Tag: God's Promises

Weaponized Narratives. Romans 3:5-8

An old proverb states that truth is the best advertising, propaganda and public relations tool.

Fact-supported truth is a powerful narrative.

Unfortunately, the truth can be hidden, ignored, obscured or inundated by error, creating what is identified as a weaponized narrative.

The concept of a narrative has become increasingly popular in contemporary society.

One American President popularized the idea of the narrative in political and social discussions. 

This concept of “the narrative” has been trumpeted by talk-show hosts and politicians of various stripes during the past decade.

Promoting the idea of a narrative implies manipulation of perception to ensure a particular outcome during any debate between proponents of opposing views.

Narratives as currently employed have a tangential relationship to truth, at the best.

Increasingly, the idea of a narrative is being weaponized in contemporary society.

I suppose this movement to weaponize the narrative was inevitable since the concept has been aggressively promoted by the media in support of favored political views.

Narrative warfare embraces more than Public Relations and propaganda campaigns.

Narrative warfare employs “weaponized narratives” which are spun from “highly selective truth,” outright lies, false accusations, distorted and altered quotations, emotional appeals, sensational outrage, fear mongering, blame-shifting, intimidating threats, victim posturing, virtue signaling and fabricated imagery. These are all facets of contemporary argument.

Indeed, these disruptive and often destructive techniques have been in the human political and psychological warfare tool kit since our first parents first appeared in the Garden of Eden.

Tragically, modern mass media and digital communications can quickly and pervasively spread the weaponized narrative, often without challenge.

Emotional arguments tend to overwhelm logic and reason.

Narrative warfare advocates argue that a powerful psychological weapon is capable of many things, including influencing national and international opinion. Worse still, weaponized narratives are employed among the faithful.

The inevitable result is devastating to the Faith.

When I speak of weaponized narratives, I am speaking of the creation and employment of a narrative driving the activity of those who hear the narrative.

Among the faithful, we witness an increasing appeal to narratives rather than the truth.

The narratives sound reasonable, though they are false; they have the ring of truthiness, though they lack either evidence or logic.

Ofttimes, the narratives have the ring of veracity, though they do not tell the whole story; they are partial truths.

Remember, a half-truth is a total lie.

That is what makes them so dangerous!

The unwary are susceptible to succumbing to the error promoted by these false narratives.

Romans 3:5-8Amplified Bible

5 But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? God is not wrong to inflict His wrath [on us], is He? (I am speaking in purely human terms.) 6 Certainly not! For otherwise, how will God judge the world? 7 But [as you might say] if through my lie God’s truth was magnified and abounded to His glory, why am I still being judged as a sinner? 8 And why not say, (as some slanderously report and claim that we teach) “Let us do evil so that good may come of it”? Their condemnation [by God] is just.

The Word of God for the Children of God. Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia! Amen.

The devotional message I am bringing today is intended to challenge us to think Christianly.

I want us to give some consideration of the narratives which are mistakenly treated as valid in the realm of the Faith.

I am challenging each of us to weigh what is promoted through such narratives in light of what is revealed in the Word of God.

I am asking and indeed, challenging, God’s people to lay a foundation for solid Christian service that equips us for honorable and truthful service to the cause of Christ the Lord, the Son of God. I do want to encourage believers to think, to act with discretion, and then to serve as God would have His people serve.

NARRATIVES THAT MARGINALISE REVEALED TRUTH —

“If our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way)” [Romans 3:5].

The Apostle Paul has presented a solemn truth.

We are unrighteous.

However, our unrighteousness reveals the righteousness of God.

If we are recognizing our condition, it means there is a standard by which we ourselves are able to gauge our actions. If there is a standard, and we recognise that standard, we are accountable to the One who judges by that standard.

Breaking this down, the particular point the Apostle makes in this verse is sobering for anyone who actually grapples with the thought we must give an accounting to the One who is qualified by His inherent righteousness to judge.

It means there is a judgement.

It means that we are held to a standard outside of our own condition.

