Place Podcast

Acts 15-16 | Stacey Toews

2012-01-29T21:19:00.000-08:00

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Acts 13-14 | Stacey Toews (and a call to give from Brad)

2012-01-22T23:53:00.000-08:00

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Added extra: Brad's call to sacrificial giving is HERE

Acts 9 | Rob Fitterer

2012-01-08T22:55:00.000-08:00

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365 Advent - Joy | Stacey Toews

2011-12-18T22:06:00.000-08:00

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365 Advent - Peace | James Prette

2011-12-04T22:20:00.000-08:00

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365 Advent - Hope | Bob Opperman

2011-11-27T21:45:00.001-08:00

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Acts 10 & 11 | Andy Renton

2011-11-20T22:59:00.000-08:00

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Acts 8 | James Prette

2011-11-13T21:02:00.001-08:00

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Acts 6&7 | Amber McMillan

2011-11-06T22:13:00.000-08:00

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Acts 3 & 5 | Stacey Toews

2011-10-30T21:12:00.000-07:00

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Acts 5:1-11 | Stacey Toews

2011-10-23T22:32:00.000-07:00

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Acts 2:42-47 | Randy Hein

2011-10-16T22:31:00.000-07:00

We should mention that this is Randy's last sermon as lead pastor. And it's good. So, listen/Download HERE. Be challenged by real community.

Acts 1 | Stacey Toews

2011-10-02T22:35:00.000-07:00

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Core Value: Beauty | Randy Hein

2011-09-25T22:32:00.000-07:00

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Core Value: Engagement | Randy Hein

2011-09-19T10:24:00.000-07:00

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Core Value: Community | Randy Hein

2011-09-11T22:41:00.000-07:00

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Core Value: Orthodoxy | Randy Hein

2011-09-04T22:38:00.000-07:00

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Question Time | Randy, Stacey, Kevin

2011-08-28T22:41:00.001-07:00

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Rockin' Book: Philemon | Kevin Scott

2011-08-21T22:05:00.000-07:00

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Rockin' Book: Psalms | Randy Hein

2011-08-14T22:17:00.000-07:00

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Rockin' Book: Revelation | James Prette

2011-08-07T22:55:00.000-07:00

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Rockin' Book: Proverbs | Dan Bromley

2011-07-31T21:11:00.000-07:00

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Rockin' Book: 2 John | Liz Bekker

2011-07-24T22:09:00.000-07:00

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Rockin' Book: Ecclesiastes | Amber McMillan

2011-07-10T20:08:00.000-07:00

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Rockin' Book: Job | Kevin McKee

2011-07-03T22:07:00.000-07:00

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Rockin' Book: John | Errol Nadeau

2011-06-26T21:56:00.000-07:00

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Rockin' Book: Amos | Stacey Toews

2011-06-19T21:15:00.000-07:00

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The Mission of God and Us Pt 2 | Simon Goff

2011-06-12T20:22:00.000-07:00

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The Mission of God and Us | Simon Goff

2011-06-05T22:08:00.000-07:00

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Jonah 4 | James Prette

2011-05-29T21:41:00.000-07:00

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Jonah 3 | James Prette

2011-05-15T20:45:00.000-07:00

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Jonah 2 | James Prette

2011-05-11T14:45:00.000-07:00

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Jonah 1 | James Prette

2011-05-01T21:26:00.000-07:00

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Easter Sunday | Randy Hein

2011-04-24T21:39:00.000-07:00

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Lord, into your hands... (Good Friday) | Bob Opperman

2011-04-22T23:15:00.000-07:00

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It is finished | Stacey Toews

2011-04-17T22:32:00.000-07:00

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Darkness
Jesus’ crucifixion was roughly a 6 hour span from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. – the final 3 hours (from noon to 3 pm) it was dark. Mark notes this in 15:33 ‘at the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour’
When was the last time the world had been darkened by God’s command?
NLT Ex. 10:21 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Lift your hand toward heaven, and the land of Egypt will be covered with a darkness so thick you can feel it."
This was the first day of Passover or the Feast of Unleavened Bread which is a spring festival, (the 14th day of Nisan begins on the night of a full moon ) -in Jewish observance, it would start this year at sunset of April 18 which is during a FULL MOON - we cannot use an eclipse as the reasoning for the darkness that hit the earth at mid day preceding the night of a full moon!
There was a historian in Egypt at the time who wrote this, "In this awful mid-day that has become midnight, either God is suffering or Somebody He loves is suffering." That was a pagan testimony. The whole world shook under the impact. He is not bearing millions or trillions or quadrillions, He is bearing the total sum of human sin. Not only committed sin but depravity as a whole.

Into the Darkness – have noted that he is forsaken by God and that he is Thirsty he adds one final word, in the language he spoke it is one word, not three – tetelestai

IT IS FINISHED

This word means "paid in full." “Receipts for taxes found in the papyri have written across them this single Greek word, which means ‘paid in full.’”
When a debt was fully paid, this word would be written on a loan document, will, or letter.
-it is in the perfect tense = a present condition which results from a past action with an on-going result.

Your car has been repaired – current status or car = repaired, reason: past actions are completed

The song has been recorded - current status of song = recorded, reason: past actions are completed

- in the perfect tense, The focus is on the present state of affairs,
-the same perfect tense is used to describe our salvation in Ephesians:

Eph. 2:8, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-"
a) "you have been saved.." = "este sesosmenoi..."
-status of Christ’s mission on earth = finished, reason: actions relevant to mission have been completed

- death on the Cross has permanent effects which ultimately will last throughout eternity!

In these three words; the consummation of all Old Testament truth and the germination of all New Testament truth.Leonard Ravenhill

Video clip of Tanzanian runner John Stephen Ahkwari at 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, who was the last runner to finish in the marathon.
http://speedendurance.com/2007/07/15/how-to-finish-a-marathon-1968-olympics-in-mexico-city/
start to play, with sound, at 1:22 of the video – it will play for 58 seconds to end
Limping into the arena, the Tanzanian runner grimaced with every step, his knee bleeding and bandaged from an earlier fall. His ragged appearance immediately caught the attention of the remaining crowd, who cheered him on to the finish line.

Why did he stay in the race? What made him endure his injuries to the end? When asked these questions later, he replied, "My country did not send me 5,000 miles away to start the race. They sent me 5,000 miles to finish it."

Let’s take a few moments together to consider Christ’s finished work!

In His final utterance from the cross, Jesus declared that all he had come to do was complete.
The totality of this statement, ‘It Is Finished’ coming from the Son of God affects all of life and existence.
What He had set out to do becomes crystal clear and how it was accomplished is brought into vivid detail.
These are the ultimate words from the cross with the ultimate bearing upon all disciples’ lives.
His mission – what he’d set out to do:

Luke 4 – reading from Isaiah
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,  because he has anointed me   to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners   and recovery of sight for the blind,  to set the oppressed free,   19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”[f]
Luke 7
Luke 7: 20 When the men came to Jesus, they said, “John the Baptist sent us to you to ask, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?’”
21 At that very time Jesus cured many who had diseases, sicknesses and evil spirits, and gave sight to many who were blind. 22 So he replied to the messengers, “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy[a] are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.
I don’t think there are many great people in history whom we can study who would be able to succinctly state that they completed everything in their life that they set out to do
Mozart – left behind the Requiem and asked a friend to finish it
King David left instructions to his son Solomon as to how to complete unfinished business in the kingdom
"It is finished." The implication of the Greek word is "This is complete." Redemption has been accomplished. You can't add to it.

When John the Baptist viewed Christ at the start of his public ministry he noted – behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world – this is what he was speaking forward to.
-Christ died during Passover, the Israelite Feast of Unleavened Bread. This festival was undertaken as a victory celebration of freedom from slavery in Egypt when Israel was led by Moses and Aaron out of Pharoah’s control, across the Red Sea and the journey toward the promised land was commenced
-the original Passover, and each subsequent remembrance of it, got underway with the sacrifice of a specially chosen lamb, unblemished, which was slaughtered and eaten in haste, in the original event, the blood of the lamb over the doorway and on its sides guaranteed the safety of all its residents when the Lord passed over Egypt and killed the firstborn of each household

When Passover lambs were slaughtered, the Israelites were forbidden to break any of the lambs’ bones Ex. 12:46
Jesus knew that he, as the Passover lamb, needed to die with His bones unbroken. So . . . he gave up His Spirit Num. 9:12; Psalm 34:20
The soldiers near the cross knew Sabbath would start officially at 6 pm (sunset) and crosses and death had to be mopped up before then. If death wasn’t imminent for those on crosses it had to be expedited.
The soldiers came and broke the legs of the criminals on either side of Jesus but when they came to him he was already dead. All of prophesy, fully accomplished!

"My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work." John 4:34
Later as he prayed to his Father he said,
"I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do." John 17:4

Jesus took our sins on himself. He took responsibility for our guilt. He died in our place so that we could go free. So that our sins would not be counted against us.

"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed." 1 Peter 2:24, NIV.

This was a gracious act of God who put Jesus forward as our substitute.

"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." 2 Corinthians 5:21, NIV.

Phillips's translation of Ephesians 1:10 "For God has allowed us to know the secret of His plan. He purposes in His sovereign will that all human history shall be consummated in Christ."

In John 20:21-23, Jesus says to his disciples, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
Examples of Christians persecuted globally:
For the fifth straight year, the government's persecution of the Church in China has continued to escalate . . .
Eighteen Christians, including two pastors, were arrested on March 28 for converting to Christianity without official permit in Orissa's Mayurbhanj district of India
An Afghan who was arrested for his conversion to Christianity remains behind bars . .
Joseph Francis has received death threats for his work on repealing of the Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws.
Three religious communities in Gyanja, Azerbaijan, have been banned from meeting for worship.
In Nepal, the believers are begging the government of Kathmandu to allot them plots of land to bury their loved ones.
The Vietnamese government has been increasingly harassing a peaceful group of Montagnard Christians living in the Central Highlands.
Source: Voice of the Martyrs April 7, 14, 2011

Remember the quote earlier from Leonard Ravenhill?
In these three words; the consummation of all Old Testament truth and the germination of all New Testament truth.
Mr. Ravenhill died in 1994 and on his tombstone he had inscribed ‘are the things you are living for worth Christ dying for?’

I am thirsty | James Prette

2011-04-10T21:37:00.000-07:00

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Why have you forsaken me? | Randy Hein

2011-04-04T09:49:00.001-07:00

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Dear woman, here is your son | Stacey Toews

2011-03-27T22:28:00.000-07:00

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NOTES:
*on Christmas Eve our kids rec’d a kitten as a Christmas gift
the cat was named ‘Jellybean’ and she quickly became everyone’s best friend.
-She trained the dog to like cats and would both play fight with him and cuddle him when he slept
-She would chase the children and climb trees with them
-She was had a pivotal role at our daughter’s birthday and helped paint during our renovations
-Everybody loved Jellybean
-Last Sunday afternoon as I drove the kids to the Easter play practice here my wife was outside pruning apple trees while the dog and cat played together in the front yard
-Jellybean ventured thru the fence to the neighbor’s property around 4:30 last Sunday afternoon and was killed instantly by their dog
-Monday morning we dug a grave and had a memorial service in our front yard for Jellybean – and while the kids and parents cried – we considered how short a time we’d had her and how suddenly her life had ended
-that’s the most grief my children have ever known

-The 4 women mentioned in John 19:25 were a gathering of women whose entire life and existence had been marked by their connection to the One who was hanging on the cross
-the one most affected was Mary
John 19 25 Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman,[b] here is your son,” 27 and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.
7 words uttered by Jesus from the cross

-the final wishes (will and testament) of a dying man
-of the 7 utterances from Jesus on the cross, these words are understood to to be the 3rd utterance in the sequence
-How many people are gathered around the cross? – he’s likely been there for hours already.
-to the person looking at the physical components of this execution, nothing remarkable has happened
-the 3 dying men have been up on their crosses for 2-3 hours already. The initial crowds have likely dissipated
-how many of the disciples who fled the night before have appeared at the cross? We have no idea
-women were the last at the cross and the first at the tomb

What are the dimensions of a cross – how elevated is Jesus?
an 8” x 8” post that was 13’ feet long
4’ of the stake are in the ground
so there’s 9’ above the ground
2’ of the stake are above his head
7’ of wood b/t the ground and his head
if he’s 6’ tall then his feet are only 1 foot above the ground

No megaphone or loud projection of Jesus voice as he utters the words recorded by John in vs. 26,27
Woman, here is your son
Here is your mother.
she’s a 45-50 year old woman – imagine what’s been part of her journey!
-Mary was the original disciple of Jesus’ way and teaching,
-Mary was the first person to fully embrace Jesus’ coming and his mission

Mary’s Song – Luke 1
46 And Mary said:
“My soul glorifies the Lord  
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,  
48 for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.  From now on all generations will call me blessed,  
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me—   holy is his name.  
50 His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation.  
51 He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.  52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones  but has lifted up the humble.  
53 He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.  
54 He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful  
55 to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.”
-but remember what else was included in the early verses of Luke’s gospel?
-when Jesus was an 8 day old infant, brought to the temple by Mary and Joseph, the met the prophet Simeon:
Luke 2 33 The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him. 34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, 35 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

consider the interplay b/t Jesus and Mary recorded in the Scriptures. Glimpses of a mother’s moments with her son.
-announcement from an angel,
-visits from wise men,
-fleeing to Egypt to get away from Herod
- the search for the boy during Passover - when at age 12 they spent days searching for Jesus in Jerusalem “Didn’t you know I was about my Father’s business?” Luke 2:49
-At the wedding where he turned water into wine “whatever he says to you, do it” John 2:5
-the women in Acts waiting for the HS filling
Acts 1:14 They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.

what questions arise for me?
Where’s Joseph?
Where are Jesus’ brothers?
55 “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas?
-Jesus knew how events were going to unfold – why didn’t he plan this ahead of time better? Or . . . if he knew he was going to rise again, why didn’t he wait till then?
-How lucid is a person at this point in suffering?
What’s it like for a mother to watch her son die especially when she of all people knows his whole story?

What conclusions do I draw? What assumptions am I making?
-Joseph is dead
-his brothers wouldn’t have provided her a safe place if they were not believing in Christ
John 7:5 For even his own brothers did not believe in him.

What lessons do I learn?
This is about ‘safe places’ in a family setting that has your best interests at heart
*Saryn saying at age 3 – she’d been with us 5 months. While in Haiti she’d been cared for primarily by a woman named ‘Glady’s’ a woman who is a her to our family, caring for many orphans there
-Gladys came to have breakfast with us while we were camping in the Okanagan - after breakfast, Gladys came around the table, to speak with our daughter. She held onto me tightly, made eye contact with Gladys and stated emphatically, ‘this is my family’ – it’s where I belong, it’s where I’m safe
-for me the words stated by Jesus indicate one powerful truth for me, Jesus decided that the best place for Mary to be, when Jesus was gone from earth, was in the home of someone whom Jesus loved and who believed in him
A new definition of ‘family’
*choosing guardians for your kids, doesn’t necessarily mean it will be uncles and aunts – it may be friends, church family, neighbors where there’s an obvious fit. The place where you know the family where have the best interests at heart
A blood relationship (thru Christ) that connects us together
-here at The Place we talk about Community
-To flourish in our faith, we need the support and safety of a loving Church community.
Community is where we should enjoy all the best characteristics of a loving/caring family. Especially when/if we have blood family who do not affirm/uphold our love for Christ and our relationship with him
Reading from 1 John

Today you will be with me in Paradise | Bob Opperman

2011-03-20T22:00:00.000-07:00

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Father Forgive Them | Randy Hein

2011-03-13T22:55:00.000-07:00

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Note: this sermon was recorded at the Gathering, so there will be minor changes.

Ephesians 6:10-24 | Randy Hein

2011-03-06T21:18:00.000-08:00

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Ephesians 5:21-6:9 | Randy Hein

2011-02-27T21:13:00.000-08:00

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Ephesians 4:17-5:20 | Keenan Sawatsky

2011-02-20T21:44:00.000-08:00

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Ephesians 4:1-16 | James Prette

2011-02-13T22:24:00.000-08:00

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Ephesians 3:14-21 | Randy Hein

2011-02-06T22:26:00.000-08:00

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Ephesians 3:1-13 | Randy Hein

2011-01-30T21:09:00.000-08:00

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Ephesians 2:11-22 | Stacey Toews

2011-01-23T22:52:00.000-08:00

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A friend of my wife started to live in a new town and was not sure how to decide what church to attend. Then, she had an idea. She dressed up as a streetperson. She soiled her clothes so that she was very malodorous. Then . . . she went church shopping. The first few ‘faith communities’ treated her as a low life who didn’t deserve to be with them. She was not warmly welcomed. The church that accepted her as an equal and treated her with love and respect became the church where she settled b/c there she knew people were living authentic Christianity.

Randy noted last week that the church is to be a trailer of heaven – how we as little Christs behave here on earth should be a foretaste of what God has waiting for us later!

As for WALLS - People erect walls to keep others ‘in their place’. Christ came to tear down all walls that separate us.

Walls:
One teenager I read from online this week writes: “Here's how it went for me in school. There were Preps, Goths, Skaters, Punks, and normal type people.”
Berlin Wall - image
South African apartheid - image
Palestinian Wall being constructed by Israel - image
The caste system -image
Economic walls
Rwanda – hutu/tutsi
Sudan – Muslim north/Christian south

One of the largest challenges that Jesus’ disciples had with his approach to ministry is that he was totally cool to hang out with anybody. Whether it was:
• a short, corrupt, Gentile tax collector
• an adulterous, Samaritan woman
• a Roman centurion who needed help for his sick servant.
• Christ took down walls and kicked down those which others sought to keep in place
When walls are removed, opportunities abound!

*brought the seller of the house we purchased through our home 4 months ago to show him our renovations. ‘I can’t believe it’ was all he could say. We took down walls and created new spaces. Within those spaces there are possibilities which never existed when the walls were in place.

Christ is big time into renovating our lives and mindsets so that in the same way, walls can be removed.
He started with the dividing wall of hostility vs. 14 which was in the temple courts – it divided Jew from Gentile. Christ has not stopped as He extends His work into our lives and communities. In God’s kingdom, “NO WALLS” is to be the norm.
Get ready to look at the Text together from Ephesians 2:11-22
Some themes that resonate in the text for me:
• Walls coming down
• Peace where there was hostility
• celebrating community with diversity
• Christ being our victory/doorway to new possibilities
• Israel being a light to the world
• A church that testifies to UNITY amidst diversity b/c of Christ.
Jumping into our text:
You there in Ephesus . . . . You are at peace with God AND at peace with your neighbors . . . but, remember it wasn’t always like this.
If you do not remember you are apt to forget the grace of God and his calling upon your life.
Vs. 11 – remember
Vs. 12 – remember
What are they to remember?
Remember where you came from
Remember what it used to be like for you – two different types of relational estrangement or separation
Vs. 1 describes spiritual separation, people out of fellowship with God their Creator and in fact ‘objects of his wrath’. This separation has been divinely corrected by his GRACE - we are saved/rescued from this fractured/divided existence and entirely through the work of Christ. This re-unites us to the divine -we who were ‘dead in our transgressions’ are at peace with God.
Vs. 11 describes humanities separation within itself. People divided along arbitrary, man made lines. One shunning another as outcasts. Hostility rather than wholeness has become the norm between nations, classes that we’ve created.
So . . . remember that it’s b/c of Christ that you’re at peace with others & God

Deuteronomy 14:2 NLT “You have been set apart as holy to the LORD your God, and he has chosen you from all the nations of the earth to be his own special treasure.”
Genesis 12:3 God’s promise to Abraham “ . . . . all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
Genesis 22:18 “ . . . through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.” (after being obedient to offer Isaac)
What were the Jews to regard themselves as? A gift from God to the other nations, a means for blessings to others however . . . they were not interested in sharing their gift with others rather they flaunted it and let others know that they were not to come so close to them.
What had they turned their blessing into ? A status of superiority. I am a Jew. You are a ‘dog’.
• Uncircumcised
• Separate
• Excluded
• Foreigners
• Without hope
• Without God

An unfortunate but common direction evident in many peoples’ lives:
How did the Jewish people reach this point of walls, separation and prejudice?
God had told them that they would be a blessing to the entire world, including the Gentiles. But over time the blessing became confused with privilege, privilege with entitlement, and entitlement almost always leads to exclusion.

• Blessing
• Privilege
• Entitlement
• Exclusion

This ungodly exclusion, that ignored their calling to other nation, was most evident in the temple courts.

Temple courts images:
toggle between sketch/photo/sketch/photo so that people can get it!
The temple was segmented into several courts, including courts for Gentiles, women, male Jews, and finally priests. The Jewish people believed God was most present in the temple, particularly in the inner temple. So if only certain people were allowed so far inside, they somewhat believed that different people had different levels of access to God.

At the temple, each successive wall was less porous. Fewer and fewer could go beyond it until you came to the holy of holies where only the high priest could enter 1 time each year. One person, once a year could get the nearest possible to the presence of God.

The Gentile court was surrounded by a small wall that stood 3 cubits3 (4 1/2 feet) tall, which contained an inscription that read, “No foreigner may enter within the barricade which surrounds the sanctuary and enclosure. Anyone who is caught doing so will have himself to blame for his ensuing death.”4

Read from Acts 21 – vss. 27 – 32 to get the context of Paul’s accusation of bringing Trophimus (a Gentile) into the temple
Read from Acts 22: 1,2 to show how the crowd of Jews in Jerusalem was glad to listen attentively to Paul’s testimony about his conversion UNTIL he got the the part of his story where God called him, as a Jew, to go share the gospel with non-Jews . . . .
Acts 22: 21 “Then the Lord said to me, ‘Go; I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’ ” 22 The crowd listened to Paul until he said this. Then they raised their voices and shouted, “Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!”
in Act 23 vs 40 Jews make an oath to not eat or drink anything until they kill Paul
the Roman commander provides 270 armed soldiers to escort Paul on horseback – why is Paul in such great danger: 1. God told him to go TO the Gentiles and 2. he took a Gentile into the temple court – past the WALL
charged words that jews would use to describe Gentiles (words that Paul grew up with as standard descriptors of Non Jews) included:

- b/t vs 11 ‘formerly you’ and ‘consequently you are no longer’ in vs. 19 there is Christ
the change in view goes from “don’t let them breach the wall to . . . break down the wall”
The new, Christ created reality is that of being:
• Brought near vs. 13
• At Peace vs. 15
• Two become one vs. 15
• Both have access to the Father vs. 18
• Fellow citizens vs. 19
• Members of God’s household vs. 19
• Built together, indwelt by God’s Holy Spirit vs. 22
If you can grasp hold of the significance of vs. 22 your life will be changed!
Paul is writing and saying that whereas previously you couldn’t even enter the temple where Jews went, you were on pain of death kept away from the presence of God NOW in Christ you are being used to be part of the new temple and you are the holy of holies – God lives in you
-my 3 year old asked me last night. Is God in our house? YES. But I can’t see him. He’s here with us and in us. HMMMMMM – but, but ?
Any reasons we contrive for why someone’s not allowed in ‘the club/church’ are false, there are to be NO barriers
Laws create rules about the flesh and expose its inadequacy to live up to them
Vs. 15 IN THE FLESH, Jesus abolished the law with its commandments and regulations
What did laws ever accomplish? Laws demonstrate the inadequacy of humanity so that Jesus could come along and prove himself alone capable to meet the requirements of the law
Colossians 2:13-15
13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you[a] alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross

God is not looking to eradicate ethnic distinctions or nations or cultures. Each should be celebrated. All are to be redeemed and infused with his Spirit’s guidance and love.
National boundaries, rather than places for walls, razor wire and armed patrols in watchtowers - should be places of powerful, positive interaction where the gifts that one nation has rec’d from God can be shared generously with its neighbors.

Only when the church shows God’s love is Christ’s victory being demonstrated.
*Reconciliation conference in Ephesus for Jews and Palestinians to outline the walls that divide them in society and how they will break those walls down
Munayer says that reconciliation is not an easy journey; "it has a lot of challenges, but it is also an act of obedience to bring the Messiah of peace into every aspect of our society whether it is social, political or economical. Aren’t we called to be a prophetic voice against hatred, anger, enmity and violence? …. How can people taste the Kingdom of God and see his fullness if we don’t move within society?

conclusion
Who do I hold prejudice against?
Whom do I build walls for?
How will I welcome Christ to see them taken down?

Ephesians 2:1-11 | Randy Hein

2011-01-16T21:38:00.000-08:00

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Ephesians 1 | Randy Hein

2011-01-09T21:12:00.000-08:00

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It’s late Sunday afternoon and you are sitting on the couch in front of the T.V. The World Juniors are over, Canucks aren’t playing, there’s nothing on except reruns and TMZ, so you turn off the T.V. Are you hungry? No. Little bored restless.

You look at the coffee table, it needs dusting. On your coffee table, underneath the T.V. Guide and an issue of People Magazine – which your wife bought – sits your Bible. You stare at it for a minute.

You’ve heard countless sermons by preachers saying, “Wretched are we, for we spend more time watching T.V. than reading our Bibles, blah, blah, blah …” So you pick it up and start flipping through it. Certain books – like Ezekiel and Zephaniah – are incomprehensible. Always have been. Other books like gospels are well-worn territory.

Whatever else you may be feeling, a certain dread begins to sink. This book used to mean something to you, and – if you were to be honest, and there is one else is in the room, so you can be honest –
… you are feeling a bit indifferent flipping through the pages. It’s a bit unsettling.

You say out loud, “Isn’t this book supposed to speak to me?” And you look up when you say it, so it’s kind of a prayer.

Well, there’s a knock at your front door. More like a bang. You get up and open the door, and there stands a stranger. He looks strange anyway: a scrawny old man in tattered old clothes. He smells like he’s been sleeping in his sweat for a few days. It’s not pleasant. He begins speaking to you quickly with wild hand gestures. It’s hard to make out what he’s saying: he’s speaking in a thick accent that – oddly – sounds to you like a cross between Arabic and Italian.

He’s trying to hand you something. He’s being a bit invasive about it. “Thank you”, you say firmly, “but I’m not interested” and you begin to close the door. But he jams his foot in the door. His forcefulness scares you. But you look in his eyes, and you realize he’s not dangerous … you could take him. He’s not dangerous, he’s just desperate.

“Please” he says, “This is for you.”

He hands you what looks like an envelope and turns to leave. You notice down the back collar of his shirt, that his back has been scarred and bruised. And you are thinking, “Who is this?” As he’s walking away, it sounds like he’s talking to himself – hands gesturing – but as you listen closer; you realize he’s praying. And it sounds like he’s praying for you.

So, you find yourself alone again. With this envelope in your hand thinking, “That was really strange … what am I supposed to do with this?”

So you sit down you open it up and you begin to read it. It’s a letter, but it feels like a script. It tells a story. A big story. A cosmic drama. Sinister forces and powers have hijacked God’s good and beautiful creation. And they are holding it captive. But God unleashes a plan. And he ushers in his final victory over these powers through his Son: Jesus of Nazareth.

But the story overturns our expectations of how things ought to work.
God does not defeat his enemies in the way we might anticipate. In fact, He subverts human notions of triumph and glory in that he wins by losing. He doesn’t match force with force, he matches force with sacrifice and love. And, in doing so, He unleashes resurrection life on his world.

This letter you are reading – titled simply “Ephesians” – becomes a script for how you can continue to participate in this drama. In it, Paul is trying to shake your perspective. He’s saying, “Not all things are as they seem to be.” Life may seem mundane, and events may seem arbitrary, but they’re not. You may have a certain grasp of events, but it’s limited. More is going on. And – whatever that is – God is inviting you into it.

Ephesians is unlike any other letter Paul wrote in that it contains no real arguments. Most of Paul’s letters are written to specific churches that are dealing with specific issues: To the Galatians, it’s religious legalism. To the Corinthians, it’s spiritual elitism. To the Romans, it’s grace. To the Colossians, it’s Gnosticism.
In fact, when we are reading these letters, we are hearing only one side of a conversation. Paul has received a report, and he’s writing back his response.

None of this back and forth is evident in the letter to the Ephesians. There are very few personal remarks and he doesn’t seem to be responding to any particular occasion. It’s as though he’s writing for the church across time and space.

It is for this reason that, sometimes, when I reading this, I feel Paul is talking right to us. That Paul is reaching – over the span of 2000 years – right into our circumstances.

And what we find, in his opening remarks, is that he’s praying. Think about it. He’s reaching across 2000 years, and he’s not coming out of the gates telling us what to do. The first thing he is doing is praying for us.

When someone tries to argue a point with me, I usually listen to what they are saying in a certain kind of light. There is nothing wrong with a good argument.
There is nothing wrong with exercising the power of reason to try to persuade someone. But when people say they are praying for me? It’s different.

Paul is saying, “Lord, I pray that they would come to know something that they don’t yet know. Or maybe they did know, but they have forgotten. Or maybe they know a little but, I that they would come to know more fully ...”

We are going to look at the first half of his prayer tonight, and the second half next week.

In the Greek, this (1:3-14) is one long run on sentence. It’s like Paul drank a lot of coffee before he wrote it. There is no measured rhythm, no singular train of thought. I don’t know if it was written spontaneously, but it was certainly written ecstatically.

Trying to study it is like trying to drink from a fire hose. It’s coming at you so fast, you can’t absorb it all. It’s full of energy.

“To the saints.”
“To those who are faithful to Jesus Christ.”
You are thinking right out of the gates, “Well, he’s not talking to me. Ask anybody. I ain’t a saint. I’d like to think that I have had moments of obedience and faithfulness, but I ain’t a saint.”

With all due respect to my Catholic brothers and sisters: Francis was a saint, Augustine was a saint, Thomas Aquinas was a saint. I can go through the whole list, they’re all saints. But so are you.

We don’t become saints by working harder. We don’t become saints by doing it better than others. We don’t become saints by mustering up more belief, or forcing ourselves into finer faithfulness. We don’t attain sainthood. It’s all a gift, people. You become a saint, by recognizing grace. Surrendering to it. Receiving it.

We are the saints. We are the sign – the proof – that God does not give up.

In verses 3-5 we discover that we are not only saints, but also adopted children. God is our Father, and we are his kids.

We can call God “Father”. In fact, in the Apostles Creed, this is the first description we have of God. “I believe in God the Father almighty Maker and Heaven and Earth.” Even before we are told to recognize God as “Creator”, we know him as “Abba”. When the disciples say to Jesus, “Teach us how to pray”. He says, “When you pray say, ‘Abba’”.

