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Bethlehem – Part 3

December 6, 2018 By admin

Accident or Miracle?

All Americans were saddened in the Christmas season of 2006 when Gerald Ford, our 38th President, passed away at the age of 93. People from both sides of the aisle really respected Ford for coming to power at a very difficult time and bringing healing and a new sense of hope to our country. Pardoning Nixon was a wrenching, perhaps disastrous, political decision . . . but it was really the only way for America’s completely dysfunctional, scandal-consumed government to get a fresh start and survive.

President Ford was the only Vice President and President to get into the White House accidentally. He was never elected to either position. He was appointed VP when Spiro Agnew had to resign in 1973; a year later, when Nixon followed the same ignominious trail, a lowly congressman from the obscure 5th District of Michigan abruptly found himself living with his wife Betty and four kids at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. West Wing had a story like that once, but this is real, and some of us lived through that very poignant time.

There’s a devout Christian pastor named Nick Twomey who serves his Lord at a medium-sized church, also in Michigan, and there’s nothing very spectacular about it. The only point of interest is that when he was a teenager, his high school girlfriend was named Madonna Ciccone, who grew up to become a pop singer who usually doesn’t use her last name. Quite a story—and it illustrates the sometimes accidental nature of fame.

I tell these two stories to contrast them with the brief life story of this Baby born in a stable in Bethlehem. Because there are many people in the world today who consider the Christmas story a sweet, touching, entirely human string of accidents.

Jesus was born, in their secular thinking, to a girl who wasn’t married. We usually call that an accident. He was born into poverty, which is very common but not something anybody would choose. When he was 12, his parents flubbed up and accidentally left him at the temple in Jerusalem for three days. And for the next 18 years, he lived such an uneventful life even the best of scholars don’t know a single thing about him.

Then he began to preach and teach. He was pretty good at it; many people listened. Some of the things he talked about are rather well-known even today. But he foolishly, or accidentally, antagonized the religious establishment of his day. He said the wrong things at the wrong times. He didn’t know when to keep His mouth shut. He accidentally healed people on the Sabbath when he should have waited until sundown. Finally, he riled the religious right to the point where they contracted a hit on him; they got him crucified on a Roman cross.

End of story. To those who believe in accidents but not in miracles, that is definitely the end of the story. Jesus was a Gerald Ford politician who only got a partial term of power, and whose time in office was cut short because . . . he was only there accidentally in the first place.

Now, do I believe this? Not for two seconds! I’ve already mentioned that we who are Christians reject entirely the “accident” motif; we have the word of the angel Gabriel, who says to the shepherds: I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; He is Christ the Lord.

Moments later the skies are filled with an angel army which tells Planet Earth that what is happening is not an accident, not a blip in the space-time continuum, not an aberration or an anonymous moment of teen promiscuity. No, the arrival of this baby is heaven’s proclamation of good will to us, the announcement of an intergalactic rescue plan.

I’d like to backtrack from this billboard-in-the-sky moment and go to a much quieter encounter, this one between one angel, Gabriel, and one confused earthling named Joseph. In Matthew 1, right after Mary has told her boyfriend that the blue plus sign in her e.p.t. test came out positive but not an accident, heaven’s #1 angel comes to Joseph and has this to say: Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a Son, and you are to give Him the name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins.

And here’s what I want for us to realize. Heaven comes to Joseph and tells him four things. One, Mary’s pregnancy is legitimate; it’s heaven-designed; it’s not an accident. Two, she will have a son. Three, God in heaven has already designated the name of Jesus. Mary and Joseph never went through a list of names, because the name had already been assigned. Four, this Son, Jesus, will grow up and succeed in a salvation plan yet to unfold.

In other words, not only is Mary having a baby not an accident, this is all part of the most concise, precise, grand, intricate, perfect, pristine, holy, galactic plan ever put together. Jesus being born on planet earth is something that was not conceived in the back seat of a car, or in a bedroom while Mom and Dad are away. This was conceived in the highest courts of heaven, and conceived there even before Adam and Eve ever sinned, creating the need for the plan.

It is sometimes suggested that Eve took the apple from the tree, and that this act of rebellion threw heaven into crisis mode. Oh no, what shall we do? I have read literature portraying this as an unexpected time of turbulent fear among the angels of heaven. What was going to happen? Was this new world doomed to be lost? But notice what Paul tells us in Ephesians 1. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will.

So there was a salvation plan before Creation Week; there was a rescue plan, an adoption plan before Creation Week. By Genesis chapter three, a plan conceived long before has already been explained to Adam and Eve.

Hollywood actor Bruce Marchiano was contracted back in 1994 to play the part of Jesus in a four-hour multi-million-dollar miniseries based strictly on the book of Matthew. They went to Africa to film, and Marchiano, a very devout Christian, just immersed himself in the role. It was a wrenching time for him emotionally; he came out a changed man. But he writes in his book that he caught a glimpse of a Jesus who was in full control all the time. He said what he said because it was right; He healed people at certain times because it was part of his plan. And Jesus went to Calvary because he came here to go to Calvary. To redeem us was his unassailable role; it could not be altered. That’s one reason why Jesus was almost a bit impatient with Cleopas and his fellow disciple as they walked in discouragement to Emmaus on Sunday evening after the crucifixion. “Why are you distressed?” Jesus asked them. “The Lamb of God came to give His life, and that’s what He did. This is all part of the cosmic plan spelled out in the prophetic writings of Isaiah. Every salvation puzzle piece is perfectly in place.”

I don’t want to belabor this point, but I want to give us one more morsel to think about. We sometimes debate and discuss the issue of Christ’s nature; was it fallen or unfallen? Could Jesus have sinned? The Adventist Church takes the position that he indeed could have sinned; the many temptations in Matthew 4 and in Gethsemane seem to indicate that. But we also have here in the Christmas story a clear declaration by the angels that this baby WILL save us; he will not fail; there is no possibility of failure. He will go to the cross and win. In John 14:30, Jesus says calmly to His disciples, speaking of Lucifer: The prince of this world approaches. He has no power over Me. He has no hold on Me says the NIV. So I cannot speak to the impeccability of Jesus’ nature, but I can gratefully proclaim the immutability of heaven’s eternal plan. Let’s never forget that God does not lose. Jesus does not fail. Heaven does not surrender. And this Baby being born was not just part of God’s biggest plan; Jesus was God’s biggest plan.

Verse 15, as we return to the midnight choir concert in the fields outside Bethlehem. When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” They saw this incredible thing, the sky lighting up, the thunder of many voices singing. But now it’s dark again. The moment is over. The glory has faded. And what do they do? They act upon the miracle which has come to them.

All through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John there were people who saw or experienced miracles. Some responded; others just walked away. But praise the Lord for these shepherds. They were given this rare privilege of receiving the announcement, and their response was the right one. Let’s go check it out. Let’s go see. The Adventist commentary points out that there is a special blessing for those who hear this kind of proclamation and who then act upon it.

Verses 16-18: So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the Baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen Him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this Child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.And right here I think you and I find something that is starkly relevant for us in this church we all love. What does this mean for us today? They spread the word concerning what had been told them about this Child.

Our Survival Depends Upon It

And friend, I was seized by this reality. The most important ingredient in our survival and growth here at this church is the challenge that we must go to others and tell them about Jesus. The shepherds saw Jesus and went and told someone else. And there have been times when someone here had a very vivid and real encounter with Jesus Christ, and a little time later, they brought by the hand a new person, a different person, someone not yet in our ranks, and brought them into this building and said: See? I told you. I have found a Friend so precious; He’s all the world to me.

We all have social connections with people who do not truly know the Christ Child as their Savior. We could say more than we say; we could share with more power than we do. We could exercise more intentionality than we do. If you spend time here in December going around in your cul-de-sac giving out Christmas cookies, you will probably be struck by the embarrassing reality of how little we know about people living less than 100 feet from our front door. We know some names, but not all. We have neighbors who are fellow believers, and we have no true communion with them as we should.

Think what would happen if every single person here, by the end of next year, found and brought to church just one other person. And just having babies doesn’t count, even though I applaud that missionary plan as well. I know that multi-level marketing schemes prove that we can’t double our church every single year, but I think we could definitely do it during the year that begins a few days from now. If these shepherds, who were basically shiftless thieves and tax cheats, could do it, you and I with our M.D.s and Ph.D.s can surely do it too.

Now we move on to Scene #2 in this story. Verse 21: On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise Him, He was named Jesus, the name the angel had given Him before He had been conceived. When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took Him to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord”) (Exodus 13:2), and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: “a pair of doves or two young pigeons.” (Lev. 12:8)

I’m a bit embarrassed to tell you this, because I frankly do not know all of the ways of the Lord. But it was God’s rule for Israel that if a young woman had a baby boy, she was unclean for a week. If she had a baby girl, she was unclean for two weeks. Another gender inequity is that the long-term purification schedule for the mother of a baby boy was 33 days, for a girl 66. And the assigned gift for a poor family, instead of being a lamb, was two doves. And this is what Joseph and Mary brought.

