were they doing? They were looking to the form of godliness to save them. They went and got the Ark and came back with two evil sons of Eli who were priests. When all the Israelites saw the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord coming into the camp, their shout of joy was so loud it made the ground shake!
The enemy heard all the excitement and asks: “What’s going on? What’s all the shouting about in the Hebrew camp?” When they were told it was because the Ark of the Lord had arrived, they panicked. “The gods have come into their camp!” they cried. “This is a disaster! We have never had to face anything like this before! Help! Who can save us from these mighty gods of Israel? They are the same gods who destroyed the Egyptians with plagues when Israel was in the wilderness. Fight as never before, Philistines! If you don’t, we will become the Hebrews’ slaves just as they have been ours! Stand up like men and fight!” You see the philistines didn’t run away. The shouts of war in the Israelite camp over an idol only served to make the Philistines fight harder.
So the Philistines fought desperately, and Israel was defeated again. The slaughter was great; 30,000 Israelite soldiers died that day. Let’s put that in perspective, in ONE day the Israelites lost 5 times more men than the US has lost in the entire Iraq/Afganistan war combined. In one day, they lost the equivalent to more than 50% of the entire Vietnam War. We don’t know what blood wars are in our culture. When the killing was done the survivors turned and fled to their tents. The Ark of God was captured, and Hophni and Phinehas, the two sons of Eli, both priests were killed.
A messenger rushed to tell Eli, who was ninety-eight years old and blind, about the loss and the death of his sons. When the messenger mentioned what had happened to the Ark of God, Eli fell backward from his seat beside the gate. He broke his neck and died, for he was old and overweight. He Eli’s daughter in law heard what happened she went into labor and gave birth. She died in childbirth, but before she passed away she named the child Ichabod (which means “Where is the glory?”), for she said, “Israel’s glory is gone.” She named him this because the Ark of God had been captured and because her father-in-law and husband were dead. Then she said, “The glory has departed from Israel, for the Ark of God has been captured.”
My friends, I believe that this is where the church is today- the glory of God has departed. There is too much sin in the church for God to walk in our midst. Saying that reminds me of a passage that is for the most part ignored in our day and age. It is Deuteronomy 23:12-14: "You shall also have a place outside the camp and go out there, and you shall have a spade among your tools, and it shall be when you sit down outside, you shall dig with it and shall turn to cover up your excrement."Since the LORD your God walks in the midst of your camp to deliver you and to defeat your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy; and He must not see anything indecent among you or He will turn away from you.
Listen to me: God is not concerned with our poop is he? No. He is concerned about us and he won’t walk in our midst today because we have too much spiritual poop lying around. His glory has departed. The glory has departed because like the Pharisees we clean up the outside maybe we stop cussing, or stop drinking, or stop going here or there but we don’t really do anything about the rebellion that is inside us. We don’t stop rebelling against God and his law.
Until the church humbles itself before God: God will not show up. If you started coming to church because of pain in your life but the only thing that has changed in your life is that you now get up and come to church that is not salvation. That is not change. Until you stop living the way you used to; until you stop rebelling against God in whatever nice and orderly way you rebel against him you will never find the God who is strong enough to save you from yourself.
As long as your stomach, your sports, your job, your life is more important than God, then guess what: You do not have salvation because the first command that leads to salvation is HUMBLE yourself; we also call that repent. I want you to understand that a saved person is not his own, nothing about him is his because he has been bought with the blood of Jesus Christ. YOU HAVE BEEN BOUGHT. You are not your own. You are the property of the Almighty God.
If you are God’s property then you have two choices: You can humble yourself now and be changed or you can stay stiff necked and let God humble you. I would recommend the first if at all possible.
I would encourage you to use the next 13 days to begin the humbling process. Search your heart, confess your sins, confess the sins of the church as a whole, confess the sins of your community. Make a list put it on paper. Beg God to change our hearts so that he can once again walk in our midst. Cause right now he’s saying: I can’t get next to you the way you are.
Let’s pray.
Oh Father, have mercy on us. Use the coming days to humble us before you. Have mercy oh God so that you can once again abide in our midst. Change our hearts oh God.
In Jesus name I ask these things. Amen.
Here the word of the Lord from the book of James chapter 4: "GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE." 7Submit therefore to God Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
8Draw near to God and He will draw near to you Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. 10Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you. ……Go in peace.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Can't Get Next To You, Babe
Morning Everyone,
I’m late getting this out and that is simply another example of just how busy I am these days. I spent most of the day yesterday converting books to digital format. It sounded easy a couple of weeks ago when I started, ok a month ago, but there is a lot of computer formatting that either has to be figured out or bypassed and since I don’t do computer coding all that well (at all) I had to figure out how to by pass it and trick the computer into doing what I wanted it to.
Signs of the age I guess, just a couple of years ago when I was in high school ; ) they didn’t even offer computer classes or should I say I was too oblivious to even know they existed if they did. I remember getting my first vic 20 computer in the early 80’s and spending hours learning to copy code so that I could play some game that was about as exciting as pong (which I played by the way and loved).
I don’t do video games much anymore mostly because once I get started I can’t seem to stop. I learned that in the 80’s as well, on the Atari 2600. I saw a girl awhile back with the Atari 2600 ensignia tattooed on her arm. I asked her if she liked the game and I could be wrong but I think she told me she’d never played one (before her time). I gave my system to a much younger cousin when I realized that if it stayed in the house I was never going to get anything of import accomplished –making it to the next level is not of import in the overall scheme of life. So by the time my kids were playing Nintendo 64 I was already obsolete – in the words of one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes – I chose to become The Obsolete Man.
You know if the church would have truly embraced TV as a medium instead of just seeing it as a new platform to preach from we could have conquered this nation a long time ago. Shows like the Obsolete Man are so biblical, so full of truth and have such a powerful message that, well , they would probably not make it past the censors these days. We lost the TV war before we even knew there was a battle I’m afraid.
But the truth is we lost the battle for our culture long before TV was invented. By the end of the civil war the country that the founding fathers knew was already on its way out. The seeds of modern life had already been planted and now they are growing out of control. TV is not to blame, computers are not to blame. The church is to blame. We left the path of life in pursuit of happiness and now we are reaping the destruction that follows such action.