Many of us in this room have messed up notions of what a father is.

I get it. I am not a perfect father, and sometimes my kids tick me off. I’m limited by my temperament, my lack of patience and my basic stupidity. But I love my kids. When they were little, I couldn’t take my eyes off them. I celebrated every moment of growth. Now, as they are getting older, I love engaging with them. I want the best. I love them. How much more does your Father in Heaven, who is perfect, love you?

He has adopted us as sons “to the praise of his glorious grace which he has freely given us”. Verse 6 literally translates, “to the praise of his glorious grace which he has graced all over us.”

But he goes on …

“In Christ, through his blood [through his sacrifice on the cross], we have redemption and forgiveness.” We are free and clean.

By now, these words should move us. We should read this stuff and, somehow, be affected. But I know that sometimes we aren’t. We flip through our Bible with indifference.

Maybe you’re here tonight and you are feeling tired of it. You’ve tried this ‘Christian thing’ and – for some reason, it doesn’t seem to work. It doesn’t fit right. And the harder you try, the worse you feel.

You look around church and you see shinny happy people, but you don’t feel like a saint. Not tonight.

One of my favorite saints was a guy named Johnny Cash. I like him for a lot of reasons. He was kind of in your face. For him, truth was a greater virtue than good manners. I like him because he was far from a picture of perfection.
For the first ten years of his music career he had a serious addiction to drugs, often taking handfuls of uppers at a time. During this period he wrecked cars, smashed up hotel rooms and got arrested on a few occasions. His lifestyle destroyed his first marriage.

He did everything he could do to run from God, including – get this – literally crawling deep into a cave without a flashlight … to die. Crazy stuff.

He believes God met him in that place. But, even after this, his walk of faith was bumpy. Cash did not understand perfection, but he understood redemption. Because he had received it. And – even though he was tough as nails – he was really soft toward the downtrodden. And he is remembered in Hollywood as the guy who stood beside those who no one else would stand beside.

And that kind of reminded me of Jesus. Maybe we need to rethink what it means to be a saint.

Cash sang about pain, and sin. He sang about Jesus unapologetically. And – for some reason – the world listened.
And it made me think; maybe sinners make the best saints. Maybe those who understand their own depravity – their own capacity for darkness – are those that will get grace the most.

Now, you don’t have to smash up cars and crawl into dark caves. But whatever it is, including your apathy, I believe God wants you to experience liberation. You are forgiven. You are accepted. You are redeemed.

I was watching the movie, “Walk the Line” a couple of nights ago. Maybe that’s why I got thinking about Johnny Cash. And, at one point, Johnny’s brother says to him. “You can’t help nobody, if you can’t tell them the right story.”

This is what Paul is trying to give us in Ephesians. He’s trying to tell us the right story. He wants to tell us the story that makes sense of all of our stories. And – further – he wants us to inhabit the story. He wants us to know who we are in it.

I believe we are in desperate need of this vision. We need to be jerked out of our slumber. Paul is saying, “Wake up, church. This is who you are. And I’m praying that you will somehow get it.”

We are so conditioned to look down, when we should be looking up. Because things are not as they sometimes appear to be.

So, this week I would encourage you to read the first chapter of Ephesians, or – rather – let Paul pray over you.

But for tonight, let’s simply declare and enjoy God’s redemption… I’m going to ask Mike to lead us in this.

New Year's Meditation | Randy Hein

2011-01-02T21:06:00.000-08:00

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Boxing Day Reflection | Bob Opperman

2010-12-26T21:53:00.001-08:00

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Advent: Love All - James Prette

2010-12-19T00:59:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately the Place recording failed. But James delivered a very similar sermon in the morning. Listen/Download HERE

Advent: "Just Advent" / Give more/ Joy - Mark Wollenberg (IJM)

2010-12-12T21:26:00.000-08:00

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Today's guest speaker was from International Justice Mission

Advent: Spend Less/Love - Bob Opperman

2010-12-05T21:48:00.000-08:00

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Advent: Worship Fully / Hope - Randy Hein

2010-11-28T22:09:00.001-08:00

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The stage is set, and we have gathered, once again, around Advent to hear the sacred story. And we have been encouraged to ‘ready our hearts’ so that we may worship more fully this season. And that is what I am here to do: to challenge us to do just that: to worship more fully.

So, let’s begin. We are inclined to think that the story of Christmas begins with the Annunciation: with a Jewish girl at her prayers being visited by the angel Gabriel and being told that she is going to give birth to a King.

But the story really doesn’t begin there. It begins with a people walking in darkness. This isn’t the beautiful darkness of a peaceful silent night. This is the ugly darkness of a world gone wrong.

You see, way back. Way, way, way back, father Abraham had been given a big promise. “Abraham” Here I am. “Abraham, I am God almighty, and I have chosen you. And because you have stepped out in faith I’m going to bless you. You will be fruitful. The father of many nations. In fact, look at all those stars out there tonight, Abraham.
Your descendants will be as numerous as them. And all people on earth will be blessed through you. As a sign, I will establish with you my covenant. And it will be an everlasting covenant.”

So, tell me, Abraham, how did that work out? Well, we know how it worked out. It’s well documented.

Within a few generations, Abraham’s descendants will be shackled into slavery for centuries. Once delivered, they will establish a brief monarchy for themselves. And I say ‘for themselves’ quite intentionally, because it was not God’s desire. He wanted to be their king. But they wanted to be like other nations. “We want a king, on a throne, full of power, with a sword in his fist.”

This collapsed into anarchy and they were conquered. And from there, they became the spoils of one Empire after another: Babylonia, then Assyria. Words like ‘captivity’ and ‘exile’ seemed to define their very existence. The Macedonians, and now reconquered and occupied by Rome.

To be sure, in this history there where some redeeming high points. Their deliverance from Pharaoh’s hand. The reign of King David. The shepherd boy from Bethlehem. But these events were few and far in-between.

God had so desired that they would be a kingdom of priests. That the way they lived and governed themselves would reflect His goodness, His holiness, His justice, His grace and His generosity.

But their dismissal of God, their stubbornness, their lack of trust, their embracing of other ways and other gods had led them to centuries of humiliation and oppression.

And now they had Herod, a king who had taken the throne by laying siege to Jerusalem.
A shrewd man, with political finesse, he had managed to befriend Caesar Augustus who had given him the title “King of the Jews”. He was a guy that would really stop at nothing to get what he wanted … and to keep what he thought he was entitled to. As we know, it became fro him a deadly obsession.

And what can we say of Caesar Augustus? We can tell you that that was not his real name. His name was Gaius Octavianus. The name Augustus he gave himself. And it’s really not a name at all. It’s a title.

It literally means, “object of worship”. The Senate in Rome declared him the son of a god and established rites of worship around his name.

Patient … the master of efficiency, Augustus was a genius in administration and overhauled every aspect of the empire. Roman rule flourished under his authority.

He made some basic demands of his subjects: that they accept the rule of Rome – or the Pax Romana – and also that they would pay heavy taxes. Rome was decadent. It consumed a lot.

This tax would have to be collected. So, it came to pass that a census would be taken of the entire Roman world. And everyone went to his own town to register. Or so the story goes …

Did you ever feel like things didn’t work out for you? So, tell me Abraham, how did it work out … for you and your descendants?

“Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land; when they are famished, they will become enraged and, looking upward, will curse their king and their God. Then they will look toward the earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness.” Isaiah 8:21-22

I know we don’t really want to be reminded us this stuff at Christmas time. It seems incompatible with our desire to make this season happy. But if we are to worship fully – which is my task to teach into this morning – then we must face certain realities.

When we seek pay attention to God, when we seek to recognize and acknowledge Him, and we will begin to examine ourselves and our world in this light. And it will compel us to see what God sees. Christian worship is not about disengaging from worldly concerns, or detaching from suffering. Our worship will give us language name those things. This is what Isaiah is doing here. He is acknowledging the pain.
By the time we get to the gospels, God had not spoken in over 200 years. I think most people had given up. They looked elsewhere for meaning instead of watching and waiting and hoping. They found other ways to cope.

But not everyone. If you were to poke your head around certain dark corners in the temple, you might see people like Simeon and Anna. And if you were to listen to them pray, you might hear them whisper. “How long, oh Lord? How long?”

These are the people that remembered the promises. They would read scripture and let the words of the prophets speak to them. “But you, oh Bethlehem, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come a ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”

From Bethlehem? Like David? Yes! Cuz that’s what we want. We want a king, on a throne, full of power with a sword in his fist. Tell us, prophets of old, will we ever have a king like that again?

No. He will bear no beauty or glory to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

Well, okay. Maybe he won’t be anything to look at, but he’ll take down the Romans, right? And that crazy puppet king. Right?

No. All hell and earth will rage against him. He will be rejected and despised. He will be familiar with pain. A man of such suffering. We will cover our faces. We’ll consider him afflicted and punished by God.

Oh …

But, surely, he will take on our pain and bear our suffering. He will be pierce for our transgressions. Crushed for our iniquities. And by his wounds we will be healed.

This thing that I am doing will be bigger. For to you a child will born …

The language used here is not ‘religious’ in the strictest sense.
It’s not even what most people would consider ‘spiritual’. It’s the language of politics. The word government is used twice. Words like prince, throne, kingdom, ruler, justice, righteousness … these words make up the bulk of the text.
Did something a little crazy this week.. proclaimed

This leads me back to Herod and Augustus. And this is why I think the phrase ‘Advent Conspiracy’ is a good one. You see, two thousand years ago, there was a certain way of perceiving things. Caesar was Lord. Herod was King. Their values dictated how life was practiced.

Caesar had built a successful empire. In his time, Herod built seven palaces and restored the Temple – it’s hard not to be impressed. But central to the way of Herod and Caesar was self-interest, entitlement, and recognition.

But Jesus said, “There is another way”. And that way ‘conspired’ against the dominant thinking of the time. He said, “You can’t be self-interested and follow me. You can’t come to the cross with a sense of entitlement, or you will miss the whole point.”
And Jesus recognized, not the powerful and mighty – the influential, the cool, the suave, the elite, the hip – he recognized the poor, the smelly, the vulnerable and the marginalized. He stood with those who stood alone and he spoke for those that had no voice.

Now, how can we fast-forward two thousand years and not wonder if the way of Herod and Caesar has not supplanted the way of Jesus? Even for us Christians. This morning can be a time of real examination for us.

If we are going to walk faithfully with Jesus, what values have we embraced that need to be challenged? What things have we been hanging onto that we need to let go?

Now, I don’t think there is anything wrong with being generous with your friends and family at Christmas time. I don’t think it’s even wrong to even be a bit generous with yourself.

But I think we do need to take a stand against – at least in our own lives – radical consumerism. This belief that purchasing stuff will bring you happiness, meaning and fulfillment. You might think, “course we know that money can’t by you love”. But consumerism is the fastest growing religion in the world: faster than Christianity, faster than Islam. And it demands almost complete devotion.

So, that’s the letting go side of the question. The second part of the challenge is this…

If we were to worship Jesus fully, what would we embrace more fully? Who would we, in Christ’s name and for his sake, engage more deeply? Who should we be standing with?

We have two symbols in our church this morning. Water over here and Cardboard over there. Water and Cardboard: very basic, very primal.

Let’s talk about water first. There is nothing sophisticated about water. But, for many of our brothers and sisters in Africa this Christmas, water will mean life. Last year, due to Lambrick’s collective generosity, six new wells were constructed for clean water in Belo Ethiopia.

It was sparked by Bob. Remember? He just walked up and emptied the change in his pocket in that box. I want to – again – encourage a little spontaneous giving this morning. Some of us buy things impulsively. I don’t think it would be wrong to give impulsively this morning. To give what’s in your pocket for clean water.

But I would like to challenge you to do something else as well. This is a water glass from home. It’s going to sit on our dinner table all advent: right beside our advent candles.

Looking at it before we give thanks will inform our prayers. Maybe provoke conversation around our table about how we are going to spend our money this Christmas. It could even be the container that we fill – with bills and coinage – to bring to church. I would encourage you to do the same.

The second symbol is for our local initiative: cardboard. We would love each one of you to take a cardboard box home this morning. We have two big problems in Victoria. Some of us have too much stuff. And other people don’t have enough. So we want you to take these boxes home and fill them with good things. All the information is in your bulletin this morning. We’ve chosen organizations that usually get neglected at this time of year. Please read it carefully.

As a leadership, we’ve put time into this because it is our hope and desire that you – our family – will, indeed, worship more fully this Christmas season. That you will embrace Jesus as Lord and King.

And that, as we worship, we will become more like him. That as we open our lives he will open our hearts.

Worldview: Gen 11 | Randy Hein

2010-11-21T22:28:00.000-08:00

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Well, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, tonight is our last night on this series in Genesis. Do you know what that means? It means that next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent.

Now, when I say this, I usually get polarized responses.

On one side, we have the Scroogy Grinches that groan and complain about the commercialism and the consumerism of this season. These are the people that hear Bing Crosby singing ‘White Christmas’ in the malls in November and they want to throttle somebody.

On the other side, we have the Christmas Pixies. You know who you are. You can’t wait for eggnog and mandarin oranges to arrive at the grocery stores. That’s the sign. You applaud people who put up their Christmas lights at the end of November.

It was the ancient church that decided Advent should be a month. But it wasn’t created to maximize shopping days, or to create hype and buzz.
It was created to birth a sense of longing and waiting. To slow us, quiet us, but also wake us from our slumber.

To aid you, our collective of musicians, poets and artists are pulling together an evening titled, “Sitting, waiting, wishing”. On Thursday, December 2. Musicians like Cindy Davis and poets like Carla Funk and Kristy Westendorf will be contributing. So put it on your calendars.

Tonight, we look at the last of these ancient stories that inhabit the first 11 chapters of Genesis. These stories that tell us so much about why we are here, what our purpose is, and what – in a manner of speaking – went wrong.

And we’ve talked about this. Genesis paints creation is a symphony of beauty. The cosmos, and everything it, is affirmed as being good. So, even today, when you experience laughter, and taste good food, marvel at a sunset, or weep while listening to good music, you can know that – in those moments – you are experiencing the world as God intended it.
In this manner, God’s act of creation isn’t ‘back there’ in time, it’s still here – it’s still happening. Because creation is still charge with the grandeur of God.

And we were created to be in communion with all things. *

But we know things aren’t as they should be. We know things have gone wrong.

And we see, in the following chapters of Genesis, how wrong things can go. From Adam and Eve wanting to be gods, to Cain murdering Abel. From the vengeful Lamech – who kills for the taste of revenge, to the disrespectful Sons of Noah – who, after the flood, look down on their poor, drunk naked father – a man who has probably seen too much – and laugh.

There are no fairy tale endings. We see the complexities of sin. But it’s right here, in the story of Babel, that primeval history reaches its fruitless climax.

After the story of Babel, Genesis will pick up the history of one man – Abraham – and his descendants. And, through him by an act of faith, hope will be reborn to the world.

But tonight we are looking at chapter 11. And what we find here is that, collectively, humanity continues to travel eastward to the plain of Shinar. While we can’t locate this story in actual time and space, the language is highly symbolic. When Adam and Eve leave the garden, they move east. After Cain murders Abel, he goes east. The Narrative is telling us that humanity is moving further and further away from Eden.

They determine to follow in Cain’s footsteps and build a city.

“Come, let’s us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They’ve discovered that they can use brick instead of stone to build things. This is the new technology. This is progress. “Look at us! What can you do? We … can make bricks and bake them thoroughly.”

Now, very important, the issue here isn’t progress. You may disagree with me, but I think progress, as we know it today, is value neutral. For example, progress in the areas of science and technology has produced great things like global communication, penicillin and i-tunes. But it’s also responsible for global warming, napalm and splitting the atom. Massive good. Massive evil.

The question for us today is this; do we have the moral character and the wisdom to wield what we are discovering? Martin Luther King didn’t think so. He said, “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

But the issue in Genesis chapter 11 isn’t progress or technology. Making bricks and baking them thoroughly wasn’t the problem. The spirit that it was born out of – their motives, their intent, their posturing – this is the dangerous stuff.

Through human ambition, we are going to try to attain heaven. “Let us build a tower whose top will reach into heaven, so that we may make a name for ourselves.”
There is so much human nature packed into this sentence that I can’t begin to unpack it tonight.

I will say that, historically speaking, every human attempt to create heaven on earth – as noble as the efforts have been – has always resulted in bringing hell.

But there’s more here. These guys aren’t young political idealists, trying to form a spiritual utopia. Their motive isn’t to commune with God, but rather to make a name for themselves. “This tower going to be a monument to our greatness.”

I am Ozy-mandias, king of kings: Look on my works, yea mighty, and despair.

I am Ramsees. I am Caesar. Js suis Napoleon. I’m Rockefeller. I’m Donald Trump, look at my towers. “We are going to glorify and then fortify ourselves.” These guys live for 80-some years, and then – like the rest of us –they die. It’s kind of absurd.

In verse five the action switches to heaven.
This is the ironic turning point in the story because, for the first time here, we are seeing things from God’s perspective. This tower, which they thought reached to heaven, is so small and insignificant that He has to come down to even see it. The narrative is trying to capture some of the absurdity of the situation.

But there is a certain gravity here as well. A kid with a gun in his hand is a concerning thing. God knows the potential here for tragedy, and he intervenes to confuse their speech and they abandon their efforts, and scatter.

Babel brings primeval history to an end. From here, we are introduced to Abraham and, through him, hope will literally be rebirthed. But it’s a long, long road. In a nutshell, they will find themselves enslaved by one ethnic group in Egypt, conquered and exiled by another group in Babylon. Somewhere in the middle, the Macedonians will have their way, only to be finally re-conquered and occupied by another ethnic group coming out of Rome.

It seems that Babel has the last word. Confusion. Anxiety. Disorientation. Alienation. Even today the city is often not considered a place of community and camaraderie, but a place of chaos, ruthless competition and blind ambition.

Fast-forward this story to another time and place. We are in a different city. We are no longer in primeval times. The city is Jerusalem. The year is around 34 AD. It’s the beginning of June. There is an international crowd descending upon Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost.

It’s a melting pot of people who had come from every corner of the earth: Verse 5 of Acts chapter 2 reads that there were people there “from every nation under heaven”. You have all kinds different cultures and different languages in one place.

If you tried to put representatives of these of people groups together today in a room, you would have a war on your hands. It wasn’t quite that hostile back then, but clearly there was a lot of chaos in the city that day. It was Babel-like.

On that day, a small group of believers huddled together in one place. They weren’t trying to make a name for themselves: they weren’t trying to build a tower to heaven. They are praying and waiting. And, on that day, heaven came to them.

I don’t think they had a clue what was coming. But suddenly the Spirit of God descended like an explosion. The event is audible – there’s a wind. It’s visible – these tongues of fire rest over their heads. Clearly there is a divine presence in the room. But God doesn’t just enter the room. He enters into the believing community. The community is baptized – immersed – and filled with the Holy Spirit.

Now, you get the sense that they must have left the house for the streets, because somehow they have drawn this multi-cultural crowd around them. I don’t know how you see it in your head, but picture Toronto. A big trade center. These guys bursting in and saying “the Leafs won the cup”. “You guys are drunk.”

And what happens next is the clincher.
These Christians begin declaring the wonders of God, and everybody in the crowd – and I suspect it must have been around the Temple because at this point there are thousands of people listening – but everybody is hearing these words in their native language.

And the people are amazed and blown away … and unified.

Now, from a cosmic perspective, I’ve always interpreted this event at Pentecost as the divine reversal of Babel. That somehow, Babel was undone on that day. But I’ve come to think of it differently.

You see, God doesn’t destroy old things. He makes old things new. This isn’t the reversal of Babel. Humanity doesn’t return to one monolithic language and one monolithic way of doing things. On that day, diversity wasn’t denied, it was celebrated and affirmed.

So this got me to thinking, with the coming of the Spirit, Babel was not reversed, it was redeemed.
The first miracle of the Spirit was to make Jesus understood in all languages. Right from the very beginning – even before the Christian church was called ‘Christian’ – this movement was multi-cultural and multi-lingual: it was a celebration of diversity.

This has huge implications for how we think about global mission. But tonight, I want to bring it home.

What we are seeing here is this: whatever was broken in the garden – those four relationships that we’ve been talking about – is being redeemed through the work of the Jesus. God wants me to experience this. * He wants me to extend this good news to others. So, by his Holy Spirit, he’s invited me to participate with him in this new thing.

You too. You can choose to embrace this, or not. Tonight we are going to embrace the redemption of Babel through the communion table. I thought it would be cool and very declarative to hear the story of the cross in different tongues tonight. It will be translated for us behind them on the screen, so we will be able to follow.

This theme of using different languages was later taken up by the Gospel writers, who wrote the stories of Jesus down in Greek. Jesus almost certainly spoke Aramaic when he taught, but the Gospel writers chose to record his words in Greek so that more people could understand them. Christianity does not have a sacred language, we don’t even have a record of Jesus words in the form in which they were spoken. The implications for this are enormous and reverberate down though history.

Just as the Cross must been seen as the healing point for the relationships that were broken in Eden, so Pentecost must also be seen as a unifying event for all people. This is one of the ways in which God, through Christ, is bringing all things – in heaven, in earth and under the earth – together.

The Fall left us broken, but – if we choose – the Cross can forgive us and begin a healing process in us. Babel has left us scattered, afraid and alienated, but – if we choose – the Spirit of God can unify us and bring us into community.

*****

Today, Ethnologues have identified 7,299 know languages. And it’s growing. In the past 10 years, they’ve discovered 103 that were previously unidentified.

Language is fascinating, but it can also be lethal. Throughout history people have subjugated one another because of language.

Only time between Passover and Pentecost to thousands of Jewish pilgrims from all over the earth to Jerusalem. Verse five of acts chapter 2 says they were devout people from every nation under heaven assembled in the city.

And suddenly, in a central place of the city they hear a strange sound of certain men and women, evidently peasants from Galilee, or speaking in over 16 different languages. Yet these untrained men and women are speaking in languages which were foreign to them. There’s speaking about how great God is, worshiping and praising him. This amazed and bewildered the crowd and blew their minds they were hit hard, stunned, and staggered.

What happened? Their testimony is this. They were waiting on God. They were not reaching out to try to become like God building something through human achievement into the sky, rather in humility they were waiting on God. And something like the wind, symbolizing God’s Spirit, blew fresh on them. And tongues of fire descended from heaven. They left from their private hosts into the street, crowds gathered to hear the sound. All the visitors, then, heard these ecstatic exclamations of the apostles and their companions. The praise of God in various tongs is frequently heard in the city of Jerusalem at this time, but usually create confusion. On this day a unified.

The event was nothing less than the reversal of the curse of Babel.

God’s plan from the start was that people fill the whole earth, that they speak different languages, and that they see the world in different ways. His intention was that the diversity of languages and cultures, just like that of the rest of creation, reflect his glorious creativity and imagination.

Mankind rebelled against this, as we have against so many of God’s gifts and the responsibilities he’s given us. But through his grace he doesn’t reverse his blessing but rather redeems the situation so that people of all nations can be united in Christ, bringing glory to him in all their immense diversity – just as he intended all along.

Which brings us to Pentecost. Sometimes people say that at Pentecost, God reversed the Tower of Babel, but that is exactly what He didn’t do. At Pentecost, God underlined the linguistic diversity that He introduced at Babel. Everyone in the crowd was able to understand the disciples speaking in his or her own language. The first miracle that the Holy Spirit did was to make it possible for the story of Jesus to be understood in many languages all at once. The Triune relational God did nor force conformity on his followers by making them all hear his message in one language, He encouraged diversity by allowing them to hear in their own language. From even before the Christian church was called Christian, it was multi-cultural and multi-lingual.

This theme of using different languages was later taken up by the Gospel writers, who wrote the stories of Jesus down in Greek. Jesus almost certainly spoke Aramaic when he taught, but the Gospel writers chose to record his words in Greek so that more people could understand them. Christianity does not have a sacred language, we don’t even have a record of Jesus words in the form in which they were spoken. The implications for this are enormous and reverberate down though history.

Some people have argued that Pentecost is the reversal of Babel. It is a celebration of divercity.

Not the reversal but the redemption of Babel.

The shadow of Babel. When the light of Pentecost.

Some people in the crowd ridiculed the believers as drunk, but Peter explained that a momentous time had arrived in the history of salvation, a time when God was now calling not only Jews but "all people" (Acts 2:17) to a life full of the Spirit. At its best, this new community of the Spirit celebrates, incorporates, and then transcends barriers of race, social stratification, economics, ethnicity, language, and gender. Diversity without division, and unity without uniformity, ought to characterize the Jesus community.

Pentecost and the birth of the new unified-but-diverse Jesus community thus reverses the curse of the tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9). In those first pages of the Bible language divided humanity in a cacophony of confusion. In the last pages of the Bible, the new community that began at Pentecost culminates in a linguistic extravaganza of "a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language" (Revelation 7:9). In that heavenly vision, all 7,299 known language groups will complete the unity of all humanity rather than destroy it.

3. Finally, Pentecost differs from Babel in its result. Babel resulted in the disintegration of the human family into different races and nationalities. Pentecost, on the other hand, brings all peoples together and reunifies them under one universal family. This universal family embracing all races and nationalities is called church. "Catholic" means "universal". On Pentecost we celebrate the birthday of the Church. Today is, therefore, an opportunity to rededicate ourselves to be active and faithful members of this family of God we call Church.

The tower is to be so high that its top is in the sky or the heavens. The illusion to Babylonian theology is most obvious. The illusions to Babylonian theology is open and undisguised. The Tower of Babylon stands as a monument to man’s impotence before his Creator. It stands as a symbol of human pride. It’s a spoof. The Babylonians understood Babel to mean the gate of God. Hebrews understood it to mean mixed up and confused. The Tower of Babel was intended to be a monument to human effort, instead it became a reminder of human pride and folly.

From a purely human viewpoint, building a tower as high as the sky is not vicious undertaking, but it seems likely that Genesis music as a sacrilege. For the sky is also having, the home of God, and this ancient skyscraper maybe another seem an effort to become like God.

Worldview: Gen 6 | Stacey Toews

2010-11-15T09:43:00.000-08:00

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Wikipedia says the story of the flood this way:
God, seeing the wickedness of man, is grieved by his creation and resolves to send a great flood. He sees that Noah is a man "righteous in his generation," and gives him detailed instructions for the Ark. When the animals are safe on board God sends the Flood, which rises until all the mountains are covered and all life is destroyed. At the height of the flood the Ark rests on the mountains, the waters abate, and dry land reappears. Noah, his family, and the animals leave the Ark, and God vows to never again send a flood to destroy the Earth.

This story does not offer itself to nuance or shades of grey
There are the righteous/faithful, they are few in number
There are the condemned/judged they are the vast majority
There’s a sense of totality – a global flood reaching 20’ above the height of the tallest mountain obliterating every living thing on land
God shows himself, as depicted in 2 Peter 2, as ONE who is both able to:
1. rescue the godly
2. punish the wicket
Meet Noah
• husband
• father
• unique neighbor
• aged boat builder
• animal control officer
• logistician
• preacher of righteousness (2 Peter 2:5)
• rainbow covenant recipient (Genesis 9:12)
• heir of the righteousness that comes by faith (Hebrews 11:7)
I love that, it’s used as a way to describe only a few people in Scripture.
When God told Noah that he would be saved – I don’t think he did an ‘I’m so awesome’ dance. Nor did he do a ‘you suckers are going to drown’ dance.
When God told Noah that he would be saved – he did what he’d already been doing for 500 years – he continued to do what God told him to do. He built an ark in holy fear. (Hebrews 11:7)
Noah is a man who did not set his sails according to the winds of society or popular culture. The reason he was blameless in God’s eyes and chosen by God to build the ark was b/c he walked with God rather than taking cues from the world around him.
“Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.” Genesis 6:8
the decline of civilization’s morality is sudden and constant as revealed in Genesis starting in Gen. 4 where Cain murdered Abel – he’s at least somewhat apologetic. By the end of ch. 4 in Genesis we read of Lamech boasting of how he’d murdered another.
By the time of the flood God speaks of the state of humanity as always evil all the time
Noah is recorded in Genesis chapter 5 as the 10th generation from Adam/creation
Adam was 130 years when he became the father of Seth
. . . Seth was 105
. . . Enosh was 90
. . . Kenan was 70
. . . Mahalalel was 65
. . . Jared was 162
. . . Enoch was 65 (walked with God, God took him away)
. . . Methusaleh was 187
. . . Lamech was 182 (never saw his grandchildren)
Noah was 500 when he became the father of Shem, Ham, Japheth

Total elapsed time recorded from Adam’s life starting to Noah’s fatherhood at Genesis 5:32 = 1556 years
Families averaging 6 children = 10 million, 7 children = 40 million
By the time when Noah passed away at age 950 years (recorded in Genesis 9:28) 2006 years had passed since Adam & Eve were created by God.
Our perspective on time needs to be challenged!

The Hadza people - November 2010 National Geographic article
“He promised to send his son to a particular tree at the edge of the bush to meet me when I was scheduled to arrive, in three weeks.
Sure enough, three weeks later, when my interpreter and I arrived by Land Rover in the bush, there was Onwas's son Ngaola waiting for us. Apparently, Onwas had noted the stages of the moon, and when he felt enough time had passed, he sent his son to the tree. I asked Ngaola if he'd waited a long time for me. "No," he said. "Only a few days."
CHANGE – you want to talk about change sonny?
We talk about the CHANGE that happens in our lifetimes. We have no clue what change is in the course of a lifetime in comparison to the life lived by Noah. He was around for 950 years.
Noah saw the world populated. Wiped out. Repopulated.
He was 500 before he had kids. He spent 100 years building a boat.
He went into the boat with some of every animal on earth and stayed there for one year. When he entered the boat the world was populated, with different races and cities, it was ‘civilized’. When he disemb ‘ark’ ed one year later it was him his wife and their 3 sons with wives in tow. Until 2 or 3 generations after the flood, the whole population of the earth spoke a common language.
By the time he died, 350 years after the flood, he’d seen 9 generations of grandchildren born and it was almost time for Terah and his wife to welcome their son Abram.
In Genesis 11 when we read of the tower of Babel and God scattering the people’s of the earth by confusing their languages- Noah was still around then.