It’s sweet to think that Mary, who received this Baby directly from heaven, now comes to the Temple to give Jesus back, in a sense. To present him to the Lord. We have baby dedication services here at church where we do this very same thing. But I would like to impress upon all of us as we head into the new year the wonderful Bible challenge to bring back to God’s house the things we receive from God.

If you have gotten talents from God, bring them here. If you have gotten children from the Lord, then it is right and proper to bring them here. You owe God that. If God blesses you with a good income, part of that income should come to this temple’s coffers. I don’t say that for myself; I say it because it is what the Bible teaches.

I am so moved when an economically challenged person here who is barely hanging on by their fingernails still gives back to God out of the blessings they have gotten from him. I know someone whose entire income is less than their rent; they are upside-down before the month even begins. And yet they come on Sabbath and bring a dish of food. Isn’t that amazing? And here Joseph and Mary, who have received this miracle Baby from God, come to the temple and give him right back.

Someone has suggested that Israelite families essentially paid these two doves to the temple as ransoms, as it were. Rather than sacrifice their firstborn children, they were permitted to “buy them back” with this sacrifice of a lamb or a pair of doves. Some people here have paid in the five figures to bring their baby home from the hospital; how much would you be willing to give the Lord for the gift of your child, were he to ask you for it? But it is inspiring to think of Joseph and Mary, ransoming this little Baby who would someday ransom the entire world with His blood. In her book, The Desire of Ages, Ellen White observes that some no-name priest held this little Baby, maybe the tenth one that day, amid all the sacrifices and blood and altars and this huge, legal system . . . and had no idea in the world that this one unique, heaven-sent Baby was going to fulfill it all, supercede it all, bring their entire edifice of legalism, of works, of blood to a crashing conclusion at the cross. Like people in Michigan who went to the polls one day back in 1948 to vote for a young Michigan State football hero and World War II vet . . . and never dreamed that young Jerry Ford would one day be President of the United States.

Now to Scene #3, and this is very touching. One of my favorite people in the Bible comes into the story now. There’s an old woman named Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. It’s not entirely clear if she was 84 years old or if she had been a widow for 84 years. One way or another, she had been around for a long while; her hair was gray. And what I like is this: even at the age of 84, or maybe 104, she was always at church. She never skipped church! As we head into the new year, I invite all of you to be like this great old gal of the Bible. She never left the temple, it says in verse 37. But before we get to her, there is another old prophet we want to read about.

Verse 25: Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel—in other words, he was waiting for this exact moment, the arrival of the Messiah—and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.

And as Simeon holds Baby Jesus in his arms, he says with beatific joy: Lord, now let Your servant depart in peace. He was willing to lay down to his rest, because he had seen the arrival of his Messiah. This is the Child. This is God Himself. This Baby will save all of us. Our rescue is absolutely assured at last.

Verse 30: My eyes have seen Your salvation, which You have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to Your people Israel. And then this great old man says to God: okay, let me go to sleep in peace. I saw what I’ve waited all my life to see. Somehow God made sure that Simeon was at the temple that very day.

So here are these two old, faithful saints. They waited for years, for decades. There may have been talk through the years of closing the church, or folding, of quitting. People then were tired of waiting for prophecies to come true, just as we sometimes are. They got weary of commuting to the temple each Sabbath. But they kept coming. And God went out of his way to keep them alive long enough so that they could have this rare, sweet experience. They got to hold the Redeemer in their arms, and know he was their Redeemer.

We’re told in the Bible, Deuteronomy 19:15, that all important matters should be established by two witnesses. And here these two old, faithful, reliable voices tell the world: Here He is. This Baby is the hope of all mankind. We saw it with our own eyes. If you don’t want to believe me, then believe them. But here at Christmastime, this one Baby is still the One. He is still our Savior, our only hope.

There’s a hard moment for you moms to think about. Simeon, holding Baby Jesus, promises the salvation of our lost world. That’s wonderful. But then he quietly says to Mom in verse 35: [But] a sword will pierce your own soul. In the Message paraphrase: A figure misunderstood and contradicted—the pain of a sword-thrust through you. In 33 years, Mary will watch her little boy up on the cross, dying for all of our sins. She’ll stand right there and hear the nails going in, sense the agony of her own flesh and blood.

This sword, we’re told by the Greek experts, was a rhomphania—a large battle sword. Not a machaira, a small dagger. No, this is a major weapon of heartbreak; in fact, it’s the same word used for the sword of Goliath. Mary is going to have her heart broken by the sacrifice on a hill far away.

I want for us to close by going back to the announcement by Gabriel. A Savior has been born TO YOU. And then this: He is Christ THE LORD.

Please stop with me and think carefully about what “Lord” means. Television sometimes uses that word carelessly; let’s not make that mistake. Jesus is our Lord. He rules over us. Jesus rules in a holy and complete way in our lives and in the life of this church.

I was talking to someone last week about surrendering his life to Jesus Christ. And I made the point that if Jesus did create us, and then did come to earth and die on the cross for our sins, then him being Lord is plain reality. In legal terms, we owe Jesus loyalty in a de jure sense—legally. By rights. It may be fun; it may not be. We may enjoy it; we might not. You might have a personality that loves church and worship, or maybe you don’t. Frankly, it doesn’t matter. Jesus is our Lord. He deserves all that we can give; He deserves our worship and our time and our offerings and the gift of our children. He deserves the powerful, dedicated functioning of this church right here. He is Christ the Lord.

And Simeon says to Mary: You are so blessed; you’re favored above all women. But there will come this sword moment. Your heart is going to break partway through this process. In the end, the world will be saved . . . but you’re going to cry one Friday afternoon.

Maybe you and I will have some hard times too. Maybe a rhomphania of loss, of pain, of death will happen to us. Christianity may mean a sword for us too. But it does not matter because Jesus is our Lord. He came to save us from our sins, and both Anna and Simeon give a testimony which rings through the centuries. We have seen the Christ Child. Shall we pray?

Lord God, in one of our final Sabbaths of this year, we bow before Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We accept the sure word of these two great saints of old, that you are the Baby sent from heaven. And like the shepherds, we want to take this good news and now share it in a tangible way with some precious person in our lives. Make us effective heralds of your love, we pray. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

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Read more at the source: Bethlehem – Part 3

Article excerpt posted on en.intercer.net from Better Sermons.

Bethlehem – Part 2

December 6, 2018 By admin

From Here to There

Have you ever wondered if perhaps we’re actually alone in this universe, and that there’s just empty sky above us? A few years ago pop star Don Henley, formerly lead singer of the Eagles, composed a pessimistic hit entitled They’re Not Here, They’re Not Coming. It was about UFOs; little green men in flying saucers. Are there intelligent beings out there billions of light years away, and if so, are they planning to show up here any time soon? What do we have here that they could possibly want? Would extraterrestrials travel all that way just to stand in line at Disney World in Orlando? One line went: “Go screaming through the universe, just to get McNuggets?” And his conclusion: there’s nothing out there. We’re here all by ourselves. Which, of course, is the antithesis, the cynical opposite, of the Christmas message.

There are days when all of us struggle with this possibility. We’re all alone. We Adventists were raised in a culture that bought this theory about heaven out there somewhere in the far reaches of a fully inhabited universe. But on the days when doubts hit us in the face, we begin to think: You know, maybe not. Maybe when our parents die, they simply lie in the ground, in the darkness. And when we die, that’s what we’ll do too. And since there’s no way for someone to come back from there and tell us there’s something – or nothing – out there, churches will keep hanging in there and Christians will keep hanging in there, until finally one generation in the distant future will just give it all up.

Some of you may have the opportunity to attend or even sing in a Christmas performance of Handel’s Messiah. A couple of lines from a bass solo give us food for thought today. There are several recitatives that are frankly kind of boring, and which we all endure, waiting for the more lively mass choir parts to come around again. But the bass sings this dirge from Haggai 2:6, 7: Thus saith the Lord, the Lord of Hosts: Yet once a little while, and I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations.

And then, in his next solo part, the bass stands up again and sings this line from Isaiah 9:2:The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. And while the mall and TV commercials try to remind us about a man in a red suit, in the Bible all things center on one Baby who is born in a manger. Everything hinges on Him. Baby Jesus is the great light. Will He succeed in His mission? Will He destroy evil? Will He survive the cross? Will He go to the cross?

As you and I face a new year together, here is our question: are we prepared to fully believe in this story? To separate the fiction on our televisions and in the children’s stories from the life-saving reality in our Bibles? I ask again: do you believe today that Baby Jesus can save your family from eternal death?

