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You are here: Home / Archives for love

The Crowning Treasure of the Home

December 7, 2018 By admin

Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table. Psalm 128:3

Read more at the source: The Crowning Treasure of the Home

Article posted on en.intercer.net from Rose’s Devotional.

Rose’s Devotionals are prepared by Rose Hartwell, one of the Intercer founders. Since 1999, Rose sends out a daily devotional newsletter that includes a commentary on a Bible passage, a list of prayer requests for the current week and an illustration from daily life that applies to the Bible passage in study.

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Filed Under: News and Feeds, Rose's Devotional Tagged With: archives, children, christian, copyright, faith, friends, heart, love, news and feeds, protection

Fighting – Part 7

December 6, 2018 By admin

Easy to Forgive?

Photo: Mikael Damkier

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. 

______________________________

Submitted by David B. Smith. Better Sermons © 2005-2008. Click here for usage guidelines. 

Read more at the source: Fighting – Part 7

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

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Filed Under: Better Sermons, News and Feeds, Spirit Renew Quotes Tagged With: airport, better-sermons, bible, christ, church, david-smith, directions, discipline, love, news and feeds, personal, wedding

Fighting – Part 4

December 6, 2018 By admin

The Terminator of Truth

Photo: Dennis Owusu-Anssah

If you come to this church on Sabbath morning but you don’t believe in the validity of the seventh-day Sabbath, what should our board do about that? What if you don’t believe in the virgin birth? Or in the divinity of Jesus? Or the 1844 Sanctuary doctrine? On the one hand, you might say, “Well, people like that wouldn’t even show up here.” But that’s not necessarily true. There have been people who came here for extended periods who weren’t even truly born-again Christians; but they liked the camaraderie, the potlucks, the strong moral foundation here, the community service opportunities this place provided for their children. And all the time, quietly in their hearts, there were things they didn’t believe in concert with their fellow attendees.

I imagine we might all be surprised if every single person here had to write up a full-confession statement of beliefs and then have us post them openly on our web site. Instead of “What We Believe,” we’d have subsections: “What Steve Believes.” “What Nancy Believes.” “What Jose Believes Is Wrong About What Nancy Believes.” And so on. Could the church survive something like that?

A few years ago, when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl XXXVII, the final score of 48-21 was substantially overshadowed by an off-the-field football player played by an actor named Lester Speight. If you watch on Super Sunday more to enjoy the competition for “Best Commercial,” this one from Reebok was the hands-down winner of the day. Six feet seven inches, 330 pounds, all hard muscle, and the point of the commercial was that some nameless company had hired Terry Tate the Office Linebacker to be its code enforcer. If you used your company laptop to play solitaire, boom! This guy flattened you with a tackle. If you didn’t get back from lunch in exactly thirty minutes, boom! This lightning-fast monster came flying through the air ready to clothesline you into submission. If your fax didn’t have a cover sheet on it, #56 would tear down the hallway, jump across the line of scrimmage, and boom! “You parked in the boss’s spot again! Boom! You spent twenty minutes uploading pictures to Costco’s photo center on company time. Boom! You turned in an expense report without proper documentation—no restaurant receipt from In-n-Out Burger. Boom!

And for 60 bone-crunching seconds, this #56 was just hurtling across your TV screen, with agonizing “thumps” as he tacked the poor people who made little mistakes here and there.

Well, Reebok really scored a touchdown with the ad, and some viewers were searching the Internet afterwards, wondering: “Who is this guy . . . and can I get him to enforce discipline at my company?” I think some pastoral staffs were putting their heads together and asking: “Can we get him here? We’ll put him out in the parking lot and he can stiff-arm all the latecomers into the sanctuary.” Get in there by 11:00 or I’ll put your spine out of line. One of the Reebok actors told the press that this Lester Speight’s football tackles were absolutely real, not staged. In fact, he said: “Man, the guy hit me so hard I was bleeding.”