He built an ark in holy fear!
“By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family.” Hebrews 11:7
Noah’s faith birthed ‘holy fear’ and holy fear birthed obedience. It was all flowing from a life of faith.
"Things not yet seen" were to his faith substantial and evident.
Faithfulness means God can accomplish in your life what he wants.
If you sense God’s not doing much in your life – consider whether you are being faithful. God gives “next steps” to those who have faithfully completed what he’s already asked them to do. No faithful obedience on your part means no ‘next steps’ from God.
Proverbs 1:7 – the Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge
Philippians 2:12 ‘continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling’
If you want to be known as someone who knows, understands – there’s a starting place. The starting place is ‘fearing God’. When we fear God we have an orientation to all of creation that is accurate to God’s reality.
Our relationship to HIM, to humanity, to nature, to ourselves all are viewed in accurate context WHEN we have a fear of God.

How big was the ark?
450 feet long, 75 feet wide, 45 feet high
length – you know the previous class of BC Ferries – the QUEENS? Queen of New Westminster, Queen of Alberni, Queen of Asbestos – all of them. They are each about 450 feet long (130ish meters). Noah built a boat the same length and width (not as tall) with, at best, the help of his family!
Some of the ferries that are 450 feet long are capable of carrying 400 vehicles!
Apparently Egyptian cubits were longer and would have made it 515 feet long, not 450 feet.
Just over 100,000 square feet of floor space with 12 – 15 ceiling heights

The flood timeline:
7:11 we read that on the 600th year of Noah’s life on the 17th day of the second month – the floodgates of the heavens were opened
7:12,17 – For forty days the flood kept coming
7:20 the waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet
7:24 the waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days
8:13 by the first day of the first month of Noah’s 601st year the water had dried up from the earth
8:14 by the 27th day of the 2nd month the earth was completely dry
that’s 1 year + 10 days passing from
When Noah, his wife and their 3 sons with wives step out of the ark – there’s nobody left on the planet. It’s just them.
NO CONVERSIONS
I love to read stories of people like Nicodemus in the Gospel of John – a guy who first came to Jesus at night asking questions. By the end of the same gospel in John 19:39 we read that Nicodemus came to take Jesus’ body and brought with him 75 pounds of myrrh and aloes. He’d been won over to Jesus fully!
In Jonah 3 we read of how God responds in compassion to the repentance of the people of Nineveh – from the king down to the servants – the nation listens to the message of a prophet of God (a foreigner who wasn’t a good role model and did not have compassion) and they are saved. God fully changes his plans for Assyria’s future, relents and spares them. No destruction happens.
We don’t read of a nation, city, family or even ONE person turning to God in the story of Noah. He goes about his task, for 100 years, of living well and obediently constructing the means to his salvation. No one believes. They all MISS THE BOAT.
His preaching yielded no converts, none repented. All were condemned. None were saved. Noah is praised. Hmm . . . is God more concerned about me BEING faithful than anything else.
What does faithfulness look like?
Friedrich Nietzsche who wrote, "The essential thing 'in heaven and earth' is...that there should be long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living."   
What he calls "a long obedience in the same direction," the Bible calls variously steadfastness, faithfulness, and perseverance. It means to get on the road and stay there.
What are faithful people to do when those around them are running toward ruin?
Your life’s work/walk with God is an accumulation of one hammer blow after another.

Prior to the flood we don’t hear much of god’s voice in the narrative. There’s a command from him and a LOT of work on Noah’s part.

Once God’s desires have been accomplished thru the holy fear inspired actions of Noah does he speak. The flood has past, the earth is ready for a new start then – 101 years later, God speaks.
He blesses Noah 9:1
He gives new instructions 9:4
He establishes a covenant 9:9
He offers a sign for the covenant 9:17

Worldview: Gen 4 | Randy Hein

2010-11-08T09:34:00.001-08:00

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If you have been tracking with us over the past couple of weeks, you will have heard that between now and Advent, we are going to be going through the first eleven chapters of Genesis. These narratives and stories that take us back to the mists of time we find our bearings. It orients us. It answers a lot of the ‘why’ questions.

In week one, we talked about creation. Which is really described as a celebration. And – along with creating everything – the Lord implanted within us a yearning and a longing for four primary relationships. Can we please go through them again?

GOD / CREATION / OTHERS / OURSELVES. “How are you doing?”

There’s harmony. There’s no discord. And they were given a mandate within these relationships. Trust me. To take care of my world. Live in peace and community. And to like ourselves and find meaning in this purpose.

Last week, Kevin spoke about how these relationships get busted up. Bent out of shape.
Adam and Eve take their fate into their own hands, and when they hear God coming and they hide. They are banished from the garden. They blame each other. And they coving themselves in shame.

I still believe that this stands as the best picture with what is wrong with us today. We look at the world, and we see goodness and beauty. But there’s this deep-seated feeling that things are not quite right.

How many of you have seen the you-tube clip “David after the Dentist”? David is a little boy that has just gotten surgery done on his mouth. And he’s in the car afterward with his dad and he’s all drugged up and he knows something isn’t quite right with the world. Because he’s drugged, we get to hear what is going on in his head.

Think of how he is corresponding with his dad.

His memory is messed. It doesn’t seem real. There’s a point where he’s full of rage and doesn’t know why. Why is this happening to me? Is this going to be forever?

I identify with him. How many times have I turned on the news and said, “Is this real life?” How many times have I been blindsided by life – really confused – and said, “Why is this happening to me?” I look at the mess and I think, “Is this going to be forever?”

This disorientation is real, because we long – we ache – for something better. And we know it’s real and attainable, but somehow no matter how hard we try we can’t get there.

It’s very timely that we are looking at Cain and Able today. On Thursday this week, November 11th, we will stop and remember that we have had exactly zero years of peace since Genesis chapter 4 was written.

So let’s look at it. First a comment on the style. It’s written in very sober terms. The descriptions are sparse. You get this sense that the celebration of God’s beauty in the garden is over. Here there’s a drab gloom hanging over the universe. I picture a cloudy day.

We have two brothers – who have no memory of the garden – trying to sort things out. One is a shepherd, the other is a farmer.

The first context we see them in, is worship. Both bring offerings to the Lord, and the Lord finds favor with Abel’s offering, but does not look with favor upon Cain’s. The literal translation is that he paid attention to one offering and not the other.

Why? Why does he do this? Throughout history scholars have tried to fill in the blanks here.

Was it because one offering was veggie the other meat? Is God from Alberta? Does God No. There is a hint in the narrative that Abel offered the best of his flock. Where there is no suggestion that Cain gave from the best of his crop. But this is a bit of an inference.

Was Abel more blameless than Cain? You might want to think so, but truthfully we don’t know. Later, in the New Testament, the writer of Hebrews suggests in chapter eleven that Abel had better faith. But, in truth, we don’t know what that looks like.
The narrative doesn’t tell us. We can become obsessive in trying to tease out an answer, but in the end all we are left with is speculation. This leads me to believe that the focal point of the story isn’t really about Cain’s rejected offering.
It’s more about his reaction.

He is not happy with how things have turned out for himself. He’s upset and feeling dejected.

I think it’s interesting that God meets with Cain in this place… even speaks to him. You can read about it in verse 6. You see, God may not have paid attention to Cain’s offering, but he continues to pay attention to Cain.

But this isn’t good enough for Cain. At this point, he’s just bitter. And, his bitterness has found a target. His struggle for acceptance could have led him to prayer, but instead it leads brutality. And he kills his brother.

“Cain, would you, by any chance know where your brother is?” Why do you suppose God asks questions he already has the answer to?
I think he desires the interaction.

“Where is your brother? Where is Abel? Do you know?” “No.” He lies. Where Adam had confessed but blamed his wife, Cain lies outright. In every way, he’s harder than his dad. We see things progressively spiraling downward.

“Why should I care? Is it my job? Am I my brother’s keeper?” The answer to this question, buy the way, is “yes”. Are you your brother’s keeper? The answer is yes. We are to and keep and care for one another.

“Cain, what have you done? … what have you done?”

“Your brother’s blood is crying out to me. Your violence has polluted the soil, and for that reason, no matter how hard you work it, it will bear fruit for you no more. You will be driven from it.”

Adam and Eve were ejected from the garden, now Cain is ejected from the land itself. Adam and Eve turned on one another. Now Cain has nowhere to turn. And really … to no one. He is destined to be restless and alone.
“I can’t bear it.” He says. “The land is hostile, people will be hostile, and you … you are hostile.” God says, “No. I’m not. In fact, in the midst of all this, I’ll protect you.” I find this fascinating. His concern for the innocent is obvious. But it is matched by his concern for the sinner.

So Cain constructs a new existence for himself from scratch. Perhaps as some crazy attempt to escape the curse of loneliness, he builds a city.. It’s ironic isn’t it? Cities have been better known for breaking down communities than building them. The rise of urbanization has made that abundantly clear. The promise of the city will offer no redemption. But I’m getting ahead of myself. We will be coming back to this theme in a few weeks.

Well, the world isn’t young anymore. On the surface, the issues faced by Cain and Abel seem pretty trivial and childish compared to the complex and sophisticated issues we face today. I mean, today we are far more enlightened in dealing with conflict. Right?

There are a lot of places I could go with this. I could turn your attention to Protestants and Catholics, Moslems and Jews, Serbs and Croats, Hutu and Tutsi. I could examine at the actual causes of these conflicts. Land. Pride. Historical disputes that, on one hand, have been long forgotten, but on the other hand, seem to have taken root to the point of bondage. But I don’t think I have to.

The facts speak for themselves. This narrative still has something very definitive about us. Cain and Able are humankind.

But I think there is a deeper application tonight. And an application that is a lot more personal.

Remember, the initial context of this conflict is worship. Two guys worshipping God. It was in the context of worship that something went horribly wrong. Do things go wrong between people in church … ever? Maybe this is the best place to start.

Like Abel, there may have been a time when you quite innocently worshipped God in spirit and truth. You might even have felt blessed in real communion with a sense of passion and mission. But something happened to you. You were the victim of someone else’s sin. In their anger, their fear, their power-tripping, or their insecurity they came after you.

You did nothing wrong. I mean, really, you didn’t. You can’t be blamed. Someone blindsided you. It may have been someone close: a friend or a church leader. And maybe they did it in the name of the church. Or maybe even the name of God.

Your blood may not have been spilt on the ground, but maybe your spirit died a little on that day. Something inside you died. And you said, “Never again. I’ll go to church on occasion, but to really enter in community with you and trust you? Never.”

God cries for you. He cries out for the innocence in you that was murdered. I believe that joy that you once had about church can be resurrected and healed.
But I want to also look at Cain tonight. Because, if we were to be really honest, many of us at like him.

We see things coming too easily for certain people. Maybe they were born with better looks, maybe they are more confident, more articulate, have better people skills, more money. And it shouldn’t bug you, but it does.

If you didn’t know better, you would say that God has shown favour on them. With big smiles, they talk about how their prayers were answered and how blessed they feel, and you sit there and you listen, and you reflect on how God has remained silent in your suffering. And it doesn’t seem right.

And, rather than leading you to prayer, it leads you to resentment. You’re jealous. You’re threatened.

You begin to look for things that are wrong with them. And – behold – you can. You find areas where they are vulnerable. And you begin to point those things out to others. Sometime subtly, sometimes not so subtly. And you think it will make you feel better, but it doesn’t.
Tonight can be a night of healing for us … we need to remember another story.

2000 years ago, Jesus’ blood was spilt on the ground. Like Abel’s blood, it too cries out, but differently. Instead of crying out for justice, it cries out to our lostness. It cries, “The curse can be undone. Those wounds and hurts, that jealousy and anger … everything that wrecks us has been conquered by my love.”

And, through my blood, I offer a new way … a new fellowship … new communion. A new community.

Through the curse – through Cain – we are born into we are born into adversity and insecurity. Through the cross, we are reborn into mercy and we can learn to trust again.

Are we practicing life under the curse, or are we practicing life under the cross? Tonight we come to the communion table. We come to listen to the story, and enter the narrative, and to enact the mercy we have already received.
So we come to commune with God. But at this table, we do it with our brothers and sisters.

Jesus said, Matthew 5:23, if you have offended a brother or sister, it’s okay to come and worship, but be reconciled first. He says, leave your offering at the alter, go find them and sort it out so you can come back and worship.

Maybe that needs to happen tonight. Maybe, while we are getting up, you need to find someone in this room that you’ve wronged. Or maybe there’s just unresolved tension. And maybe you can show each other a little love. Take communion together.

Jesus so desires that we be one. That we live under the cross and not the curse.

Worldview: Gen 3 | Kevin McKee

2010-10-31T22:19:00.000-07:00

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Worldview: Gen 1-2 | Randy Hein

2010-10-24T22:26:00.000-07:00

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To the dismay of my wife, I’m not an overly sentimental man. So, when a new chick flick comes out, she usually finds herself going to see them with friends. But a few years ago, on our anniversary, we saw the movie ‘The Notebook’.

The movie begins with and elderly man – played by an aging James Garner (Jim Rockford) – and he arrives at an old folks home. He’s ushered in to meet an elderly woman. Apparently she is suffering from Dementia or Alzheimer’s. He sits down to read her a story. And you think, “Nice guy, probably retired himself, and he goes to retirement homes to read to old people.”

When he first arrives, the woman is a little stand-offish, but the nurse says, “He’s okay, he comes and he reads to you everyday.” So, the plot of the movie is his telling of this story.

The story is a romantic tale about a man who pursues a woman relentlessly, and never gives up. And that – against the odds – he finally wins her love and they end up together.

Now, I’m a little slow, but it took me about three quarters of the way through the film to realize that the story was theirs: that he is reading this story to his wife. And he is hoping that – in telling the story of their love from the beginning – she will be awaken.

He gets to the end and she says, “That’s the most beautiful story I have ever heard in my life, and it sounds so familiar.” And then there is a sudden change in her face. She becomes lucid and aware. She says, “It’s our story isn’t it?” He says, “yes.” She says, “How long do we have?” He says, “Last time it was five minutes.”

She asks, “How are the children?” He says, “They’re fine, they were here to see you today.” She says, “Tell them I love them.” Then she says, “Will you hold me, can we dance?” And they dance. But quickly as she has fallen into recognition, she fall out of recognition. And she finds herself in the arms of a stranger. And she gets all disoriented and begins to scream. It’s heat breaking.

All of our lives, God is telling us this great love story. He’s calling us to recall something that we have forgotten. And he is looking for those brief moments of cognition where – in a manner of speaking – we get rooted in the story again and everything will make sense.

But – as so often is the case – something happens and we become self-referential again. And we lose the story again. And, when this happens, we lose grip: we become disoriented.

Between now and advent – so over the next 5 weeks – we are going to explore these primal chapters of Genesis. And we are doing this with the hope and prayer that we will be reconnected with the Grad Story: this story that makes sense of all our stories, that are so critical in establishing a healthy worldview.

So, tonight, we go right back to the beginning. Christianity doesn’t begin with Jesus. It begins here. Words like salvation, redemption, and reconciliation make no sense outside of this story.

There are many ways that we can approach the first two chapters of Genesis. One of the ways, for example, is that we can ask it to give us an accurate scientific rendering of origins. Try to harmonize this account with scientific data.

In trying to do so, we can’t ignore 500 years of tension. Think of Galileo standing before the Holy Office in Rome fearing for his life because he proposed – in writing – that the earth was not the center of the universe. Or think of The Monkey Scopes Trial in 1925, where in a courtroom in Tennessee where the clash between evolution and creation came to a head. We have to recognize that the relationship between faith and science has been, at best, a bit tenuous.

So where does Randy stand on this? I believe a lot of the tension can be resolved when we ask the right questions of the text. The first question we must always ask is, “What was the intent of the original writer?” Who was the author? This book, I think rightly, has been ascribed to Moses. When was he writing this? What was his context?

Can I say, with sensitivity but confidence, that I don’t think Moses was overly concerned about presenting a scientific account of creation. That kind of rendering would have made little sense to the community that he was writing to. He wasn’t writing to refute Darwin and Copernicus. He was seeking to answer different questions. He had a different purpose. But that purpose is critical for us to understand.

Because, like us, the people he was writing to had lost their connection with their story. They had lost their collective memory. For hundreds of years, the Jews had lived in slavery. They had been immersed in paganism and polytheism: lustful gods doing crazy and chaotic things to bring forth the world. In many of these mythologies, humans are a mere unfortunate afterthought; subject to the whims of gods that act all too human. Moses is calling the Jewish community to an alternate worldview.

And he’s trying to reignite their memories. To remember a story they have lost.

GE 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

GE 1:3 And God said… let there be light …

There is nothing arbitrary about it. With clear intention, like an announcement of something great, God speaks, and creation bursts forth.

Light and sounds. Colors and textures. Things out of nothing. And then life. And it’s progressive: simple life to complex life and then life with consciousness.

Over fixed time periods God creates the whole cosmos: star-fields, oceans, vegetation, sea life, and animals. In Egypt, these things had all been deified. The sun was a god. The moon was a god. Aspects of nature were deified. Genesis says, “No. There is a sovereign who created it all.”

And this whole cosmos isn’t fixed and static, but it’s organic: things grow and transform. And once everything is in motion, God says, “this is good…” Creation is a celebration. God is pleased with the order and complexity of all he has done.

We are surrounded by the creative power of love. Every once in a while, we need to step aside from our troubles and take a fresh look.

The last time I had a good look at the stars was last weekend at the retreat. I went for a late walk. I looked up at the stars and it dawned on me that I wasn’t looking at a three-dimensional sky. I was looking into the forth dimension. It takes years for the light of those stars to reach me. I felt like I was looking at time.

What does that do to your concept of size and significance? It’s big. It’s vast. Yet, the universe has to be exactly how it is in order for my life to be sustained on this little planet. That’s how much God loves me. That’s how much I matter.

God creates it and says, “It is good.” Christian spirituality is not about detachment from the world, but about having the right attachment. The universe as created was intentional, beautiful, good and rich – not safe – but charged with the grandeur of God.

The last thing God creates is us.
Genesis 1:27
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

Genesis 2:7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

I like this. We are created out of dirt and spirit. Like the rest of creation, we come from the dirt. We are part of the eco-system. Just the top of the food chain. In a certain manner of speaking, what separates us from apes is very little. The scriptures validate this.

But the scriptures also suggest that we are much more. God breathes his breath into our lungs. And we bear the image of our Maker. However you want to break it down, we are special. You are infinitely valuable and unique.

And God calls us into relationship. In chapter 3, it says in the cool of the day, walked to meet with them. I don’t know what that would be like, but I figure it would be pretty awesome. But he doesn’t just call us into relationship with himself.
He calls us into a harmonious relationship with the rest of the planet. We are to be the care-takers of creation.

GE 2:15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

When I was studying philosophy, I had a friend who identified himself as a ‘post-humanist’. Post-humanists are deeply suspicious and critical of those who say, “humans are the measure of all things”. They criticize our industrial world as being too human centered. They often blame Christians for being willfully ignorant of our place in a vulnerable eco-system. I think they have a point.

But I think, as human beings, we have the unique capacity to either care for the rest of nature or destroy it. I don’t know any other animal that can do that. I think this – in a manner of speaking – sets us apart.

The proper Biblical understanding of our relationship with creation is one of cultivation and preservation. The language used here suggests more of a sense of stewardship than ownership.
Then God says, “it is not good for a man to be alone…” And we have this wonderful romance between Adam and Eve that we taught through over the past three weeks. Beyond the romance, we have the beginning and the formation of community. We are not only called into relationship with God and his created order. He has also called us into a loving relationship with others.

And finally we have a forth relationship. People often miss this one. It is the relationship that one has with one’s self. In verse 25 of chapter 2 we read that “they were naked in the garden and felt no shame.”

If you can look beyond the sheer physicality of the picture, you can see that there was a complete transparency. If there was a mirror they could take a long gaze and smile.

These four relationships …

• Our relationship with our Creator –
walk with me ETC…

This is good stuff. It’s what God intended. But we know that things are not as they should be. Genesis chapter 3 we see things come undone.

GOD / CREATION / COMMUNITY / SELF

You look in the mirror and you say, “I’m not right.” You watch T.V. and you see that we can’t resolve our conflicts. You watch the weather report and you see us reaping havoc on nature, and nature convulsing all over us. And you wonder where God is in all of this.

And you ache, because you have eternity in your heart. You ache for things to be right, for relationships be whole. You need to know that it is a God thing: it’s in your spiritual DNA.

There was a world where these relationships were not marred. And maybe if we hear the story again, our memories can be rekindled. We will be a little less disheartened and a little more hopeful.

Next week we are going to look at Genesis chapter 3, where we see why the wheels come off. But tonight we get to reach beyond.
We have this table to also remind us that God broke in to make things right. That, in Christ, a great announcement has been made and all things are coming together again.

Through giving us bread and wine, Christ is rekindling our memories. We get to re-enter the narrative. So we’ve chosen a liturgy that gets us rooted into the story. Will you stand as we declare the source of our salvation.

Relationships 3: Singleness | Janet Doherty

2010-10-17T20:39:00.000-07:00

Listen/Download HERE

It is a great joy for me to be up here tonight; I have been really looking forward to the opportunity to explore some ideas around singleness with you for 2 and a half years now - since the last time we did relationships at the Place. At that time I was on a panel about relationships, which was an oddly vulnerable experience for me, but it also made me realize how much I have to say about this topic, and I walked out of those doors with the conviction in my heart that next time we did a relationship series, I wanted to be a part of it. So I have been thinking and meditating and praying about these ideas I want to share with you tonight for two and a half years. And, I would like to begin, as all good lay preachers ought to begin, by quoting Randy;)

As a leadership we get together once a year in August or September to look back over the last 12 months and look forward to the next 12 months, and often when we do that, we look at our year through the lens of our 4 core values: how have we been living into community this year, how have we been living into beauty this year, etc… Two years ago, when we came to the lens of orthodoxy, Randy framed our discussion by saying “We don’t prize orthodoxy in this community so we can stand self-righteously and arrogantly in a corner clapping each other on the back and saying ‘oh, we’re right…doesn’t it feel good to have the corner on truth;’ we pour ourselves into the pursuit of orthodoxy because bad theology hurts people.”

That perspective stuck in my mind because the Christian church in North America often has a flawed theology around singleness, and many single people are hurt by that flawed theology. Many churches have a culture that subtly, and at times openly, encourages a single trajectory through education, finding a job, falling in love, getting married, and having babies – all of which should be accomplished by age 30 or so. I am not here to denigrate that trajectory. I think it’s a beautiful model, and if that is what our Father has called you to, then take those gifts, and cherish them, and delight in them.

I am here, however, to proclaim definitively that this is by no means the only trajectory to which God calls his children. The church’s habit of measuring people against that yardstick has tremendous destructive potential for our single people’s self-esteem, for their ability to hear God’s leading in their lives, and for their ability to make healthy choices in their relationships. One tragic result of the narrow view that sees only this trajectory is that many of our young people grow up with an awareness of only two options for their future: either I will be married, or I will be miserable…not a great perspective for sound decision-making at such a crucial and formative season of life. Another tragic result of the narrow view that sees only this trajectory is that people who are old enough to know for sure they haven’t followed that path - because they’ve stayed single, or been divorced, or lost a spouse - feel isolated or ostracized or that they can’t really belong…not a great foundation for being able to enter meaningfully into the life of a faith community.

Now part of the problem, of course, in trying to get a sense of what our theology of marriage and singleness should be is that when we turn to the scriptures we get mixed messages. If we take our first two scripture readings tonight as examples of what the Bible teaches about relationships, it is understandably confusing. In Genesis we have out of the mouth of God that it is not good for us to be alone. If you take that passage on its own, you would be quite justified in supporting the church’s tendency to squeeze everyone into the marriage mold. But then you have from Paul, under the new covenant, that unless we are totally incapable of managing our lust, it is better to be single so we can all focus whole-heartedly on pleasing God. So, that’s a fairly strong indictment against all of you who have so little self-control as to need to be married.

So, what do we do? Take Genesis over 1 Corinthians because the voice of God as recorded in scripture has more authority than the Holy Spirit writing through Paul? Take 1 Corinthians over Genesis because under the new covenant we are commanded to remember that we are grass, and that single-minded devotion to God’s work in the world is all that matters? Are we really called to consider that our own personal pleasure and companionship are inconsequential? Sometimes I try to imagine how radically different the church would be if every Christian took this passage to heart and we were all unmarried, labouring devotedly side-by-side to accomplish God’s cosmic redemption and reconciliation in our midst: it’s a bafflingly radical idea…but at the same time it has its charm.

What I am trying to say is that these two understandings of what God wants for us are about as far apart as possible on the spectrum. If my hands would stretch farther apart, that would be better. And as with many of the paradoxical elements of our faith: there is a sense in which both perspectives are true. The Holy Spirit through Genesis celebrates marriage as a holy gift given for a couple’s mutual help and comfort, and for the joy of intimacy with another human being, and as a beautiful metaphor to illustrate the nature of God’s relationship to the church. It’s extraordinary. It’s amazing.

Likewise, the Holy Spirit through Paul celebrates the wonder and privilege of living life in single-minded devotion to and intimacy with God. Of letting literally nothing divide our attention or our hearts from the relentless, disciplined, sacrificial pursuit of knowing, loving, and serving him for our fleeting moments on this earth. That is also extraordinary. It is also amazing.

So we have these two very different but equally beautiful ways of living life; the difficulty arises because they tend not to be equally valued in the church. We celebrate joyfully with those who enter into the covenant of marriage, but those who are lead by their covenental relationship with God to enter into a season of singleness – whether by their own choice or by the circumstances in their lives - are often viewed with pity or skepticism: what’s wrong with these people that they can’t find a partner?

The belief that every Christian should be married is theologically untenable. It simply cannot be defended. Our Father certainly – as we see in the scriptures and throughout church history - calls some of us to singleness. That call is more difficult to hear, however, in the context of a faith community that rarely recognizes such a call’s validity.

If I can personalize these ideas for a moment here, let me say that there are many aspects of our faith - aside from questions of marriage and singleness - that jar against what the world values, recognizes, and pursues. So, examples of this would be the call we have as Christians to simplicity, or to humility that are often counter-cultural. And as I go about my daily life there is a dissonance that occurs between the voices around me – what they are encouraging me to pursue - and the voice of God within me – what He is calling me to pursue. So I live with this dissonance all week, and when I walk into this community on a Sunday night, our services are restorative to my soul: they agree with the voice of the Holy Spirit within me, support it, strengthen it, remind me of what is truly important, what brings true freedom, where my identity and worth and joy lie. Through sermons and conversations that happen in this room, I hear your voices outside me affirming and encouraging the inner voice that calls me to live differently, and that harmony between inner and outer voices helps restore me to centeredness in Christ.

I will tell you truthfully, however, that when it has come to being single, the dissonance between the voice within me and the voices outside of me has continued, and indeed often increased, in the context of the faith community. I rarely have conversations that affirm and encourage the inner voice leading me through this season of singleness. In contrast, I have often had the sense that in staying single I am somehow failing to live up to people’s expectations of me, or that many of my siblings in the faith consider the life of a single person to be a lesser, sadder existence compared to the companionship of marriage.

Before I continue to develop these ideas using a few stories, I want to stop and clarify that I don’t perceive the church to be consciously belittling or maliciously harming single people. A lot of these attitudes are culturally ingrained and subconscious. If you asked many Christians whether it is possible that God might call someone to singleness, I think many of them would answer ‘yes’. In an intellectual, academic kind of way, many Christians can acknowledge that as a possibility. However, many of those same Christians don’t even consider the possibility that God might be placing that call on them, or someone they love. The clearest way I can think of to explain the subtlety of how this phenomenon works is to explore how well-meaning friends have tried to encourage me through times when singleness has been difficult for me.

One of the most obvious challenges in being single is dealing with bouts of loneliness. When I have confided in close friends that I am feeling lonely the common responses are sympathy – “that must be so hard”- and confident proclamations that my singleness will be temporary - “I’m really going to pray that God brings someone wonderful into your life” or “I’m sure the right guy is just around the corner”. These kinds of comments and attitudes are genuinely intended to be helpful and encouraging. However, the truth is that it is destructive to our relationship with God if we take the posture that the only solution to suffering is through a change in circumstances – in this case, implying the only solution to loneliness for a single person is through meeting someone and getting married.

You can imagine, in fact for many of you it will be obvious, the destruction that would follow if the church took a similar posture with married people. Marriage comes with its own set of difficulties, and a big one is that the health and happiness of a married couple are powerfully linked. If your spouse is thinking or acting in ways that are self-destructive or destructive to the relationship, those thoughts or actions affect you deeply and cause you intense suffering, and in many cases you have little to no control over when, how, or if those issues are dealt with and resolved.

So when my married friends confide in me about serious struggles they are facing in their marriage, I am in a position of tremendous power: I am living the life they long for. My primary relationship is with someone who is perfect. The only one who ever creates dysfunction in the relationship is me. Anytime I want to I can repent of my sin and He’ll forgive me…no grudge holding. The grass is very very green on my side of the marital fence. So you can imagine how hurtful it would be for my friend if my first response after she confides the depths of her struggle were to be “oh my goodness; I’m so sorry; that’s awful; I don’t know how you are dealing with that”. Implication: Your situation is totally horrifying; I am filled with pity for you; I am so glad I’m not married. There is a world of difference between pity and compassion. Compassion: very helpful; pity: not so much.

Then, imagine if on top of my “sympathy” I were to heap the assertion that the only way out of her suffering was a change of situation “you know, it is really too bad that you shackled yourself to that chump, but don’t worry! Sooner or later one of you will die, and then you can be happy.”

So many of you will think I am exaggerating a tad here…but in truth this type of perspective is not far off what single people face. When my friends are struggling in their marriages, what they need is genuine compassion coupled with the ability to see the value in their situation despite its difficulty. And, I am in the very fortunate position of genuinely loving and appreciating my friends’ husbands. When my friends are fixated on a particular difficulty in their marriage, I can quite truthfully listen with compassion, and affirm that their suffering is legitimate, but also – and very importantly - help them see beyond the suffering to the ways in which their marriage is a gift. And while I will often pray with them that God will heal or change a particular aspect of their marriage, I will also strive help them to see why, even if there is never any change, the sacrifices they are making and the suffering they are enduring are worthwhile, meaningful, purposeful. My married friends need a safe place to talk about their marital struggles.

Single people also need a safe place to talk about their struggles. When I am fixated on or overwhelmed by a difficult aspect of being on my own, I need people who can listen with compassion, affirm that my suffering is legitimate, and then help me see beyond it to the ways in which singleness is a gift. And, while those people may pray that God will bring someone wonderful into my life, it is absolutely essential that they can also help me see why, even if there is never any change, the sacrifices I am making and the suffering I am enduring are worthwhile, meaningful, purposeful. And, you guys, this only works if you actually believe it. And the trouble is, precious few Christians are able to see the wonder and beauty in being single.