It means that judgement is pending for all mankind.

Thus, it should not be surprising that almost all the narratives constructed for millennia revolves around our vain attempt to evade responsibility for our own character. The narratives constructed by us, humankind, seek to reduce God to a mere caricature, easily dismissing the wickedness of man’s fallen character.

Ultimately, all narratives attempt to avoid facing our pending, well deserved and well-justified, judgement by God who is our ultimate Judge.

Since time immemorial, sinful people have endeavored to marginalize God.

No doubt, well-meaning individuals are just as guilty of constructing narratives to fit their particular point of view.

Nevertheless, a favorite effort of sinful people is to construct a narrative that sounds reasonable, so long as the narrative is not examined too closely.

The narrative we construct presents a god who is pleasant and nice; this god is inclined to grant mankind’s desires rather than being holy and righteous.

What people want is “good;” holiness and righteousness are “bad.”

This newly constructed god is a fantasy of mankind, a fabrication of minds enamored of this dying world without commitment to the True and Living God.

However, the construct is dangerous precisely because it is attractive.

What are some of these narratives?

The first narrative to be considered was popularized some years ago, having been pushed hard by one major campus organization:

“God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.”

This particular narrative is popular; it is undoubtedly loved by many who have repeated it during past years.

The narrative certainly has an appeal, beginning as it does with the love of God.

In Scripture, we are taught,

“By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So, we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother” [1 John 4:13-21].

None of us would ever argue against the truth that God loves mankind.

After all, God created mankind; He gave us life.

God does love the creature He made.

The evidence for this affirmation is that He sent His Son to be the Saviour of the world. Everyone has heard JOHN 3:16:

“This is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

God’s love is not that icky, treacle-sweet sort of emotion that supposedly gives people a warm, fuzzy feeling from the top of their head to the soles of their feet.

God’s love is real, practical, tangible.

God’s love is muscular.

Above all else, God’s love is transformative. Those who receive the love of God cannot remain as they were, for the Spirit of God will take up residence in the life of those who have received that love, and HE will change the individual!

One great problem with this particular narrative is the revelation of God’s hatred. Perhaps you will recall this statement from the Prophecy of Malachi.

“‘I have loved you,’ says the LORD. But you say, ‘How have you loved us?’ ‘Is not Esau Jacob’s brother?’ declares the LORD. ‘Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated. I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert’” [Malachi 1:2-3].

Later, the Apostle Paul would cite this passage when teaching of God’s election of the righteous. Paul would write,

“As it is written, ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated’” [Romans 9:13].

As an example that the LORD is capable of hatred, the Wise Man informs us,

“There are six things that the LORD hates,

seven that are an abomination to him:

haughty eyes, a lying tongue,

and hands that shed innocent blood,

a heart that devises wicked plans,

feet that make haste to run to evil,

a false witness who breathes out lies,

and one who sows discord among brothers.”

[Proverbs 6:16-19]

The Psalmist gives us startling insight into God’s character when he writes,

“God is a righteous judge,

and a God who feels indignation every day.

If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword;

he has bent and readied his bow;

he has prepared for him his deadly weapons,

making his arrows fiery shafts.”

[Psalm 7:11-13]

Indeed, God is love; but we must never forget that God is holy, and His holiness excludes unrighteousness from His presence.

Any who fail to receive the grace of God, that one who has never been made righteous through faith in the Son of God, must face God’s wrath.

Jesus warns, “I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him” [Luke 12:5]!

Let me be very clear on this. I do not want anyone to conclude from the knowledge that God does hate that He is some sort of cosmic killjoy, a celestial ogre constantly glaring down at mankind while seeking opportunity to strike down anyone who expresses joy or who happens to engage in pleasant acts.

God seeks the best for mankind, and that includes our joy.

We so easily confuse happiness with joy; we constantly and fruitlessly pursue “happiness.”

But happiness is never promised in the Word of God;

joy is the heritage of the children of the Living God.

Jesus promised His disciples,

“If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” [John 15:10-11].