In the midst of battling the destruction that we have chosen to bath in I’ve been thinking of the things that God can’t do. Too often in our day and age freedom is defined as being able to do anything you want to do. But I believe that God shows us that freedom is as much about not being able to do things as it is to do what you want. I guess the thing that started this for me was listening to Al Green singing “Can’t get next to you babe”
The song describes all of these things that really only God can do: I can turn the gray sky blue, I can make it rain when I want to. I can live forever if I so desire; things like that. All followed by the singer saying, but: I can’t get next to you babe.
Earlier this week it hit me that God can’t get next to sin. Duh, I know. He refuses because to leave the path of life would be the end of his freedom He would be rebelling against himself (and I think we might call that schizophrenia). That is the reason why we don’t see him in church much these days. His presence can’t abide sin and the church has trouble locating the path of life. It’s like we’re walking parallel lines with God. We can see him over there and wave to him, we think we’re going the same direction but our lives never intersect. I guess that is a perfect example of having the form without the power.
I say all of this because I’ve gone out, way out, on a limb and called my congregation to hold a day of Prayer and fasting with an eye toward corporate repentance. Mostly I did it because I’m tired of going to church without God showing up. I’m tired of watching the slow train derail off the path of life, and I’m tired of settling for imitation life instead of real life which can only be found on the path of righteousness. I’m tired of bondage that passes itself off as freedom. The freedom to sin is not freedom at all – it is destruction. Paul says twice in first Corinthians that EVERYTHING is permitted. You can sin if you want to but he always adds: Everything is not profitable.
We have been sucked into this idea that what is good is what makes us happy but nothing could be further from the truth. Death from the wages of sin makes most people happy in the short term. It feels good and that’s all that matters. Destruction feels good while it’s going on. As Sheryl Crow sings: If it makes you happy then why the hell are you so sad? I don’t know why the world is made this way but it is. We have an aversion to suffering, we assume something is bad because it makes us unhappy but the truth is we are destroying multiple generations and our future by making sure that our children never have to suffer. We are protecting them from the things that they will need to survive in the name of happiness. You see ensuring happiness rules out perseverance, it rules out learning to master life skills because at the first sign of whining we want to make happy.
But the goal of life isn’t to be happy. The goal in life is to find the path of life and stay on it. And until we are willing to humble ourselves and give up the destruction that we call the pursuit of happiness then God is going to keep singing Al Green. He can’t get next to a people that love sin. He won’t get next to a people that refuse to humble themselves. When I said I went way out on a limb with this fasting thing that’s because the risk is that I will see just how far people will go to not repent. I may even see how far I am willing to go to NOT repent. How far will we go to stretch the rules so that it looks like we are complying but really aren’t? I am running the risk of seeing the true hearts of my self and my congregation and in some sense I am running the risk of God saying “Can’t get next to you babe” so loudly that I can actually hear it.
Now that said, I am also running the risk of God actually being God and forcing people to repentance and humbleness and then I will have to deal with walking in faith and watching as the power of God takes dominion over his people and our communities. Sounds great but it means going up against giants. That is a little intimidating and probably one of the reasons that we are in the mess we’re in. But I think I’m finally at a place where I’m so sick of bondage that I am willing (If I know for sure that God is, in the words of the Carpenters, “longing to be close to me”) to take the risk of standing up in front of Giants and watch them fall instead of being safe in the arms of destruction.
Given my track record it could go either way.
Grace, Mercy and R&B to you all,
Brad
I’m late getting this out and that is simply another example of just how busy I am these days. I spent most of the day yesterday converting books to digital format. It sounded easy a couple of weeks ago when I started, ok a month ago, but there is a lot of computer formatting that either has to be figured out or bypassed and since I don’t do computer coding all that well (at all) I had to figure out how to by pass it and trick the computer into doing what I wanted it to.
Signs of the age I guess, just a couple of years ago when I was in high school ; ) they didn’t even offer computer classes or should I say I was too oblivious to even know they existed if they did. I remember getting my first vic 20 computer in the early 80’s and spending hours learning to copy code so that I could play some game that was about as exciting as pong (which I played by the way and loved).
I don’t do video games much anymore mostly because once I get started I can’t seem to stop. I learned that in the 80’s as well, on the Atari 2600. I saw a girl awhile back with the Atari 2600 ensignia tattooed on her arm. I asked her if she liked the game and I could be wrong but I think she told me she’d never played one (before her time). I gave my system to a much younger cousin when I realized that if it stayed in the house I was never going to get anything of import accomplished –making it to the next level is not of import in the overall scheme of life. So by the time my kids were playing Nintendo 64 I was already obsolete – in the words of one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes – I chose to become The Obsolete Man.
You know if the church would have truly embraced TV as a medium instead of just seeing it as a new platform to preach from we could have conquered this nation a long time ago. Shows like the Obsolete Man are so biblical, so full of truth and have such a powerful message that, well , they would probably not make it past the censors these days. We lost the TV war before we even knew there was a battle I’m afraid.
But the truth is we lost the battle for our culture long before TV was invented. By the end of the civil war the country that the founding fathers knew was already on its way out. The seeds of modern life had already been planted and now they are growing out of control. TV is not to blame, computers are not to blame. The church is to blame. We left the path of life in pursuit of happiness and now we are reaping the destruction that follows such action.
In the midst of battling the destruction that we have chosen to bath in I’ve been thinking of the things that God can’t do. Too often in our day and age freedom is defined as being able to do anything you want to do. But I believe that God shows us that freedom is as much about not being able to do things as it is to do what you want. I guess the thing that started this for me was listening to Al Green singing “Can’t get next to you babe”
The song describes all of these things that really only God can do: I can turn the gray sky blue, I can make it rain when I want to. I can live forever if I so desire; things like that. All followed by the singer saying, but: I can’t get next to you babe.