We’re studying together in Luke chapter 2, and I mentioned last week the humbleness of this great story. Verse 7: [Mary] wrapped Him in cloths and placed Him in a manger. All parents here have spent some time in the maternity ward, and we know for a fact that mommies don’t usually have to wrap up their own babies. There are doctors and nurses and specialists who look after the newborns and who bathe and clean and diaper them. But Mary had nobody. No one was there to give her an episiotomy or stitch her up. Whatever got done, Mary and Joseph were the only ones to do it, because this was as lonely a birth as there has ever been.

Here’s the second half of verse seven: Because there was no room for them in the inn. Have you ever been on the road in a distant land and faced the gloom of night without a hotel reservation? Where will you stay? Who will provide you with some shelter and a warm cup of cocoa? Then it begins to rain. It is a lonely thing to not have a hotel room for the night, even if you’re not experiencing labor pangs every two minutes.

Tradition suggests that this might have been a cave Joseph and Mary stayed in, or at best a small, unused house where animals were kept. The Bible doesn’t say, “Born in a stable,” but a stable is the only place where there’s a manger or feeding trough, so this is what we infer.

I heard a cute story about a kindergarten play at a Christian school. Joseph and Mary, little five-year-olds, came up to the door of the inn, knocked, and had a fellow student come to the door dressed as the innkeeper. “I am sorry,” he said, reciting from the script. “We have no room for you.” And the girl playing Mary was such a good little actress, with a quivering lip and tears in her eyes, the kid inadvertently blurted out: “But would you like to come in for a drink?”

But what a lesson there is for us right here! This innkeeper, whose name will never be known, didn’t know that the Savior of the world was going to be born that night. Or that he could have been the host of the pivotal birth in our world’s history. But he didn’t have room for Jesus that night.

And I don’t ask you this question; I ask myself this question. Have I fully made room for Jesus in my life here in this soon-concluding year? How often have I spent time doing good stuff, busy stuff, important stuff . . . but not really experiencing the presence of Jesus in my thoughts? How many Sabbaths have I spent here at church where I did a lot of things and checked off many tasks and drove home with many future priorities crowding my mind . . . but didn’t really stop and just let the reality of Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior fill me with peace and hope?

We have all fretted with some hard realities about the difficulty in keeping a church alive and thriving. What policies will help us? What nimble plans might take us in a new direction? Well, I know one thing is true and always true: we need to have room for Jesus in this place. If we have music without Jesus, and sermons without Jesus, and social times without Jesus, and potluck conversations without Jesus, we will have masterminded a failure as colossal and sad as the one this innkeeper had. There was no room in the inn.

Let me put it to you another way. It is a wonderful thing when you open up your hearts and invite new people to join our wonderful family. Nothing moves me to tears like stepping into the waters of baptism with a new friend. Sometimes we have a guest enter who looks or sounds different from the rest of us. They live in a different neighborhood; perhaps their economic status is not quite up to the average we enjoy here. But they come in. We baptize them, they join us, and now week by week they sit here in our presence. They share our dinner tables; they own a membership here as true as your own. They are, in a sense, the visiting Christ to us, because we are told that the strangers all about are as Jesus Himself. Matthew 25:40: Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.

Now, in the coming year with its 52 Sabbaths, is there room in the inn for five more? Or ten more? Or for as many more as God may bless us with? On that cold winter night, Mary looked like an unwed mother to the manager of that Motel 6, who was decidedly not leaving the light on for her. Will we have room here next year for the unwed mother, the out-of-work mother, the welfare mother, the single mother with her ragtag kids? This is one of the greatest tests of a church and its purity: does it obey Matthew 25 and make room for those in our neighborhood who are hurting?

Every December, you understand, the pastor and his wife receive some Christmas cards and phone messages from people who are grateful for our church’s hospitality. Those kind words belong to all of you, of course, and I am proud of this church and its generosity. Next year I pray that our generosity will grow, that it will take in more than our credit cards and our recipes, but will also include our time and our own dining room tables and our personal friendships. Do we have room for Mary and her baby at our Sunday birthday parties as well as our Sabbath potlucks?

Back to Luke 2, verse 8: And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. We have sometimes assumed that December 25 as a Christmas date is probably way off; in fact, sometimes we connect it with pagan rituals and ceremonies. There are various sects which do not celebrate the day for that very reason; I’m glad our church is not in that camp. But it’s observed that shepherds would not have been out in the fields at night during the cold winter months. However, I was just reading the other day that near Bethlehem, grazing flocks which were reserved for temple sacrifices actually were in the fields, both day and night, on a year-round basis. So it’s possible that December is the true Christmas month after all.

But who does this glorious news come to? Who gets the great announcement? It’s not the preachers and it’s not the General Conference officials or the Pharisees. It’s not the wealthy doctors and lawyers. Instead, it’s the shepherds in the fields. In fact, the humility of this moment is deeper than we realize. One commentary points out that “shepherds were a despised class; their work kept them from observing all of the ceremonial law.” That’s ironic, since they might have been raising the very lambs used in those ceremonies.

What’s more, shepherds were often considered to be thieves by nature. “They confused ‘mine’ with ‘thine,’” one writer complains. “They were precluded from giving testimony in law courts” – so they were not a particularly trustworthy bunch.

And yet, verse 9: An angel of the Lord appeared to THEM. And the glory of the Lord shone around THEM.” God bypasses all of the successful people who govern on the church board and gives this great news to the people who attend the church’s soup kitchen instead.

And how do the shepherds react? Three words. They were terrified. Of course. In the King James, they were sore afraid. An angel appears to you at midnight, and almost always, that is going to be a scary and possibly unwelcome situation. Angel messages tend to involve some lifestyle upheaval. Your girlfriend’s going to give birth to the King of the universe. Go to Ninevah and tell them their city’s going to be destroyed in 40 days. The hour of judgment has come. Things like that. Plus, this blinding glory was just plain scary in and of itself. Going back to Luke 1, we find that this angel is Gabriel himself, the highest of all created beings, the archangel who stands in the very presence of God.

And what happens next is so wonderful. Verse 10: “Do not be afraid,” said the angel.

For four thousand years people had been afraid of God and terrified of religion. False religions had people burning up their own babies; appeasing the gods. Offering blood sacrifices. Even the true religion of Jehovah had elements which were intended to teach the beauty of Calvary, but which made people afraid and apprehensive instead. At Mount Sinai, everybody was terrified of that thundering voice in the mountain; they said to Moses, “You go up and talk with God; we’re too scared. Find out what He wants and then come tell us.”

If you ever have a chance to visit the country of Thailand, you will pass many stores that are filled with ornate spirit houses. A good Buddhist will have a little mini-temple / house on his property for the evil spirits to park themselves in. (Better in the backyard than in the living room.) Once in a while the owner will go out and put an orchid there or a bit of rice. Now, who eats the food offerings, I don’t know . . . but there’s an element of fear to their faith. Will their next reincarnation be kind to them? Will the gods forgive them for some of their bad karma?

Some of you have attended Pioneer Memorial Church at Andrews University in Michigan, and back when Pastor Dwight Nelson did a global TV event called “Net ‘98,” he used as his tag line: “God is not someone to be afraid of, but someone to be a friend of.” Jesus says to His disciples in John 15: I have called you friends. In the Adventist Church, we believe in the tragic necessity of a cleansing hellfire, but not an eternal hellfire, because God is not someone we have to be afraid of. I want with all of my heart for God to have enough fire to someday burn Lucifer into nonexistence and then I want those fires to go out, because God is our strong but gentle Friend. I cherish the fact that Jesus spent the last night of His life with His 12 best friends, and that He even loved the Judas who sat there among them.

Here’s the rest of verse 10: I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. The Christmas story is supposed to be good news of great joy for all the people. The Living Bible says it this way: The most joyful news ever announced, and it is for everyone! I go without shame on mission trips to share Jesus in foreign countries because the story of Jesus is intended for those people. It’s good news for those people. I wrestle with the reality that we ask young people to convert, to do something which hurts the feelings of their Buddhist or Hindu parents. It feels like a betrayal of their national heritage. And I want to say in response, “No, you are still a loving child. But this is good news of great joy. It will make your life vastly better and, in the long run, perhaps give your entire family, including your parents, eternal life.”

Close your eyes for a moment and think of great headlines. The war in Iraq is over. Your child is given a full scholarship to Harvard. You just won the California lottery. You thought you had cancer, but the doctors call to tell you the tests are negative. You and I should get dressed each Sabbath morning and come to church with a feeling that we have news greater than all of that rolled up into one headline. “Jesus has come; we have eternal life. We have a home in heaven with God’s family for all eternity.” That should be what colors our attitude as we pull into the parking lot of this church. We have pledged, in our new church board, that in all our discussions and interactions this coming year, we are going to be in a hope-filled, celebratory mode for these next twelve months. Why? Because the angel announcement – good news of great joy – is still intact here in December. Nothing has changed. The offer hasn’t expired. After 40 centuries of discouragement and doubt and despair, we get the same Redeemer the shepherds did. They sang Christmas carols; we sing Christmas carols. They got eternal life; we get it as well. They received hope for their children; that’s our inheritance also.