Jesus is concerned that His followers possess joy, and He intends for that joy to be full, overflowing.

OVERFLOWING JOY IS THE HERITAGE OF THOSE WHO LOVE THE MASTER.

Again, preparing those who followed Him for His departure, Jesus said,

“Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So also, you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full” [John 16:20-24].

The Master promised to pour out His goodness so that His followers may overflow with an abundance of joy! That is genuine joy!

Yet another narrative which has been weaponized states, “God is too good to judge a person.”

This narrative is an expression of the philosophy that we have come to know as universalism.

Though you may not have heard the term universalism, you will no doubt recognise it as a variant of the Apostle’s statement in the fifth verse of the text.

There, the Apostle has written, “If our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.)” [Romans 3:5].

The instruction is crafted in such a way that we must answer in the affirmative concerning God’s judgement.

Throughout the New Testament are warnings concerning “the wrath of God.”

Here are just a few examples to illustrate the point.

As he opens the Letter to the Saints in Rome, Paul warns,

“The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So, they are without excuse” [Romans 1:18-20].

After listing a dark catalogue of wicked acts (sexual immorality, all impurity, greed, filthiness, foolish talk and crude joking), the Word of God solemnly warns,

“Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience” [Ephesians 5:6].

Those who engage in such practices or who tolerate them are identified as “the sons of disobedience.” Clearly, God means to punish those so identified.

A similar passage warning against such acts is found in the Letter to Christians in Colossae.

There, Paul has written, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming” [Colossians 3:5-6].

Clearly, if Scripture is held to be authoritative, the Lord not only disapproves of such acts, but He holds those who engage in these acts 100% responsible for all of their own actions. His wrath will be poured out on sinful people.

Let’s come right out and everyone admit we are fearful of a God who is holy.

Intuitively, we prefer a god characterized by what we might call “benevolent neglect.”

We want a god who delights to give us what we want, a god who doesn’t interfere with our mad pursuit of getting what we want, a god who keeps his hands off our lives, allowing us to do whatever it is that we want.

Because our desires dictate the sort of god, we imagine we want, we choose to focus on God’s goodness to the exclusion of recognizing His holiness.

By exalting our own desires over the character of God, we craft a narrative that shields us from the harsh reality that our holy God demands of us our holiness.

I freely acknowledge and confess that I am speaking in sweeping generalities when I make such a statement.

Nevertheless, the most of mankind is greatly and heavily and mightily angered at the mere thought we are not in control of our lives, we should need to give an account to anyone, especially unto the Living God! We want a “genial god” who smilingly approves of our choices, doting upon us, giving us what we all want.

Peter’s words have proven to be a source of consternation for every single one of us in this modern world.

You will remember that Peter instructed Christ’s followers,

“Preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’ And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God” [1 Peter 1:13-21].

Among one prominent group of cultists, and tragically even among a surprising number of allegedly “professed Christians,” who are obviously untaught, we will often hear the vehement protests,

“Why, I wouldn’t I throw firebombs at police cars – they are the enemy.”

“If my “cause is just” I know God won’t condemn sinners to eternal flames.”

Undoubtedly, none of us would throw firebombs at police cars.

Such an action betrays a sick mind to even contemplate such a thing.

Police are not the ultimate enemy. I don’t want to see anyone come to harm.

You will recognise this narrative as a variant of the previous narrative.

Essentially, this narrative argues that because I am kind (at least according to my own standards), God is at least as good as me! I don’t believe that I would torment anyone; and those holding to this particular narrative take this to mean that God won’t pronounce judgement that causes eternal pain to anyone.

What is not so immediately apparent is those who are advancing this “cause – effect” argument have, without any authority whatsoever, brought God down to the level of a mere human rather than raising people up to God’s level of living.

I must reiterate—I would never throw any firebombs anywhere at any time.

The implication is that eternal judgment is somehow gratuitous torture, and no one will accuse God of delighting in torture!

The Lord God has no pleasure in the death of sinners.