Earlier this week it hit me that God can’t get next to sin. Duh, I know. He refuses because to leave the path of life would be the end of his freedom He would be rebelling against himself (and I think we might call that schizophrenia). That is the reason why we don’t see him in church much these days. His presence can’t abide sin and the church has trouble locating the path of life. It’s like we’re walking parallel lines with God. We can see him over there and wave to him, we think we’re going the same direction but our lives never intersect. I guess that is a perfect example of having the form without the power.
I say all of this because I’ve gone out, way out, on a limb and called my congregation to hold a day of Prayer and fasting with an eye toward corporate repentance. Mostly I did it because I’m tired of going to church without God showing up. I’m tired of watching the slow train derail off the path of life, and I’m tired of settling for imitation life instead of real life which can only be found on the path of righteousness. I’m tired of bondage that passes itself off as freedom. The freedom to sin is not freedom at all – it is destruction. Paul says twice in first Corinthians that EVERYTHING is permitted. You can sin if you want to but he always adds: Everything is not profitable.
We have been sucked into this idea that what is good is what makes us happy but nothing could be further from the truth. Death from the wages of sin makes most people happy in the short term. It feels good and that’s all that matters. Destruction feels good while it’s going on. As Sheryl Crow sings: If it makes you happy then why the hell are you so sad? I don’t know why the world is made this way but it is. We have an aversion to suffering, we assume something is bad because it makes us unhappy but the truth is we are destroying multiple generations and our future by making sure that our children never have to suffer. We are protecting them from the things that they will need to survive in the name of happiness. You see ensuring happiness rules out perseverance, it rules out learning to master life skills because at the first sign of whining we want to make happy.
But the goal of life isn’t to be happy. The goal in life is to find the path of life and stay on it. And until we are willing to humble ourselves and give up the destruction that we call the pursuit of happiness then God is going to keep singing Al Green. He can’t get next to a people that love sin. He won’t get next to a people that refuse to humble themselves. When I said I went way out on a limb with this fasting thing that’s because the risk is that I will see just how far people will go to not repent. I may even see how far I am willing to go to NOT repent. How far will we go to stretch the rules so that it looks like we are complying but really aren’t? I am running the risk of seeing the true hearts of my self and my congregation and in some sense I am running the risk of God saying “Can’t get next to you babe” so loudly that I can actually hear it.
Now that said, I am also running the risk of God actually being God and forcing people to repentance and humbleness and then I will have to deal with walking in faith and watching as the power of God takes dominion over his people and our communities. Sounds great but it means going up against giants. That is a little intimidating and probably one of the reasons that we are in the mess we’re in. But I think I’m finally at a place where I’m so sick of bondage that I am willing (If I know for sure that God is, in the words of the Carpenters, “longing to be close to me”) to take the risk of standing up in front of Giants and watch them fall instead of being safe in the arms of destruction.
Given my track record it could go either way.
Grace, Mercy and R&B to you all,
Brad
Saturday, January 8, 2011
foundation series 21 1-9-11
We are going to be starting the book of Nehemiah today. It is a continuation of the book of Ezra and in fact in Jewish literature it is called Ezra 2 or they are put together in one book called Ezra. Let’s start with chapter 1 verse one: The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah Now it happened in the month Chislev, in the twentieth year, while I was in Susa the capitol, 2that Hanani, one of my brothers, and some men from Judah came; and I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped and had survived the captivity, and about Jerusalem.
I take this to be that it had been 20 years since the king of Babylon had given the Jews permission to go back home. Nehemiah is still in Babylon and is a servant of the king, as we will read later he is a cup bearer. What we see here is that some people had come back to Babylon for a visit and Nehemiah asked them how things are going after twenty years.
Remember it took them 15 or so years to rebuild the temple. So this is going on around 5 years after the end of the book of Ezra. I bring out all of this because I want to remind you that advancing the kingdom of God TAKES TIME. These things were written for our example. If we miss the fact that building the kingdom takes time then we are going to be very disappointed in our life times. To add New Testament perspective on this if you remember the construction of the temple had been completed, that means that the body of Christ was up and functioning. The last thing that we read was that there had been a great rededication, a renewing of covenant oaths to the Lord.
And now five years later the visitors have this to say about the condition of the kingdom: The remnant there in the province who survived the captivity are in great distress and reproach, and the wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are burned with fire."
If you remember in our study of Ezra I said that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are an example of what Jesus told the disciples to do in Acts chapter 1: They were asking Jesus, "Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?" 7He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or epochs (seasons or periods of time) which the Father has fixed by His own authority; 8but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth."
I want you to understand that you and I, the body of Christ are Israel. The kingdom is going to be restored to the bride of Christ. There is one people of God from every tribe, tongue and nation and it is named Israel – the people of God. Since Christ took the throne sitting at the right hand of the father with all authority power given to him; he has been advancing his kingdom – the kingdom of Israel. It is not for us to know the times or epochs. In Fact, Daniel chapter 2 uses similar language concerning God the Father: "Let the name of God be blessed forever and ever, For wisdom and power belong to Him. 21"It is He who changes the times and the epochs (seasons or periods of time); He removes kings and establishes kings; He gives wisdom to wise men and knowledge to men of understanding. 22"It is He who reveals the profound and hidden things; He knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with Him.
You see our job is not to worry about the times or the epochs: God has planned them from before the foundation of the world. The mess that this world is in at this time was planned by God before the world began. The condition of the world is not our concern- our concern should be walking on the path of life – being a witness to the goodness of God by walking faithfully in obedience to his law in the midst of a dark world.
We advance the kingdom by first bowing our knee to the king. When we submit ourselves to the king then our calling is to make disciples, to teach the people nearest us how to walk on the path of life. We can’t make anyone walk on it but we can show them the way. The law of God, the righteousness of God is the path of life. We are first to disciple our families teaching them the way that they should go so that when they are old they will not depart from it.
Now that is hard because for most of our lives we haven’t known the way we should go; that’s why advancing the kingdom is so slow. For over a hundred years in this country we have despised the law of God, we have rejected the path of life; and now we are reaping the consequences of that. The seeds that have been sown are starting to bear fruit. It’s not like we can just automatically switch the fruits that are growing. We have to weed the field, we have to plow the ground, we have to plant new seed and we have to do that with an eye on the 22nd century BECAUSE THAT’s HOW LONG IT TAKES SPIRITUAL SEEDS TO GROW IN A CULTURE.