Verse 11: Today in the town of David a Savior has been born TO YOU; He is Christ the Lord.These may be two of the most wonderful words in all the Bible. A Savior born TO YOU. Jesus is God’s gift to the human race. This is not a sterile salvation transaction; Jesus is born to us. I and my loved ones deserve death; we deserve to be wiped out. But God, aware of me and my needs, says: Here is a Christmas gift for YOU, Pastor X. My Son. I give My own Son to be born and live and die and sacrifice His life FOR YOU.

Again borrowing from Handel’s Messiah, there is a beloved song that comes from Isaiah 9:6. In fact, 15 of the songs in this oratorio come from that prophetic Old Testament book. But here is what we sing together: For UNTO US a Child is born; UNTO US a Son is given. And this King, who shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace . . . is ours. He is heaven’s gift to you and to me. UNTO US this Christmas miracle is offered.

I found a couple of encouraging insights in our Adventist archives that I would like to share with each of you today. As we carefully tell our children that Santa’s workshop at the North Pole is a fun figment of our imaginations, I’m afraid that we perhaps think of heaven as being almost fictional, perhaps fictional, and many trillions of miles from this lonely planet. Sometimes people drop out of church for various reasons – and this is one of them. The Christmas story is just too remote.

But here in Luke 2, there are shepherds in the fields. Real men, living their spartan lives, doing their thing, earning the few copper coins that are in their pockets. And suddenly there’s an angel standing in their presence. Gabriel comes all the way from the inner throne room of heaven and stands among them in a field outside Bethlehem. So it’s not really that far away after all. The book of Daniel chapter 9 has a story where Daniel is deeply troubled and praying through tears about a confusing prophetic vision he’s had. And before he even says amen and gets up from his knees, Gabriel is there to give him encouragement and explanations.

And the author of The Desire of Ages makes this observation: “Heaven and earth are no wider apart today than when shepherds listened to the angels’ song. Humanity is still as much the object of heaven’s solicitude as when common men of common occupations met angels at noonday, and talked with the heavenly messengers in the vineyards and the fields. To us in the common walks of life, heaven may be very near.”

I know we surmise that heaven is close because of the miracle of prayer. Today you can travel around the globe and then pick up a phone and converse back to those you love virtually for free using something called Skype and an Internet connection. But heaven is also near when we bring heavenly values into the lives of others here, when we extend grace to those who wrong us, when we are a faithful part of this spiritual community, when we pray for one another. In fact, Jesus once said to His disciples: The kingdom of heaven is among you. It’s here now; it’s already begun. It’s not in limbo until the Second Coming. True, the streets of gold are a ways down the road; the pearly gates haven’t yet come into view. But angels travel from heaven to earth quickly and easily, and when you call someone who is discouraged and say, “Hang in there; I love you; I’m praying for you,” you help to bridge the gulf between this cold world and the waiting Paradise.

Verses 13 and 14: Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom His favor rests.” In the King James: Good will toward men. When we sing “Gloria in Excelsis Deo,” that’s from the Latin Vulgate for this expression: “Glory to God in the Highest.”

I mentioned earlier that this church does not exist to make ourselves happy or socially fulfilled, although it can have that blessed side effect. But we are here, as we sang in “O Come All Ye Faithful,” to adore Jesus. To worship Him and give Him glory. “Yea, Lord, we greet Thee, born this happy morning.” Our corporate worship is for the purpose of bringing glory to Jesus and to the Father who sent and sacrificed Him. All other benefits are frankly incidental.

But notice that this song ends with what God gives to us. After four thousand years of mistrust and fear, God not only proclaims His good will through a baby but also through a sky-filling choir. Every angel heaven has comes down to Judea and helps sing this song: Peace to men on whom His favor rests. God sends the entire population of heaven to say to us: “I like you. I really, really like you. I’m not your enemy; I’m your Rescuer.”

And on earth . . . peace. We don’t live in a world of peace, but peace is God’s gift to us. Someone remarked about the irony that most armies bring turmoil and death, but here in the skies there is an army of angels and they bring us the gift of peace. An army of peacemakers, armed with nothing but good news about God’s plan to bring peace to planet earth.

Sometimes people who belong to a church are anxious about its future. Jesus brings peace. Sometimes we have a trace of animosity with another person; someone told me recently about a church quarrel they had had and how they had acted to get past it. Through the influence of Jesus, we have peace. There are those sitting here today who have deep concerns about their ability to survive financially during these holidays. Jesus, working through His church, helps to bring peace. Married couples go through times of tense communication and misunderstanding; the influence of Jesus brings peace. Many of you work in high-voltage jobs where one wrong move can mean substantial financial loss; the promises of Jesus and His guarantee of security bring you peace as you face the new year.

Let’s prayerfully look around us at the babies we are blessed to have in our family. They don’t seem to know that we’re struggling mightily with a conflict in Iraq and that the Middle East is a cauldron of controversy and that we don’t trust Vladimir Putin very much. They doesn’t know that some Adventists disagree with other Adventists about what happens at the end of the 2,300 years mentioned in Daniel chapter eight.

But I’m glad these precious, innocent infants live in homes which have embraced Jesus being the Savior who brings peace to our world and to our lives. I’m thankful that Mommy and Daddy are teaching them that Baby Jesus can save us from our sins and bring us peace. Shall we pray?

Lord, in a season where myths abound and where the man in a red suit seems more real than the Baby in swaddling clothes, help us to keep on believing. Thank You that heaven is both real and near. Thank You that heaven’s gift to us is personal and that You love us enough to give us peace. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

______________________________

Read more at the source: Bethlehem – Part 2

Article excerpt posted on en.intercer.net from Better Sermons.

Fighting – Part 7

December 6, 2018 By admin

Easy to Forgive?

I have a mental game for you to play today, and it’s going to be easiest for those of you who have had bosses in your work experience—especially one that you didn’t particularly get along with. If you ever went to an Adventist academy, you can probably play this mind game very successfully. There was a story in the sports pages not long ago about a professional baseball player and athletic hero who had personal assistants and flunkies on his payroll, and they often had to endure profane, steroid-laced outbursts from the man who signed their paychecks.

Anyway, here’s the scene. It’s 2:00 a.m.; you’re sound asleep in bed with your spouse. It’s very cozy there; you’re having a beautiful dream about your favorite team winning the World Series or this church bursting at the seams with visitors, with people standing along the sides because the pews are all filled. Wonderful dreams. And all of a sudden the phone rings, and it’s this guy. This boss you do not like. At two in the morning.

And he says: “Uh, Dave . . . did I wake you?” Well, of course he did, but you don’t say that. “What’s going on, Mr. Jones?” And he says to you: “I need a favor. I just landed at the airport twenty minutes ago because of that big storm back east. And I get out here to the curb, and the bus shuttle stopped running because of some tie-up out their way. There’s no buses or van pools for at least three hours, they tell me.”

And you want to say: “Mister, what’s that got to do with me? I punched out nine hours ago; you don’t own me at two in the morning. Abe Lincoln freed the slaves back in 1863.” But you don’t say that. You’re thinking to yourself what a selfish, argumentative, bossy boss this guy is, how he treats people unfairly, how he needlessly hurts people’s feelings, how he lets his cousin have a phantom job at the company, how his wife who never works gets a company car. And now he’s calling you up in the dead of night, interrupting your nice baseball dream. But you don’t say anything, because you know what’s coming next.

And the guy says: “Dave, I’m sorry . . . but can you run down here and pick me up? I’m at Terminal Four. We’ve got that big teleconference at ten this morning, and if I don’t get at least some shut-eye, we’re going to blow that crucial Sacramento account.”

Even as you hear this request/demand, even as a million excuses flood into your mind, even as you toy with saying to the guy: “You know what? Get your wife to drive down there in that stinking fancy company car and pick you up, you blowhard excuse for a boss,” you slowly ease yourself out of bed and begin putting on that pair of pants you dropped on the floor three hours earlier. You’re going to do it. You’ll hate yourself for chickening out; you’ll boil all the way to airport and all the way back; your wife will call you a wimp in the morning. But you’re going to get in your car and drive one hour down to the airport and pick up this clod and take him home so he can go beddy-bye.

Here is the ironic thing. And I’ve pondered this scenario many times. The next day, down at the loading dock where we all work, I’m grousing and feeling sorry for myself with my fellow workers—Bob, Peter, Jose, Elvin, Tony. And I say to them, “You know what? If any of you guys had called me at two in the morning, and said you were really stuck, snowstorm back east, Super Shuttle on the fritz, could I give you a ride home, blah blah blah, I’d do it. No problem.”