There was a Leadership cartoon once, and they must have found a relative of Cousin Lester’s to be the enforcer at Sunday School. I mean, this guy was huge. He looked like a Marine drill instructor: butch haircut, square chin, no-nonsense clip-on tie, tattoo of a church steeple on his muscular biceps. And this man has a new, fragile Christian by the neck, lifting him about two feet off the ground, while about eight other people are quaking in their boots in the background. And this Terminator—I mean, Sunday School teacher—is bellowing at the guy: “Sixty-one? Sixty-ONE? What do you mean, there’s sixty-one books in the Bible? Drop and give me twenty!” And the caption reads: “It quickly became clear that retired General George ‘No Surrender’ Summers was the wrong choice to teach the new members class.”

Well, we’re having a bit of fun here, but have you ever been personally tackled over Bible truth and your particular interpretation of it? Have you ever been forced to run fifty laps because of your faith? If you were driving to church this morning, and thinking to yourself that there are 61 books in the Bible, instead of the correct, true, holy answer of 66—which every good Adventist in the world ought to know . . . I mean, come on, people—should I radio ahead and get the CHP (that’s the Christian Highway Patrol) to pull you over at the next intersection and beat the heresy out of you?

I know that many of us who work in the Lord’s vineyard have experienced prickly encounters with someone who was determined to have their say—and maybe their way—over some Bible teaching or doctrinal interpretation. And armed with a stack of quotations and perhaps even DVDs, they seek out dialogue and debate with friends and strangers alike.

I have had a few of these encounters along the way, and there’s a question I think it is helpful to ask at a certain point in the summit meeting. “Does this debate at your church help . . . or hurt? Is it unifying or dividing the congregation? Is it causing growth or splintering? Is it leading you to pray for the pastor or talk about him behind his back?” And I will say that sometimes new friends who have been prone to do battle have reflected for a moment, and then admitted that maybe they could do more to help heal wounds of division.

Let me ask today: what does this question of doctrinal warfare mean for us in our daily lives? It appears that the early Christian church had both Terry Tate the Reebok Linebacker and General George the Terminator sitting on the front row. Along with Paul, Silas, Barnabas, and Timothy, people like this were right there with their camcorders getting video clips of the drums in the youth division. People were fighting about doctrines that still had the wet ink on the parchment. Notice what Paul writes in Titus 3: 

But avoid quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless. Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him. You may be sure that such a man is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned (vv. 9-11).

Now, this is a deep, complicated, gray-area principle. But we do find here that at least under some circumstances, division on Bible teachings is a dangerous and wrong thing to indulge in. If someone is endlessly tackling the saints in the foyer of the church, or coming to prayer meeting wearing a helmet, Paul seems to be suggesting that they be cut from the team.

BUT . . . now let’s hear a warning that sounds to us like it comes from the other team’s huddle. Paul’s writing now to his friend Timothy; this is from 6:3-5. If anyone teaches false doctrine and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, he is conceited and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between men of corrupt mind.

So you notice the apparent awkward contradiction here. On the one hand, Paul tells us that fighting about church teachings is bad. It’s divisive, it’s harmful, it’s unproductive. On the other hand, adhering to false doctrines, and body-checking people with heresy and dangerous interpretations . . . for sure is wrong. So we have: “Don’t fight about truth. If someone is teaching falsehood, stop him.” Truth is important—but controversy over truth is to be avoided. But how can we know if we’re defending truth? After all, every person sitting here today is convinced that the way they see things is truth, the whole truth, and nothing but truth. If it weren’t truth, we’d change our views. Nobody wants to be in error. So it rings a bit hollow to us when Paul comes along from a dusty 2,000 years ago and says: “Listen, you guys, don’t fight about truth. And I know—so I’ll tell you what truth is.”

But, in a sense, he’s correct. The Bible is written by godly men who wrote under the process of inspiration, Holy Spirit-protected truthfulness. So if something is plainly written by a Paul or a John or an Isaiah, we can take those clear statements as incontrovertible truth.

Let me very humbly share a few principles that help us through this difficult topic. And I say this as a person whose own biblical views have been humbled on more than one occasion. I am less sure about some things today than ten years ago, and more sure about others. But one thing we have to prayerfully attempt to do is to discern, with the Bible and God’s help, the difference between necessary truth and other truth.