I will be the first to admit that it is hard to remember that. I want things to move quickly, I want hope to be restored and it will be but not in my time frame. Our calling is for longer than our lifetime. You that find yourself closer to the end and think you have no purpose, that God is through using you, are wrong. If you look throughout scripture you will find that God often times waits until the end of a person’s life before he reveals the fullness of their calling. You’re purpose has never been to just work a job and make money, your calling is more than that. You need to be seeking God asking him to reveal his plan for you now. The kingdom of God needs you to help advance it.
You see the kingdom of God is not built with a big flash and bang. It is built slowly one stone upon another. Line by line precept by precept and maybe in your life time a couple rows blocks in the kingdom are built. Our calling is to make sure the blocks we lay are put into place solidly or else the next generation of kingdom builders is going to have to come in and rip out all that the generations before them have done poorly and rebuild. The kingdom grows slow and that is hard for us to understand in the fast food world that we live in. We’ve been taught all these fairy tales about how one person can come in and change the world overnight but that is nothing but a fantasy. Jesus didn’t change the entire world over night. He walked in righteousness for 33 years. His work was finished on the cross yes but at the same time it also only began with the resurrection. We have been working to advance his kingdom ever since. The best thing you can do to advance the kingdom of God is to walk on the path of life, especially in our day and age when the majority of people inside and outside the church don’t even believe that the law of God, the path of life is valid for them.
Back in Nehemiah they have been trying to advance the kingdom for twenty years. They have made some progress in their individual lives, the church is up and functioning, they have renewed their covenant with God but their community is still a mess. Their righteousness hasn’t made it out of their own lives yet. The city is falling apart. The culture is on its death bed. Much like it is here.
Verse four tells us Nehemiah’s reaction to hearing the news: When I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days; and I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven. 5I said, "I beseech You, O LORD God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who preserves the covenant and loving kindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments, 6let Your ear now be attentive and Your eyes open to hear the prayer of Your servant which I am praying before You now, day and night, on behalf of the sons of Israel Your servants, confessing the sins of the sons of Israel which we have sinned against You; I and my father's house have sinned. 7"We have acted very corruptly against You and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses. 8"Remember the word which You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, 'If you are unfaithful I will scatter you among the peoples; 9but if you return to Me and keep My commandments and do them, though those of you who have been scattered were in the most remote part of the heavens, I will gather them from there and will bring them to the place where I have chosen to cause My name to dwell.' 10"They are Your servants and Your people whom You redeemed by Your great power and by Your strong hand. 11"O Lord, I beseech You, may Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant and the prayer of Your servants who delight to revere Your name, and make Your servant successful today and grant him compassion before this man " Now I was the cupbearer to the king.
Nehemiah understands something that we tend to forget – when a people are in bondage, when a cultures begins to fall apart it is because the people of that culture have refused to keep covenant with God. He also understands, however, that if a people who are in the midst of devastation in their culture humble themselves before God then God promises to restore the kingdom to them. God hears the prayers of those who delight and revere not with their words but with their lives.
It is not often that I endorse or bring to your attention things that the Southern Baptist convention offers but one came to me awhile back that really stirred my heart and so I want to share it with you today. I share it because it fits in perfectly with what we have been studying and I believe it to be brought to our attention by the hand of God.
Let me read to you the letter that I received from Don Pierson the State Prayer coordinator: Solemn Assembly: Fewer and fewer believers seem to be familiar with the term and even less have ever participated in one of these most holy sacred times of consecration and renewal. There are no less than twelve in the Old Testament. They were more than a service, in fact none were less than a day in length and most were several days. The emphasis was not on the ceremony or the ritual but on repentance and consecration. The call for a Solemn Assembly was first and foremost a call from God to His people to return to Him. They focused more on the sins of the corporate body of Christ than on the individual believer. The call for Solemn Assembly carried with it a strong warning (Isaiah 1) about making a Solemn Assembly into a mere worship service or ritual that was void of true humility, repentance and consecration. A Solemn Assembly is a call from God to His people to return to Him. It is like the cry to the church of Ephesus in Revelation to “Remember – Repent – Repeat”. Because of its very nature it involves: A seeking of His face; A forsaking of sin; A humbling before the King of kings; A confession and a consecration; A renewal of covenants and commitments; A cry for help and a cry of hope; and it is a repentant heart that drives all those who participate. During the 2010 Southern Baptist Convention, Southern Baptists were challenged to call their churches to Solemn Assemblies starting in January 2011. The exact date is January 31, 2011; this day is to be set aside as a day of fasting, prayer, and repentance. The reasoning behind this call for Solemn Assembly – “We have forgotten our first love (Revelation 2:4) and need revival in SBC. There are many decisions being made that will affect our future; We need God’s direction.” The Tennessee Baptist Convention desires to assist our churches in answering this plea. We live in a time when true revival and awakening is desperately needed in our nation and among us as a people of the King of kings. We must return to Him with all of our hearts. We must ask for His searching of our hearts and we must respond to His Spirit with hearts of repentance. We must consecrate ourselves. Our Lord deserves nothing less from us and the lost world needs for us to be salt that has not lost its savor.
I find myself grateful that God is stirring up other’s hearts toward repentance and for taking the Old Testament seriously. I am laying the gauntlet before you all today. I am asking you to commit yourself to fasting and praying on January 30. I’m asking a big thing here. I am asking you to not eat from 6 pm on Saturday night until 6 pm on Sunday night. I’m asking for that because a biblical day begins in the evening. Now I can make up a list of excuses as long as anybody as to why I can’t do this. I understand that the Convention is calling for this on a Monday and if they are following this correctly they are asking people to stay home from work as well as fast and pray. I think that is certainly biblical I’m just not certain that people are at the right place yet to do that and so I am asking you to give up your Sunday to prayer and fasting. I am asking all of us to not eat, to pray and to focus on humbling ourselves before God. I’d bet money that as long as some of you have been in the church you have never been asked to do anything like this. I am asking you to get serious with God; serious enough to give up food and Sunday sports as a witness to your humbleness before God. Every time you feel a hunger pain or have a craving to reach for that tv remote be reminded of your sin and the sins of this land and ask for mercy. Ask God to humble his people and then hear their prayers. Pray for more mercy. Pray for God to actually do something in the lives of people who are desperate; to make himself known to us and to the lost in our families. It’s time to quit playing games.