There is, in many cases, a lamentable lack of spiritual imagination among Christians, and many people project their own fears around singleness onto single people. They can’t conceive of singleness as anything more than an absence of the companionship they enjoy. Our view of life and happiness is so narrow that we don’t see what might be extraordinary about a life or a season of life devoted wholly to God. And, worst of all, our experience of our own faith is so limited that the great, beautiful promises our Father makes to us- that our joy and fulfillment are found in Him, that He loves us, that he has a purpose for our lives, that our earthly sufferings are not worthy to be compared with the glory that awaits us – all these have the potential to be liberating, life-altering realities, and so often they ring hollow to us; they sound trite in the very moments when we need them most. We aren’t able to believe them, to internalize them, to experience the extraordinarily joyful reality of them.

I said earlier that our attitudes to singleness have tremendous destructive potential for our single people’s self-esteem, for their ability to hear God’s leading in their lives, and for their ability to make healthy choices in their relationships. I’d like to take each of these assertions in turn, and tell you three short stories that illustrate the type of destructive potential I am talking about.

As far as self-esteem, I can’t begin to guess the number of times in my mid-to-late-twenties when someone in my life made a comment implying that I was somehow responsible for my singleness because I was doing something wrong (you’re too picky; your standards are too high; your expectations are unrealistic; are you carrying baggage from your parents divorce? are you afraid of intimacy?). And each time, for many years, it didn’t take much to send me spiraling into the depths of self-doubt: “maybe there is something horrifyingly unloveable about me that sends every man in his right mind fleeing for the hills.” And I would spend agonizing moments in prayerful self-reflection trying to decide if I was indeed sabotaging my own happiness. And each time I would feel reassurance that God was at work and had purpose in leading me through this season.

Now, I am not so naïve as to think that everyone who is single has been called there by God; I am confident there are indeed some Christians who are sabotaging God’s attempts to give them the gift of marriage, and who do need to be asked these difficult questions, but for goodness sake, exercise some discernment!!! Not every single person over the age of 25 has massive character flaws or emotional baggage; and, for that matter, I can’t see that personal baggage is particularly a barrier to marriage. Plenty of perfectly dysfunctional people get married all the time, and then proceed to figure it out.

About five years ago I had an epiphany where my self-esteem around this whole issue was concerned. I was over visiting with some very close friends. I am also close with their folks, and so we were all sitting around the table catching up, and someone asked me if I had been seeing anyone.

Now, it just so happened that this was within a few weeks of me ending what remains to this day my favorite of all of the dating adventures of Janée. I have had some random and highly entertaining dating experiences, but this was the greatest of them all, and it was fresh in my mind, so I went into full-blown Janet story-telling mode, and I’m regaling them with all the details, and I am exaggerating the funny bits, and we are all laughing quite hard, and in the silence that followed the story my friends’ mother, who has some psychological training, says, “You know, Janet, I really believe that when people are ready for a relationship it will find them, and if you want to sit down sometime and talk about what might be hindering your ability to enter into a relationship, I would love to meet with you and help you unpack that and move on from it…” and she continued in that vein for quite awhile, and as she was talking, my mind did this split where two totally different sets emotions and thought patterns were happening at the same time: on the one hand, I am recognizing that her words come from her sincere love for me and desire to further my emotional health…she is generously offering me her professional services for free because she sees singleness as a problem to be solved and she wants to build me up to the point where I can solve it. So one half of my brain is engaging in the conversation on that level, and acknowledging that of course, like everyone, I have my personal issues, but also expressing my belief that singleness is God’s call on my life for the moment…blah be de blah explaining some of the things I have shared with you tonight.

Meanwhile, the other half of my brain is having a total epiphany moment, and I am all jubilant and excited and turning cartwheels inwardly because for the first time ever in my life, at 27 years of age, I am bypassing the spiral of self-doubt, and going straight to the conviction that God’s hand is in my singleness. It was a moment of total triumph. Finally, after the better part of a decade, I actually believed and trusted that reality – not just in my head, but in my heart as well - without having to walk though prayerful self-analysis to get there. It was such a relief!! SO outwardly I am going “hmmm…that’s really interesting…here’s my perspective” and inwardly I’m going “tra-laaaaaa, Lord, I finally believe you! This is fantastic!!”

And I suppose in the end you could take that story as proof that God can sustain our self-esteem and our healthy perspective and our ability to be rooted in him even in the face of adversity, but honestly…why would we put our people through that?? And why would we allow so so so many people to experience singleness as an onerous burden when God is perfectly able to infuse it with joy and beauty and wonder and purpose if we cultivate eyes to see how He is at work in it.

So that is about all I have to say about self-esteem, but I do have a few more words to say about how negative attitudes toward singleness have the potential to compromise our ability to hear God’s leading in our lives. Last year in conversation with a well-meaning friend, she said to me “I mean, even if you got married at this point, would you still want to have kids??”, and I was quite taken aback, because obviously her perspective was that it was getting to be a bit late in the game for me to be starting a family, and when I got home, I got to thinking about that perspective. To make matters worse, I had just broken off a potential relationship with a lovely Christian man who wasn’t the right fit for me. He was, however, convinced that it was God’s will for us to get married, and he was also the kind of person with whom I had enough foundational values in common that I could potentially have made it work. So I got to thinking that if I continued listening to the voice that said he wasn’t the right fit, instead of taking the pragmatic route and marrying the lovely Christian man who wants a family, I might very well be setting myself up to not have a family. There is no time-limit on falling in love that I am aware of; but there is a rather inflexible time-limit on being able to have children. And I will tell you candidly that the desire for both of these experiences is very close to my heart. So, up until that point I had been thinking “okay, God is making me wait, I can see the purpose and the beauty and the wonder and all that, so we’re good. I am happy to wait”. Suddenly, I was panic-stricken as the possibility dawned on me for the first time that God might not just be asking me to wait; He might be asking me to sacrifice that desire altogether. Seriously. Panic stations.

So I call my friend, and I say “ummm…what if God isn’t actually planning to lead me into a marriage in time for me to have a family? What if I keep listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit in me and that voice leads me away from what I want? Like we are talking about some pretty major sacrifices here. What if that’s where I am headed??”

And my friend responded by saying, “absolutely not! I reject that as a possibility! God absolutely intends for you to have children, and you are going to make a completely fabulous mother. I pray for your husband all the time. He’s coming.” So we say a few more things, and we pray together, and we get off the phone, and afterwards I am sitting in my lovely little living room thinking to myself: that pep-talk was intended to reassure me and make me feel much better. Why am I neither reassured nor feeling better.

And, I realized, that I was if anything more discouraged because my understanding of our faith is that we have to be prepared to say “not mine but your will be done” and mean it. Jesus says quite clearly in Matthew 10:38-39, those “who d[o] not take up [their] cross and follow [me are] not worthy of [me]. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” This does not seem to me to be an ambiguous statement. It seems to me to say quite clearly that we need to be prepared to lose everything, up to and including our very lives, if that is the cross God calls us to. And let me tell you coming face to face with that statement in the scriptures and the possibility that my cross might involve sacrificing the very thing I want most for my life was utterly terrifying. And my friend’s initial response was singularly unhelpful.

What she might have said was “Janet, you still have a few years before you need to worry about that” because that’s true. She could even have said “Janet, I think it is unlikely God is going to ask that of you” because that is her perspective, and she honestly believes it. But what she needed to also say and didn’t was “Janet, He is a good God and He loves you. If He calls you to that there will be purpose in it, and He will sustain you through it.”

So that episode began what we now jokingly refer to as the “friend tutoring” or “friend training” program, in which I have enrolled my sister and 3 or 4 close friends, so that when things like this happen I sit down with them and say: “here’s why that response was unhelpful, and here’s the sort of thing you might want to say next time.”

Here is the connection between this story and the idea of hearing clearly God’s voice in our lives: if we are surrounded, even in the church, by the Satanic idea that our lives should be about securing our own personal happiness, and that the only way to secure such happiness is through the companionship of marriage, we have precious little chance of being able to hear the voice of God when it calls us to anything else. If I had known when I was 20 that obedience in breaking off my relationship with my first love would lead to a decade of being on my own, you can bet I would have thrown myself immediately into his arms and sprinted to the alter as fast as my little legs would carry me. I had absolutely no framework for considering singleness as anything other than a laborious, pitiable, lonely, miserable toil. It was absolutely beyond my realm of possibility that God’s voice might lead me there, or that my obedience to that voice would create some of the most joyful, rich, beautiful and meaningful experiences of my life.

A decade later, now that God’s voice has led me there, I have the experience of knowing that his promises are true, that I can trust him, that it is in fact through giving up my own ideas of what I wanted that I have been given infinitely more than I could have asked or imagined. If I had never put myself in the position of needing to rely on those grand sweeping promises I was talking about, I would never have known deep down in my soul that they are true. Now singleness is not the only circumstance in life that puts us in the position of needing to test God’s promises, but it has been God’s way with me, and I can tell you truthfully that I would not trade the joy of these twelve years on my own with Christ for any other joy – marital or otherwise. One of the early church Fathers, St Irenaeus, said “the glory of God is a man fully alive,” and I fervently believe that we only get to be fully alive by cultivating awareness of and obedience to the voice of the Holy Spirit within us. Our primary role as siblings in the faith is to support and exhort each other on the straight narrow road, wherever it may lead us… and we do not serve a cookie-cutter God who sends everyone to marital bliss at age 22

So the final point I want to make is that our negative attitude toward singleness has the potential to discourage healthy choices in relationships. The stigma associated with remaining single past your twenties can pressure people into unhealthy relationships… if you happen to be someone that God isn’t going to lead into marriage until age 35, or 48, or 60, or not at all, you have to decide whether you are going to trust him. And the truth is, that many people don’t even recognize that that is the choice they are making. If your only framework for understanding singleness is seeing it as a problem to be solved, if it is not even on your radar as a possibility that singleness might be the good gift that God is giving you, then it becomes very easy to choose relationships that don’t feel quite right, but feel better than facing the stigma or ostracism or isolation that come from being single in the midst of a people who misunderstand singleness.

I would like very much to be able to be a voice that encourages single people to lift up our heads beyond these narrow pressures, to remember that there is absolutely no relationship, no pleasure, no comfort in this life that is worth silencing the voice of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, or worse, hearing that voice but refusing to believe it is God. Let me read you a quote from Thomas Kelly that addresses the importance of cultivating a sensitivity and obedience to the voice of the Holy Spirit in our lives:

‘there are plenty to follow our Lord half-way, but not
the other half. They will give up possessions, friends,
and honors, but it touches them too closely to disown
themselves.’ It is just this astonishing life which is
willing to follow Him the other half, sincerely to
disown itself, this life which intends complete
obedience, without any reservations, that I would propose to you in all humility, in all boldness, in all seriousness. I mean this literally, utterly, completely, and I mean it for you and for me – commit your lives in unreserved obedience to Him.

If you don’t realize the revolutionary explosiveness of this proposal, then you don’t understand what I mean. . . . To this extraordinary life I call you – or He calls you through me – not as a lovely ideal, a charming pattern to aim at hopefully, but as a serious, concrete program of life to be lived here and now. . . by you and by me.” (Kelly 26-27)

This passage is actually just describing basic Christian living: the audacious call to unreserved obedience. All of us as God’s children have the privelege of seeing our lives and our choices in the cosmic scope of eternity, and entering into the fullness of the role our Father has given us to play in this world. But I would be irresponsible if I drew your attention to that aspect of Christian living without also emphasizing another basic tenet of our faith, which is that we can do nothing outside of Christ. In my relationship with God we have a very clear division of labour: I am weak, and He is strong. I don’t want to belittle the temptation to find our joy, our comfort, our identity in something other than God, because those opportunities are very real and very frequent. Intellectual assent to a set of theological propositions will not meet our emotional needs. If our faith doesn’t go beyond a set of ideas and become a deeply personal and relational way of life, a life in which we are deeply connected to God in prayer, a life in which we are deeply invested in a community of close friends, a life in which we are guided and sustained in every aspect of our day by the Holy Spirit, we are hooped. God has designed the Christian life to be arduous enough that we cannot live it in our own strength. We need him.

And so I would like to conclude with a quick reading, from the same book, that applies to all of us who love God, no matter what the circumstances of our lives are. It has been tremendously influential in my walk of faith, and I hope it will provide encouragement and helpful perspective for anyone who is too busy to be close to God in that profoundly personal way:

Let me first suggest that we are giving a false explanation of the complexity of our lives. We blame it upon the complex environment. Our complex living, we say, is due to the complex world we live in. . . . We Western peoples are apt to think our great problems are external, environmental. We are not skilled in the inner life where the real roots of our problems lie. . . . Life is meant to be lived from a Center, a divine Center. Each one of us can live such a life of amazing power and peace and serenity, of integration and confidence and simplified multiplicity, on one condition – that is, if we really want to. . . .

Let me talk very intimately and very earnestly with you about Him who is dearer than life. Do you really want to live your lives, every moment of your lives, in His Presence? Do you long for Him, crave Him? Do you love His presence? . . . ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and mind and strength.’ Do we really do it? Is love steadfastly directed toward God, in our minds, all day long? Do we intersperse our work with gentle prayers and praises to Him? . . . Are our lives unshakeable, because we are clear down on bed rock, rooted and grounded on the love of God? This is the first and the greatest commandment.

Do you want to live in such an amazing divine presence that life is transformed and transfigured and transmuted into peace and power and glory and miracle? If you do, then you can. But if you say you haven’t the time to go down into the recreating silences, I can only say to you, ‘Then you don’t really want to, you don’t yet love God above all else in the world, with all your heart and soul and mind and strength.” For except for spells of sickness in the family and when the children are small, when terrific pressure comes upon us, we find time for what we really want to do.

I find that a life of little whispered words of adoration, of praise, of prayer, of worship can be breathed all through the day. One can have a very busy day outwardly speaking, and yet be steadily in the holy Presence. We do need a half-hour or an hour of quiet reading and relaxation. But I find that one can carry the recreating silences within oneself, well-nigh all the time. (Kelly 90-97)

The first time I read that I found it quite shocking, and moderately offensive because it does not phrase ideas gently. But as I reflected on it, those words really helped me to see the tremendous difference there is between merely believing in God and actually loving him. Between merely wanting to live a Christian life, and actually allowing God to order my life. It turns out that something in my nature makes me very unlikely to do much out of duty or obligation. I have found, however, that love – the love of God for me as well as my love for him – has the power to motivate me, to sustain me, and to strengthen me to strive to be a good steward of whatever burden, joy, cross, or gift life places on my straight, narrow path.

This is the call on all of us: to accept God in our lives as He chooses to come. All of us will experience unfulfilled longing on this earth, whether it is the longing for a spouse that doesn’t come, the longing for a child that doesn’t come, the longing for healing that doesn’t come, the longing for peace that doesn’t come. And ultimately, these are all the same longing…they are the longing for heaven, for wholeness, for perfect reconciliation with God and with each other.

So, my hope for us, as a tribe who are journeying this walk of faith together, is that we will cultivate eyes to see how the Holy Spirit is working in our lives, and to encourage each other in our obedience to Christ whatever condition, vocation, or relational status He may call us to. I pray that we will be the voices of steadfastness and perseverance for each other, that we will be concerned about His business, not our own, and that when we are received in heaven He will say to each of us “well done good and faithful servant,” and we will feast and celebrate together as we enter into the joy of our Lord.

Kelly, Thomas. A Testament of Devotion. New York:
HarperCollins, 1992.

Relationships 2: Marriage | James and Liz Prette

2010-10-10T23:08:00.000-07:00

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Relationships 1: Dating | Randy Hein

2010-10-03T21:26:00.000-07:00

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Community | Randy Hein

2010-09-26T22:00:00.000-07:00

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Beauty | Randy Hein ft. Carla Funk

2010-09-19T20:26:00.000-07:00

Listen/Download HERE Summary the rest

Engagement | Randy Hein

2010-09-15T12:52:00.000-07:00

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This includes the four interviews with Skate Life, Street Cafe, See them Run, and Penny's friends in Zambia.

Orthodoxy | Randy Hein (and James Prette)

2010-09-05T23:16:00.000-07:00

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A New Temple | Randy Hein

2010-08-29T21:58:00.000-07:00

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This is one heavy passage of scripture. Can you talk about the scriptures being nasty? This is nasty stuff. It just doesn’t get any darker than this, does it?

Can you imagine the disciples who were hearing this? They are probably like …

“Jesus, what the heck? Like, where is all the love and peace and harmony? We thought you were a happy guy. And, here we are at the Temple, having a little ‘Jonas Brother’s’ moment, and you go all Marilyn Manson on us. We’re just commenting on how nice the architecture looks in the sun, and you go on this apocalyptic tirade. What gives?”

Tonight is our final evening going through the parables found in Luke’s gospel. Now we titled the series “Blindsided by Jesus and his stories”, but tonight we probably should have called it “Head butted by Jesus and his prophesies”. I made this slide myself.

But, I think we are going to discover that, despite its shadow, hope rises from out of this passage. There is no doubt, we are seeing the destruction of something here. And the destruction is cosmic: I’m going to argue that it’s the death of religion. But something incredible is going to rise out of these ashes. So this passage, in many ways, is the dark before the dawn.

But before we continue, let’s get a little context …

You have to picture Jesus riding into Jerusalem and bursting into tears over the beautiful city that had so much promise but had gone so wrong. People are all around him cheering – ‘Messiah’ – but he’s in tears.

And he goes to the Temple that is in the center of the city. But, let’s understand, it’s not just central to the city.

In the imagination of the people, it’s the center of the universe: the most sacred place in the world. It was God’s earthly dwelling place: where heaven and earth came together. Even though God’s throne was in heaven – and the whole earth was his – in the Holy the Holies he came and dwelled near his people.
So it was central to the life of the nation. Those that didn’t live near Jerusalem made three regular pilgrimages a year to offer sacrifices to atone for their sins. So this place was central to their understanding of God, faith and spirituality.

Now if you read through the gospels, you quickly discover that – right from the beginning, when it comes to religion in general – Jesus is a one man-wreaking machine.

His indictment is this: the faith and the customs of Israel that were revealed by God in order to create intimacy with God, were being abused and corrupted to the point that they were killing intimacy with God.

Now it’s always important to remember, Jesus isn’t anti-Jewish. He is Jewish. He is crying for Israel. His whole framework of looking at things is formed by what God had revealed through the Law and the Prophets. Most of his script comes from the Old Testament.

But something has gone horribly wrong. The faith and the customs had become dead rituals.
And, what is worse, religion had become a way of determining who was in and who was out. The Law, that was supposed to bless people, had become a measuring stuck. And if you didn’t measure up … And religious leaders were propping up this system. They were using it to push marginalized people further into the margins. Further away form intimacy with God.

And Jesus is always embracing these people: real sinners, drunks, prostitutes, tax-collectors, women that have been looking for love in all the wrong places. These are the people that Jesus is embracing and he is saying, “The Kingdom of God is for these people.”

So he gets to Jerusalem, the nerve center of everything that should be right. And everything there is wrong. Beyond being a hindrance to people finding intimacy with God, the Temple has become place exploitation.

This drives him nuts. And he takes it personally. “You have turned my Father’s house into a den of thieves.”

The exploitation of religion is something the prophets of the Old Testament warned against. About 400 years earlier, the prophet Jeremiah was told by God to …

“Go to the entrance of the Lord’s Temple, and give this message to the people: ‘O Judah, listen to this message from the Lord!

Don’t be fooled by those who promise you safety simply because the Lord’s Temple is in Jerusalem. They chant, “The Lord’s Temple is here! The Lord’s Temple is here!” But I will be merciful only if you stop your evil thoughts and deeds and start treating each other with justice; only if you stop exploiting foreigners, orphans, and widows…

Don’t be fooled into thinking that you will never suffer because the Temple is here. It’s a lie! Don’t you yourselves admit that this Temple, which bears my name, has become a den of thieves?”

Both the prophet Amos and Isaiah say this, “I hate your worship. You sing your songs and clap and dance, but you’ve neglected justice and exploited the poor.” Amos 5:21-25, Isaiah 1:10-18
As we saw last week – the Temple system was exploiting the most vulnerable people in Israel. The poor. The widow and orphans. And just as Jesus is warning people of this, it happens right before his eyes. This poor widow comes in and is surrounded by this decadence. And he says “enough”.

So, the disciples are looking at the Temple and saying, “Isn’t this cool…” And Jesus says, “Actually, guys, it’s all coming down.”

Once he finishes this long and rather dark soliloquy, he says, “I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” The striking thing is how true this statement was.

Some people think this prophecy is about Jesus’ Second Coming, when – in fact –everything he described here was fulfilled by 70 A.D.

Within the disciples’ lifetime (66 AD), Israel would declare itself an independent state and establish a provisional government.
Leaders in Jerusalem would surface and call themselves ‘Messiah’. They would promise political deliverance from the Romans. Now the Christians living in Jerusalem saw this promise as empty. And those that didn’t flee the city for the hills were persecuted for not joining the resistance movement.

But they were right about the empty promise. Within a few years, Titus would lay siege to Jerusalem. It was a terrible time for people stuck within the city. And after five months the city fell and was sacked. The Temple was burned to the ground.

This was spiritually inconceivable – hence the apocalyptic language. These aren’t just the telling of historical events. This is a complete unraveling of things. The spiritual center of the universe has been destroyed. Or has it?

Maybe this is just the dark before the dawn? You know, it’s only now that some of the things Jesus said and some of the things he did begin to make a little bit of sense.

For example, Jesus said, “Destroy this Temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

This is a very loaded statement. The first thing he is saying is that he is the temple. He’s the place where God dwells and meets with humanity. He’s also making an obscure comment that if you kill him, he’s gonna rise again.

When Jesus is talking to the woman in Samaria, she asks him a question about worship. “We Samaritans worship on that mountain, you Jews worship in the temple in Jerusalem.” There will come a time, when all believers …

When Jesus drew his final breath on the cross, the Bible record that something happened that would forever signal the end of religion. In the temple was a large heavy curtain that separated the rest of the temple from the Most Holy Place. Where God’s presence dwell in an undiluted majesty.

No one ever went there, except the High Priest, and he could only do it one day of the year. At the moment of Jesus’ death the curtain was torn in two – from top to bottom. God bursts out.

Jesus was ushering in a way of life in which we would have no further need of the Temple.

“The coming of the Kingdom of God is the end of religion. No more system. No more institutionalized salvation. No more sacred buildings. I am tearing down religion as the foundations for people’s connection with God and I’m replacing it with myself.”

And here is where it gets really amazing …

As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him— you also, like living stones [under chair], are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 2:4-5

The bottom line is that Christ did not destroy one building destroyed only to see it replaced by other buildings. This is not a temple. We are the temple. We are the house of God.

This is not an alter, and this is not the sacrifice. This is a table, where we come together to remember the sacrifice. And – in turn, at this table – Jesus asks us to come and offer up our lives as living sacrifices.

And here’s the challenge. Where there was religious exploitation in the temple in Jerusalem, may there never be a hint abuse or exploitation in us. Where there was hypocrisy that was sanctioned and defended, may we confess and repent of our hypocrisies. And where there have been labels that divide people into spiritual super heroes and spiritual losers. May we all come recognizing our common need for mercy.

There can be no labels. Not at this table. We are the temple, let’s declare it tonight.

Hypocrites | Randy Hein

2010-08-22T21:06:00.000-07:00

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Have you ever caught yourself being a hypocrite?

I don’t just mean in the religious sense, I mean in the general sense: you know, like anytime you find yourself saying one thing and doing something different.

Sometimes I catch myself mid-sentence, “If there are two things I can’t stand, it’s people who won’t tolerate other cultures, and the Dutch.”

Sometimes I catch myself too late. I remember handing my neighbor a pamphlet to on fair-trade concepts, on how we can purchase things more ethically with better global awareness, it had statistics on working conditions in developing nations and daily wages in sweat shops. He took the pamphlet graciously.

But there was something off about the conversation. As I was walking back to my house, feeling self-satisfied, I looked down and realized I was wearing a Nike t-shirt – quite possible bought at Wall Mart and no doubt made with child labour.

Ever catch yourself being a hypocrite?
Pastors are the worst. Because, next to writing books, preaching is the greatest of hypocrisies. Sure, I can stand up here and talk to you about all about gentleness and self-control as being evidences of a Spirit-filled life. But have you seen me coach lacrosse, or what the Hawks beat the Canucks? Gentleness and self-control don’t come to mind. More like intense and a little insane.

Well, I have news for you. We are all hypocrites. Some of us happen to be worse than others. But all of us are inconsistent. We all have ideals that – if truth be told – we don’t live up to. Now, this shouldn’t lead to a posture of resignation, but it should keep us humble.

And it begs a few questions. What does God think of our hypocrisy? Are there levels of hypocrisy? And – if so – what is the worst kind?

Let me set up the context of our story for tonight. Jesus has entered Jerusalem for the final showdown. These are the final days before the cross. And they are intense.

And crazy things are happening. Jesus does some very bizarre stuff that only makes sense in retrospect.

Remember, that everybody was expecting the Messiah to come into Jerusalem riding as a king: riding warhorse, laying siege to the Roman garrison and overthrowing the government. This was the expectation.

But Jesus does none of this. He doesn’t come on a warhorse – he comes in on a donkey. He doesn’t attacks the Roman garrison – he goes to the Temple and goes absolutely ballistic. Throwing over tables, chasing guys around with a whip. Screaming, “How dare you turn my Father’s house into a den of thieves.” If he’s laying siege, it’s here.

This was crazy.

The Temple was considered the most sacred place in the universe. It’s where heaven and earth came together. It’s where God met with humanity. Heaven bled into earth and earth into heaven.
Sins were atoned for there – they were forgiven through elaborate rituals.

It’s no surprise that the very people that were lining the streets crying, “Hosanna” just a few hours earlier, saw the craziness in the Temple and went, “What? Maybe this guy is a little nuts. Maybe we would be better off if he was dead”.

Well the religious leaders are convinced of this.

“What kind of ‘Messiah’ are you? What right do you have to call down judgment on our religion? The Messiah is supposed to redeem and vindicate us. We have endured Egyptian slavery and Babylonian captivity and now we are under Roman occupation. But we have held it together.

We have preserved the Law and against all odds, rebuilt the Temple. What right do you have to criticize us? Under who’s authority are you saying and doing these things?”

So the religious leaders go on the offensive. They try to trap him. Stacey talked about this last week.
They challenge his authority, they try to corner him on the issue of paying taxes, they try to trip him up on the question of divorce. We have chapters of debate. Time after time, Jesus smacks them down. Till we get to the end of chapter 20…

Luke 20:39-40 “… the teachers of the law responded, ‘Well said, teacher!’ 40And no one dared to ask him any more questions.” The only way to read this is them admitting defeat.

Now it’s Jesus’ turn to go on the offensive. He turns his attention to the Teachers of the Law. These guys are the top dogs. In the chain of command, they are seen as the guardians of the truth. The protectors and defenders of the faith. .

Jesus turns to them and says, “What exactly have you guys worked so hard at preserving, here? What are you protecting?”

"Beware of the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and love to be greeted in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets…” 46
These guys masquerade around with the appearance of importance and godliness, but it’s a joke. They aren’t in love with God, they in love with power and the authority.

And then he goes on to say this …

“They devour widows' houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely." 47

Now, ‘the Law’ that these experts claim to protect, says this …

Exodus 22:21-23

22 "Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. 23 If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry.”

God seems to have a very special place in his heart for the marginalized and the vulnerable. He wanted his community to be a sanctuary for the downtrodden. So the Law has all kinds of safeguards in place to make sure they were taken care of.
Deuteronomy 14:28-29
28 At the end of every three years, bring all the tithes of that year's produce and store it in your towns, 29 so that … the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be satisfied, and so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.

So we see it in the Law, We see it in Wisdom Literature.

In Psalm 68 God is described as a “father to the fatherless, a defender of widows”. Proverbs 14:31 says that to oppresses them is to show contempt for God.

The prophets warned that neglecting widows and orphans would end in judgment. When God explains to Isaiah why Israel is going to fall, he says,

Isaiah 1:22-24
23 Your rulers are rebels,
companions of thieves;
they all love bribes
and chase after gifts.
They do not defend the cause of the fatherless;
the widow's case does not come before them.

Why did the city of Sodom fall? According to Ezekiel …

Ezekiel 16:48-50
49 " 'Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”

The ‘Teachers of the Law’ that Jesus was confronting knew all of this. But – more than that – they had been charged with guarding it, proclaiming it, practicing it and defending it. And when the nation was screwing up, their job was to sound the alarm.

But, instead, they are doing just the opposite. They are exploiting religion as a means to get ahead by preying on the most vulnerable. They have been called, by God himself, to care for widows, and they are robbing them.

And no sooner has Jesus said this, then this poor widow walks across the courtyard of the Temple and drops her coinage in the collection.

Jesus says,
"Guys watch. She’s given the greatest thing. All these others made offerings that they'll never miss; but she’s given extravagantly what she couldn't afford—she gave her all!"

You know, in our world here in Victoria, we don’t really see her level or degree of poverty on our streets. Her poverty has been regulated to the other side of the globe. She does inhabit the world of Deli, Calcutta, or Dehradun.

She really is an example that the quality, not the quantity, of you gift is what really matters. I really wish her example could be a focal point of our story. But it’s not. To preach that sermon alone would not do justice to the context.

On one side of this story we have these ‘teachers of the law’ who are exploiting the poor, and on the other side we have ‘the temple’ which stands as a symbol of this exploitation.

Here – sandwich in the middle – stands this noble woman who is a victim of both. And Jesus is pointing this out.

And you will have to come back next week to hear how he responds. But the focal point of the story is not her but the utter hypocrisy that surrounds her.

Are their levels of hypocrisy? And – if so – is there a hypocrisy that turns God’s stomach?

What where do we go with this, people?

On the surface, the immediate application seems to be directly aimed at people like me. Every week, we take an offering, and a portion of that ends up in my bank account. I think you have every right to ask, “Where is the money going?”

It’s why we have budget meetings, and pre-budget meetings, where we open our books and show you where the money is going. We want to be really transparent about these things. And, if you were to go to one of the pre-budget meetings (which none of you do) you would be pleased to discover that no one here is getting rich.

That’s why I was attracted to Lambrick in the first place.
You see, the people at Lambrick have always had a commitment to mission. And I think that’s our future.