For example: the Bible unflinchingly tells us that the doctrine of the Resurrection is absolutely vital. It’s not negotiable; it’s not a bargaining chip. It’s not something the Adventist Church could vote out of its 28 Fundamental Beliefs in a future General Conference. Without the resurrection of Jesus on Sunday morning, and the subsequent resurrection of all of God’s faithful saints, there is no Christian Church. The entire edifice falls if that one doctrine gets a crack in it. First Corinthians 15:3: For what I received, Paul writes, I passed on to you AS OF FIRST IMPORTANCE: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. Then verse 14: If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. Case closed. Every time we pastors sit down with God’s Word and begin to craft a sermon for Easter Sabbath, we realize anew that the Bible explicitly establishes the Resurrection as a linch-pin teaching: without it, we lose the doctrine of forgiveness, of eternal life, of heaven, of the Second Coming, of the divinity of Jesus Christ, of the validity of Old Testament prophecy. Everything falls apart without the Resurrection.

So if a guest speaker came here and attacked that teaching, we would be perfectly within our rights—in fact, we would be morally obligated—to show that person to the door. That teaching could not stay here among us even as a discussion. There are some beliefs that are crucial to the faith.

In an essay entitled Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism, C. S. Lewis lamented a good half-century ago that sometimes priests and preachers who have lost all faith in the truths of the Bible still wear the cassock and the pastor’s hat, come to church, get a paycheck from the diocese, and then fail to support the belief system that is supporting them. He calls this a form of prostitution, which is a colorful but appropriate metaphor. And then adds this lament: “Once the layman was anxious to hide the fact that he believed so much less than the Vicar: he now tends to hide the fact that he believes so much more.” And notice this sad conclusion: “Missionary to the priest of one’s own church is an embarrassing role.”

I’m gratified as I surf different denominational web sites, and as I read the great books of the Church, that very often we find a strong, unifying, faith-building coherence to the various statements of belief. What are the critical things? The same key pillars are affirmed over and over. I most often read about the love and omnipotence and omniscience of God. About the divine authority of the Old and New Testaments. About the perfect sinlessness of Jesus our Savior and Redeemer and His atoning blood which is totally sufficient to save us in heaven. About the Resurrection. The Second Coming. The doctrine of the Church. The importance of Bible baptism. And the triumph of God’s kingdom over the rebellion caused by Satan. Christians everywhere recognize these teachings as crucial to the faith; and thankfully, most believers who embrace the Word of God don’t find it necessary to endlessly debate those points.

So some doctrines do need to be defended. There are some pillars where, if a dissenter wants to endlessly argue against the Body of Christ, he or she eventually needs to be escorted from the Super Bowl gridiron. “Warn him once, warn him twice,” Paul says, and then that’s it.

And of course, this is itself one of the core questions: what is important? What is crucial? What is it that will threaten the Church itself if left to conquer from within? Some people think that jewelry is a very important issue; others don’t see it that way at all. But the question of jewelry has divided and destroyed many churches. Maybe you don’t care about that question in the least, but if we began to perform same-sex marriages here on Sabbath afternoons, you might have something to say about it. This is our dilemma.

In the introduction to his book, Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis shares how he decided which issues to cover. Which “disputed points,” as he put it, was he going to tackle? And he writes this: “One of the things Christians are disagreed about is the importance of their disagreements. When two Christians of different denominations start arguing, it is usually not long before one asks whether such-and-such point ‘really matters’ and the other replies: ‘Matter? Why, it’s absolutely essential.’”

What, then, is vital? Obviously, anything that impacts our eternal salvation is important. Anything that casts God’s kingdom in a false light is important. Anything that besmirches the character of God is important.

But some things are not. I have been in Sabbath School classes where the members steered over to some hot political point where the Word of God is eloquently silent! It doesn’t say what we should believe. And yet two sides will get going in heated discussion, and emotions will begin to heat up. After just a few minutes, it sounds like World War III has begun. 

The reality is this. The Bible isn’t clear on every question. No one knows the answer to these questions. And I have had to gently come to someone in the parking lot after church and say to them, “Look, let’s not have wars that are unwinnable. First of all, the Bible doesn’t specify. All you had in there were your opinions. We all know what Bible verses are pertinent to the subject; there aren’t going to be any new ones. Secondly, that whole issue only deserves two minutes anyway, especially because it’s unsolvable. It should never get more time than that.” Humble Christians need to agree to not keep snapping our wet towels at our doctrinal adversaries, trying to irritate them into an arm wrestling match.