This is a serious thing and so I wanted to bring it to you’re attention now so you can have three weeks to prepare your hearts. We will start fasting on Saturday night and a little over half way through we will meet here like we always do but there will be no donuts or sausage biscuits and instead of Sunday School we will have a time of prayer and testimonies in the sanctuary starting at 9: 30. Yes, our children should be a part of this also. Then we will have our regular worship service and afterwards go home. Then we will meet Sunday night at 5:45 for a short time of corporate prayer followed by communion to end our time of fasting. It seemed to me like this passage was a perfect instrument for introducing all of this to you.
What should you be praying for? Here’s a short list:
· Pray that our churches will unite their hearts and their cries in Solemn Assemblies in January.
· Pray that the Law of God will once again begin to rule believer’s hearts/
· Pray that our pastors will be lead to know how to lead our churches during these Solemn Assemblies.
· Pray that they will not be about "performance", "show", "vain and empty meetings" but that they will be characterized by true brokenness, humility, and desperateness before the throne of God.
· Pray that God will convict, cleanse, and renew His calling in our lives.
· Pray that a true spirit of repentance would permeate the meetings.
· Pray that we would humble ourselves, turn from our wicked ways, and pray like we have never done so before.
· Pray for true revival to come to us as a people as His holy presence finds humble and contrite hearts and spirits among us.
· Pray that we would be delivered from religiosity, tradition, apathy, and indifference.
· Pray that we will return to Him with all of our hearts.
· Pray that we will ask for Him to search our hearts and that we would respond to His Spirit with hearts of repentance.
· Pray that we will consecrate ourselves.
· Pray for a sense of urgency that would consume us and reach the lost and that equipping the saints would be done so by us with greater zeal.
· Pray that we would begin to recognize a live as if Jesus Christ is the Conquering King of kings and Lord of lords in the lives of His people and in the world. Pray that every stronghold would be destroyed in us and among us.
These things are just the tip of the iceberg of what we can and should be praying for. Ask God to lay on your heart the things that you need to be praying for. Ask him to begin to give you the prayers you should pray and write them down. I will be handing out a pamphlet as soon as I get them in the mail that will give you some aid in preparing your heart starting the week before the solemn assembly. And I will be working the topic into the sermons the next two weeks.
I know it has been a bit of a strange sermon this morning but let’s close with prayer. Father thank you for you word. Thank you for giving us ways that we can humble ourselves before you. I pray that you would give us strength and courage to walk this path. In Jesus name I ask these things, Amen.
From Isaiah chapter 1: 10Hear the word of the LORD, You rulers of Sodom; Give ear to the instruction of our God, You people of Gomorrah. 11"What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me?" Says the LORD. "I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams And the fat of fed cattle; And I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs or goats. 12"When you come to appear before Me, Who requires of you this trampling of My courts? 13"Bring your worthless offerings no longer, Incense is an abomination to Me New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies- I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. 14"I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, They have become a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them. 15"So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen Your hands are covered with blood. 16"Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Remove the evil of your deeds from My sight Cease to do evil, 17Learn to do good; Seek justice, Reprove the ruthless, Defend the orphan, Plead for the widow. 18"Come now, and let us reason together," Says the LORD,"Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool. 19"If you consent and obey, You will eat the best of the land; 20"But if you refuse and rebel, You will be devoured by the sword " Truly, the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
Go with humble hearts
I take this to be that it had been 20 years since the king of Babylon had given the Jews permission to go back home. Nehemiah is still in Babylon and is a servant of the king, as we will read later he is a cup bearer. What we see here is that some people had come back to Babylon for a visit and Nehemiah asked them how things are going after twenty years.
Remember it took them 15 or so years to rebuild the temple. So this is going on around 5 years after the end of the book of Ezra. I bring out all of this because I want to remind you that advancing the kingdom of God TAKES TIME. These things were written for our example. If we miss the fact that building the kingdom takes time then we are going to be very disappointed in our life times. To add New Testament perspective on this if you remember the construction of the temple had been completed, that means that the body of Christ was up and functioning. The last thing that we read was that there had been a great rededication, a renewing of covenant oaths to the Lord.
And now five years later the visitors have this to say about the condition of the kingdom: The remnant there in the province who survived the captivity are in great distress and reproach, and the wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are burned with fire."
If you remember in our study of Ezra I said that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are an example of what Jesus told the disciples to do in Acts chapter 1: They were asking Jesus, "Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?" 7He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or epochs (seasons or periods of time) which the Father has fixed by His own authority; 8but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth."
I want you to understand that you and I, the body of Christ are Israel. The kingdom is going to be restored to the bride of Christ. There is one people of God from every tribe, tongue and nation and it is named Israel – the people of God. Since Christ took the throne sitting at the right hand of the father with all authority power given to him; he has been advancing his kingdom – the kingdom of Israel. It is not for us to know the times or epochs. In Fact, Daniel chapter 2 uses similar language concerning God the Father: "Let the name of God be blessed forever and ever, For wisdom and power belong to Him. 21"It is He who changes the times and the epochs (seasons or periods of time); He removes kings and establishes kings; He gives wisdom to wise men and knowledge to men of understanding. 22"It is He who reveals the profound and hidden things; He knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with Him.
You see our job is not to worry about the times or the epochs: God has planned them from before the foundation of the world. The mess that this world is in at this time was planned by God before the world began. The condition of the world is not our concern- our concern should be walking on the path of life – being a witness to the goodness of God by walking faithfully in obedience to his law in the midst of a dark world.
We advance the kingdom by first bowing our knee to the king. When we submit ourselves to the king then our calling is to make disciples, to teach the people nearest us how to walk on the path of life. We can’t make anyone walk on it but we can show them the way. The law of God, the righteousness of God is the path of life. We are first to disciple our families teaching them the way that they should go so that when they are old they will not depart from it.