But I don’t think answering that question gets us off the hook with Jesus. I don’t just think he’s looking at me. If I’m reading my New Testament correctly, if you claim to be a Christian tonight, then you are a priest, you are a guardian of the good news, we – together – are the temple.

We have been entrusted with the care of widows and orphans. We have been entrusted with the care of the vulnerable and the marginalized.

James 1:27
27Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Who are our widows and orphans? Who are the vulnerable ones? How have we neglected them? And how do we get beyond just talking about caring for them, and actually doing something about it?
Here’s my recommended starting point. Stop saying, “You know, we should do something about that.”

When you say “we” you distance yourself form personal responsibility. When you say “should” you pawn off making a personal decision to some later time. And that time will probably never materialize. Stop saying, “we should” and start saying “I will”.

What’s it going to take for you to say, “I will do something about that …”? You know, the beautiful thing is that – when we step up – we are going someplace where Jesus already is.

When our group takes the Plunge and goes to Cambie Street to hang out with junkies and homeless people, they are going where Jesus is. When I was in the north of India, seeing these kids getting love and dignity – that is where Jesus is.

These are declarations we need to make. Our community will continue making them. But what is God saying to you tonight? Can you see yourself moving from “we should” to “I will”?

Parable of the Tenants | Stacey Toews

2010-08-15T20:33:00.000-07:00

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NOTES:

CONTEXT:
Front end: Palm Sunday/triumphal entry & cleaning out the temple
Back end: Last Supper & Judas’ betrayal
Location: 19:45 & 21:37 – in the temple
Mood: 19:47 – the chief priests, teachers of the law, leaders among the people are trying to kill him. On multiple occasions the gospel writers indicate that Jesus knew their thoughts so . . . it seems obvious that Jesus knows exactly what is up.
Momentum: 21:38 - All the people came early in the morning to hear him at the temple
Rhythm in these 2 chapters:
1. An issue is raised OR a question is asked
2. Jesus responds in a manner they didn’t anticipate (no warm/fuzzy moments) typically quite harshly and with an air of finality
3. People are left astonished/silent (20:26), they dared not ask him more questions (20:40)
In today’s text we have 3 ‘run ins’ between Jesus and the leaders.
1. A tough question.
2. Tenants from hell.
3. Paying taxes.

Run in #1
We know that Jesus has just cleared out the temple overturning a lot more than some tables. He was challenging what the religious leaders had been promoting. He had invaded their space and told them they were treating God’s place for worship as if it was a den of robbers. Well, now it’s time to push back.
REMEMBER: all of this dialogue is happening in a crowded setting where everyone is listening attentively to each word spoken.
Vs. 2 "Tell us by what authority you are doing these things," they said. "Who gave you this authority?"
Before I answer you, how about if you answer me a question?
Jesus replies with: “Was the baptism of John from heaven or from men?”
What’s he really asking them? In words you or I would use, I hear Jesus asking them to answer the same question about John that they just asked him about himself.
You are asking me where I get my authority. Where do you believe John derived his authority?
“Was his authority from heaven/God or men/popular opinion?”
The religious leaders swagger turns into a tail b/t the legs HUDDLE.
NOTE: the chief priests/teachers of the law knew the general population believed he was a prophet i.e. from God
-He uses the question to explain who He is and to expose the hypocrisy of the leaders.
-If John was from God, then he was right in proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah
-if this is true, then Jesus had all authority.
Question: Why did John baptize?
Answer: John baptized multitudes in the baptism of repentance. This type of baptism required sinners to repent of their sins AND then do good works to prove their repentance. John was preparing the way for God’s plan for a New Covenant - a sinner could have their sins forgiven through the baptism of repentance. This was a brand new message. Until the moment that John preached baptism of repentance, the children of Israel did not have a way to have their sins forgiven (without sacrifice of life).
As had been predicted of his ministry: John mowed down theological mountains, filled in valleys where there’d previously been little understanding, and he mended potholes on the roadway to relationships being solid with God.
John’s message and ministry was to date the most evident deconstruction of OT thinking re: methodology on approaching God.
He came to God’s people offering forgiveness without death of a sacrificed animal and then pointed to the Christ saying ‘that’s the Lamb of God’ !
John 1: 29 . . . John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30This is the one I meant when I said, 'A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.' 31I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel."
When the chief priests and law teachers were smacked upside the head by Jesus’ question, rather than an answer to theirs – they don’t turn to their theology notes and try to ‘unpack’ how God has been revealing himself in history and preparing his people for a Messiah invasion. Nope. They decide to opt for the ‘cover your butt and don’t lose popularity points with the masses’ response
-they vote for preservation of reputation so they decline to answer Jesus’ question
Popularity is not leadership!
-Jesus retorts, “if you won’t wrestle with the facts underlying my question then I won’t answer your question”
-the lesson is powerful and I experience it regularly in my walk with God – ONLY ASK FOR MORE REVELATION FROM GOD WHEN YOU’VE RESPONDED TO THE REVELATION HE’S ALREADY PROVIDED
God reveals himself and truths that have the power to connect us to him so that we will have both direction and nourishment. When we reject his revelation we lose our way and we lose our rhythm of keeping in step with his Spirit.
The religious leaders are thus like children at the meal table asking their parents for more food while their servings are untouched. I’m not giving you more until you make the most of what has already been provided

RUN IN #2
-we rented a home of ours out in East Sooke, the tenants were in a few months and we, according to our agreement, had access to the crawl space anytime we wished and drove out one Sunday to retrieve a few things that were still there. We opened the door to the crawl space and my wife, leading the way, turned around immediately with her glasses fogged up from all the warm steamy air inside and said ‘we’ve got a problem’ a grow operation was in full swing.
*tenants from hell
-hold on to the property, beat up anyone coming to collect rent, kill the landlord’s son
*I read this story to my kids a few weeks ago. My 7 year old daughter, when it was finished, concluded, “Oooh, those people in the vineyard are cranky.”
Isaiah 5 gives us a picture of Israel as a vineyard and God the owner of it. The parable told by Jesus ties well into it.
In Jesus’ parable there is an owner, there are tenants, owner’s servants, owner’s son.
The tenants are determined to control the vineyard and not yield its control. After pounding on the servants sent there the owner muses, ‘perhaps they will respect my son’ vs. 13
Bam – imagine how the religious leaders who are listening take that line when it hits them on the chin.
The next thing that happens in the parable, vs. 14,15 the tenants plot to kill and do kill the son of the owner. Whomever lives on site is likely to hold ownership in the event the owner dies and no living heir surfaces.
What have the religious leaders all been scheming to do? Kill Jesus.
Everyone gathered listening in the temple gets the point. Vs. 16 All the people holler out, likely with an eye on the antagonistic leaders ‘may this never be’.
Opposite of AMEN
The people ‘no way’.
Jesus ‘way’
Christ asserts – this IS going to happen. How else do you explain the meaning of Psalm 118?
What does Psalm 118 tell us? It’s a picture of a stone building being constructed. It’s a building of significance requiring perfect materials each put into place perfectly.
The builders/stone masons are spoken of in the plural but I’ll refer to them in the singular to make it more able to grasp. The construction is well underway. There are a host of walls, archways, and rooms all in progress. The entrance to the whole building is a gorgeous arched doorway planned to be set into an enormous wall that will extend generously upward to a domed ceiling. A critical stage in the construction is upon him. The archway is coming together and the sides are nearing one another. The critical piece needed, which no matter how hard he looks he cannot find, is a capstone. It will connect the left side of the arch to the right. With a proper capstone in place the arch will be complete, beautiful and robust. The mason is on an immense pile of large stones, no two are alike. Somewhere amidst them he must find THE ONE. He nears the end of the day handling numerous pieces of stone in hopes of finding a capstone that will fit. Wearily he lifts another and endeavors, as with each previous stone he’s held today, to look at it (like a puzzle piece) and imagine it up at the top of the scaffold being placed into the capstone location. He’s frustrated. This one won’t work either. He drops the stone aside, it lands beside him with a thud. He stoops, laces his boot with dusty fingers and decides I’m done for the day, my back is aching. He turns to go, his foot catches on the very stone he’d just cast aside and he falls hard, unable to get his hands out in time on the uneven footing of a pile of hard edged rock. The side of his head smashes on the rocks and he lies still, never to move again. The following day another mason comes to the site to visit the builder and discovers his body. The dead mason’s foot is turned at a strange angle and seems to be holding his foot in one direction while the leg has gone in another. When he is asked to take over the project he returns to exactly the spot where he found the dead mason thinking to himself, “I want to pick up exactly where he left off.” He views the structure, walks all around it and realizes that nothing will go forward unless a capstone is found for the central door/archway on the main/front wall. It’s obvious to him that this is what the previous mason had been searching for. Hmm, he decides to go right to the spot where the previous mason had fallen in his search for the perfect stone. There’s still blood where his head hit so the exact spot is easy to locate. All the while he’s eyeing stones wondering which one could be the capstone. He sits down next to the bloody stone and sees IT with a sense of awe – could it be?! The stone where the dead mason’s boot had caught looks perfect. He calls helpers and asks them to assist him to heft the stone to the top of the scaffold centered in the archway. He gets it to the top and it fits like hand in glove – there could not be a more exacting fit. What had been rejected, and then caused ruin yet all the while it was the sought after piece to stabilize the master work!

1 Peter 2 is a great place to read how Peter ‘unpacked’ Psalm 118.
Who are the servants sent by the vineyard owner? The religious leaders of the day knew they were being singled out –
Vs. 19 ‘they knew he had spoken this parable against them’
Lesson from Jesus: verse 18 notes re: Everyone What I do with Jesus will determine the course of my life. My salvation or destruction rests upon that choice.
If you rule wrongly in your life decisions with respect to me you will be broken/crushed.
RUN IN #3
It’s interesting that in the freshly fired realm of HST’s rule we see the spies come to Jesus seeking to trap him in regard to his position on paying taxes!
*HST applies when the deli items are heated up, if you order it cold/unheated HST does not apply!
The leaders of the day, wanting to kill Jesus, had no power to do so. They could only do their best to have Roman soldiers arrest him and then have Pilate (responsible for collecting taxes for Rome) put Jesus on trial. So . . . to get Jesus speaking out against paying taxes to Rome would be an ideal corner to squeeze him into so that Pilate would clearly rule him as guilty.
-Their question, “Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?’ seemed to put Jesus on the horns of a dilemma. If He agreed the tax should be paid, He seems to deny the sovereignty of God over Israel, and will lose popular support. If He says that it should not be paid, He declares Himself an enemy of Rome, which branded Him as a revolutionary and put His life in danger.
-He uses a coin and the image on it to point out paying taxes is fine but be sure God’s not being short changed with your life. The coin has Caesar’s image so give it back to him if he asks for it. However, YOU bear God’s image and he’s asking you to offer that to him.
Give the coin to Caesar, but give your life to God.
His critics are silenced and astonished by his answer.
Interestingly, When the council of the Jewish elders turn Jesus over to Pilate in Luke 23:2 they open with the accusation ‘this man is subverting our nation and he opposes payment of taxes to Caesar’
VOM – Prayer & Persecution alert
Three leaders of an underground house church in North Korea have been executed and 20 of their Christian associates jailed. North Korean police raided a house in Kuwal-dong in Pyungsung county, Pyongan province, and arrested all 23 believers who had gathered for a "religious function."
Three "ringleaders" were tried, sentenced to death, and executed soon afterwards. The other 20 were reportedly sent to prison camp No. 15 in Yodok. The arrests and executions happened in mid-May

The Parable of the King and Minas | James Prette

2010-08-08T21:04:00.000-07:00

Listen/Download HERE

The Pharisee and the Tax Collector | SImon Goff

2010-08-01T21:35:00.000-07:00

Listen/Download HERE

Let’s Pray…
“Thank you Lord that we’re not like that proud ‘let’s elevate myself above others’ Pharisee…” Ooops… well maybe there are some similarities.

Try again…
“Lord take my words and make your parable hit us tonight in a new way”. Amen

STORY
More than a decade ago I was dating my now-wife Kathryn. We were in England and on a day-trip I wanted to explore the sites of rural Dorset with this wonderful Canadian beside me . Here’s my possibly flawed recollection of it:
We’d already done a few things, and out of the four remaining options it was clear to me at least that we should check out the “Hampstead Marble Factory”. Ever helpful I threw open a map pointed to a region of a page and said “it’ll be there somewhere.” She, obviously, was starry eyed and trying to impress this handsome, enigmatic Englishman, with her map-reading skills so took on the task.
We drove and drove, past, as you will imagine people drinking tea and eating scones, farmers with bad teeth, and football hooligans drinking vast amounts of warm beer.
Kathryn’s cheerful calls of left and right, as we zipped by tall hedgerows at breakneck speed on single-lane roads with no markings and 90-degree corners, became quieter and she appeared to be hiding behind the map whispering the name of our hoped-for destination.
Well finally, my stiff upper lip wobbled a little, and I slammed on the brakes, and grabbed the map. After peering at it for a few seconds, I jammed my finger down and said “there it is.” I looked at her expecting her words to echo tonight’s parable. Perhaps “O Simon, have mercy on me, the poorest of map readers…”
Instead, she just peered down, smiled a little, and said – “Oh Hampstead, I thought you were saying Hamster…”
Ah, cross-cultural relationships are fraught with danger.

INTRO
A reminder to those who just joined us, we are working our way through the parables found in Luke – a series we’re calling Blindsided…
So called because it’s a simple story that’s meant to be understood that creeps up on you and whack out of nowhere, it hits you – demanding an immediate response – a change that shows that you truly heard it.

So, on listening to it, if you haven’t felt the pain yet, then we’ve got some work to do.

It seems simple enough – Jesus is speaking to some proud, scornful people, and so sets up a prayer showdown in the temple, with the winner being made right with God.
In one corner, the villainous religious hypocrite with his grandiloquence (means ‘use of big words’) matching his arrogance.
In the other, a shining example of spiritual freedom and spoken simplicity, the flawed yet likable tax collector.
The hero wins the contest, we all cheer, dust off the popcorn and go home, satisfied that everyone got what they deserved.

How is this spiritual version of Rocky going to really change us?

There must be more to it than that stereotypical caricature so let’s delve a little deeper…

Jesus is building to something here … he has been accused of hanging with sinners and tax collectors 3 times already in Luke by his critics. He’s going to use their prejudices against them in this encounter. He starts the story of two men who went to the temple to pray privately to God.

Re-enter the first man. This Pharisee does seem a little proud – he does elevate himself above all others around, and his love for his neighbour certainly isn’t coming across. And the prayer seems a little me-centred. But we do know that this style of prayer was common in that day and his posture of standing facing heaven was also typical.
But he is a good, honest upright man.
On religion, 10 out of 10. The Law said fast once a year but he’s on it twice a week – admittedly on busy market days when his whitened face and disheveled appearance would get noticed. Also the Law stated to tithe only certain crops, he is giving 10% off the top from everything he had.
On morality and ethics – he’s a commandment keeper, utterly faithful to his wife, and I’m sure a dependable friend.

It’s pretty obvious he’s been keeping track and is pretty happy with his journey so far. Maybe he’s even feeling a little prideful, so he hurries to the temple to give God the glory for all the steps he himself has made.

Now for the tax-collector… he really was a despicable piece of work. He was a cross between a legit crook and a mafia-style enforcer. He was a betrayer of his nation, religiously unclean, and morally dubious. He was the type to buy whatever or whoever he wanted – a man who would have people beaten and then let his hair down with a heady mix of wine and prostitutes.
But when this guy turned up at the temple, his prayer was very different. Firstly he doesn’t look up like most, and secondly he continually beats his breast in sorrow, the verb implies. The only words he gets out are actually “be merciful to me, THE sinner,” not just ‘a sinner’ as we read. He realizes that he deserves nothing except judgment. He has no journey to be proud of. In fact he has just collapsed on the road.

So let’s modernize this parable just for us. Revised Simon Version. Verse 10-13.

“Two people came to the Place tonight. One was a regular, and the other… here I struggled with finding someone as universally hated… but let’s try this… the other was a known paedophile. As the regular was moving to her seat, she thought: “Gee, looking around the room, I feel pretty good about who I am, God. Especially that odd-looking guy at the back… I know that face! What is that pervert doing here?
Where was I? I don’t hang out in cliques or gossip, my style of worship isn’t showy. I don’t drink, swear or smoke and holding hands with my fiancé is the limit. Looking at the wall display, I pray and read my bible everyday, give a tenth of my wage to this community. And more when the need arises! Remember the Water for Belo at Christmas? I serve with the Placekidz, and open my home for Church of Breakfast.
The paedophile just sat at the back, his eyes staring at the carpet. As tears started to fall, he muttered, “God, take away your anger that I so completely deserve. I am the worst person that exists”.

So suddenly our picture changes… from this… to this.

What happens next? (I’ll focus back on the original text)

It is the sinner who returns home justified before God – acquitted in God’s court of his sins. The winner is the scum of society. What’s more – the final line “For the proud will be humbled but the humble will be honoured” gives the result eternal ramifications for both characters.

This was… is … shocking! Unfair even. Neither person gets what they deserve.

What did the tax collector understand that we, the Pharisees, don’t?

He realized:
 All our works, and the Jewish Law, are responses to God’s acceptance, not a way to earn it.
 That although we have been big on self-righteousness ever since the Garden of Eden and the Tower of Babel, MAN CANNOT BE SAVED BY HIS WORKS, however good, religious, moral or ethical they are.
 The question is not ‘am I as good as my neighbour… as we may think… but am I as good as God?”
 If we use these things to map-read, direct or walk our own spiritual journey, then we may make many steps BUT we are entirely on the wrong road. One that will take us nowhere, and get us lost … not just in looking for a marble factory.
He understood that if we keep justifying ourselves by how useful our life is to God, we cannot truly admit we’re dead in our sin, and will not be ready for the free gift of grace.

So why can’t we just stop in our tracks and do this too?

Robert Capon suggests in his book Kingdom, Grace and Judgment:
“ Our love of justification by works is so profound that at the first opportunity we run from the strange light of grace straight back to the familiar darkness of the law.” (p.342)

Perhaps. So let’s test this theory by extending our old parable…
Imagine this… we’re hanging out with the tax collector over the next week of his life. Wouldn’t we desire just a little reform… maybe a new profession for starters? BUT nothing happens – he is the same jerk as he was before. Then he returns to the temple, and the same scenario plays out. Same heartfelt admission, same divine reaction. How unfair would this be?

Rewind. What if he had changed a little? Less beatings, drunkenness and call-girls. Maybe even a little money to Belo and he agreed to flip a burger at the next church barbeque?
When he revisited the temple, would we want God to question or recognize him about his ‘improvement’? But IF GOD didn’t care for the Pharisees impressive journey then, why would he be interested in these few faltering steps?
At the very least, we would want God to acknowledge that his heart is in the right place, and that this would warrant approval.

IF any of this went through our heads, we show how deeply ingrained our need to try to impress Him with our map-reading skills. How intense is our need to justify ourselves to God through our heartfelt desires, internal disciplines and external actions. How we may use even our choice to align ourselves with Him as a sign of our worthiness.
We constantly clothe ourselves in an identity for Him and others to see because, like Adam, we fear nakedness, truth and vulnerability.

Ultimately we destroy the power of this parable, and show how uncomfortable we are with being blindsided by God’s upside-down kingdom – and his wild and free gift of grace.

So let’s take both the hit and the frightening step forward out of our comfort zone - our own created fiction into His divine fact.

Let’s admit that we are dead, knowing that

Jesus came to raise the dead
Not reform the reformable
Or improve the improvable.

Then, like the thief on the cross who has nothing left to give but faith in the saving power of Jesus, we are welcomed into the most wonderful life, for now and forever.

Let’s close in a short, now familiar prayer:

“O God, have mercy on me, a sinner”

Lazarus and the Rich man | Randy Hein

2010-07-25T22:19:00.000-07:00

Listen/Download HERE

Faith and Forgiveness | Ryan MacLeod

2010-07-18T20:17:00.000-07:00

Listen/Download HERESummarythe rest

The Lost Son | Andy Renton

2010-07-11T20:16:00.000-07:00

Listen/Download to Andy's intro to the video teaching HERE

Questions from the night...

The Younger Son

How have I been a restless spirit?
How does this monologue alter my view of others?
Have I had similar inner struggles to this younger son?
What embrace have I fought?

The Older Son

What do I feel entitled to?
Do I have a problem of pride, arrogance, or self-righteousness?
What are my motives for staying and serving in the Father’s house?
What do I have to release in order to be found?
What am I trying to prove with my work?

The Father

What does this character teach me about God?
What does this character teach me about myself or about being a parent?
Who or what do I need to release control of?
How can I reach out to welcome the younger and older brothers to the celebration?

Which role in the story do I relate to most?
How does the story allow me to relate to others in a different way?
What have I learned about God? Myself?

The Shrewd Manager | Kevin McKee

2010-07-04T20:16:00.000-07:00

Listen/Download HERESummarythe rest

Future of LPC | Bob Opperman and Randy Hein

2010-06-27T20:47:00.000-07:00

Listen/Download HERE

The Great Feast | Randy Hein

2010-06-20T22:07:00.000-07:00

Listen/Download HERE

Summarythe rest

The Parable of the Fig Tree | Randy Hein

2010-06-13T21:09:00.000-07:00

Listen/Download HERE

Summarythe rest

Parable of the Moneylender | Stacey Toews

2010-06-06T22:26:00.000-07:00

Listen/Download HERE

Luke 7:36-50
Forgiven Much - A new start in your old town
June 6, 2010 at The Place

This is a story of contrasts:
1. A self-righteous Pharisee AND a sinful woman.
2. Formal hospitality AND overflowing love.
3. Self-worth through righteous living AND self-worth through forgiveness.

Four vantage points from which we can gather the story’s key points:
Simon’s view of Jesus
Simon’s view of the woman
Jesus’ view of the woman
The woman’s view of Jesus

Simon - hosting the party
a Pharisee and host of the ‘event’
Hospitality is a very strong value in the Near East
a basin would typically be provided so guests could wash the dust of the road from their feet.
Scented olive oil was sometimes offered to anoint a guest's hair (Psalm 23:5b; 45:7; 92:10; Amos 6:6).
beloved guests would be kissed as they were greeted (2 Samuel 15:5; 19:39; Matthew 26:49).
Simon offered none of these marks of a gracious host. Such overflowing hospitality wasn't required; but his rather ‘cool’ welcome showed he wasn’t being especially warm or cordial. It makes me wonder why he brought Jesus to his place. He calls him Rabbi but doesn’t seem to treat him like he’s an authority.
Question on the minds of the self righteous – how can Jesus pose as a prophet and at the same time have a woman like this hanging on him?
Simon doesn't seem so alarmed that such a woman is in his house, as that Jesus doesn't perceive what kind of woman she is.
Simon thinks to himself – if Christ were legitimately acting in the power of the divine (as a prophet) he’d know this woman’s true colors and he’d be creating a healthy buffer. Christ on the other hand, being divinely led, knows the thoughts of Simon and chastises him for thinking such a thing.
At the encouragement of Simon – this evening event promotes: pointing fingers, exposing others’ wrongdoing, a keenness to ostracize. He runs with a crowd that traffics in exclusion
The woman - crashing the party
• she is a resident of the town,
• she is looked down upon as a sinner (Greek harmatolos).
• We're not told what her sin is
• she has not been invited
• desperate to start anew,
• Ashamed, embarrassed, on the margins
• She views herself as having nothing to offer
-sinners were shunned by respectable society and prohibited from participation in the local synagogue. Roman law disallowed Jews from inflicting the death penalty
-In our society this would be considered "crashing the party," but in their culture, apparently anyone was free to attend and listen to the dinner conversation.
Why is the woman doing this?
Is she wanting to be accepted by Jesus, is she thanking for Jesus for the forgiveness she anticipates receiving OR forgiveness that she’s already received?
She must have brought the perfume with a plan!
This woman set out that evening with a plan in mind, she’d fallen in love with Jesus, she’d experienced his forgiveness and this night she was going to tell him/show him that HIS love had changed her completely
-this is ‘pre-meditated’ !
Does she continue to approach Jesus, getting nearer and nearer, just waiting to see if she’ll be kept back but b/c she’s not hindered she continues with her original plan?
What display of affection did this woman offer to Him?
1. Stood behind him weeping
2. Wet his feet with her tears
3. Wiped his feet with her hair
4. Kissed his feet
5. Poured perfume on Jesus’ feet
intimacy of her attentions appear to many of the guests as shocking
-once the flask of perfume is opened, it is detected by everyone in the room.
Add to that the woman's reputation in the community and this is downright scandalous,
"wiped," "kissed," and "poured" (NIV, or "anointed," KJV) indicate repeated action.
-all eyes turn to the woman now kneeling at Jesus' feet, weeping, wiping, caressing his feet with her long black hair, kissing his feet with her lips, and pouring perfume upon them.
-lots of people gasp but nobody stops her, they ALL think Jesus will stop her!
I think she came with perfume, and wept, and kissed Jesus' feet BECAUSE she had already reached out in faith and accepted the forgiveness of God that he offered in his teaching. She came because she KNEW she was forgiven; she came out of gratitude; she came out of love. That makes very good sense in context with Jesus' explanation of her actions.
Simon – hosting the party
Woman – crashing the party
Jesus - the party
Jesus – guest willing to challenge what’s typical, willingly engages with sinners and embraces them
No warmth is extended but Jesus accepts the dinner invitation.
vs. 34 he is criticized for dining with sinners. But he is no respecter of persons.
He is willing to associate with the religious elite, as well.
The text indicates that Jesus "reclined at the table" (Greek kataklino, "reclined").
guests arranged around a very low table, reclining on their left leaving their right hand free to feed themselves.
Their feet, sandals removed, would be splayed out behind them, with some space between their feet and the walls so those who were serving the meal could bring the various dishes to the table.
Jesus compares Simon's acts as a host to the sinful woman's acts of love.
Simon's Acts The Sinful Woman's Acts
No water to wash feet Washed feet with tears, wiped with hair
No kiss of welcome Kissed feet continually
No scented olive oil for his guest's hair Poured perfume on his feet

CONCLUSIONS:
The parable – the point
Two debtors with different degrees of indebtedness.
The difference b/t them – one owes 10 times more (LOTS) than the other.
The similarity b/t them – neither can repay their debt.
Jesus' point isn't hard to guess. Simon's actions have shown little love, while the sinful woman has lavished love upon Jesus. Now building upon his brief parable, Jesus turns the object from love to forgiveness.
The extent of our love displayed is proportional to the love we’ve experienced demonstrated toward us by Christ in canceling our debts
Ratio of Debts forgiven to Love displayed
Jesus fully has Simon’s attention, and that of the gathering – he turns his attention to the woman and declares her forgiven!
The guests, however, don't understand. They think that he is he was absolving her sins then and there -- and that troubles them because only God could forgive sins (Luke 5:21ff).
But Jesus continues, looking directly at the woman: "Your faith has saved you; go in peace." He acknowledges that her faith in his promise has brought her salvation. And he bids her the blessing that Jews offer one another in parting: "Shalom."
It means not only peace -- - it also means prosperity and wholeness and goodness and blessing. Jesus has welcomed her into the fellowship and salvation of God's people.

Then to further mess with their heads, Jesus pronounces forgiveness for the woman. No temple, no priest, no sacrifice. The whole God ordained means known to the Jews on how to cautiously sidle up to God using props, rules and techniques is thrown out the window. Apparently, after thousands of years of carefully followed Mosaic rules, the old was out and passé and the new was here. Yes, Jesus tells them that God is here, reclining on an elbow, sharing a meal with them AND all the while welcoming the affections of a woman of ill repute declaring her ‘off the hook’ and free to ‘go in peace’.
Do you see this woman? Vs. 44
Do you see her as Jesus sees her?
When you see this woman, what do you see?
My question to you and me is . . . into whose arms will she go? Where will this woman be peacefully received, loved, accepted, taught, nurtured and feel at home. She is a drug addict recovering, she is an alcoholic trying to dry out, she is a sexual offender, a thief, a parolee.

This encounter that two people have with Jesus, Simon the religion specialist and the unnamed woman with a tragic reputation is another ‘divine reversal’ of how we, in our own minds, would think things will turn out.
The one who has mostly kept the laws and been very keen to tell others about doing the same stands guilty and unable to connect in a meaningful way with Jesus while the woman who is only known for the bad she has done comes away knowing peace, forgiveness and total acceptance in the presence of Christ.
The one who thinks he doesn’t really need God, b/c on his own he’s been so capable of doing good, finds his abilities leave him distant from the one who has come seeking closeness with him. The one who is shunned and excluded by society finds her desperate overtures for embrace to be welcomed while onlookers stand by slack jawed at the scene her and Jesus make. She knew she couldn’t be accepted on her own merits, she’s fallen entirely on the mercy of a God who welcomes total surrender and reliance.
• our family’s encounter in the hospital this past week – the gratitude of so many doing so much to bring about change in our life and our daughter

I knew a blind man whom a surgeon helped to see.
The doctor never had a lover such as he.
It is in such a way that singers love composers.
Calvin Miller – The Singer

The Rich Fool | Kevin McKee

2010-05-30T22:32:00.000-07:00

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There was a song in the 1980’s by a jazz musician named Bobbi McFerrin. It was called “don’t worry be happy”. It featured a great comedic video including Robin Willimams one of my favourite comedians. I loved this song when it came out, it stuck in my head and I had some good feelings based upon it. It’s message was simple, don’t worry, everything is going to be okay. In my youth I could embrace that, but as a I grew a little older it became harder and harder to keep that light hearted attitude. I mean the guy can’t pay his rent, he is going to be sued. He is in deep. Don’t worry, be happy, what are you nuts?