I have had delightful go-rounds with friends and neighbors over the question of what happens to the soul of a person when they die. They believe the soul goes directly to heaven when you die, and, being a faithful Adventist, I believe in the concept of soul sleep. In both scenarios, it’s either a moment or an apparent moment before you see the face of Jesus. But there is a very real difference of opinion between us.

And so we begin to go at it. I give them Ecclesiastes 9:5, 6. “The dead know not anything.” They hit me with Philippians 1:23: “I desire to depart and be with Christ.” I circle around and come after them with I Thessalonians 4: “The dead in Christ shall rise at the second coming.” They pop me back with II Corinthians 5: “Absent from the body, present with the Lord” and Luke 16: “The rich man and Lazarus.” And after calling it a draw, and getting into it again a month later and calling it a draw, and having a third discussion across the back-yard fence the following Christmas and calling it a draw, I finally come to realize a couple of things. 

First of all, the fact that the issue is unresolved doesn’t seem to be threatening our Christianity. This other person is still fully committed to Jesus, and so am I. Secondly, again, we both seem to know all of the Bible verses there are. Unless there is some new Dead Sea scroll discovery that gives us a 67th book of the Bible, we have all the information there is, and still aren’t seeing eye to eye. And I finally come to realize that something in the other person’s past experience makes it hard for him to see this issue in any other way than he does. What seems to me a very coherent and logical and even wise heavenly plan is unsettling to him. A sincere evangelical once said to his Adventist pastor friend across the street, “Sam, when I die I don’t want to just lie there in the dirt; I want to go immediately and be with Jesus.” And who am I to argue with that very good sentiment?

So it is often possible—and wise—that when we dialogue with friends on the other side of the river, we both try hard to rejoice together over the 98% of great Bible truths that we hold in common. There are so many things that we believe in full union; we must ask God to help us try to talk more about those things.

And maybe someone will say to me: “But, Pastor, isn’t it possible that Satan will use the idea of immortal souls to bring about a major deception in the last days?” Yes, that is possible. And all we can do now, while that possible campaign lies in the future, is to love these neighbors of ours and hope that if that day of darkness comes, and lies about God and heaven are sweeping the earth, these new neighborhood friends of ours will remember our visits and gain a new perspective at that time, with the Holy Spirit’s help.

I would like to recommend to you today what the Bible recommends to you today: a gentle andinquiring spirit. We should seek all truth. We should have fellowship Bible studies where we get into the deep and controversial things. It’s a time-honored principle that we shouldn’t air our debates before the general public; that never draws people in. Attack billboards and prophecy brochures that cast aspersions on the beliefs of others are always inappropriate. But here within the family, if we can do so lovingly, sure, let’s study hard. We should explore just as far down the paths of learning as the Holy Spirit enables us to. But as we read from Colossians 3 last week, let’s clothe ourselves with compassion and kindness and humility. Let’s preface our debates with: “I may be wrong. I’m still learning. And isn’t it wonderful that Jesus has saved us and now enables us to study these truths with a perfect absence of fear”?

For many decades our media ministries like the Voice of Prophecy have had to learn the art of presenting all arguments in a gentle frame of humility. There are some evangelical and Catholic-owned radio stations where, if you talk about death and soul sleep and hell in violation of their belief structure, they’ll pull the program. They’ll cancel your contract. So the people involved in scripting those radio messages had to ask God to help them remember that every single day, they were reaching virgin ears who had never heard from the Adventist Church before. They had to build bridges, not blow them up. They wanted to be attractive as well as articulate. As St. Augustine once said: “In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; and in all things, charity.”

Let me close with this. All other issues are subservient to the centrality of Jesus. Jesus is everything. Jesus is our all in all. Jesus is our only hope. Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath. Jesus is the One who is coming again. Let’s place every other issue in its right perspective and place, in the shadow of the life and victory of Jesus.

I believe that all of us who are humbly trying to share Jesus with others are going to win some battles and lose others. There will be those for whom our Bible perspectives will not take hold. The convictions which are so sweet and clear to us will not come into focus in everyone else’s life. And yes, we will stand in frustration on the sidelines as friends we care about go through needless hurt as they battle their own misconceptions.