Now that is hard because for most of our lives we haven’t known the way we should go; that’s why advancing the kingdom is so slow. For over a hundred years in this country we have despised the law of God, we have rejected the path of life; and now we are reaping the consequences of that. The seeds that have been sown are starting to bear fruit. It’s not like we can just automatically switch the fruits that are growing. We have to weed the field, we have to plow the ground, we have to plant new seed and we have to do that with an eye on the 22nd century BECAUSE THAT’s HOW LONG IT TAKES SPIRITUAL SEEDS TO GROW IN A CULTURE.
I will be the first to admit that it is hard to remember that. I want things to move quickly, I want hope to be restored and it will be but not in my time frame. Our calling is for longer than our lifetime. You that find yourself closer to the end and think you have no purpose, that God is through using you, are wrong. If you look throughout scripture you will find that God often times waits until the end of a person’s life before he reveals the fullness of their calling. You’re purpose has never been to just work a job and make money, your calling is more than that. You need to be seeking God asking him to reveal his plan for you now. The kingdom of God needs you to help advance it.
You see the kingdom of God is not built with a big flash and bang. It is built slowly one stone upon another. Line by line precept by precept and maybe in your life time a couple rows blocks in the kingdom are built. Our calling is to make sure the blocks we lay are put into place solidly or else the next generation of kingdom builders is going to have to come in and rip out all that the generations before them have done poorly and rebuild. The kingdom grows slow and that is hard for us to understand in the fast food world that we live in. We’ve been taught all these fairy tales about how one person can come in and change the world overnight but that is nothing but a fantasy. Jesus didn’t change the entire world over night. He walked in righteousness for 33 years. His work was finished on the cross yes but at the same time it also only began with the resurrection. We have been working to advance his kingdom ever since. The best thing you can do to advance the kingdom of God is to walk on the path of life, especially in our day and age when the majority of people inside and outside the church don’t even believe that the law of God, the path of life is valid for them.
Back in Nehemiah they have been trying to advance the kingdom for twenty years. They have made some progress in their individual lives, the church is up and functioning, they have renewed their covenant with God but their community is still a mess. Their righteousness hasn’t made it out of their own lives yet. The city is falling apart. The culture is on its death bed. Much like it is here.
Verse four tells us Nehemiah’s reaction to hearing the news: When I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days; and I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven. 5I said, "I beseech You, O LORD God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who preserves the covenant and loving kindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments, 6let Your ear now be attentive and Your eyes open to hear the prayer of Your servant which I am praying before You now, day and night, on behalf of the sons of Israel Your servants, confessing the sins of the sons of Israel which we have sinned against You; I and my father's house have sinned. 7"We have acted very corruptly against You and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses. 8"Remember the word which You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, 'If you are unfaithful I will scatter you among the peoples; 9but if you return to Me and keep My commandments and do them, though those of you who have been scattered were in the most remote part of the heavens, I will gather them from there and will bring them to the place where I have chosen to cause My name to dwell.' 10"They are Your servants and Your people whom You redeemed by Your great power and by Your strong hand. 11"O Lord, I beseech You, may Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant and the prayer of Your servants who delight to revere Your name, and make Your servant successful today and grant him compassion before this man " Now I was the cupbearer to the king.
Nehemiah understands something that we tend to forget – when a people are in bondage, when a cultures begins to fall apart it is because the people of that culture have refused to keep covenant with God. He also understands, however, that if a people who are in the midst of devastation in their culture humble themselves before God then God promises to restore the kingdom to them. God hears the prayers of those who delight and revere not with their words but with their lives.
It is not often that I endorse or bring to your attention things that the Southern Baptist convention offers but one came to me awhile back that really stirred my heart and so I want to share it with you today. I share it because it fits in perfectly with what we have been studying and I believe it to be brought to our attention by the hand of God.
Let me read to you the letter that I received from Don Pierson the State Prayer coordinator: Solemn Assembly: Fewer and fewer believers seem to be familiar with the term and even less have ever participated in one of these most holy sacred times of consecration and renewal. There are no less than twelve in the Old Testament. They were more than a service, in fact none were less than a day in length and most were several days. The emphasis was not on the ceremony or the ritual but on repentance and consecration. The call for a Solemn Assembly was first and foremost a call from God to His people to return to Him. They focused more on the sins of the corporate body of Christ than on the individual believer. The call for Solemn Assembly carried with it a strong warning (Isaiah 1) about making a Solemn Assembly into a mere worship service or ritual that was void of true humility, repentance and consecration. A Solemn Assembly is a call from God to His people to return to Him. It is like the cry to the church of Ephesus in Revelation to “Remember – Repent – Repeat”. Because of its very nature it involves: A seeking of His face; A forsaking of sin; A humbling before the King of kings; A confession and a consecration; A renewal of covenants and commitments; A cry for help and a cry of hope; and it is a repentant heart that drives all those who participate. During the 2010 Southern Baptist Convention, Southern Baptists were challenged to call their churches to Solemn Assemblies starting in January 2011. The exact date is January 31, 2011; this day is to be set aside as a day of fasting, prayer, and repentance. The reasoning behind this call for Solemn Assembly – “We have forgotten our first love (Revelation 2:4) and need revival in SBC. There are many decisions being made that will affect our future; We need God’s direction.” The Tennessee Baptist Convention desires to assist our churches in answering this plea. We live in a time when true revival and awakening is desperately needed in our nation and among us as a people of the King of kings. We must return to Him with all of our hearts. We must ask for His searching of our hearts and we must respond to His Spirit with hearts of repentance. We must consecrate ourselves. Our Lord deserves nothing less from us and the lost world needs for us to be salt that has not lost its savor.