Everything around us in our society is predicated on gaining security, gaining possessions, preparing for the joyous time in our lives when we will retire, and be able to frolic with our grandchildren with no cares in the world. I am as guilty of this as the next person. I have been known to count the number of days to retirement, I am under 1000 working days now. I tell myself that I do my work to have money for my family, to get a good pension. This is true, but when I am honest with myself, I have to admit that I also love to work sometimes and that I will need to do something when I retire. I am inundated with commercials that tell me that I will enjoy my free time, I will be able to sit back and relax, as long as I have planned well, consulted with a bank financial adviser and to avoid taxes, I have put some of my money into RRSPs. In this sense, our world is speaking the terms of the main character in the first part of our passage today, in my bible the man is called the “rich fool”, although in our society, I think he would be referred to as the prudent investor, lets call him PI.
“13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” 16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ 18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
The person who asked Jesus the question that led to this parable didn’t get the answer he expected. He figured Jesus is a Rabbi, Rabbi’s settle disputes, so I will ask Jesus to settle my family dispute. But Jesus messes up his attempt to solve his dispute by telling a story that doesn’t even address the question. Instead Jesus tells the story of PI. The key to this passage that Jesus wants to impress on His hearers is the focus of PI.
PI is probably a typical fairly successful member of the community. Today PI would be a solid citizen. He pays his taxes, but of course avoids paying more than his fair share. He probably works out at the gym, four or five times a week. He is always on the lookout for new property to add to his retirement portfolio. PI has a retirement portfolio. In the story, PI thinks that he can have a cushy retirement, if he just increases his personal wealth. Then suddenly it all goes sour. PI dies. There go the plans for a cushy retirement, what is his RRSP worth now. In fact, with current estate laws, his RRSP is worth a lot less to his widow, if he had one.
PI stands before God and all PI has done, all of it focused on himself, on his benefit, does him no good. Jesus challenges His audience, the person who asked the original question by saying that the accumulation of wealth, the accumulation of comfort is transitory and at the end what matters is your relationship not to the things of the world, but your relationship to God. Some of us are lucky in life because we face this moment and have an opportunity to make changes.
When I was young and foolish, I was traveling with my family, we decide to spend a summer going all across Canada and the U.S. in a travel trailer. I was 18, and just getting ready for University. This would be our last great family adventure. I had just gotten my license and my father was looking forward, as was I, to me taking a load of the driving. We left London, Ontario and headed north to Thunder Bay where we had family. We decided to camp at a campground at Kekabekka Falls, which was a 200 foot falls near Lake Superior. We set up camp and I decided to go exploring, especially since it meant that my sisters would have to do the work getting dinner ready. I walked to the river and noticed that although the fence around the dried up river (there was a dam that kept the water at a trickle) said to proceed at my own risk, I assumed that since I was young and invincible, I faced no risk. I then decided that maybe it would be cool to climb on the rock face of the falls, I don’t know where I was planning to go, except down. I started climbing down and then I realized the rock face was shale, which does not hold up well under the weight of a high school football player. I fell, and in that instant, I glimpsed my short life going before my eyes. As you can guess, I did not fall all the way. I landed on a ledge about 4 feet wide, about 20 feet down. My glasses on the other hand did a 200 foot swan dive. I climbed back up the face (I really was not very bright) and went back to the camper, where my parents almost decided to complete the job the falls had not completed. As punishment, I drove all across Canada squinting to see the wondrous country side, as my father decided I would not get new glasses until we got home.
Why do I tell this story, because I got something else out of it other than a cut on my elbow, a scare and the wrath of my parents. I gained perspective. Life is finite and I have to face that reality. It is then that I started reconnecting myself to God more closely than I had in the few years before that time. In concert with the death of my grandfather a few months earlier, I realized that life is only part of reality and maybe I needed to focus on relationships and on connecting with God in a more complete way. I think this is part of the message of the story of PI. Jesus is saying to people to focus less on themselves and their comfort and more on themselves in relation to God.
Some might argue that there is more to it than that. That it is inappropriate for us to be concerned about the future, that we should not plan at all. I am not convinced that this is what Jesus intended. I think there is nothing wrong in looking ahead, but there is something very wrong when that looking ahead takes over our lives and is focused on acquiring material goods. All of us are guilty of this, I am guilty of it more than most, I not only plan for myself, I also want to plan for my family, which drives them crazy. I am wrong, and it is a battle that I will have to keep fighting within myself. If we look on to the next passage, Jesus reminds us that we need to trust him. God will deliver for us.
Let me conclude by asking some questions that come out of this parable.
First, where is your focus, is it like PI, on yourself and material things, or is it on your relationship with God?
Second, how willing are you to trust God that He can lead you and care for you?
Third, where are you in your life? Are you perhaps a student or newly employed, if so how are you going to work out the balance in your life so that the first focus is God, and the second focus is that you live for others, including your families? If you are older, like me and nearing retirement, how do you get ready for retirement, while also being open to serving God. For those of us who are parents, how do we avoid trying to direct and plan the lives of our children? For me this is the toughest question I have to answer.

Persistance | Randy Hein

2010-05-23T22:34:00.000-07:00

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If you were to be honest with me, many of you would tell me that you find prayer difficult. That sometimes, when you are praying, you feel foolish, like you are just talking to yourself. Sometimes you wonder if it works at all.

Why do I know this? Because I am like you.

Sometimes I find myself saying stuff like this. “If my prayers aren’t effective, if they are not changing the world – or at least my world – maybe I’m not doing it right.”

Apparently, we are not alone.

There is only one point in the gospels where Jesus’ disciples ask him to teach them anything. And it has to do with their struggle with prayer.

“Lord, John’s disciples seem bold in prayer. He’s given them rigorous rules and principles about prayer and fasting. And yet he’s says you are greater than he is and we are your disciples. So, what’s up with that? Teach us how to pray. Give us the right language and phrases so that we might be mighty in prayer.”

So Jesus says, “okay, alright.” And he gives them a prayer that is surprisingly brief. It’s composed of 38 words. Prayed slowly, it takes about 20 seconds. And then it’s over. Class dismissed. Next to the Lord’s Prayer given in Matthew 6, it is stark, bare-bones and unpoetic.

And then he tells them a really wired story.

It begins with a guy in turmoil. His friend has traveled across and country and has arrived at his house in the middle of the night. His friend is hungry and he’s got nothing in the pantry.

So he walks to his neighbors’ house and knocks on the door, “Cory … Cory … hey, wake up. Kingsley has just come over and he says he’s starving and I have nothing to give him. Do you have any bread you can give me? You’re my only hope, man.”

“Dude! I’m already in bed. You’re waking up the boys. Get lost.” A reasonable response. But our guy keeps knocking.

“I will not be denied!” Cory pulls the pillow over his head. He begins to question his position on the use of violence. But finally he gets up and gives the guy three loaves. Out of friendship? No. Jesus is very clear about this. Simply because the guy was shamelessly persistence. End of story.

So, after hearing this model for prayer and this story, you can just see the disciples put down their pencils and thinking, “Jesus, what the heck, man. We were expecting some principles and guidelines. Instead you give us a 20 second prayer and a totally bizarre story that really has no reference to God at all. I mean, we can’t even find God in that story. Where’s Aslan? Where Gandalf, Where’s the Father reaching out to his wayward Son? Jesus, we can’t find God in the story?”

Well, I think what Jesus has given here is revolutionary. But we have to hear it correctly.

I think Jesus answers three very important questions.

“Who are we praying to?”
“What exactly are we to pray for?”
“How are we to pray?”

We are going to break it down tonight.

Who are we praying to?

He said to them, “When you pray, say:
…Father…”

When I was 11 years old I saw Star Wars for the first time. It rocked my world. I proceeded to see it 21 more times in the theater. It cost me a dime to get down to Granville Street, a buck to get into the theater, $.25 for popcorn, and a time to get home. I could do it on my allowance …

I loved that movie. It was my personal mythology, my religion. Talking bad about Obi-Wan Kenobi or Luke Skywalker was like blaspheming the Holy Spirit. And it wasn’t just the state-of-the-art special effects, or the fact that Princess Leia was a babe. There was something transcendent about Star Wars. It had to do with The Force: this mystic presence that “surrounds us, and penetrates us and binds the galaxy together.”

At 11 years old. I had already had experiences where I felt the presence of something greater. I just didn’t equate it with the God of Christianity. At the time, that God seemed very distant to me.

For a lot of religious people, God is personal but distant. He can be pleasant, he can be mean, but he’s not approachable. In contrast to that, many people that embrace New Age spirituality see God as close but impersonal. God doesn’t have a personality doesn’t have a name. Heck, you can call him what you want: The Universe, Your Higher Power, The Force.

When Jesus introduces God, he says, “When you pray, simply say, ‘Father’.” God is really close and extravagantly personal. Just say, “Dad”. Bound up in this simple address is the heart of all that Jesus came to do. “I want to introduce you to the Father.”

He’s not some mystical feeling or religious idea. “When you pray, simply say ‘Dad’.”

Now, for some of you, thinking about God as a Father, is not bringing you happy thoughts. Because you project that onto your own experience with your own dad. And maybe he wasn’t around. Maybe he was a substance abuser or a physical abuser. Maybe he was just difficult.

For those of us – and I include myself – who had complicated relationships with their dad’s. We, more than any, need to understand and experience the Father’s heart for us. That our Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer is also very fond of us.

Now, like all relationships, this one should not be neglected. We should be very intentional in prayer. So John the Baptist wasn’t wrong to give his disciples disciplines. But Jesus says, “It doesn’t begin there.”

Everything is couched in relationship. Even in the bizarre parable that follows, everything takes place between friends. Prayer is relationship. If we miss this, we miss everything.

What exactly are we praying for?

On this, Jesus is very clear.

Hallowed be your name,
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
And lead us not into temptation.

What do we see here?

The first few lines are very epic. “Father, hallowed be your name” – big way of saying, “reveal who you are”. “Your Kingdom come” – we are saying, “Lord, set the world right. Whether it be the problems in Thailand or the issues in Gordon Head, fix what’s broken.” It doesn’t get much bigger than that.

But after that it gets really basic. Keep us from hunger. Keep us forgiven. May we be people who dispense mercy. And protect us from our selfishness. Very basic stuff.

Are these things reflective in my prayer life?

Give us this day our daily bread …

This woman in a little village in India trudges down the mountain each day to gather sticks for her cooking fire. Then goes back down the mountain to fetch water for cooking the food. Then she grinds the wheat that she has carried on her back, cherishing every kernel.

She makes flatbread in the palm of her hand. She drops them in the pan and feeds them one by one to her children, the only food they will have that day to fill their stomachs. I suspect she prays, “give us this day our daily bread” differently than the way we pray it.

Do I ask for daily bread, or do I beseech God to secure my long-term future? I don’t even really think about food. I’m gonna need a better job with better benefits. Because, let’s face it, I deserve it. I’m entitled to more. …than this. Daily bread? I need a bit more security than that.

Do I really ask God to forgive my sin, or am I asking Him to turn a blind eye to what I’m doing? You see, until I’m honest and vulnerable with my sin and understand to depth of God’s forgiveness for me, it’s going to be really hard for me to forgive you. If I become aloof to sin, you better believe that I’m going to become aloof to you.

Am I really asking God to lead me away from temptation? Those temptations that I like? Those things that, in my insecurity, I clutch to? There are all kinds of temptations out there. The temptation to withdraw from people in need, the temptation to judge people I hate, the temptation indulge in my felt needs.

Do I ask God to deliver me from these impulses, or do I see them as so big that I just resign myself to them, even though I leave a path of hurt and destruction behind me.

Is this how we pray? Not usually. Usually, I think, we’re covering our butts and asking for stuff. We are asking God to bless us and give us more.

This prayer is like a compass that guides us back to true North. There is nothing safe in it, or plastic about it. In fact, I would say you can’t pray it honestly without a sense of desperation.

Desperation… now this leads us to our parable…
How are we to pray?

Let me say, right out of the gates, God is not well represented anywhere in this story. His character isn’t seen anywhere. He is not some sleepy dude that – if we nag him enough – he will give us what we are demanding: God is not sluggish, he cannot be coerced and, when he gives, he does so freely without reluctance.

This is a one-point parable. Jesus is focusing on one thing, and it is this. He is encouraging a kind of holy boldness, a sharp knocking at the door, and insistent asking, and a search that refuses to give up.

He saying, “When in prayer, don’t worry about coming on your best behavior: be direct, be honest, be human, be shameless. It’s okay to be desperate and show desperation.”

People who lead reasonable, respectable lives – who are preoccupied first and foremost with the endless struggle to think well of themselves – do not intrude upon their friends privacy at midnight.

It’s okay to be direct in prayer. This is not a cat and mouse game.

This is a battle, a fight with the powers of darkness, and those who have glimpsed the light are called to struggle in prayer – for peace, for reconciliation, for wisdom. For the world around you and for the struggle within you.

As a pastor, you guys need to know that I get on my knees regularly and fight for you. That – in your lives – you would reflect and glorify God.

Do you know what the word Israel means? He struggles with God. The name was given to Jacob after he had spent a night wrestling with God. It’s all relational – get in tight. This is prayer.

There is one more thing I want to say tonight, which leads beautifully into communion. Something is central to both the prayer and the parable: community and bread.

Jesus doesn’t say, “Give me my daily bread”. It’s plural. “Give us our daily bread”. We are meant to pray it together. The friend at midnight is seeking bread on behalf of another friend who’s hungry. Prayer, Bread and Community.

When we meet God, we do not have to find a mountain top, or search our psyches, or hold hands and sing “Kum-Ba-Yah”. We gather and break bread in Jesus name. May we do this with greater clarity, closer intimacy and desperation for God’s mercy tonight?

Father, we need your touch tonight, thank you for your love that is symbolized in this bread and wine, we come hungry and thirsty for you … thank you for meeting us in this place.

Parable of Good Samaritan | Bob Opperman

2010-05-16T22:14:00.000-07:00

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The Global Gospel | Randy Hein

2010-05-09T21:52:00.000-07:00

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As we just heard read to us, Jesus has also given us a global mandate. “Go into all the world – and wherever you go – make disciples of all nations, immersing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

What we are being told is that, right from the church’s humble beginnings in Jerusalem, God has intended the gospel to inspire a worldwide movement. Which is why we can be sitting here halfway across the world in a completely different cultural context following and celebrating Jesus.

The kingdom He announced was meant to be multi-ethnic and multi-cultural.
I don’t believe this mandate has changed. So what are the global implications of the gospel? And what must we learn, and unlearn, to be effective agents of God’s mission in the world?

You see, we are not the first Western Christians to be asking this question.

Our story, at least for tonight, beings abut 100 years ago. The place is Edinburgh, Scotland. We are there. And we are at the first major International Missionary Conference of the 20th Century.

You will notice that, for an international conference, we are all pretty white.

To be fair, at the time, 71% of all Christians in the world are European. And Canada is right up there. A census in 1901 indicates that 98% of us considered ourselves to be Christians and 75% attend church regularly.

So, here we are in 1910, and we gathered with great zeal and passion to talk about reaching the whole globe with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Particularly the Southern Hemisphere: South America, Africa, and Asia. Due to industrialization and advances in transportation, it was possible to get around. Due to massive Western colonialism, there was access.

So there is a great deal of optimism at our conference. We are saying things like, “We believe we can Christianize the whole Southern Hemisphere in our lifetime. In fact, if we really commit ourselves, we could do it in a generation.” And so was birthed the global missionary movement of the 20th Century. So, how did we do?

I speak in generalizations. Perhaps unfairly. Most of the missionaries who went abroad had noble intentions and sacrificed a great deal to do what they did. They built schools and hospitals and orphanages and talked a lot about the love of Jesus for all people.

However, I think it is fair to say that many of these 20th Century missionaries were also caught up within the imperial attitudes and the colonial structures of the time. As a result, it was hard for them to parse their national identity from their Christian faith. The Christianity they were committed to ‘looked’ and ‘sounded’ very European and North American.

For a good chunk of these missionaries, it was inconceivable that Christian faith could even be expressed in what appeared to them to be primitive cultures: they looked so backward, it was unthinkable. So the report home would sound something like this, “We brought to the heathen not only the gospel, but civilization and good manners.”

So there was this tendency to duplicate Western society wherever they went. We have evidence of this in the European-style cathedrals built in India, the western dress adopted by Chinese Christians, and British Wesleyan hymns adopted as the norm in African churches.

Many of the paintings hanging on church walls of the time, had Jesus portrayed as a white guy with Scandinavian features, blue eyes and probably – in the imaginations of the people – speaking in annunciated King James English.

Any history student can tell you what happened next. It began as a backlash to European Imperialism.
It didn’t happen all at once, but by the time we hit the Second World War, the rotten underbelly of colonialism has been exposed. We see a reaction all over the world. “No more corruption. No more exploitation.”

And whether it is the Cultural Revolution in China, the Marxist Revolutions in Southeast Asia and Latin America or the anti-colonial independence movements in Africa and India, the message was generally the same:

“We are tired of your oppression. We reject your Imperialism, your moral superiority and … in many cases, your Christianity. Get out. We don’t want your governments, your authority structures, your generals, your presidents, your prime ministers, your priests or your missionaries.”

So they got booted out. This deeply depressed many Christians in the West. By the time we get to the 1970’s many of us had been led to believe entire continents have been lost to the gospel.

But here’s the irony. And maybe this is just the way God has to work in order to get us out of the way. In many cases, it was only when the Western missionaries were disempowered that the gospel began to take root. It was only when the church began to indigenize – to take on the culture, the flavor and the forms of the people – that it began to grow.

It happened quietly, but very quickly. And today it has exploded.

I have to confess, when I started reading this stuff, I was really suspicious. I couldn’t possibly be true. Initially I was reading from Christian sources, so I figured it was just propaganda. But I started looking at outside sources and they confirmed what was happening globally. And I was blown away.

In 1920, 9% of Africans identified themselves as Christians. Today, it’s 46% of the continent: 350 million Christians. That number is growing rapidly.

In 1949, when the last of the Western missionaries were getting the last ‘heave ho’ out of China, there were an estimated 700,000 Protestants living there. I don’t have numbers on Catholics at the time, but I suspect it was even fewer.

In 2007, Time Magazine wrote an article on the church in China. They estimated that today there are 65 million believers and “thousands more are converting every day”.

To give you a sense of proportion, the church in China is twice the size of the population of Canada.

After failed attempts by foreign missionaries to gain a foothold in China, Christianity is finally taking root and evolving into a truly Chinese religion. TIME

Along with the substantial presence of the Catholic Church in Latin and South America, there has been a surge of growth within Pentecostalism that – in the last 10 years – has brought countries like Ecuador and Venezuela near to 90% professing belief.
Like a small mustard seed that grows into a huge resilient tree that has a complex root system that is deeply entrenched and can’t be uprooted. The church has found a way to grow and flourish.

Today …
More than two out of three evangelical Christians now lives in Asia, Africa and South America.

If things keep progressing the way they are, global watchers are suggesting that within 20 years …

50% of the Christian population of the world will be in Africa and Latin America and another 17% will be in Asia. By then the proportion of whites among the world’s Christians will have fallen to perhaps 1 in 5.

Just to give you a sense of how crazy things are already… The largest church in the world is not in the U.S. but in Seoul, Korea.

It’s called “The Church of England”, but there are more Anglicans worshipping in Nigeria than in Britain, North America and Australia combined. Half of all of churchgoers in London England are now from African descent. The largest church in Russia is not Russian Orthodox, but an African Pentecostal Church in Kiev.

Can we see what’s happening here? Christianity ain’t a Western thing anymore.

Here’s my moment of clarity. At the moment, I’m inclined to believe this post-colonial explosion of the church is the biggest thing to hit us since the Protestant Reformation. Forget charismatic renewal. Forget the post-modern, emerging church conversation.

A world of change is forcing a revolution in the way we think.

So what must we learn, and unlearn, to be agents of God’s mission in the world? Here’s a start.

We have to move from thinking about ‘Doing Missions’ to ‘Being Missional’.

This is what spent all last week talking about …

“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And he breathed on them. We have been sent out. Our very being is missional. Our whole way of thinking and living has to be bathed in this. When we walk out the door, you are being sent.

So, where is the mission field? We have to embrace the fact that it’s everywhere.

In fact, if you want to be completely impartial, where is the greatest need for evangelistic work today? By most statistical standards, it’s Europe. Maybe the Middle East.

But here, today, in Victoria, less than 1% of the population went to church. A recent study found that Victoria has more atheists per capita than any other city in North America.

Do you know that we are the least churched city in Canada? Welcome to Canada’s missional disaster zone. Anglican Churches may be growing in Nigeria, but they’re shutting down buildings here.

By the way, I’m not depressed about this. What an opportunity. What a time and what a
place to be an ambassador of Christ.

Last year Douglas Todd of the Vancouver Sun wrote,
“If you wanted to start a new religion, there is no better place to attempt it than in British Columbia.This West Coast province is fertile ground for a new religion, a new spirituality -- because it has the fewest people on the continent who attend a church… But, scratch the ‘secular’ surface of most British Columbians, and they will tell you that, even though they're not ‘religious’, they definitely see themselves as ‘spiritual’."

We are on the cutting edge and I am excited that God has called us here to mission.
Perhaps the most important mission trip I take this year, will be when I go down to the corner store tomorrow morning. Maybe your most exciting mission project will be helping with Operation Trackshoes this summer.

The second thing I hope we’ve learned is that the Kingdom explodes in growth when it is translated and expressed in the living culture where it is planted.

African churches should look African. They should sound African. Asian churches should look and sound Asian. Christianity is not a world religion that has a particular expression. This is what ought to separate it form world religions. Buddhism has Tibet. Islam has Mecca. Judaism has Jerusalem. Hinduism has the Holy Ganges. What does Christianity have? Christianity has 1780 Feltham Road. **** Christianity is not rooted in one place and it’s not rooted in one culture. one culture.

This is how it’s always been … Antioch. Corinth.
Jesus has penetrated every culture. The Spirit of God is already at work in every people group. He is speaking their language. He is speaking into their fears, their hurts, their longings. His work of redemption will look different in different cultures.

We should not be asking people to change cultures and become like us when they become Christians. Unfortunately we’ve done that.

We have to be asking in our culture or any other culture, “Where is the goodness here? Where is the beauty here? Where are the kingdom longings?” There are traces of the kingdom bleeding through everywhere.

But in order for this to work, we will have to learn how to listen better.

Firstly, we have to listen to God and what he’s saying.

We have to listen to what he is saying to us through other Christians around the globe. (Global Christian voices) They have a lot to teach us …

If you listen to the likes of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in Russia or Bishop Desmond Tutu from South Africa or Mother Teresa of Calcutta or Oscar Romero from El Salvador … you will find that – even though they never got together to write a manifesto – they all said the same thing about our Westernized Christianity.

They told us decades ago that we were in trouble. They told us that our Christianity was self indulgent. They said that, even though we were materially decadent, we were spiritually poor. They told us that it would end badly.

They wrote about it. They preached it. But, of the most part, we wouldn’t hear it. “How dare they?” But their words were tragically prophetic.

We have to listen to global critics of Christianity. One of the most articulate critics of Western Christianity was Mahatma Gandhi.

When asked how Western Christians might best engage India, he said …

"I would suggest first of all that your missionaries begin to live more like Jesus Christ. Second, practice your religion without adulterating or toning it down. Third emphasize love and make it your working force, for love is central in Christianity. Fourth, study the non Christian religions more sympathetically to find the good that is in them, so that you might have a more sympathetic approach to the people."

“If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today.”

Duot and Chol

So, in light of all this, our global understanding of the gospel has to be more wholistic and relational.

With almost half of Africans already identifying themselves as Christians already, perhaps our primary obligation to that continent should not be evangelistic. We are more heathen than they are.
Instead, maybe we need to aid our brothers and sisters who are already established there, who are often living in dreadful circumstances.

In the kingdom to come, there’s gonna be wholeness: no suffering, no disease. If our job is to alert people to the Kingdom of God by creating a foretaste of things to come, we have an obligation to advocate young moms in Zambia.

If we are creating a foretaste of things to come, then we should welcome international students from the Sudan. If we are creating a foretaste of things to come, then we should respond to the crisis in Haiti. bring clean water and promote peace between Christians and Muslims in Ethiopia. People, this is a necessary side of global salvation that we need to partake in.

And tonight we get to partake in a foretaste of heaven around the communion table.

The Local Gospel | Randy Hein

2010-05-02T21:40:00.000-07:00

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That was my son, Caleb Hein, on drums tonight. He may seem like a quiet and unassuming person to you, but make no mistake, on the cul-de-sac where we live, Caleb is the Alpha Male. We have a bunch of little kids on the street – mostly boys – and they all want to be like him.

When I ask Alex what he wants to be when he grows up, he thinks, and says, “Either Indiana Jones, or Caleb”. They are always pounding on our door and asking him to come out and play.

Often he will find some kind of excuse to say, “I’m busy”, but sometimes he just takes a deep breath and goes out to play road hockey or basket ball with them.

The parents just love him. In fact, one day I was talking to one of my neighbors. And she said, “You know how you Christians have your whole W.W.J.D. thing … What Would Jesus Do?” I said, “Yeah.” “Well, in our home, we have W.W.C.D.? … When are kids are faced with a situation, we ask them, What Would Caleb Do?”
At the time, I laughed and apologized for Christian marketing. It only struck me later, what she was actually saying. She isn’t a Christian. She doesn’t read the Bible. What does she know of Jesus? And, if Jesus is going to make an impression on her life, where is that going to come from? Maybe Caleb is the only Bible she gets to read.

Last week, we began a series of conversations on “The Gospel: personal, local, global”.
It’s a three part series that can be posed in three questions: what does the message of Jesus mean to my life? What does it mean to my neighborhood? And does it have global implications?

Last week we talked about this first part: the personal side of the gospel. If Jesus were standing here tonight – with his long streaming hair and his blue sash – what would he have to say to me, or to you? To be completely honest, I don’t really know.

But I think he would find a way to connect with your story – that would be consistent with what we see in the gospels – he would connect with your story and speak truth to it. And then he would say something like this: “follow me.”

I want to suggest that, to be a Christian, is to be on a journey of faith that doesn’t end with Jesus, but it beings with Jesus. Spiritually speaking, the journey has mountains and valleys. Sometimes the path seems really clear, other times dark and dangerous. But he says, “don’t be afraid, you are not alone, follow me.”

So the journey requires a sense of commitment. Jesus says, “I want to teach you things. I want to show you wonders. I want you to participate in what I’m doing.” The question is, “Do you have the kind of heart that can be responsive and obedient to where he takes you?”

For this to happen, God has to be at the center of your relationship with him, not the other way around. We are no longer the center, he is and we rotate around him.
I have found that this is the best way to live. Because that’s how we were created to live.

Now there are other options. You can live a self-centered life, and when I say this I don’t mean a selfish life. I simply mean a life where you are the arbiter of right and wrong and you will dictate them terms by which you will live.

You can live this way and be a very good person and a very moral person, but it’s not how it was intended to be. Through offering himself, God demonstrated a way of love that gives us the possibility something bigger and something different.

But let’s talk a little bit tonight about what Jesus did.

John opens his gospel by writing, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” Here we have Jesus at the beginning. This is something that Christians have always confessed to be true. Jesus is God.
And through him all things are made. In the act of creation, God sends forth His Spirit, His voice, His Breathe, and His Goodness.

We see through history that he sends his Covenant, he sends the Law, when people mess up, he sends his prophets. And, in due time, God sends his Son. John 3:16, right? How does he present himself?

Not how we might think. Our ideas and notions of God are so distorted. When we think of God appearing, we think of blinding flashing light. Like in the scene where God appears in Monty Python’s Holy Grail. This is how we think God would present himself.

Think again, God says. Totally within his character, he saw what needed to be done, and took the plunge into humanity and joined the ranks.

John 1:14 reads, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

The word for “made his dwelling” is es ken osen. Literally translates “He pitched his tent with us”. Eugene Peterson translates this, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.” God became human and moved into the city.

If the Bible is right, God lived in a Nazarene neighborhood for 30 years. He lived with those people and interacted with that community. When you read the gospels, you get the sense that he enjoyed this: that He liked hanging out with people and mixed with everybody on every level of society.

So our understanding of the gospel has to be couched in these terms. The Father sends the Son. The Son sends the Spirit. And God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – sends us. We are the “sent ones”. And we have been sent into Victoria.

And the goal of our mission is to make our neighbors conscious of the reign of God.
We are to introduce people to the King and the ways of the King.

We do this by doing justly, loving mercy, walking humbly with him … and throwing parties. It’s right there in the Bible:
Romans 12:13 – “practice hospitality.”
Open your homes, open your lives.

We are here to create a foretaste of heaven. It’s like our lives should be like a good trailer for an up-coming movie.

Tell me, have we created a good foretaste of heaven here in Victoria? What do our neighbors think of us? This is the critical question. If our building was taken away from our neighborhood tomorrow, would our neighbors grieve or would they be relieved?

How do we embodying this Good News? I mean, this is what Jesus did. It’s who he was. “The Word become flesh.” The word for this is ‘Incarnation’. It’s a big word, but an important word for you know.
Through Jesus, God became very tangible. It isn’t just language, or thought, or idea. The message takes on flesh and blood.

As sent ones, we are to be incarnational. Our message means nothing if it isn’t lived.

The problem is we have an ex-carnational spirituality. What do I mean by this? I mean we don’t really live our Christianity in our bodies anymore; we just live it in our heads. It’s become disembodied: just thoughts, ideas and notions of the truth.

So how do we move from
ex-carnational to incarnaitonal?

When we are talking about the gospel entering the neighborhood we are talking in very concrete terms. We have to ask questions like, “What does the gospel look like? What does it sound like? What does it smell like?”

I am going to plot out a path for your consideration…

First thing I want to say is this – and this is the testimony of scripture – God is already at work.

He is in our neighborhoods long before we ever arrive. And I have to say this because sometimes we are under this false assumption that nothing is happening until we show up.

As some of you already know, I’ve been a bit of a critic of the W.W.J.D. campaign. And it’s not because I think it’s a bad question – “What Would Jesus Do?” – but I don’t think it is the primary question. When it comes to the mission of God, before I act, I should pray: “God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – what are you already doing? And how may I participate in what you are already?”

I used to think it was my job to save the neighborhood. So I had an agenda of what that was going to look like, and I was impatient with God because he seemed a little slow on the ball. But it’s just not the case. God is so big and so active, I just can’t keep up.
Can we, in this posture of prayer, bend our knee to the mission of God and respond in obedience to what he’s already doing?

We can do this through what I will call Spontaneous Responsiveness.

A guy in our community here tonight was driving with his daughter on a windy day, and his daughter noticed an old woman lying on the side of the road. He immediately stopped his car and helped her to her feet and offered her a ride home. When they got to her place she said to him, “You know what, when you die you are going to go to heaven for doing this.” He responded, “That’s very kind of you to say that, but I am hoping to bring a little bit of haven to you today in your time of need.”

Helping a single mom move. Buying sports equipment for a neighborhood kid who otherwise couldn’t afford it. Sitting with a neighbor who husband has just left her.

These are all situations that call us to respond with grace and generosity. It’s not about token good-deeds, or random acts of kindness. This is about being responsive to moments where God prompts us.