And you know, that’s true. If any of you were to call me from the airport at two a.m., I’d be happy to go get you. I wouldn’t mind at all going to pick up anybody from our church family. It’s no problem. It’s the middle of the night; there’s no traffic. The freeway’s a big, moonlight-bathed wide-open four-lane concrete ribbon. I’ve got cheerful music on the car stereo. We both get home by 3:45, I sleep in a couple of hours more than usual, we get back to the factory by ten the next morning and we laugh about it over our coffee.

Now, why don’t I mind going to the airport for friends like these? Because I like these guys. They’re my friends. I have genuine affection for them. Even though a nocturnal airport run isn’t really my favorite thing, my love for my fellow church members makes it an easy task.

But this jerk who’s above me in the flow chart, this boss I don’t like, this person I have a ten-year feud with . . . no, I don’t want to do good things for him. I’m not willing to sacrifice for my enemy.

I think one way or another, we are all familiar with this scenario. We put up with things from our friends that drive us batty and resentful when we get the exact same treatment from the antagonist in our life.

I have good news for all of us today. The Bible describes this very airport scenario. There’s another commuter named Pete—author of two epistles in the back of your Bible—who has this to say. I Peter 4:8: Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

Isn’t that true? If you love someone, that covers over their sins. If you love someone, you forgive them for calling in the middle of the night. There’s a stated truth that has run from my parents down to me, and from me down to my own children. It goes like this: “You can call us any time! If you’ve been at a party, and you need a designated driver, call. If you’re pulled over for speeding, call. If you’ve been busted for something, call. If some boy has gotten you in trouble, call.” If they’re away at college, they know that your home is their home, even at two in the morning. That’s the one knock on the door you will never resent. And even if they get a little drunk and land in jail and call you up to go their bail, you put up with it. Why? Because love covers over a multitude of sins.

Many of us can remember teen moments where we had to call our own parents and confess that we had messed up in a royal way. Some of us have gotten ourselves kicked out of Adventist schools. And we make the most incredible discovery: love covered over a multitude of sins. Our parents forgive us; they overlook it; they never mention it again. They live by the principles of this Bible verse. The Message paraphrase puts it this way: Love makes up for practically anything.

Now, the reality is this. There are two kinds of love. One kind is natural-born. In the Bible a confused young man named Jacob was married to two girls at the same time; they were sisters and he only loved one of them. He had to force himself to be nice to Leah and to remember to bring her flowers on her birthday. But with Leah’s little sister, Rachel, that wasn’t a problem. He was head over heels with Rachel; Rachel was the one worth working seven years to get. With Rachel it was honeymoon love.

How many of us can attest to the fact that love covers over practically anything when you’re in Maui for two weeks following your wedding day? During a honeymoon you can find yourself in a hotel that doesn’t meet your expectations, you can go to a restaurant where the food is undercooked and a sporting event where your team loses. Your spouse might come down with a bug and you lock your keys in the car. Despite that, you have one of the happiest two weeks of your life. Love covers over almost anything when it’s natural, free-flowing, kissy love.

In Matthew 5, which is part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, He points out the obvious truth that there isn’t really credit given for having a forgiving nature on your honeymoon. Everybody does good deeds for their friends; everybody loans money to their friends. Loving your friends is something even the tax collectors do; in fact, most Aprils I wish I had a friend who did work for the IRS. But praying for your friends and doing good deeds for your church pals, going out to dinner with the people you already like, isn’t a true test of our Christian faith. No, what God is looking for here is His people who will allow love—meaning spiritual love, chosen love, disciplined love—to cover over a real and aggravating multitude of sins.

I have sometimes had telephone visits with people whose marriages have gone on the rocks. A husband will confide that he and his mate have just moved into separate quarters. Communication is hard. They don’t see eye to eye. And it strikes me with real pain that what seems so easy and natural for us in some circumstances is painfully impossible at other times and for some other people who may be here in our midst.

There may be someone in this place, who is in this sanctuary at this very moment; out of the corner of your eye you can see them. And right now, you do not like that person. The chemistry is volatile and toxic. You don’t openly fight with them, but if an opportunity comes to torpedo them from behind, you do it and you enjoy it. Have you ever watched a conversation drift here and there, and suddenly you thought to yourself, “I may get a chance to say this malignant but delicious thing against the person I don’t like”? There’s the choice: when the train of sinful opportunity comes by, are you going to jump on board, or are you going to do the disciplined thing and wave the devil past you?

In his book, Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis has a chapter entitled “Forgiveness,” where he writes about the admittedly difficult task of “loving” an enemy. He calls it “this terrible duty.” And here’s what he says: “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive, as we had during the war.” Meaning World War II. Meaning Adolph Hitler. Meaning Auschwitz and the concentration camps.

The Los Angeles Times has been running a series recently on our wounded soldiers in Iraq. It’s wonderful news that, today more than ever, those Black Hawk helicopters can swoop down to pick up the wounded, and have these brave soldiers in sterile, state-of-the-art medical units within 60 minutes, or what they call the “golden hour.” If you can be in the operating theater within one hour and stop the exsanguination, they can usually save you. But even now, men’s bodies are still being just chewed up by those enemy IEDs. One doctor came upon a scene of carnage where there was blood an inch deep on the floor and a pile of body parts. And with his stomach twisting around, he had to ask: “Is that one person or two?” But people who go to war, trying to liberate a foreign population, sometimes come home with lifetime disabilities inflicted by those very people . . . and all of a sudden, forgiveness is a real, gritty, bloody business. It’s not poetry and flute music any more.

Even here at home, you may have an enemy who truly is a terrible person. Your own spouse may be an ogre at times. There might be someone here at church who really has treated you unfairly. They may be unlovable. And it’s understandable and even all right that you hate their destructive, hurtful qualities.

However, there’s one Christian sitting here today, one bad, petty, conniving, treacherous beast whom you keep on loving. “Hate the sin, but love the sinner,” we say, and we follow that rule for one person. Any idea who? (And don’t all of you say “our pastor.”) No, that Christian is you. No matter how bad you may be at times, you keep on loving and forgiving yourself.

But in what spirit do we love and forgive ourselves? Hopefully, we do it in this way. Lewis again: “We ought to hate [cruelty and treachery and cowardice and greed in our enemies] in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is any way possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.

When Jesus was on the cross, He experienced the scorn of those nail-driving, dice-throwing Roman soldiers, and the Redeemer side of Him wanted to have them restored, made morally right again. He experienced a caring connection with the thief next to Him—and I mean the bad one, the one who died with a curse on his lips.

And sometimes it becomes the arduous, thankless, unglamorous, heroic task of the Christian here at this church to think of this thoughtless supervisor, or the materialistic hypocrite sitting near you, or that brother or cousin who caused a rift in your family . . . and, maybe with fasting and prayer, decide to have “the mind of Christ” about that person. If we can’t have a natural love for them, at least we can have the spiritual kind, the kind forged out of Calvary and the commands of the Bible.

Remember that Peter talked about this kind of love covering over a “multitude of sins.” Well, Calvary forgiveness is sufficient to take away the sins of the world, so clearly God means for it to be enough.

On a practical, day-by-day level, though, what can we specifically do? A man who worked at a small Christian publishing company discovered that the place was internally dysfunctional. The venture ended badly for a number of people. Some lost their jobs; others were methodically maneuvered toward the back door. Finally it became his turn, and it was a fairly bitter experience. For a good while afterwards, he had a big emotional scar, and a get-even mindset. He enjoyed trashing the person involved; he waited daily for the gossip train to come into view, and he jumped on board every chance he could.

One day a Christian friend said to him, “Phil, this thing is gonna kill you if you don’t let it go. If you don’t surrender the entire mess to a higher power.” So he knew he had to, but what was the first step?

First of all, pray. Pray for the person if you can, and pray to the Lord about your feelings. That’s not going to surprise Him, but it helps to articulate your helplessness, your sinful attitudes, your frustration. Do like King David did in the “imprecatory Psalms”; just let it all hang out. We shouldn’t use curse words here at church; but if your prayers have some strong emotional language in them, it’s not going to be anything God hasn’t heard before.

Secondly, fill your life with the basic Christian disciplines. Read your Bible; share even your bruised and damaged faith. Join God’s people each week, even if you feel like a hypocrite. Everyone else here is struggling with it too; I can promise you that. Keep on with the five purposes: worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry, mission.

And then: take baby steps. It may not be possible to fully forgive that enemy right at first. That’s all right. Becoming holy is the work of a lifetime. But take a baby step.

This particular man finally said to himself about this particular person who had hurt him: “That’s it. First of all, I’m going to stop talking about him to other people. Number two, the next time I run into him, I’m going to shake his hand and try to act like this catastrophe never happened.”