I find myself grateful that God is stirring up other’s hearts toward repentance and for taking the Old Testament seriously. I am laying the gauntlet before you all today. I am asking you to commit yourself to fasting and praying on January 30. I’m asking a big thing here. I am asking you to not eat from 6 pm on Saturday night until 6 pm on Sunday night. I’m asking for that because a biblical day begins in the evening. Now I can make up a list of excuses as long as anybody as to why I can’t do this. I understand that the Convention is calling for this on a Monday and if they are following this correctly they are asking people to stay home from work as well as fast and pray. I think that is certainly biblical I’m just not certain that people are at the right place yet to do that and so I am asking you to give up your Sunday to prayer and fasting. I am asking all of us to not eat, to pray and to focus on humbling ourselves before God. I’d bet money that as long as some of you have been in the church you have never been asked to do anything like this. I am asking you to get serious with God; serious enough to give up food and Sunday sports as a witness to your humbleness before God. Every time you feel a hunger pain or have a craving to reach for that tv remote be reminded of your sin and the sins of this land and ask for mercy. Ask God to humble his people and then hear their prayers. Pray for more mercy. Pray for God to actually do something in the lives of people who are desperate; to make himself known to us and to the lost in our families. It’s time to quit playing games.
This is a serious thing and so I wanted to bring it to you’re attention now so you can have three weeks to prepare your hearts. We will start fasting on Saturday night and a little over half way through we will meet here like we always do but there will be no donuts or sausage biscuits and instead of Sunday School we will have a time of prayer and testimonies in the sanctuary starting at 9: 30. Yes, our children should be a part of this also. Then we will have our regular worship service and afterwards go home. Then we will meet Sunday night at 5:45 for a short time of corporate prayer followed by communion to end our time of fasting. It seemed to me like this passage was a perfect instrument for introducing all of this to you.
What should you be praying for? Here’s a short list:
· Pray that our churches will unite their hearts and their cries in Solemn Assemblies in January.
· Pray that the Law of God will once again begin to rule believer’s hearts/
· Pray that our pastors will be lead to know how to lead our churches during these Solemn Assemblies.
· Pray that they will not be about "performance", "show", "vain and empty meetings" but that they will be characterized by true brokenness, humility, and desperateness before the throne of God.
· Pray that God will convict, cleanse, and renew His calling in our lives.
· Pray that a true spirit of repentance would permeate the meetings.
· Pray that we would humble ourselves, turn from our wicked ways, and pray like we have never done so before.
· Pray for true revival to come to us as a people as His holy presence finds humble and contrite hearts and spirits among us.
· Pray that we would be delivered from religiosity, tradition, apathy, and indifference.
· Pray that we will return to Him with all of our hearts.
· Pray that we will ask for Him to search our hearts and that we would respond to His Spirit with hearts of repentance.
· Pray that we will consecrate ourselves.
· Pray for a sense of urgency that would consume us and reach the lost and that equipping the saints would be done so by us with greater zeal.
· Pray that we would begin to recognize a live as if Jesus Christ is the Conquering King of kings and Lord of lords in the lives of His people and in the world. Pray that every stronghold would be destroyed in us and among us.
These things are just the tip of the iceberg of what we can and should be praying for. Ask God to lay on your heart the things that you need to be praying for. Ask him to begin to give you the prayers you should pray and write them down. I will be handing out a pamphlet as soon as I get them in the mail that will give you some aid in preparing your heart starting the week before the solemn assembly. And I will be working the topic into the sermons the next two weeks.
I know it has been a bit of a strange sermon this morning but let’s close with prayer. Father thank you for you word. Thank you for giving us ways that we can humble ourselves before you. I pray that you would give us strength and courage to walk this path. In Jesus name I ask these things, Amen.
From Isaiah chapter 1: 10Hear the word of the LORD, You rulers of Sodom; Give ear to the instruction of our God, You people of Gomorrah. 11"What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me?" Says the LORD. "I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams And the fat of fed cattle; And I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs or goats. 12"When you come to appear before Me, Who requires of you this trampling of My courts? 13"Bring your worthless offerings no longer, Incense is an abomination to Me New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies- I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. 14"I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, They have become a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them. 15"So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen Your hands are covered with blood. 16"Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Remove the evil of your deeds from My sight Cease to do evil, 17Learn to do good; Seek justice, Reprove the ruthless, Defend the orphan, Plead for the widow. 18"Come now, and let us reason together," Says the LORD,"Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool. 19"If you consent and obey, You will eat the best of the land; 20"But if you refuse and rebel, You will be devoured by the sword " Truly, the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
Go with humble hearts
Thursday, January 6, 2011
The Heat Is On
Greetings Everyone,
Thanks to those of you that responded to last weeks blurb. It’s nice to know that the things I write still strike a chord with people now and again. I don’t know what your schedule has been like so far this year but mine has been jam packed. What with people breaking into work just to watch glass break and remodeling projects that have to be finished (and I use that term loosely because there are only 24 hours in a day) tomorrow, well, lets just say with Glen Frey, The heat is on.
I’m ready for a break. But it’s not just work; somehow in all of this I managed to finish the rough draft of a new book that I started back in 2008 and turned down an opportunity to write a horror flick about spontaneous combustion even though the money would have been nice. The new book, whose working title is Just Business, deals with the subject of Modern day slavery and given the topic, well, it makes my other books look like Disney stories, even I cringe as I read some sections. It is not a topic I would have chosen on my own but three years (I cannot believe it has been that long) I was asked by friend named Joel S, to write a screenplay on the topic which I did. Don’t know that the movie will ever be made but in the process of writing the screenplay there was so much detail lacking that I asked to retain the book rights. I couldn’t stand not knowing the details which are pretty rough at times but not as rough as they could have been. It also gave me the opportunity to expand some existing characters and fill in back story. So while it can be rather gut wrenching and honest; overall, it is a theologically, philosophically sound piece of work (in my opinion of course). Like I said it ended up being a prequel of sorts to the Corpus Christi Chronicles filling in background on some of the characters we’ve all come to know and love and creating several characters who thankfully I will never have to develop any further because they all die in the course of this book, though there is one mean and nasty Russian mobster that still lives somewhere.
It took so long to write because I got stuck in the middle. I got to a place where I didn’t know how to unfold these people’s lives and it took me nearly two years to figure it out. Once I jumped that hurdle the rest of it came rolling out in a couple of days. No, I don’t know where the words come from but when they start coming they don’t stop until I finish or I get stuck.