But I think more important than Spontaneous Responsiveness is what I’ll call Reflective Faithfulness. To be thoughtful and diligent. To bloom where you have been planted.

We are a placed people. We live on this particular patch of earth. And this surrounding area is where we are in mission first. This is where we are in mission first. Tonight, we can’t be incarnational in Belo, Ethiopia, we can’t be incarnational in Deradune, India, but tonight we can be incarnaitonal in Victoria, British Columbia.

It is important to remember that our relationship to this neighborhood is at once personal, spiritual, environmental, social, economic, and political.
If we open our eyes, we will find countless ways to move into mission by participating in things that are happening in community around us. And if things aren’t happening we can make them happen.

Here are some shining examples are some shining examples of what I’m talking about … *

Look what God is doing through our community

Say “yes” to invitations from the community to get involved. * My wife has been running the hot lunch program at Gordon Head School for the past three years.

“Thanks for doing this.”

The principal of Gordon Head Middle School thanked me for telling kids about Jesus. Three weeks ago. “He’s really, really messed.”

Now, there’s no doubt that this will be messy. Following God’s lead into mission will lead to conflict, frustration, and unanswered questions. We might find ourselves certain of less, and humbled by our failures. So, in this, we will also have to receive grace and be shaped.

I pray we will be shaped by these disciplines …

Receiving the gift of inconvenience
Opting to be vulnerable (standing for what God stands for)
Entering into pain and suffering with others
Taking risks (even if feeling overwhelmed)
Seeking to ask creative questions more than giving clever answers
Growing in relationships

“What does the gospel look like?”
Maybe a guy helping an old woman who had fallen on the side of the road.

“What does it sound like?”
Maybe the laughter of a homeless guy with a full belly down at Street Café.

“What does it smell like?”
Sometimes it smells like my grandpa’s Old Spice cologne.
Maybe Amber’s baking. Or the smell of the McLeod’s house during Church of Breakfast.

May we be challenged to “taste and see that the Lord is good”, as we seek to engage our neighborhood with the gospel. To pray, “God, what are you already doing, and how might I participate?” And then bow our knee to the Mission of God.

The Personal Gospel | Randy Hein

2010-04-25T20:32:00.000-07:00

Listen/Download HERE
We have just finished a massive study through the Gospel of Luke. It took us over 6 months, but we have read through – and had conversations about – this epic telling of the life of Christ: from birth, to life, to death, to resurrection, and ascension. The whole shebang.

Kevin ended is talk last week with this epic statement. “Jesus has changed everything.” And while I fully agree with this statement, you may be more cynical. Changed what? Apart from a few Religious Wars, the Spanish Inquisition, and a bunch of buildings with crosses on them, how is the world any different?

I want to respect your cynicism. So for the 3 weeks, we are going to look at the basic message of Jesus. We’ve titled this series, The Gospel: personal, local, and global. What does the gospel mean to my life, my neighborhood and what are the global implications?

So I’m going to do my best tonight to explain the personal aspect of the gospel in very plain terms.
But in order to do that – to be fair – I think I need to show you my hand, and explain where I’m coming from.

When I was 13 years old, almost 30 years ago, I made a commitment to follow Jesus. I did this mostly due to the love I experienced at summer camp. There wasn’t a lot of pressure there was just a lot of love. And – one night when I was walking with a friend – I told him I wanted in on it. And he told me that the way ‘in’ was Jesus. So I said, “okay”. I got on my knees and I prayed my first prayer. I wish I could say it was more intellectual than that, but it wasn’t.

By the way, it was the same summer my sister taught me how to play “Stairway to Heaven” on the guitar. Which probably explains a lot and sums up about every tension in my life: my commitment to Jesus and my love for Led Zepplin. ‘In the world but not of the world’ has been a pretty critical theme.

After that, I did my very best to go to church. But it was tough. I didn’t care for it.
We all have our stories with the church, right? So for reasons that I thought I could justify,
I just stopped going. I went through a period of being what I’ll call being ‘de-churched’. During this time, if pushed, I would have still called myself a Christian. I was just tired and a little uninterested.

I spent most of that time reading Karl Marx, and watching Kung Fu movies while my friends played Dungeons and Dragons and wrote songs. We wanted to sound like Pink Floyd and look like Duran Duran – but we had neither talent nor looks … or the fashion sense.

But something happened in my 17th year. It wasn’t what I’d call an emotional crisis, but I was conflicted. I had been reading the gospels, and I had this growing realization that there was a growing gap between what I believed to be true and how I was living. It had to be resolved.

At the time, I thought it was self-initiated, but today I really believe God was calling me to resolve the conflict in my heart. In a sense, God was saying, “Look, just choose.”

I knew that resolving this would require commitment and that this commitment would have consequences. It was a season where I really tried to embrace what it meant to follow Jesus. And everything changed.

He brought people into my life that drew me back into the church. These people were nerds, but they loved me and prayed for me. He gave me a greater love for my friends who didn’t believe what I believed. He gave me a desire and maybe even a skill to explain things that hadn’t been well explained.

So that’s a little sliver of my story. I’ve left out huge chapters: my years studying philosophy, marriage, how I ended up here. But I tell you this little piece because everybody has a story. And everybody’s story is unique.

As much as we try to reduce the gospel to concepts, steps and stages, it really can’t be. What, then, unifies Christians? What does it mean to embrace the gospel? Is there a way we can define what it actually means to be a Christian? And, if the offer is being extended, how do I become one? Randy, maybe God is calling me to resolve a conflict in my heart, but I don’t know how.

I think one of the best ways to describe the Christian life is that it is a Journey with God.
It’s not just about being on the right path, but having the right company.

Here is Luke chapter 5, we find Peter. He’s just a regular blue-collar guy living in a remote corner of the world. Just living out his days quietly. But Jesus comes into his world and disrupts everything. Initially, he doesn’t like what Jesus has to say to him. But it begins to sink in, and it hits him as a bit of a crisis. He has a “What if this is true?” moment.

There is a piece of him that just wants to be left alone. “You don’t want me. I’m small, busted, and sinful.” But Jesus says to him, “I want you.”

If you’ve never heard it said before, hear it tonight, in this journey God takes the initiative. He says, “I want you.”

In the accounts recorded in Matthew (4:19) and Mark (1:17), Jesus simply says to Peter, “Come, follow me.” So Peter begins this journey by saying, “yes”. And, in following Jesus, he enters a journey that’s just wild.

Sometimes we are led to believe that encountering Jesus is the destination. But really, it’s just the beginning of the journey.

Now, this journey requires commitment. So I think this is another good word to describe what it means to embrace the gospel. It requires commitment.

When Jesus called Peter, he didn’t simply say, “Here’s a new system of beliefs.” He said, “Follow me.”

You can’t hold this at a distance and understand it. This can only be realized if you embrace it.

You can know a lot about coffee without ever tasting it.

You can know a lot about a kiss without ever having kissed someone. In fact, you can break down a kiss clinically. You can deconstruct it to its physical properties. You want it, here it is …

Two Homo sapiens press their moist, creased facial orifices together, clinch tight the sphincter muscles to draw the orifices into fleshy mounds and exchanged saliva, breath, occasionally allowing the tongue muscle to touch (and perchance to wrestle).

That’s probably more than you ever wanted to know about the kiss. Very clinical.

“That’s not a kiss,” you say. What’s missing? “Well, that’s easy,” you say, “the experience.” And what does the experience require?

We love to examine things before we commit to them. And that’s okay, in fact, I think there’s real wisdom in that.

But the fact remains: you can know a lot ‘about’ something without ever knowing it. There are a lot of people that know a lot about God, but don’t know him. Knowing requires commitment.

Jesus says to Peter, “Drop your nets. Stop what you’re doing. Follow me. Commit to how I see things. Commit to how I do things.”

But, as we break this down, perhaps most profoundly, it is a journey into a Relationship.

Well, what does this relationship look like?
The Bible uses transcendent language. God is a Creator relating to his creation: His creatures. He is a Lord, King and Ruler.
But the Bible also uses intimate language: friendship, a parent, a restless lover. Jesus is a Master who calls us to apprentice under him.

Jesus relates to different people in different ways. And if you want evidence of this, then just read your Bible.

Peter – Zacheaus – Woman of Samaria – Rich Young Ruler – Nicodemus.

Why? Because they are all different people and he meets people not on some spiritual grid, but he meets them where they are at.

He respects our stories and he relates to us as people.

So every story will be different.

When it comes to your ‘faith journey’, don’t worry about where you’ve been, or how you got here…or whether your story measures up to other people’s stories.

The critical question is, “Where am I with this right now?”

If God has taken steps towards me – if he is pursuing me – have I responded?

I met my wife Marcy when I was 19. You may not believe this, but - back then - I was a kind of a geeky guy. Yet, for some reason, (pity I think) Marcy began to return my affection. It wasn’t long before we decided to commit to get married.

Today, 20 years later, we are still married. It is not dependent on my feelings any particular day, or even on the circumstances. She can be in the next room, we can be continents apart. We are journeying together in a committed relationship.

When I ask people if they are Christians – I get all kinds of responses… “Sort of”

Now, I sympathetic to all these answers, but what would happen if you were to apply the same statements to other relationships.

What if people asked me if I was married and my response was: “Sort of”

The gospel is journeying together with God in a committed relationship.

This is a call to participate in what God is doing in the world. There will be times on the journey when we will stumble and feel weak. We will waver on our commitment. And aren’t faithful in our relationship. But that’s okay.

God loves you the way you are and not the way you are supposed to be, because you will never be the way you are supposed to be.

Come to him “As flawed as I am, I want to follow you Jesus. I can’t do it on my own, I can’t even meet you half-way, but I believe you’ve gone all the way for me. And I want to respond. I want to accept the gospel and follow you.”
Tonight we are sharing in communion. This is where we embrace and declare what God has done through Jesus to reach out to us.

One more thing. Jesus said to Peter, “Drop your nets and follow me. I will give you a new sense of purpose. I will make you a fisher of men. But you gotta step up.”

Maybe in one way or another, you want to embrace this message. Perhaps for the first time, you are saying, “Okay, it makes sense.” Maybe you’ve embraced it but you feel like doing something to enact that decision.
Maybe, like when I was at 17, you are feeling God’s call to a deeper sense of commitment.

I want you to feel free to do something tonight. Feel free to come up here and cut a piece of this netting off. You know, the ultimate enactment of that decision is baptism, we’ll talk about that sometimes, but if you want to do something tonight, come up during or after communion – bring a friend – and we have scissors here and take a piece home.
the rest

Luke 24:36-53 | Kevin McKee

2010-04-18T22:32:00.000-07:00

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THE ASCENSION OF JESUS

Very often when we approach any issue, we start from what we know and we tend to want to read what happens from that perspective. We know the results and unfortunately that often colours the way we look at the issue or event. That is one of the dangers that can happen with our look back at the Ascension of Jesus and all the events that related to Jesus’ death and resurrection.

We need to start by remembering the situation. The disciples had been living with, traveling with and learning from Jesus for three years. Imagine living with someone for that long, you become deeply attached. All of a sudden this person is taken from you violently, not only that, you are at risk because you were a friend.

I expect that the disciples were emotionally devastated, and perhaps even physically exhausted. They are confused and I am sure that thoughts came to mind as to whether the past three years were for naught, I mean, Jesus, their Rabbi, was gone. Now a few days after that death, a violent and brutal death, the disciples are hearing stories. One group was on a road out of town and came back saying they had spent the day with Jesus, learning from Him, but not recognizing Him until they settled down for dinner, and then Jesus disappeared. Some of the women and a couple of the disciples had gone to the tomb that Jesus had been laid in and the guards were gone and the tomb was empty. What is happening, what is going on here? FEAR becomes a major part of the confusion.

Today we often have events of a similar nature, devastation in Haiti that makes no sense and we don’t know exactly what is going on. Or 911 in the U.S. which had all of us scared about the future, we didn’t understand and we didn’t have information and we were frightened. These are the same kind of feelings that the disciples had.

The first few verses set the context. Luke 24:36-38: “As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!” But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. And he said to them, “Why are you troubled and why do doubts arise in your hearts?”

The disciples are talking, probably as we would worrying about what happened, and what they should do. If it was me, I would probably be likely to be saying I need to get out of here, I don’t want them arresting me. I don’t know what happened with Jesus, but this is all pretty weird. Peter, who had denied Jesus on the night of His trial, is an ample demonstration of the fear and confusion that the disciples face.

All of a sudden Jesus arrives, He just appears. What does He say, “Peace to you” In modern language this might be understood as a greeting of both friendship and telling the people to relax or chill.

The disciples are according to the text, startled and frightened and thought they were seeing a ghost. In fact I think the text may understate the reality, they were terrified and had reason to be that way. Then Jesus asks a question that He knows the answer to. He does so to challenge them, to make them think of what they had spoken of with Jesus. He is trying to jar them into facing a reality that they could never have imagined.

Jesus understands their concern and fear as the passage going on demonstrates. Luke 24: 30-43: “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.” And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. And while they still disbelieved, for joy and were marveling, He said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave Him a piece of broiled fish, and He took it and ate before them.”

Jesus confronts their concern and realizes that they will need physical evidence, proof that they can believe in that will allow them to recognize a new reality, that Jesus has died and has been resurrected and is physically with them again. So He offers to be touched and He eats food, a truly physical act. The disciples are still nervous, they want to believe, they want to feel the joy of having Jesus back with them, but on the other hand they are still uncertain. Jesus physical evidence starts to bring them around and then Jesus takes it one step further by reminding them of the past He has had with them.

Luke 24:44-47, “Then He said to them. “These are my words that I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures and said to them. “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”

Jesus then opens up the Scriptures to them. He wanted to open their minds to not only memorize the Scriptures but also to understand and think about what the Scripture was saying. He wanted them to understand and think of the Scriptures, not in the manner that had first been described to them as they grew up but to see in the Scriptures the real truth that He had come to declare. He was declaring through His words, through His actions, through His death and through His resurrection that a New Covenant, a New Kingdom has been brought forward, not just to the Jews but to all of the world, all of the nations. He then ends the section by stating that God’s promise was intended to be proclaimed to all the world and that was His expectation of His disciples.

Jesus, continues this explanation of the New Covenant and the role of the disciples in the next two verses: Luke 24: 48-49, “You are the witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you, but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” The first aspect of this explanation is the role of the Disciples. They are called to be witnesses, and in this passage the word means a legal witness. They are intended to be keepers of the Promise of the New Covenant.

One might ask what the “Gift of the Promise” is, it is what is declared in verse 47, that Jesus has died for the sins of human beings, that He is resurrected and that as a result we can be reconciled to God, we can be children of God, with the promise of a new Kingdom, a new Covenant.

At the end of these two verses, Jesus brings up another aspect of what is to come for the Disciples. They are going to be given “power from on high”, we often refer to this as the Gift of the Holy Spirit. This is an ability, a capacity that does not come from our own natural talents, but an authority and an ability that comes from God. But it is more than that, for that power is God and He chooses to live with us and work within us.

Having given instructions to His community, His close friends, Jesus begins His last acts on Earth, before He returns to the Father.

Luke 24: 50-53 “Then He led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up His hands, He blessed them. While He blessed them, He departed from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshipped Him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God.”

We can learn a lot from Jesus’ last actions with His disciples. First He leads them, using language that is the same used for a shepherd leading his sheep. Then He commands them, as to what they are responsible to do. Then He blesses them, He assures them with His blessing that they are not going forward into the world alone, and then He leaves them.

How do the disciples respond. First, they worship Jesus and God the Father, they acknowledge just whom it is that they serve. Think of the change from earlier in this passage where they were scared and confused and now they are sure, that they are worshipping God and that Jesus is real and has given them instructions. Second, they are filled with joy, they have moved from fear and confusion to great joy, something has changed in their lives and this has changed everything about their lives. Third, they patiently wait for the promise of the Spirit and in the meantime worship in the Temple all the time. Think of this, a day or two before, they were hiding in a room, scared of the future and now they are openly joyous and worshipping God in the most public place of all the Temple.

So what does all this say to us, what does this do for us, now, 2000 years later? I mean it may have been great for them to have this comfort, this wondrous experience, but how does this help us tomorrow as we wake up and go to work or go to school, or look for a job? The truth is that the events of those few days and the actions of JESUS CHANGED EVERYTHING. His death and resurrection and then His ascension, declared a New Covenant between God and human beings a new future for all of us who choose to accept God’s offer.

The passage also provides us with an outline of the different stages of a relationship with God that every human being goes through at some point in their life. It is how we respond in those stages that is critical to our future as part of the New Covenant.

The first stage is when we as people are filled with doubt, doubt as to whether anything about God is true, including whether God even exists. If we are open and honest at this stage, we will admit that we need to seek evidence. Evidence that God is real, that Jesus existed and that the life and death and resurrection of Jesus has historical evidence. We know from a variety of sources, some in Scripture and some not, that Jesus was a historical figure, that His disciples believed in what He was saying and accurately wrote down what He said and their observations. In the end, we must weigh that evidence and determine if it is sufficient. I believe that given the alternatives, in terms of the views of the world, it is more than sufficient, it is overwhelming proof.

The second stage is one of fear, what if I make the choice to follow Jesus, what will it do to my life, how will it impact me? We seek reassurance, we want to know that there is something more than what we see. In this passage, Jesus provides that reassurance both in showing Himself to His disciples, and also in expanding their understanding of the Scriptures that declared who He was and what He would do.

Once we have started to overcome that fear we begin to have a cautious optimism. Maybe this is true, maybe my life can have meaning, maybe I am meant to part of something more than this world I see in front of me. The disciples have those same feelings, and Jesus encourages them to move forward, He tells them about the promise of the New Covenant and prods them to begin the process of stepping out. We need to be willing to maybe haltingly and maybe cautiously commit ourselves and move forward into the community of faith. This might mean coming to church more, or joining a study, or asking a friend questions about what they believe.

Out of this step of caution, hopefully comes belief. The disciples are convinced by the evidence, by the direction that Jesus has given, and they move to a position of trust. Once we have come to terms with what is presented to us in the message of Jesus, we are called to belief and trust in the God who offers us so much. All the evidence in the world cannot make the final step any easier, we must have faith, we must trust that Jesus does care for all of us and wants us to be part of His community.

We are not however left in a position of blind trust. The disciples are taken by Jesus through the Scriptures, they are encouraged to understand the depth of its meaning and the inherent call to action in God’s name that rests within the Scriptures. The Scriptures provide us with an understanding of the new reality, the new truth that the Covenant has created. We also are called to study, to learn so that we can grow within the community. God does not fear our questions, in fact Jesus welcomed the questions and concerns and addressed them and God will do the same for us.

The disciples are given orders to go forward, but Jesus knows they cannot do it alone, so He tells them to wait for the Holy Spirit, for God’s power to fill them, before they begin their new work in the Kingdom. The same is true for us, we need to seek the power of the Holy Spirit, so that we to can be equipped for our role in the Kingdom.

Finally, the disciples are transformed, they are changed forever, from people living in fear to people living in joy and people living out the truth they have discovered before all around them. We to need to embrace the resurrection and allow it to transform our lives, so that we will be part of the witness of the New Covenant.

So let me end with the following questions for you to think about. Where are you tonight in these stages? What are you going to do tonight, tomorrow and forever, to move forward to the final stage of being transformed into a new creation, a child of the New Kingdom.

What awaits you in this New Kingdom, and how can you be part of that recreating of the world.

We have heard of many opportunities in and out of our community of the place where we can answer those questions. Opportunities like helping Haiti, either here or there, Young Life at high school, IVCF or Navigators at university or college, the Street Café, or serving in the community, or serving here in the place. Which one is God calling you to and how are you going to respond?

Luke 24:13-35 | James Prette

2010-04-11T22:54:00.000-07:00

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Unfortunately the first section of this recording is missing

Luke 19:28-48 Palm Sunday | James P

2010-03-28T21:03:00.000-07:00

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Luke 18:15-43 | Andy Renton

2010-03-21T23:57:00.000-07:00

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Tell the people around you something that you don’t think you could live without. Or at least something you don’t want to live without.

Have you ever had something taken away from you that you didn’t realize you relied on so much?

This week I took a few days up island to spend time reading and writing this sermon. I was at my wife’s family cabin, which is an absolutely awesome place. Now in the past, we’ve had internet access up there. But when I arrived this time, I opened up my computer, probably about 10 minutes after arriving, and…. Nothing.

I’m not sure what shocked me more. Having no internet, or my reaction to not having internet. At first I was in disbelief. I tried over and over to see if anything was there. I tried making up passwords for the locked wireless feeds I could find. Maybe I’m like one of those hacker wizzes and can figure it out?! Nope. I suck, no luck.

Then I got upset. Then angry. After a bit, I figured there was no point in being there, and said it was time to pack up and head right back home. And then I just relegated myself to moping around the cabin for the next hour or so as I accepted that I was to spend a good portion of my time the next few days NOT connected to the internet. I was officially separated. Cut off.

Now I knew I spent a lot of time on the internet. I knew I relied on it for communication with a lot of people and groups. And I knew it was important to me. But just how important? It was so odd to feel my reaction to not having it, and the fear that I experienced. There was a bit of me that actually was afraid. What was I going to do?! Show’s how much I depend on it eh?

Anyways, tonight we’ll be discussing this Rich Young Ruler and his dependence on wealth. But before we get to him, let’s begin with prayer.

So the passage we have starts with a little controversy. The context is that we are only a couple weeks from Good Friday. In the next few days, Jesus will be entering Jerusalem to great fanfare. However, He knows what is coming and this is probably wearing on Him heavily, something the disciples may be noticing though they don’t really understand.

And it’s in this context that we find Jesus being bombarded by parents bringing their children for prayers of blessing from this great teacher. This was a fairly common thing back then, like what we do with our baby dedications here. Unlike the other Gospel authors, Luke tells us specifically that these were young babies, by using the word brephos, which meant very small children, infants, or at most young toddlers.

So a bunch of parents are bringing their children to Jesus, for Him to touch them and bless them, and the disciples start to get angry. Not only does Jesus have an important ministry of teaching and healing, but they sense He has been feeling overwhelmed lately. So they want to help and rebuke the parents for bothering Him in this way.

But it is the disciples who Jesus gets angry with. He rebukes them. He’s not just happy to spend time blessing the babies, but He offers a little lesson for His followers. He tells us that the Kingdom of God belongs to “such as these,” and that “whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.”

So what does that mean? Some people have suggested that we should look at the characteristics children have to embody them ourselves. But I don’t think that’s what Jesus is saying.

Rather, we must read this lesson in light of what precedes it in Luke’s Gospel. Jesus has just told a parable of the Pharisees vs. the tax man’s prayers. Most translations close that story with this line: “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Some commentators believe the beginning of tonight’s passage could start with a little “For instance…” Jesus tells the parable to explain the point, and then offers us the real life experience as well. But do babies really have the ability to humble themselves?

I really like Eugene Peterson’s way of telling this. Starting in vs. 15:
“People brought babies to Jesus, hoping he might touch them. When the disciples saw it, they shooed them off. Jesus called them back. ‘Let these children alone. Don’t get between them and me. These children are the kingdom’s pride and joy. Mark this: Unless you accept God’s kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you’ll never get in.”

He calls it “the simplicity of a child.” He links this with his rendering of Jesus’ point in vs. 14: “if you’re content to simply be yourself, you will become more than yourself.”

So it’s about simplicity. About being yourself. Babies can’t do anything but, be babies. They really bring nothing to the table. They take, they receive care, that’s it. Simple.

Let’s continue with that in mind. Our passage now turns to a rich young ruler. Whereas the disciples tried to block the children from coming to Jesus, it seems as though the crowd parts for this man. He is well known. Probably a synagogue leader. Mark’s Gospel tells us he runs and falls at Jesus’ feet, desperate for the answer to his question.

We must be certain to realize this is not a trick question like many of the other religious rulers ask of Jesus. This seems to be an honest plea, as though this man knows he’s been blessed with wealth, social standing, and has kept the law, but still feels uncertain about his eternal standing.

“Good teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus’ response of “Why do you call me good?” is unexpected. It reminds me of when another religious leader, Nicodemus, genuinely praised Jesus and earnestly sought His guidance.

Both of these leaders truthfully want His direction. Instead of graciously responding, Jesus challenges them. He sees that they have a limited spiritual understanding, and He challenges them toward more. He has a similar honesty with His disciples, seemingly calling them out regularly.

In comparison Jesus has a soft and gentle approach to those with limited capacity for understanding, like the children. It’s not that Jesus is mean or even critical of those He challenges, but rather He gives them opportunities to really consider what they are saying, to dig deeper into their self-assured perceptions.

But Jesus also quickly moves on. This man was not there on a mission to figure out what or who was ‘good,’ but rather to find out if he was ‘good enough.’

“What must I do?” he says. By his response to Jesus’ statement about keeping the commandments, he is essentially saying, “have I done enough?” He feels he has kept all of God’s rules and laws, which should get him into God’s good books, but we sense by his question that he thinks he may still be lacking something.

Jesus gives him one more task, the one thing He knows will be hard for this man. In love, Jesus says, “sell what you have and give it to the poor, then, come follow me.”

So why this challenge? Jesus at no other time is recorded as issuing this task to anyone else. So why this man?

Jesus knew that this man was controlled by his wealth. He was hanging onto it so tight, that it actually had control of him. Jesus wanted him to release his riches to the poor so that he could be free.

It’s interesting that Jesus just didn’t say ‘follow me.’ The man could have kept his wealth, followed along with Jesus, and probably really help out the cause as he would have a lot of resources Jesus and the disciples would be able to use. Many churches today I’m sure could use this passage to support people giving more of their money to the church itself.

But Jesus doesn’t say this. This passage is not about giving to the church or to the poor, though those are obviously important. But Jesus wasn’t focusing on that here. This passage is about the man himself, and his ability to truly receive what Jesus is offering.

It’s important to note here, that when it comes to our giving, let’s understand that … God isn’t short of cash. He doesn’t need our money. The important thing about being generous and giving is that we learn our need to let go. The message here is that we give not simply to help God, but – really – to help ourselves. Giving develops trust, and we become free from the traps of money and possessions.

The reality is that for this man, and for all of us, we tend to hold on to the things of this world like money with such a tight fist that we cannot let it go. This stops us from being able to reach out and receive Jesus as Randy talked about last week. As Luke shared in Chapter 16, we cannot serve both God and Money… only one thing can be our Master.

When we have our fists or arms held so tightly around the things of this world, whether it be money or intellect or safety or family or toys or anything, we cannot be free to reach out for Jesus. We need to let go in order to receive Him.

Sadly, for this man, he leaves in sorrow, because he cannot let go of his grasp on his wealth, his position in society. He came in desperation for eternal life, but it seems there’s one thing he’s more desperate for.

“I want to love you,” he seems to say to Jesus, “but it has to be on my own terms. I don’t want to give my life to you; I just want you to enhance what I already got. I just want a little assurance that what I’m doing already is good enough for the prize on the other side of this world.”

The rich young man is advocating a spirituality that is very popular these days, and has been throughout history. I’d risk suggesting it’s evident in almost all of our lives here. I know it’s evident in mine. I believe in Jesus, I understand what He did for me, I love Him, and I truly want to follow Him.

But the reality is that I don’t always release everything I hold on to for Him. This is actually an interesting passage for me to be speaking on, because back when I was 21 and really passionate for God and renewed in my faith, I read this story and felt God was calling me to this same challenge.

I thought about it for a week or two, and was deciding pretty quickly that God wanted me to sell or give away everything, and move to Africa to ‘follow Him.’ Now that isn’t a bad thing. But it’s not God’s call for all of us either. It was actually Randy that suggested I take some time to think through it, and consider that those around Victoria needed Jesus and His ministry just as much as people in Africa did. I obviously decided to stick around and now I’ve been serving the youth of Gordon Head for 6 years as the Youth Pastor of this church.

But that was one point of my life. Even as a Youth Pastor I struggle to give over all of my life to God. There are things I don’t think I can live without. My internet connection is just one silly example, but it’s valuable for all of us to consider what we are unwilling to give up. What is it that scares us a little to not have in our life?

What is it that God may be challenging you to release your grip of tonight? What is getting in the way of you completely trusting and following Him? He may not be asking you to ditch it completely, but at least consider how you are holding it. Have you put your trust in this thing? Has it become your Master?

Back to the story, you can just imagine what the disciples are thinking as Jesus sends this man away. “What are you doing? You’ve let a good man slip away whose deep pockets could help advance your cause.”

And Jesus looks around at his disciples and begins to explain what they cannot understand. “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. Even harder than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.”

The disciples are just shocked. For a couple reasons. The first is that they were under the dominant cultural assumption that prosperity was a sign of spiritual blessing. If God liked you a lot he would esteem you economically.

I think this assumption – this prejudice – still exists today. We probably wouldn’t say that all rich people are good people. But I think culturally and socially we tend to treat people differently when they are rich. We favour them a little more than we favour the poor. It’s like the disciples stopping the little children, or blind Bartimaeus in a few verses, from coming to Jesus, whereas they let this rich ruler right on through. We look on the rich and poor with different eyes, and Jesus did not. He sees everyone as lost.

The disciples were shocked for a second reason. A camel can’t get through the eye of a needle. Jesus has taken the smallest thing imaginable and said that the largest animal in Palestine can’t get through it. It’s impossible. Is Jesus saying no one can get eternal life, or just rich people? This question is what frames their next statement about themselves. “But what about us Jesus? We’ve left everything for you… can we be saved?”

Jesus has challenged this man, and left us this teaching to ponder, to allow us to realize that salvation is a divine possibility. Not a human one. The rich ruler asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Though Jesus did not give an easy direct answer, we can see that He is telling us “There is nothing you can do. It’s my initiative. It’s possible only through me.”

So if it’s only possible through Jesus, then why does He say that the wealthy are at a disadvantage?

With wealth often comes a sense of independence. With wealth often comes a posture of self-determination. The wealthier we are the less inclined we are to need to trust anybody, including God. We trust ourselves, and the resources we think we control.

Again, I think this passage we’re looking at comes straight out of Jesus’ parable of the two men who prayed which Luke records for us in verses 9-14. The Pharisee prayed a prayer of self-justification, thanking God for how good he was and that he was not like those around him who were unjust.

The tax collector simply prayed: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” So simple. No justification. He approached God with nothing to hold on to. He simply brought himself and asked for mercy.

Those who are rich with wealth, or intellect, or social standing… they have an impossible time letting go of their self-justification. They are used to proving themselves, and are able to do so in all arenas except for one… in the presence of God. When it comes to Him, we have nothing we can offer. We can’t DO enough to earn our way into His presence.