He did okay with the first thing, but several months went by, and God was kind enough to not let him run into his adversary. One day, as he was in attendance at a camp meeting retreat clear across the country, there was that enemy, big as life. And Jesus gave him the power; he went up to his former fo, said hi, and held out his hand. The surprised opponent shook it . . . and again, God in His mercy, made sure it was a very brief conversation. The man’s former boss was quickly called to another appointment, and our friend went back to his motel room and watched 16 straight hours of “Nick at Night” as his pulse rate returned to normal. Actually, it was a positive, good-feeling moment. It was a baby step, no two ways about that; but it was a step toward having the mind of Christ.

In his book, Crisis of the End Time, Marvin Moore tells how he had seriously wronged somebody way back when he was living in a college dormitory. This is decades ago, and for something like 25 years, that misdeed just sat there. He hadn’t been friends with this person, so for a while the estrangement wasn’t something he even noticed. But as he began to seek a deeper spiritual life with Jesus, that problem began to come back and bite at him. The Holy Spirit seemed to be telling him, “You need to confess that sin and seek reconciliation.”

And at first his reaction was very predictable. No way. Not a chance in the world. “I would rather die than confess that sin.” His exact words. It was almost: “I’d rather go to hell.” It was just an emotional impossibility.

Well, that’s all right. God let him keep making baby steps, keep slowly growing. But bit by bit, the conviction grew. And finally, one day, he felt like he was ready. He sensed that this confession should be a face-to-face thing, not done by e-mail, and he already had to go and see this person about something else. So he got him on the phone, and said, “When I come to see you about such-and-such, there’s something else important I need to discuss. Is that all right?”

The day came, and he had to drive for several hours to make this appointment. And as he got closer and closer to the town where his enemy lived, he found out that he was actually anticipating taking this spiritual step. In a sense, the decision was out of his hands; his new faith mandated this confession, the Bible mandated it, the promptings of God’s Spirit mandated it. And God was clearly planning to give him the power to get this thing done. When he actually did it, it turned out to be a wonderful experience.

Speaking of baby steps, it’s true that so often this discipline of loving enemies requires us to do things we simply do not feel. That doesn’t matter. In terms of both loving God and loving the unlovely people all around us, our directions are basically the same: just go and do it. C. S. Lewis advises: “Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor (in terms of feelings); act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.” He further points out that “trying to be like Jesus” will often bring into our minds something we ought to stop doing. Okay, stop. Never mind what your feelings are—stop. Something else you may need to start doing—okay, start. He once wrote: You—husband—probably should stop reading this book and go help your wife do the dishes.” Well, I don’t want to. What does that have to do with anything? Go take a baby step into the kitchen; that might soon lead to more productive steps taking you to happier parts of the house.

And as we’ve been saying in this series, let’s keep before us the grandeur of God’s kingdom. Jesus said once to His disciples in Luke 17, The kingdom of God is within you. It’s here now. You inhabit it already. If you’re My follower, you’re a citizen now. Our nation is currently debating this whole immigration issue, and should we put people on a fast track to citizenship? But Jesus tells us that when we embrace the Christian faith, it’s here now. We begin to live by its principles immediately.

So you and I are already beginning a life of preparation for residence in a land of complete harmony. We’re going to be living there. But so is that other person. So is that person in the next pew over. So is that person on the board who disagrees with you most of the time. God needs to remake us and He’s planning to remake them. And somehow we need to take our petty and not-so-petty resentments, our list of grievances and simply surrender them to the reality of God’s rule in heaven. It’s God’s task to make us ready, to make us fit and holy. Our job is to love each other and to allow that love to cover over a multitude of sins.

I don’t want to undo the strength of this kind of Christian discipline, but I will observe that even in this hard-as-nails theology, bad is still bad. Sin is still sin. And sometimes bad things still do need to be punished. In C. S. Lewis’ essay, he stoutly affirms that wrongdoing still must reap its reward. Rogue nations need to be defeated on the battlefield by Christian soldiers. Criminals sometimes need to be executed, even if they have repented. “We may kill if necessary,” he writes, “but we must not hate and enjoy it. We may punish, if necessary, but we must not enjoy it.”

And when the desire to get revenge, to savor hatred, to anticipate executions, comes along, we just have to kill that desire, he writes. Hit it over the head every time it bobs its head up, day after day, year after year. Boom! Love your enemy. Boom! Love your enemy. Love him. Christ loves him . . . YOU love him.

Paul writes in Ephesians 2 about how Jesus works this out in our lives: He is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.

Let me close by lifting up the possibility that Jesus can actually change our hearts instead of simply enforcing an emotional discipline here. Having the “mind of Christ” might be like watching an exercise video for a while, but let’s remember that Jesus really did love these people. He didn’t have to grit His teeth and force it; His love was real and genuine and spontaneous. And that can be an incredible gift if we allow Him to give it to us.

Maybe you remember a little cinematic story going back about a decade. Kathleen Kelley owns a little children’s bookstore in New York City. And she has an enemy named Joe Fox. Big, bad Joe Fox, whose huge discount megastores always put the little neighborhood bookstores out of business.

Her only comfort during this conflicted time is her anonymous Internet friend, NY 152. He’s kind, he’s caring, he understands her, he supports her. Kathleen is always comforted when her laptop informs her, You’ve Got Mail. And when she goes to the mattresses to fight big, bad Joe Fox, he’s there online for her.

Well, you know the story. She doesn’t realize that she has fallen in love with her enemy. And just before Joe Fox makes himself known, he asks her to forgive him for being mean, for putting her out of business. A few scenes later, they meet at Riverside Park. She begins to cry—tears of joy: “I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so bad.” He says: “Don’t cry, Shopgirl; don’t cry.” And of course, forgiveness is now easy. She can now forgive because she’s in love. True love covers over a multitude of sins.

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. Shall we pray?

Jesus, we’re willing to reconcile and love as a discipline if need be. You went to Calvary despite human fears that drew You away. But we ask You today to give us a miraculous experience of real love, of a unity that flows freely from hearts renewed by Your grace and reborn at the Cross. In Your name we pray, Amen.

______________________________

Read more at the source: Fighting – Part 7

Article excerpt posted on en.intercer.net from Better Sermons.

Fighting – Part 3

December 6, 2018 By admin

Doomed Divisiveness

A Christian math teacher once had a young man come up to him during a break in their college algebra class. And he said with a very happy look on his face, “I won $600 at such-and-such casino the other night.” Early in the semester, when the professor talked about the practical reality of negative integers, he had mentioned that visitors to Las Vegas probably know a lot about negative numbers, so this student was proud to be the exception to the rule.

When the teacher asked him the secret of his success, he replied, “Well, I always play the same game and just stay with the same tactic all the time. I don’t deviate from it.” He didn’t seem to know much about finely-tuned computer strategies or card-counting, so the teacher decided that he must have just been very lucky. But then he said, “And I played that same way all last summer, lots of times, and I’m up something like $1,600.”

Well, Las Vegas pros say there’s nothing more irritating than people who play like morons, making all the wrong moves and still constantly winning in spite of themselves. But the Christian teacher said to him, very gently, “You know that in the long run, the fixed percentages in those games are going to finally eat you up. The downhill slope at a gambling casino is something you simply are not going to beat over a lifetime.” Everybody who knows anything just hooted when William Bennett, author of the famous Book of Virtues, claimed that he had played high-stakes slot machines for decades and broken even the entire time. That simply is not possible mathematically.

Let me quickly abandon this particular motif, and come instead to a spiritual reality that is more fixed in concrete than the 5.39% you buck if you sit down at a roulette wheel or the 17% you go up against if you spend an afternoon at Santa Anita Racetrack. Our Bible subject today is the question of fighting: arguing, debating, holding grudges, criticizing others, bickering over theology, fomenting dissension over music and worship styles. And the hard reality is that criticizing other people is a mathematically doomed delusion. It simply isn’t going to work. If you want to change things and improve the world by criticizing and stirring up conflict, you’re going to end up disappointed.

There’s a wrenching Old Testament story we find in the book of Numbers, and I remember reading this as a boy in those old Bible Story books by Uncle Arthur. Three men named Korah, Dathan, and Abiram developed a critical spirit there among the children of Israel. This was at Kadesh, just on the borders of Canaan, after the 12 spies had brought back the discouraging report about giants in the land, and after Israel had faltered in their faith. Instead of going right now into Canaan and taking over in victory, the Israelite “grasshoppers” were going to wander in the wilderness for an extra forty years. So it’s understandable that people were out of sorts and looking for scapegoats, and these three men, the Bible says in chapter 16, “became insolent.” They were openly critical of Moses and Aaron and very vocal in causing the entire community to become embroiled in anger and dispute.

In this particular case, God didn’t wait around to let the roulette wheel of time prove that their critical natures were a fatal plague. If you read the story—and don’t let your children hear this at a tender age—God actually opened up the earth and just swallowed up these three families, along with their tents and toys and tricycles. It’s interesting that God says to the rest of the people, right before this “Big Gulp” punishment, “Move away from the tents of Koran, Dathan, and Abiram.” He knew that this infection of rampant criticism was a deadly thing, and He didn’t want to destroy innocent life along with the guilty.