I really enjoy developing characters lives on the written page. I think part of the reason for that is that I get to see a large section of a person’s life unfold in the course of a couple hours or at the most in couple days. That is so different from the way I watch my own life develop. I have to watch my life unfold in slow motion. I have to wait for meaning to unfold on events sometimes decades after they happen. ‘Why,’ is continually a part of my vocabulary. It’s hard to see the why sometimes when you are surrounded by broken glass, construction glue, and toilets.
And so writing is a bit of a reprieve from the slow unfolding of life, yes life is slow to develop even though it rushes by at the speed of light: one of the mysteries of life.
I’m looking forward to seeing what has been written for my life in the New Year. It seems I always fall back to the Counting Crows song Long December when the New Year rolls around. “It’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe that this year may be better than the last.” I think I’ve quoted that every year since I started writing these things and I guess that’s pushing six years now.
It continues to ring true because this is God’s world and he is unfolding his plan. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. It is certainly not based upon me and the mythological plans that bounce around in my head. One thing that I am understanding clearer every day is the vital necessity of staying on the path of life, the path of righteousness if one is to truly live anything else will eventually turn into destruction.
Now I will admit that sometimes the path of life feels like dying but that is because it is dying, to truly live one must die to rebellion against the things of God. I heard a quote this week accredited to Oliver Wendell Holmes which said: If I had a formula for by passing trouble, I wouldn’t pass it around. I wouldn’t be doing anyone a favor. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it….Meet it as a friend, for you’ll see a lot of it and you better be on speaking terms with it.
I would make one change and say that it is God that gives us the capacity to handle trouble and not trouble itself I still believe that the basic statement is true. I have spent too much of my life trying to avoid what I thought was trouble and now at 50 I am finally beginning to learn to be on speaking terms with trouble, embrace it as what is necessary to take me to my destination and walk through it like an open door. That doesn’t make it easy; it makes it necessary for the journey.
And so I walk on, I walk the line, the path of life by the grace of God heading for the destination which is: Well done faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Master. Motivated by knowing that It is the Joy of my Master that is my strength.
Grace and Peace,
Brad
Thanks to those of you that responded to last weeks blurb. It’s nice to know that the things I write still strike a chord with people now and again. I don’t know what your schedule has been like so far this year but mine has been jam packed. What with people breaking into work just to watch glass break and remodeling projects that have to be finished (and I use that term loosely because there are only 24 hours in a day) tomorrow, well, lets just say with Glen Frey, The heat is on.
I’m ready for a break. But it’s not just work; somehow in all of this I managed to finish the rough draft of a new book that I started back in 2008 and turned down an opportunity to write a horror flick about spontaneous combustion even though the money would have been nice. The new book, whose working title is Just Business, deals with the subject of Modern day slavery and given the topic, well, it makes my other books look like Disney stories, even I cringe as I read some sections. It is not a topic I would have chosen on my own but three years (I cannot believe it has been that long) I was asked by friend named Joel S, to write a screenplay on the topic which I did. Don’t know that the movie will ever be made but in the process of writing the screenplay there was so much detail lacking that I asked to retain the book rights. I couldn’t stand not knowing the details which are pretty rough at times but not as rough as they could have been. It also gave me the opportunity to expand some existing characters and fill in back story. So while it can be rather gut wrenching and honest; overall, it is a theologically, philosophically sound piece of work (in my opinion of course). Like I said it ended up being a prequel of sorts to the Corpus Christi Chronicles filling in background on some of the characters we’ve all come to know and love and creating several characters who thankfully I will never have to develop any further because they all die in the course of this book, though there is one mean and nasty Russian mobster that still lives somewhere.
It took so long to write because I got stuck in the middle. I got to a place where I didn’t know how to unfold these people’s lives and it took me nearly two years to figure it out. Once I jumped that hurdle the rest of it came rolling out in a couple of days. No, I don’t know where the words come from but when they start coming they don’t stop until I finish or I get stuck.
I really enjoy developing characters lives on the written page. I think part of the reason for that is that I get to see a large section of a person’s life unfold in the course of a couple hours or at the most in couple days. That is so different from the way I watch my own life develop. I have to watch my life unfold in slow motion. I have to wait for meaning to unfold on events sometimes decades after they happen. ‘Why,’ is continually a part of my vocabulary. It’s hard to see the why sometimes when you are surrounded by broken glass, construction glue, and toilets.
And so writing is a bit of a reprieve from the slow unfolding of life, yes life is slow to develop even though it rushes by at the speed of light: one of the mysteries of life.
I’m looking forward to seeing what has been written for my life in the New Year. It seems I always fall back to the Counting Crows song Long December when the New Year rolls around. “It’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe that this year may be better than the last.” I think I’ve quoted that every year since I started writing these things and I guess that’s pushing six years now.
It continues to ring true because this is God’s world and he is unfolding his plan. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. It is certainly not based upon me and the mythological plans that bounce around in my head. One thing that I am understanding clearer every day is the vital necessity of staying on the path of life, the path of righteousness if one is to truly live anything else will eventually turn into destruction.
Now I will admit that sometimes the path of life feels like dying but that is because it is dying, to truly live one must die to rebellion against the things of God. I heard a quote this week accredited to Oliver Wendell Holmes which said: If I had a formula for by passing trouble, I wouldn’t pass it around. I wouldn’t be doing anyone a favor. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it….Meet it as a friend, for you’ll see a lot of it and you better be on speaking terms with it.
I would make one change and say that it is God that gives us the capacity to handle trouble and not trouble itself I still believe that the basic statement is true. I have spent too much of my life trying to avoid what I thought was trouble and now at 50 I am finally beginning to learn to be on speaking terms with trouble, embrace it as what is necessary to take me to my destination and walk through it like an open door. That doesn’t make it easy; it makes it necessary for the journey.
And so I walk on, I walk the line, the path of life by the grace of God heading for the destination which is: Well done faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Master. Motivated by knowing that It is the Joy of my Master that is my strength.
Grace and Peace,
Brad
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