Yet you and I are God’s steadfast ambassadors. I can only hope and pray that somehow, despite those flashes of helpless pain, these friends of ours will at least hold on to the hand of Jesus. That they will discover, even if childlike, even if imperfect, even if prodigal son-like, the thing that Acts 16:31 talks about: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. And I pray that our time with these precious souls, the gifts of connection that the Holy Spirit creates for us—as He did for Philip and the Ethiopian ruler so long ago—will be positive, healing blessings. I’d like to save everybody I can, and make the others happy. Shall we pray?

Lord, we are acutely aware today of our inexperience, our lack of wisdom. Sometimes we battle enthusiastically over things we know so little about. Help us to lower our voices and raise our level of compassion. Help us to defend our Bibles and not our opinions. And please make us the most diligent to share a friend named Jesus, the one doctrine that ensures salvation. In His name we pray, Amen.

______________________________

Submitted by David B. Smith. Better Sermons © 2005-2008. Click here for usage guidelines.

Read more at the source: Fighting – Part 4

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

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Filed Under: Better Sermons, News and Feeds, Spirit Renew Quotes Tagged With: bible, christian, family, internet, love, pastor, resurrection, sabbath school

Far Above Rubies

November 28, 2018 By admin

Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.

Read more at the source: Far Above Rubies

Article posted on en.intercer.net from Rose’s Devotional.

Rose’s Devotionals are prepared by Rose Hartwell, one of the Intercer founders. Since 1999, Rose sends out a daily devotional newsletter that includes a commentary on a Bible passage, a list of prayer requests for the current week and an illustration from daily life that applies to the Bible passage in study.

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Filed Under: News and Feeds, Rose's Devotional Tagged With: children, christ, devotionals, family, influence, jesus, jesus-christ, love, personal, power, teacher

Pause. Listen. Reflect.

November 28, 2018 By admin

When I am at work, I usually eat lunch at my desk, but today I decided to stop by one of my favorite restaurants. As I parked my car and walked toward the restaurant, I saw encouraging words that were written on the ground in each parking space. “Say hello to someone.” “Smile.” Such meaningful reminders.

After I picked up my lunch, I read more words on the ground. But these three words caused me to think. The first parking space had, “Pause,” right in front of a red car. The second one, “Listen,” was in an empty space. The last one I saw, “Reflect,” glowed in the sun.

The sequence of words caught me by surprise. How many times do we pause, listen and reflect?”

We live in a fast-paced world where we have smart phones, tablets and computers to go wherever we go. We can chat online with people, we can have a conversation with a mechanical voice as we drive, and we can play games and/or listen to music. We can multi-task by walking for exercise while we pay our bills on our phones and talk to a long time friend. That’s the way we roll. We live in a constant flow of words, thoughts and ideas. No wonder we miss opportunities to spend with God.

These words reminded me of part of a verse I learned a long time ago. The King James Version renders it this way, “Be still and know that I am God.” The Holman’s Christian Standard Bible translates it this way, “Stop your fighting — and know that I am God” (Psalms 46:10)

“Be still or stop your fighting and know God.” These phrases remind us that if we want to know God, we need to disengage with our busyness and let stillness rest over our minds and hearts. Perhaps listening to one less song or skipping one more video game can allow us to know God better. It is in the pausing, listening and reflecting that we grow a little deeper in knowing God.

I am going to challenge myself to stop wrestling and fighting with the busyness of my life and get to know God in the stillness. I am going to pause, listen and reflect on the beauty, the creativity and the love that God has for us.

Something so simple as three words written in asphalt has given me a deeper desire to grow in my walk with God.

Pamela A. Williams writes from Southern California. 

The post Pause. Listen. Reflect. appeared first on Answers for Me.

Read more at the source: Pause. Listen. Reflect.

Article excerpt posted on en.intercer.net from Answers for Me.

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Filed Under: News and Feeds, Vegetarian recipes Tagged With: beauty, bible, james-version, listen to god's voice, love, quiet, reflect, reflection, restaurant, simple-as-three, still-or-stop

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