But what if God had simply permitted this strife to play itself out over five or ten years. Would things have improved in the ways these three malcontents wanted? Would the Children of Israel have been blessed by their verbal barbs? And here in this 21st century, are there churches where the members can hold onto a pattern of criticism and cynicism, and still point to vibrant growth and lots of baptisms and people beating down the doors to join that church?

A lot of you here today aren’t old enough to have experienced the fascinating cesspool our nation knows as Watergate. A year or so ago, Jon Stewart or one of the late-night comics was trying to get some laughs out of the latest scandal, which he called: “Dick-Cheney-shooting-a-guy-in-the-face-gate,” but this was nothing compared to the several years where conflict seemed to rule in Washington, D.C. Historian Richard Reeves wrote a book entitled Richard Nixon: Alone in the White House, which was crafted out of a whole slew of new material: tapes and notes and papers from presidential aides like H. R. Haldeman. Reeves describes a Nixon alumni reunion that happened back on May 17, 2000, something like six years after Nixon passed away. A lot of the Watergate figures were also dead by then, including Haldeman, but a good number of people who served from ‘68 until August 9, 1974 got together and reminisced and remembered. Many of them still had those old Nixon-style flag pins in their blazers. Nixon’s grandson, Christopher Cox, led the group in saying the Pledge of Allegiance.

And as Reeves tells the story, a lot of these people, a quarter of a century later, were still almost in a daze, going around saying to each other, “What happened? How did this thing fall apart on us the way it did?”

You look at the numbers. In 1972, Richard Nixon won reelection over George McGovern, beating him by 18 million votes. Five hundred twenty electoral votes to 17. He beat him 49 states to one. The whole nation was red except for Massachusetts. Even San Francisco voted Republican. And less than two years later Nixon was quitting in disgrace, waving to the staff outside the White House and getting on Air Force One to fly back to California.

What happened? One of the Watergate men was named Elliott Richardson, a man who died just a few months before this reunion. He had been Nixon’s attorney general, but had resigned in protest after refusing to obey Nixon’s order that he fire the Watergate Special Prosecutor, which led to something called the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre.” And Richardson had said to this biographer: “Nixon wanted to be the Architect of his Times.”

But then you read the book. And on page after page, chapter after chapter, there are stories of tragedy. Here and there is greatness. There are moments of rare courage; Nixon was a consummate statesman in many ways, a brilliant, incisive thinker. He mastered the issues. In addition, he could be tender, noble, self-sacrificing, courageous. He had greatness in him. He actually had an amazing ability to gently comfort a hurting person, to be personal and warm. He once had a secretary who just couldn’t spell a certain word, and he finally went out of his way to always bypass that word and use other language, just to not keep embarrassing her.

BUT . . . most of this book is a long, sad chronicle of bitterness. Of fighting. Of quarreling and dissension, the splits and the schisms and the splashes of anger.

In the intro to the book, Reeves writes this: “Nixon’s inaugural address, lifted stylistically from Kennedy’s 1961 speech, was built on a sign held up by a young girl in Ohio as he campaigned there: ‘Bring us together.’ But Nixon could not do that. He saw people as groups, to be united and divided toward political ends. The architecture of his politics, like that of his foreign policy, was always based on manipulating groups and interests, balancing them or setting them against one another, whichever suited his purposes or the moment or the times.”

In ‘72, which was that historic election year, Nixon was masterful at visiting both Moscow and Beijing, pitting Russia and China against each other instead of against the U.S. And since the enemy of my enemy is my friend, he achieved breakthrough arms and trade agreements with both superpowers by driving wedges between two countries that had been longtime Communist allies.

Back to Richard Reeves’ intro: “Nixon glorified in cultural warfare, dividing the nation geographically, generationally, racially, religiously. He believed that was what all politicians did. His ‘silent majority,’ a resentful populist center of working and middle-class Christians, loved him not for himself but for his enemies.”

It’s kind of sad that the last line of this postmortem mentions Christians as being a key part of this angry, restless, ready-to-hate constituency. And even today, so many people in the secular world look into our parking lots, and read how Christians are always marching, always suing each other, always engaging in the politics of personal destruction. Does that kind of ongoing civil war get those onlookers to come in here and visit us? Not too much.

Well, what does the Bible say for us on this subject? I guess there must have been a lot of Nixon posters and a lot of anti-Nixon posters in the ancient streets of Colosse, because this is what Paul writes to all of the new Christians there: Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity (Colossians 3:12-14).

It’s interesting that the Bible says to clothe ourselves with compassion. I can look around this morning and see the outfits that you took pains to wear to church today. We all put on these items of apparel and then we walk into God’s house. And what would it be like if we made a decision, there in our own homes on Sabbath morning, before hitting the freeways: “I’m going to clothe myself with an attitude of compassion. I’m going to put on a coat of kindness, a flannel shirt of forgiveness, a poncho of patience”?

I know we have all had the experience of having to go out into a cold world and perform some act of service, some deed of Christian love. We don’t feel like it. Our house is warm and cozy; there are wonderful things on television. But we have this divine appointment. So I imagine you do what I do too. As I get to my parking spot, I have to simply put on an emotional coat of enthusiasm. I have to say, “I love people. I love sharing these ideas. I love the witnessing opportunities. I love serving. And for the next couple of hours, even though it’s raining, I am going to look like I am the happiest, most fulfilled, most aren’t-we-having fun guy these people have ever met.”

And the Bible is true. We can decide to have different thoughts. We can put on a coat of forgiveness, or forbearance, of remembering that Calvary is more important than the fact that you like a different kind of music than others seated in the same Christian sanctuary as you, or that you don’t like the necktie the preacher is wearing.

I know this diagnosis in Colossians 3 is easy to read, but really hard to do. I know that. Paul says: “Bear with one another.” Well, I don’t want to. “Forgive each other; forgive those grievances.” But my grievances are really justified and documented and well-rehearsed. Someone read in Matthew 19: “Love your neighbor.” And he responded: “Good luck. I’d like to see you love MY neighbor.” There’s a classic line about American legend Will Rogers: “He never met a man he didn’t like.” And someone replied: “I’ll bet Will Rogers never met so-and-so.”

But we face the hardness of this invitation, the seeming impossibility of this wardrobe of chosen charity, with two truths. First of all, we have to. That’s it! We have to put on this necktie of love . . . why? Because the Bible tells us we have to.

In his book, Love, Acceptance, and Forgiveness, Jerry Cook tells about a scenario where three ladies were all employees of his church. Choir leader, secretary, office assistant, whatever. And for some reason, they weren’t getting along. The office politics between the three of them had just gotten toxic, and the entire church staff knew it.

And finally Cook called them in and said this: “Look, this has to be fixed. I don’t really care what the issues are, frankly, who’s right and who’s wrong. But the simple fact is that the Bible commands you to work it out. It’s not an option; it’s not a recommendation. You’re commanded to forgive each other, love each other, bury the hatchet, sacrifice the grudge, whatever. And that’s a command as binding as ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’”

So what happened? Cook told them, “You can take my office. Go in there and put your cards on the table and work this out. Compromise, discuss, dialogue, whatever it takes. But I want all three of you, individually, to give me a phone call tonight and tell me this thing is all wrapped up.” And then he went out and went golfing. He spent the afternoon whacking a little white ball all over the yard, knowing that the mighty enforcing power of the Word of God was going to get this thing done. That night he got three phone calls. “Are we good now?” “Yes, Pastor Cook.” “Okay, thanks a lot.” That was it.

Philip Yancey passes along a story told by Walter Wink in his book, Engaging the Powers. Ten years after World War II ended, two peacemaker brokers tried to get some Polish Christians and some German Christians together, hoping to mend fences and get these fellow believers reunited. And they asked the Poles: “Could you possibly forgive these guys? The Germans are truly sorry, truly repentant, for what happened to your relatives. Can you reconcile?”

And to a man, the Polish Christians said: “There’s just no way. No way in the world. Every stone in Warsaw is soaked in Polish blood. We cannot forgive! Sorry, there’s just no chance.”

Well, that kind of fizzled out the meeting, but they finished the gathering and all stood up to leave. They held hands and said the Lord’s Prayer together. And when they got to the part, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” the main protestor who had so vehemently said, “No way,” stopped the prayer. And with a pale face, he suddenly said, “I guess we have to forgive. We have no choice but to forgive. It’s not an option. In our own power, true, there’s no way. But we couldn’t say the ‘Our Father’ if we failed to obey what it says here.” Christian willpower is really just giving our will over to God and accepting His power. And that’s what these fragile believers did.

Eighteen months later the two groups met, they reconciled, and they formed a Christian alliance that is still going strong. Why? Because the Bible commanded that they do it. The hardness of the challenge was overcome by the reality that this was the kingdom rule.