Now usually I don’t spend a lot of time talking about heaven and how or who gets in. I think it’s a way of playing God, and I’m not eager for that conversation. But I think this passage makes it clear that Jesus is open for this conversation. In fact, within just the 15 verses we’ve been looking at, salvation and heaven are referred to over 10 times in 5 different ways.

We can enter into, belong to, or receive the Kingdom of God. We can or can’t inherit eternal life. We can receive treasures in heaven. We will be or won’t be saved. And there is an age to come.

The passage makes clear that we are to consider the eternal ramifications of our lives lived here on earth. Not so that we can figure out what we need to do to get to heaven, but rather in realization that there is nothing we can do. So stop trying.

The small group I belong to has been studying a book by CS Lewis lately, called ‘The Great Divorce’. It’s essentially the story of a man’s dream as he voyages through Heaven and Hell.

I want to read one little bit from it. The main character has happened upon two people who are having a conversation. One has already been to Heaven and he has come to help his old boss, who is referred to as a Ghost, along the journey. The old boss is disgusted at having to be escorted by his employee, who had also happened to have murdered someone while living on Earth.

CS Lewis →

The charity that this man does not want, is the only way. Nothing we can do will earn our way into heaven. As the one man says, nothing can be bought in Heaven. All is given, we just simply need to ask and receive. None of us truly get what we deserve, and thank God for that.

The word charity actually originates in the word carus, which basically means to care for someone. And that’s where we can tie it into what Jesus tells us, that we need to come as babies into the Kingdom of God.

Babies really have nothing to offer. They can’t give us anything out of their own attempts or merit. They simply accept the care of their mother or sadly, they die.

I think Jesus wants us to realize that nothing we can do will ever be good enough to earn His love or gift of salvation. Just us being ourselves is enough. As the parent looks on their child, so God looks on us. We needn’t try and earn his care. And certainly don’t reject his mercy or charity. But rather just receive it.

Tonight we come to the communion table. We have this symbol to remember what Jesus has done for us. In continuing His teaching that we can do nothing, but rather salvation is only possible through God, Jesus follows the story of the rich young man by explaining to His disciples what is to come in the next week for Him.

In verse 31 it says He took the 12 aside and said to them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and all things written about the Son of Man by the Prophets will be accomplished. For He will be handed over to the Gentiles, and will be mocked and mistreated and spit upon,
and after they have scourged Him, the will kill Him;
but on the third day He will rise again.”

As we come together to consider this great tragedy and it’s blessed triumph, how will you approach God?

Will you come thinking, “I’m a decent, civilized, presentable human. I’ve done enough, earned my place in Christ’s Body.”

Or do you break off yourself from God because of what you have done. Seeing yourself as not worthy, and therefore not deserving.

Remember tonight that none of us are deserving of God. None of us are good enough. But all He asks is that we simply come. Receive. Trust, and follow.

Luke 17 | Randy Hein

2010-03-14T23:18:00.000-07:00

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Summary
the rest

Luke 10:1-24 | Sherri Priestly

2010-03-07T22:36:00.000-08:00

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Turn to someone next to you and recount a time when you were bursting to tell a story/give a piece of news.

Dog Story (not true at all!)

And that brings us right to our discussion of Luke tonight. We’re looking at the point in Jesus’ ministry when he sends out 70 men with a great story to tell- the story of the kingdom of God.

As we begin our look at Luke 10 tonight, it would be useful to take a step back and look at the big picture for a minute. 2 weeks ago James told us that 2 events in Chapter 9, Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ & the transfiguration, represented the apex of all three synoptic gospels. After that it’s all downhill- straight to the cross in Jerusalem. Our passage tonight occurs at the beginning of this stage of Christ’s journey.
The section of the Gospel of Luke that we are in tonight is quite unique. Many scholars view Luke 9:51 all the way to Luke 19:28, as Luke’s “special section”. It contains material largely peculiar to Luke or shared only by Matthew but arranged quite differently. Luke introduces this section by saying this in Chapter 9 verse 51:
As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.
The language used makes us think of a non stop, no detour straight line trip to Jerusalem and the cross, but Luke then shows Jesus going here and there, stopping talking and teaching. So what does Luke mean by that sentence? He’s letting us know that Jesus’ time on earth is coming to a close. He is bringing his readers along on Jesus’ pilgrimage to the cross. What did the Savior decide was necessary when he knew his time was ending? What did he say? How did he lead his people and prepare them for his departure?
As we look at our passage tonight, we can see a certain urgency with which Jesus sends out the 70. He sent them:
…two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go.
Luke 10:1
He would not pass through any of those places again after this visit. If they were to respond to his message about the kingdom of God it would have to be now.So, Jesus sends out 70 men ahead of him, to all the places he plans to travel as heralds of his imminent arrival.
Depending on what version you have it will say 70 or 72, it is different in some of the early manuscripts, and there is debate about which number is correct. However, there is significance to the number 70, which leads many scholars to lean towards 70 being an intentional choice. Seventy as the number of elders appointed to help Moses lead the people of Israel. It was also the number of nations believed to be in the entire world at the time. So this number looks back to Israel’s history and ahead to the spread of the gospel.
Either way, a whole bunch of people are sent out to a whole bunch of different places. Earlier, when Jesus sends out the 12, you think “that’ll be great practice for his chosen church leaders”. But here Luke says he sends out 70 others as well! I love that because it expands my vision of just how many people were following Jesus on a regular enough basis that he felt he could entrust them to be his ambassadors. I also like it because these 70 weren’t “special” we don’t know their names, they hadn’t received the “special” attention that the 12 received, all the insider talks and personal answers, but Jesus sent them out.
I imagine that these 70, when Jesus first suggested they go ahead of him, may have thought- we’re not ready, we just new in this whole Jesus thing, what can we really accomplish? But Jesus thought they were ready.
I think Jesus sends us out as well. And we may not feel ready.
Maybe you’re new to this whole Jesus thing. Isn’t it wisest to let other more experienced people do God’s work? What if you mess it up? Say something wrong? I want to tell you tonight, that I think Jesus thinks your ready. Simply by responding to his call on your life, God will equip you to do what he wants you to do. It doesn’t matter what your job or your training is, you are a sent one, just like these 70. On mission for Jesus, declaring his kingdom.
So I think we can take the instructions that Jesus gives to these 70 and apply them to our own lives. Jesus says to us, just as he did to the 70 in verse 3:
Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves.
Being sent is not going to be easy. We’re leaving home turf, we’re leaving what’s safe and secure. It requires that we trust God and follow him without being side tracked Jesus said in verse 4:
Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.
Just go. You don’t need special equipment, you just need yourself in proper relationship with your creator. Connected to the vine, as Stacey encouraged us to be last week.
And what is to be our message? Verse 5 says:
When you enter a house, first say, 'Peace to this house’
Jesus’ contemporaries were not looking for peace. They were looking for the wrath of God to rain down on the godless Romans and the wicked Samaritans. To destroy then and show the Israelites righteous and approved of by God. They were looking for armed revolt. That is what the Messiah was to bring- a flaming sword to smote ruin on all who opposed Israel.

Jesus comes with a message of peace: Matthew 5 Jesus says “Blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the merciful” he says “Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also”.
You don’t bring about God’s kingdom through armed uprising. You can’t expect to do evil and have positive godly things be the result. But at this time the Jews thought that fighting was the only way. It didn’t matter how many miracles they saw, or how shrewd and insightful Jesus’ teaching was, they would not hear that God way was not the way of militant action. They wanted to go their own way.
Jesus knew that many would not accept his message, in following verses he pronounces “Woes” on several cities- Korasin, Bethsaida and Capernaum. These can be seen as warnings about the final judgment that will come if they reject Jesus’ message about the kingdom of God. But they can also be seen as the real time consequences that would be administered to these cities by the Roman government. By turning away from God’s chosen Messiah and seeking to make his kingdom come through armed revolt, each of these cities would be devastated not by “fire from Heaven” but by the brutal, merciless destruction dealt out by Rome.
The 70 were sent out by Jesus with an urgent message of “peace”- to return to God’s way and a message of reassurance and hope – “the kingdom of God is near!”
Literally the kingdom of God is at hand! The kingdom of God has arrived! Because, in Jesus, it had arrived. While on earth He was the kingdom of God on earth. Now that he has gone to heaven he has sent the Holy Spirit; now the kingdom of God is inside us.
We have been sent and entrusted with this same message- the kingdom of God is near! The “real” world, as you know it, is just a dead, drab façade. The kingdom of God is bursting around the edges, busting in through the margins. Each of us is crack in that façade through which the light of God can come bursting through. We are the light of this world, we stand out like a lamp on a hill, calling out to those in the darkness- this drab dead pain filled world is not the reality. There is real life! Life you were created for, life lived in connection to your creator who loves you and died for you. The kingdom of God is right here! Grasp it! Take hold! And Live!
It can give me goose bumps. I want to be a big crack in that façade.
The 70 were to deliver the message “the kingdom of God is near” to those who accepted them. And to those who rejected them? They were to deliver the exact same message “the kingdom of God is near”
Those whom Jesus sends out with his message are not authorized to judge. That’s not our job. It is the Holy Sprit’s job to convict people of their sin. We bring the message- the kingdom of God is here! We hold it out- this is what life is supposed to be about, this is how to live in God’s way, to be truly human, connected to your creator who loves you and wants to know you. Here it is! That’s our job, that is what we have been sent to do.
We have not been sent to pronounce judgment on those who we perceive to have rejected our message. In this passage the judgment and woes are pronounced by Jesus- the only one fit to judge.
I find this very freeing. I don’t have to go around trying to make everyone I meet fit my moral code, walk and talk like I do. And if they don’t fit my code or live up to my standards, to make sure I set them straight. That’s not my job.
I am sent to hold out a beautiful message of peace and reconciliation through the cross of Jesus. And if people reject this message? Even scoff and throw me out? I simply brush the sand of my feet and continue on. I don’t carry that burden or bitterness with me. I leave it with God. I’ve done my job. He’s perfectly capable of doing his without me.

In the next section, the 70 return full of excitement about what they had seen and done. They report to Jesus that “even the demons submit to us in your name” and he responds with some strange/strong language. He says:
I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.
What’s up with the whole Satan falling like lightning thing?
It’s certainly prophetic language. Jesus had been praying and saw a vision, he saw the heavenly reality which corresponded to the earthly victories won by the 70. He knew, and could encourage them that their work was part of the greater work he was sent to accomplish- the defeat of Satan, the accuser, through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.
And the work that God calls us to is significant too. It’s all part of the “cosmic battle” if you will. Our actions in service to God are part of God’s work bringing about the reconciliation of all his creation back to himself.
But don’t rejoice that you’re so awesome, Jesus says. Instead rejoice that your names are written in heaven. Our joy on this earth doesn’t come because we can do great things for God, that sense of self accomplishment only leads to pride and sin. The only cause, the greatest cause for rejoicing we have is that we have been reconnected to our creator. The Maker of Heaven and earth knows our names- he’s written them in heaven.
In fact, it’s interesting to contrast what the 70 rejoice over and what Jesus rejoices over. They were excited about all the cool stuff they were able to do. Jesus was excited about the work of the Spirit, in verse 21:
At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.”
The Holy Spirit is at work with power in the lives of the unlearned, insignificant men. Not trained leaders of the country, not the religious elite. The Spirit is at work in the lives of those who accept Jesus’ message- that’s us. Just look at what they were able to accomplish, when fully in contact with the vine.
There is clarity in simplicity and we do well to remember that. It doesn’t matter how many facts we can accumulate about Christ it only matters that we seek to know Christ himself. Because Jesus really is all we need, he will supply us with the words, with the courage and with the humility to go. We just need to step out and do so.
Finally Jesus ends with a prayer:
All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
This prayer is an affirmation of Jesus identity. God the Father has given him authority over all things. And he alone knows the Father intimately- through the trinity.
But here’s the cool part, look at that last sentence. No one can know the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
To whom has the Son chosen to reveal the father? To each of us. Look at John 1:
Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
Those who believe Jesus’ claims about himself were true, who believe he came to rescue us from ourselves, we have been given the right to become children of God. We have been invited in to that exclusive family relationship that Jesus has with the Father.
Amazing.
Jesus is it! Jesus is the consummation of all history.
He finishes this passage by saying that many people have longed to see what these men have seen, to hear what they have heard. This is it! God’s kingdom has come. They got to witness it first hand. We get to spread the word!

We are called and sent to share the message that Gods’ kingdom is near. It’s at hand, right now. Tickling at the edges of sad world, bursting through the cracks that are each of us. His people who bear the amazing news that the life you were created for is available. Connected to your creator, the true human experience joy, love, peace and hope. It’s here.

Luke 9:37-62 | Stacey Toews

2010-02-28T22:17:00.000-08:00

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The crash and burn of any disciple

My return from the Philippines – a year of spiritual victories and powerful experiences. Followed by a summer of tree planting alongside a 3 some of guys by the names of: Mark, Butch and Evil. Sex, profanity and drunkenness was their 3fold theme.
Life with Christ is lived with NO credentials but one – we are either in him or we are not in him.
In short I see the text this week (Luke 9:37-62) to be one which reminds us as followers of Christ to 1) be re-amazed at Jesus and his ability while 2) also recognizing how quickly / instantly we lose ALL ability to serve as 'kingdom agents' the second we are disconnected from Him. It's a true statement on John 15 5"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.

B/c earlier in the chapter they've successfully gone out as disciples to heal AND to cast out demons, they've also affirmed him as the Christ and witnessed him transfigured but the very next day (after the transfiguration) they cannot do something (cast out a demon) which they've already done successfully at the start of chapter 9. What happened? They became self -absorbed. They fall into petty arguments about who is the greatest, endeavor to stop others from working the very miracle that they are now unable to do and when people in Samaria oppose them they disregard the guidance of 9:5 (keep on walking) and suggest instead to destroy the Samaritans. Over and over in this chapter, the disciples are rebuked. Rather than firing them, or telling them to beat it, he continues to clarify how intensive their commitment must be.

Rather than being discouraged, Christ (moving into chapter 10) appoints more of the same 'losers' and sends them out too! I love this - he has chosen us to be his workers.
The disciples’ experience resume
8:22 witness Jesus calm a storm, command wind and waves
8:26 witness Jesus release a demon possessed man in Gerasenes
8:40 witness Jesus heal a twelve year long ‘untreatable’ health condition
8:55 witness Jesus raise a dead girl bringing her back to life
9:1 granted authority by Jesus over diseases and demons and provision for all of their needs
9:10 firsthand victoria (as promised) over disease, demons etc
9:16 witness Jesus feeding 10-15 thousand people from one person’s lunch
9:20 affirm Jesus to be the Messiah - This is the climax of the gospels. This is the apex of Jesus’ popularity with the crowds. After this, his popularity declines. We also read regularly that after this point he made it tough to want to be his follower b/c he started really lay it down.(i.e. vs. 23) Following Jesus isn’t about feeling good and a free lunch, it’s about self-denial, counting the cost, suffering like Jesus and putting others ahead of yourself.
9:23 taught by Jesus that he will be rejected and killed by the religious elite and after three days raised to life -
9:28 witness Jesus transfigured with Moses and Elijah
The next day . . . .
Scene 1 Vss. 37-42
The disciples crash and burn – Jesus heals a boy whom the disciples could not
-Jesus is coming down from the mountain with Peter, James and John
-the disciples not on the mountain were doing their best as Jesus’ representatives in his absence and struggling very much to do what they’d been commissioned to
-the father of the boy possessed by an evil spirit comes to Jesus explaining that his disciples had not been able to help
-what happened to them? They’ve done this before
• I’ve seen people possessed and seen people released,
• Seeing people released from bondage is incredibly glorifying to God far more than Satan being able to control their bodies, voices or use them as puppets to scare/harm others
• God isn’t interested in my experience being anything but a deepening of my walk with Him – he doesn’t let Satan flaunt his power but waits for resources to be on hand before Satan’s hand is fully revealed so that he can defeated!
• Satan enters our lives like a mouse and then, once in, acts like a lion, any foothold provides an option for entrance and he doesn’t leave our lives graciously but he does and MUST when we openly welcome Christ to flood in
• God doesn’t work that way – he comes with the generous spirit of most loving, caring father you’ll ever meet and is so respectful to us that after having given His son on our behalf, who in turn gave His life so we could be forgiven he offers us the choice to call him Lord or flip Him off – and in calling us to himself he spells out the terms of our relationship with the meticulous nature of a banker drawing up documents for a loan – we know exactly what he’s asking of us – everything we have in response to all he’s given
Verses 1-6
Parallel passage is in - Mark 9: 28,29 After Jesus had gone indoors, his disciples asked him privately, "Why couldn't we drive it out?" He replied, "This kind can come out only by prayer.”
Question:
What are you holding onto as a ‘replacement’ for being connected to Jesus?
The epic, everyday blunders of Jesus’ followers
vs. 40 – they could not
vs. 41 – unbelieving and perverse
vs. 45 – they did not understand, they did not grasp, they were afraid to ask
vs. 46 – an argument started about greatness
vs. 50 – do not stop him b/c he’s not ‘one of us’
vs. 55 – Jesus turned and rebuked them

-poor representation of Jesus is one of the age old challenges of the church -many today would speak of Jesus in view of the followers of his whom they have met
ie. I’ve met members of his club/church and they were not at all able to address my needs therefore: Jesus is of no value or purpose in my life – HE is unable to help me
-the father did not presume that b/c the followers got it wrong that necessarily the one they were following was messed up !
The boy’s father was willing to sidestep the disciples and go straight to the ONE who was supposed to be their source.
- . . . messed up and prone to fail as we are, Jesus has chosen us!

Scene 2 Vss. 43-45
Listen carefully, I’m going to be betrayed
-the meaning of what Jesus was telling them was ‘hidden’ from them.
Like a person who might receive a bad verdict from the doctor and then refuse to ask further questions, they, too, didn't want to know any more
Question:
Is there a message from Jesus that I need revealed or the courage to ask Him about?

Scene 3 Vss. 46-48
Arguing about greatness
The question the disciples are arguing about is not who IS the greatest, but who WILL BE the greatest.[2] The Greek word is meizon, the comparative form of megas, "large, great."[3] They were seeking greatness of rank and dignity, of importance and status. This is not the pursuit of excellence as a disciple or as a minister of Christ -- a good thing.
They needed a little child in their midst to remind them of value and where their focus should be.
The child is standing beside Jesus – a symbolic place of great significance
you need to welcome one/treat one as having my credentials whom you view as being the least or lowest in rank
Who could we say are the equivalent today of ‘children’ ?
Whom is Christ calling me to welcome in His Name?
• First nations communities
• Homeless
• Sweatshop workers in developing country factories
• Immigrant or refugee populations in our neighborhood.
• Haitian earthquake victims
•
Scene 4 Vss. 49,50
He’s not one of us
By Luke's record of such a blunder here, as well as by his recording the ignorant proposal of Peter in the transfiguration event, he forever refuted the notion that Luke "corrected" certain passages in Mark in order to show the apostles in a more favorable light.
-each person is for Jesus or against Jesus, no in between ground.
-the person choosing to rely on the name/power of Jesus to oppose Satan seems quite clearly on the FOR Jesus side of the equation so . . . . encourage him!
“When we are faced with alternatives and a choice of ways confronts us, the question is not: Is this good or evil? Is this helpful or hurtful? No, the question we must ask ourselves is: Is it of the world, or of God? For since there is only this one conflict in the universe, then whenever two conflicting courses lie open to us, the choice at issue is never a lesser one than: God . . . or Satan? Love Not the World by Watchman Nee
How do I keep people out?
Scene 5 Vss. 51-56
Inhospitable Samaritans and fiery disciples

The Lord was in the habit of constantly sending out by themselves small companies of his disciples as missionaries in the neighboring districts, thus accustoming his followers, in view of his own approaching death, to act and to think alone. F13

What had they been taught by Jesus when they came to a town where they were not welcome?
Shake the dust off your feet and keep looking for a place that welcomes you.

NOTE: The disciples were eager to grab hold of God’s power to bring down fire BUT they couldn’t tap into God’s power to heal a boy who needed release from Satan’s grip.

How did Jesus teach them – he rebuked them and showed them again

Scene 6
Vss. 57-62
Jesus promises that those who are willing to part with what is most dear to them for his sake "will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life" (Matthew 19:29).
The key to this section is the verb follow, which appears in verses 57, 59 and 61
Discipleship is not a second job, a moonlighting task, an ice-cream social or a hobby. It is the product of God's calling and should be pursued with appropriate seriousness.
The closer Christ drew to Jerusalem the more clearly he communicated discipleship is an all or nothing calling.
Chapter 10
I’m sending out another 72 of you
Pray for more still to join ranks with me and go out as my messengers

Conclusion:
What am I holding onto as your ‘replacement’ for being connected to Jesus?
Repentance: for the people whom I have turned off of Jesus b/c I didn’t live as I’ve been called and commissioned to
What in my life has my focus shifted from seeing Jesus freeing power released in peoples’ lives? For the disciples it was spending time wondering who would be great and who should be OUT of their group.
Prayer for more harvesters - Prayer to be a true reflection of Christ
Apart from me you can do nothing
The success of any disciple reflecting Christ is tied to his/her connectedness to Christ.

Luke 9:18-36 | James Prette

2010-02-21T22:25:00.000-08:00

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Luke 9:1-17 | Randy Hein

2010-02-14T23:54:00.000-08:00

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Summary
the rest

Luke 8:22-56 | Amber McMillan

2010-02-07T23:45:00.000-08:00

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I feel like I should have a wooden spoon in one hand and a knife in the other to speak to you guys tonight. For those of you who don’t know, when I am not busy with things of the Place community, my official title is cooking instructor. Hence my desire for the afore mentioned tools. I am humbled to have been asked to share with you tonight!

I was raised to own and read one of these (hold bible) Thanks be to God, but much of my learning in the church was to make me believe that it took a seminary trained person, to help me understand it. Can any of you relate? As I reflect on that experience, I realize that it sowed seeds of fear in my heart that I couldn’t discern the scriptures for myself. I realize that what developed in me was a fear of my faith. Quite simply: it made me shortsighted. My Fear made me shortsighted. So much so that I haven’t always able to see the things God was doing around me.

When I first looked at the text tonight, it was with some of those fears. Can I really expose some of God’s truth in these 4 happenings? It’s funny because we’ve spent the better part of 5 weeks in Place KIDZ wrestling with the text, practicing, rehearsing and interpreting for the drama we just saw. As I watched them discern ways to portray Jesus and his disciples, I was reminded that these words are alive. . living and breathing. . .God’s continuing message to each and every one of us. Through His holy spirit, the truths found inside these pages are unique and pressing for each of us.

So, Luke is sharing something with us. The theme tonight is “Lord over Death and Disease” so, what of that? How do we see that Jesus was the Lord over them? What does the text reveal?

It starts with a storm. Ever been in a storm? On a boat, on a lake or otherwise? I remember being tossed to and fro in our motor yacht when I was a kid, sinking the bow pulpit as we shuddered through 2 meter swells. And all of this on a Lake in Ontario!
For me, the calming of the storm is miraculous. I couldn’t do it. I could only feel helpless in the midst of it. Not unlike we saw the disciples. Where was their faith Jesus asked? How could they doubt Jesus’ ability to calm the storm and save them from the depths? What did they have to fear? The Lord of death and disease was asleep in the boat; what was He going to do? Perish along with them?
I think Jesus asked them where their faith was because they really had lost sight of it. In the messiness of the situation, their fear made them shortsighted. Have you ever found yourself in situation so messy, so inconceivable that your fear of not knowing what to do paralyzed you?

In verse 26 of the passage it reads that after Jesus calms the storm:
26They sailed to the region of the Gerasenes,[a] which is across the lake from Galilee. 27When Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a demon-possessed man from the town. For a long time this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tombs.

So, Jesus is confronted by a man who is possessed with demons. Verse 30 reads:

30Jesus asked him, "What is your name?"
"Legion," he replied, because many demons had gone into him.

Now, the word translated ‘legion’ was a word often used in the military to describe a group of 1,000’s of men in a Roman army. So there were many of them and, we see that they have wreaked havoc on the man and reduced him to the state of a wild animal. The text doesn’t says that Jesus calls the demons out of the man.It is with His permission, they are cast out of the man and he is restored to his natural self. Miraculous.
Oh, but where do the demons go? The swine. . .what do we about them? Where do they fit in? Why did Jesus allow the demons to be cast into them? Well, I’ve heard some preachers use this part of the scripture as proof of demon possession, animal demon possession and that we are all called to cast demons out of our fellow brothers by the power of God. I’ve also heard this passage used by Jewish rabbis as proof of how unclean pigs really are and that to eat them is to sin. I don’t want to go there tonight. The Lord over death and disease had the power to do anything; it should stand as no surprise that these verses show that. But, I want to wonder what the demon possessed man in the story would say this passage was about? If we could ask him, what do you suppose he would say? What word might he use to describe what happened to him? Salvation comes to mind.
And if that’s what he might say: Let’s take it further: How about the townspeople and the farmers? What would they say the passage was about? They had just witnessed the Lord of death and disease heal a man. This man had been totally controlled by demons, had been forced out of the community. He gets healed and what do we see them do? Verse 35 reads:

35 When they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone out, sitting at Jesus' feet, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid.

They choose fear. It says that they were afraid and verse 37 goes on to say what that fear motivated them to do:

37 Then all the people of the region of the Gerasenes (gur-ass-knees) asked Jesus to leave them, because they were overcome with fear.

They tell Jesus to leave. They couldn’t deal. Not only were they motivated by fear but I think their fear made them shortsighted in what they were really witnesses to. Do you think they might have had need of Jesus? Do you suppose there was someone else in their midst that could have used Jesus’s words or touch? Didn’t matter, they just couldn’t see it. The pigs were dead, the crazy man wasn’t crazy anymore and life wasn’t as it was. Has anything ever happened in your life that caused change you didn’t like?

Bob and I have been married over 16 years and our last move was our 23rd. You don’t want to get me started on how many times God has forced me out of my comfort zone. A few times I’ve even asked Jesus to cross the ‘lake’ in my life just because I couldn’t deal. so, I know where the townspeople were coming from. Change is tough. It can be paralyzing and fears run rampant when we don’t immediately understand what God is trying to do.

So, as the group return to the other side of the lake, Luke introduces us to two people, both in need of Jesus and both with faith, verse 41 says:

41Then a man named Jairus,(Jii-rus) a ruler of the synagogue, came and fell at Jesus' feet, pleading with him to come to his house 42because his only daughter, a girl of about twelve, was dying.

Just as Luke begins to paint a picture of this man’s state, a woman lurks in the crowd. She’s desperate to touch the cloak Jesus is wearing because she believes, if she could just do that, she might not bleed anymore. The gospels say she bled for 12 years and nothing helped her. Perhaps her faith wasn’t as strong as her desperation for anything that might help. Regardless, as she touched his cloak, she was healed. The Lord of the death and Disease used a flimsy piece of cloth to take away her ailment. Miraculous.

You know, just like the others in this passage, I like to think about her. I like to imagine what she was going through at this exact moment. She would likely have been disguised because she would have been known to be unclean in the jewish crowd. Any flow of blood was seen as unclean and meant separation from society. She’d spent 12 years of her life ostracized. To show up meant pushing though her fear, to touch his cloak, and even more fear when, likely hoping to be able to slip away, Jesus asks who touched his cloak. . .

47Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed.

She’d had to make herself known; Admit it was her and face the crowd that would no doubt be aghast at her presence. When she trembles in Jesus’ presence and admits that she was the one to touch his cloak, verse 48 says:

48Then he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace."

By facing her fear, she was healed. Miraculous. Against all the odds, she met Jesus, touched his cloak and was made well. Was her road easy? Did her fear make her shortsighted; did it fuel her faith to believe in the impossible; or did she choose her faith and not her fear?

Luke then turns right back to Jarius as gets the news that his daughter has passed.
Now as a parent, I can’t even imagine how that might have felt. The guilt of not getting to Jesus sooner; the anger that there was no time left. The despair that his only child lay dead in his own home.

But, God’s timing is everything, is it not? His timing is without limits and boundaries and our is small and short. Jarius’ has lost his child to time. Verse 50 says:

50Hearing this, Jesus said to Jairus, "Don't be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed."

Jarius hadn’t lost his child to time; the Lord of death and disease wasn’t governed by time. He was calming the storms, casting out demons, healing the chronically ill and raising the dead outside of humanity and the confines of what Jairus knew to be possible.

You know, I can’t help but feel, as I wrestle with these verses, that God is trying to show me something about my own faith. Like the disciples in the storm, I can see that my fear of what I don’t know can make me second guess what God can do in my life. As the townspeople reacted to Jesus healing the demon possessed man, I can also see that my fear of change and what I don’t understand can make me push God away and turn in on myself. But, just like the woman who touched Jesus' cloak, I also see that my fear can fuel my faith; the pain and uncertainty of what I cannot control can allow me to lean on what I believe He is faithful to do. And just as when Jesus raises Jarius's daughter from the dead, Jesus, the Lord of death and disease, is not bound by time or circumstance in His victory over my humanity.

What do you see? Remember that this passage is alive. . living and breathing. . .God’s continuing message to each and every one of us. Through His holy spirit, the truths found inside these pages are unique. It is by design that we are gathered here tonight. Perhaps some of you are here with fears of your own? Maybe you are second guessing what God is doing in your life? Or maybe you are facing circumstances that are so tough and wrought with change that you want to push Him away? Maybe some of you fear what these verses reveal about Jesus himself? I want to encourage you tonight to push through that fear. . .to use it as fuel for strengthening your faith. Don’t allow that fear to make you shortsighted of what God wants to do in your life. Just like I shared that my experience made me fearful that God couldn’t reveal himself to me through his word; that fear has allowed me to push through, build my faith and better lean on him.

Luke 8:1-21 | Andrew Dean

2010-01-31T21:25:00.000-08:00

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The parable of the sower is a simple story but Jesus uses it to make profound observations about the human heart. The seed is the word of God and it is being sown liberally into each one of our hearts. Our hearts however receive this word in different ways. Some receive it as though they are a path, the surface of their hearts are paved over and they don’t let the seed/word in. Some receive it but their hearts represent the rocks, the seed germinates but doesn’t survive long term. Some receive it but thorns sneak into their hearts, the seed grows but it is smothered by deceptive things. Some receive the word like the good soil and by persevering they overcome.

This sermon identifies what the seed and soils look like and it addresses some of the strategies we can have as Christians to create good soil in our hearts.