But let me make the second point, going back to what we already said. If we choose a life of criticism and conflict and dissension, especially here at the church, the plain truth is that we’re choosing a life that is already a proven failure. It’s a fact: the politics of division and strife, and the spiritual life of division and strife, are doomed approaches. They simply are not going to work.

Again, these many Nixon biographies make that point well. The tactics of division did work, after a fashion and for a while. There’s a famous story where a young, fiery speechwriter named Pat Buchanan helped his boss engineer a political strategy regarding race and busing and affirmative action. “Mr. President, let’s frame our arguments this way, making these A-B-C points. Our silent-majority people will really respond to that.” And someone in the White House pointed out that the policies Buchanan was advocating were bound to divide the nation right in half. This was going to be a red-blue chasm a long time before that became a popular metaphor. And Buchanan just gave the critic a smile and said: “If we cut the country in half, I guarantee you our side’ll get the bigger half.” And maybe you can win one or two elections that way. But can you really create a generation of peace like that? Can you forge a lasting prosperity for all Americans? Can you grow your political party long-term by calling a lot of other people “them” all the time?

Two former participants in the Religious Right later left that movement and wrote a confessional tell-all book entitled Blinded By Might. In it, Ed Dobson and Cal Thomas address the tendency of Christians, especially in our most caustic, argumentative, condemning moments, to invade the world of politics and expect national parties to do the things we almost demand that they do. “Adopt our planks into your platform or we’ll bolt the party; we’ll vote with our feet.” And when one prominent media Christian made those kinds of threats, a senior party chairperson quietly responded: “Jim, political parties win through communication, not through excommunication.”

I don’t know how often you get to the book of Titus, which is a small three-chapter letter from Paul. But the new Christians in Crete—of course, everybody Paul wrote to was always a new Christian—had fallen almost immediately into the failed trap of “Us vs. Them.” Some believed that all new converts needed to keep the entire Jewish law, including circumcision . . . which was keeping a lot of people out of the baptismal tank. The Democrats in the church said, no, we don’t agree. There were some Christians who were clinging to old Jewish myths and what they called “genealogies,” which were probably mythical stories attached to Old Testament history. Other Christians were ready to chuck all of that stuff. And finally Paul gives them, and us, this warning: But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law. And notice this. Why? Because these are unprofitable and useless.

And that’s it. You can have this fight, but it’s a useless fight. It’s like trying to make a living and support your family playing roulette forty hours a week. The Bible tells us in scarlet letters: these discussions are doomed. These tactics are terminal terrain. They simply are not going to work or bear fruit. If you want to kill ten prayer meetings in a row debating these points, yes, you can sure do it. But at the end of the day, things won’t be better; they’ll be worse.

If it feels like my Nixon stories have picked on just one political party today, I can quickly balance the scales. A Democratic political operative named Bob Shrum has been around for a long time. Every four years the top candidates always vie to land him on their team. “Get Shrum; he’s a veteran.” But the fact is that this guy has headed up something like seven consecutive losing candidacies. He has a lot of experience, and all of it is on the deck of the Titanic. Whatever he suggests never wins.

And in our own spiritual lives, as we try to foster an atmosphere of love and unity here at this church, why should we hitch our wagons to a mental attitude that we already know going in is a falling star? Many decades the great Dale Carnegie penned his classic bestseller, How to Win Friends and Influence People. And in his very first chapter, he says this about the temptation to criticize other people: “Criticism is futile.” Let me repeat that. “Criticism is futile.” Why? He tells us. “It puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment.” And then for more than 200 pages, with story after story, he tells high-profile anecdotes about people who wanted other people to change. Who wanted other people to do things differently. Who wanted to effect a shift in policy. So they criticized their opponents. Did it work? Did the people change? Did the atmosphere change? Did the policies change? Almost never. You aren’t going to get what you want out of that other person if you shout at them or embarrass them. It . . . will . . . not . . . work. It simply is not a battle tactic that brings the desired results. It’s a fixed reality that criticism and controversy are failed weapons.

In his recent book, When the Enemy Strikes, Pastor Charles Stanley points out that Satan doesn’t hit us with any new temptations. The Bible tells us, Every temptation is common to man. There’s nothing really inventive here; Lucifer has been employing the same old strategies since Eden. Why? Because they always work. And often he gets us to do something that we already know is a failed, fallen idea with grief at the end of it.

So we all know what it feels like to know these realities, and then still do the hopeless thing because of our natures. Richard Nixon honestly wanted to be a unifying, courageous leader. He wanted to “bring us together.” He once was talking with a friend about the man he was Vice President to, Dwight Eisenhower. And he reminisced by saying: “Everybody loved Ike. But the reverse of that was that Ike loved everybody. Ike didn’t hate anybody. He was puzzled by that sort of thing. He didn’t think of people who disagreed with him as being the ‘enemy.’ He just thought: ‘They don’t agree with me.’”

So how can we come to this church and “be like Ike”? Well, we have this Bible mandate: clothe ourselves with a determined attitude of kindness. Of forgiving. Of not arguing. Of wrapping up all of our relationships in love. If we tear off our necktie of charity one Sabbath, that’s all right. Put it back on. Ask forgiveness. Start again. Ask forgiveness. Start again. Take the larger view. Seek God’s help.

And once in a while, look in instead of out. What is our emotional wardrobe here on Sabbath mornings? Do we come here ready to fight or to forgive? To embrace or arm-wrestle? Again, Nixon got to the White House in 1969, really determined to do good things for the country he loved so much. He had bright visions for the nation. This Richard Reeves tells how Nixon was a loner; he would go off by himself to a secluded office overlooking the Rose Garden and fill a yellow legal pad with memos: “From RN . . . to RN.” He would write encouraging notes to himself, as he looked into the mirror and reflected on what America needed from its Chief Executive. He’d been in power for 17 days when he wrote this: “Most powerful office. Each day a chance to do something memorable for someone. Need to BE good to DO good. The nation must be better in spirit at the end of term. Need for joy, serenity, confidence, inspiration.”

And we look back now from the safe pedestal of the future and sympathize. It’s a tragedy that President Nixon reflected and saw the high bar. He read the Magna Carta of Colossians chapter three. But in his own power, he just could not get over that bar. Not by himself. He couldn’t get over hating, attacking, dividing. His adversaries were doing it to him, and he soon resolved to get even and do it back to them. He finally said to his friend Bob Dole: “I just get up in the morning to confound my enemies.” And after five-and-a-half years, the failed infrastructure of “enemies lists” and revenge and IRS audits brought the presidency of this lonely, embittered, brilliant man to an end.

Well, that’s history. But we can learn from history and the pages of God’s Word. How the God of all peace and all peacemakers must look down in despair when you and I deliberately steer into the low road of controversy! His own divine yellow legal pad is filled with hopeful achievements for His church and His people. God has kingdom plans for this church right here. Plans for peace and for unity and for the kind of growth that happen when there is peace and unity. But He needs for me and for you to do this hard but proven thing. Clothe ourselves in kindness. Bear with one another. Turn the other cheek. Bear with one another. Forgive.

It sounds like a broken record, but it happens to be playing the one song that works. Shall we pray?

Lord, You’ve given us the power of choice, and each day of our lives we need to choose to wear the wardrobe of a peace-filled, unity-seeking life. Help us to come to this holy place and build bridges of understanding. Help us to see the big picture, and to prepare now for the harmony that defines heaven. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

______________________________

Read more at the source: Fighting – Part 3

Article excerpt posted on en.intercer.net from Better Sermons.

Better Sermons, Please

October 26, 2016 By admin

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Dear God: I have to open up my heart to you, Lord. Here goes: please bless Pastor with an extra portion of your Spirit regarding sermons. Lately they seem so disorganized, so empty of meat, so uninspiring. And the plain reality going in is that preaching has never been his forte. These past few years we’ve had several families finally drift across town, sighing, “We just do not get fed.”

Father, I know that all of us have gifts and gaps, strong points and weak ones. Please help me to be patient with our pastor’s “journeyman” pulpit abilities and his predictable points. I want to have a patient heart and a searching soul; when there’s an occasional good nugget of truth, please don’t let me miss it because I’m fuming over in the corner.

I’m asking you to also help me simply love this man. He serves us faithfully; he visits his members diligently and he has the most loving heart. That’s worth a lot. I realize that we can feed our souls in other ways besides at 11:30 a.m. Sabbath morning; please lead me toward the spiritual resources that I need.

But to the extent that it’s within your appropriate power, Father, nurture our pastor with new ideas and impassioned convictions. Open up his eyes to the illustrations and the gospel nuggets that sparkle in the universe all around us. Add your miraculous blessing to his dogged commitment, and we’ll say “Amen” as often as we can.

In Jesus’ name, Amen!

Read more at the source: Better Sermons, Please

Article excerpt posted on en.intercer.net from Online prayers.

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