God, speaking through Ezekiel, declares,

“Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord GOD; so, turn, and live” [Ezekiel 18:31-32].

We know that the immediate focus of God’s pleading was Israel, however, the overarching emphasis is applicable to anyone.

Again, God pleads with lost people when He appeals through the same prophet,

“As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die” [Ezekiel 33:11]

What is missed, or ignored, when people appeal to this narrative is that God does not send anyone to hell.

Let me iterate: GOD CASTS NO ONE INTO THE FIRES OF HELL.

People who have rejected the grace of God have positioned themselves with the devil and the demons who are opposed to God and under sentence of eternal condemnation.

The fact is that people do choose to pursue their own desires, knowing that the consequences of what is chosen leads to eternal death.

Is that not the warning presented in the Word?

We read, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” [Romans 3:23].

Because this is true, the warning must be announced, “The wages of sin is death” [Romans 6:23a].

I am so grateful there is a corollary to that warning when God promises,

“The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” [Romans 6:23b].

Should an individual stumble into hell, that person will stumble into eternal damnation having stepped over the grace of God, having ignored the pleas of the godly and the warnings of those who are saved.

The lost will have decided, if only through deliberate neglect, they prefer the prospect of eternity without the mercy of God to the glory that flows from the grace of God.

Therefore, lost people choose, they receive, the consequences of their choice.

Yet another narrative says, When you’re dead, that’s it—you’re finished, you’re done.

Again, this is a variant of an earlier narrative already considered.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to address the narrative, if for no other reason than that the unthinking imagine it is unanswerable.

This narrative is wishful thinking, a case of people whistling past the graveyard.

It is assuredly not a matter of conviction growing out of what is written in the Word.

Does death end it all?

However much an individual may wish that was the case, every expectation leads us to reject that view.

We demand accountability of those who do evil.

Since we are incapable of exacting retribution on the wicked of this world after death, we expect justice beyond this existence.

Sometime past, we watched a situation illustrating the danger of adopting a narrative rather than seeking truth.

A native activist supposedly advocating for native rights accused a group of youth from a Catholic School of “stealing his narrative.”

This is the language of the social justice warrior and not the language of reason, it is not the language of logic.

There was scant logic in his complaint and no logic whatsoever. This activist felt the youths had “stolen his narrative,” so, he refused to sit down with them to seek a peaceful resolution to the situation his own actions had precipitated.

It soon became apparent that this man was only casually acquainted with the truth. This illustrates one major tragedy of a narrative—those holding the narrative become wed to what they have created rather than seeking the truth.

As though such narratives are the “hot as hell-button” stuff of our modern journalism, we have also witnessed an actor who fabricated a story of being assaulted simply because he is black and/or because he is a homosexual.

He claimed he was assaulted by two men whom he identified as “far right thugs.” However, the Chicago police demonstrated that this man was lying.

Here is the narrative that is so hurtful!

The story became the means for news outlets, for politicians and for Hollywood stars and starlets to very publicly and very verbally attack and threaten those whom they fervently considered to be politically right of their own positions.

The narrative became the story. Even after it was demonstrated that the actor had lied, apologists continue to argue for the necessity of the story. Thus, a lie enters into the “stinking” thinking of the populace as though it was the truth.

Narratives almost always mask reality, deceiving those who buy into the narrative. Grave as that situation is for us, the adoption of narratives among the people of God creates a real and present danger that threatens righteousness.

GOD’S TRUTH — The real danger of narratives is that they so easily become substitutes for facts.

When narratives are substituted for facts, those individuals that have become wedded to a narrative tend to deny what they are hearing because it doesn’t fit exactly, politically and precisely into their ever so carefully crafted narrative.

What I happen to believe is ultimately immaterial—what matters is the truth, and truth is, by absolute necessity, completely independent of my assessment.

What God has written in His Word is truth. As a young Christian, a saying often heard among the saints stated, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it for me.”

Undoubtedly, those reciting this couplet thought it sounded impressive—at first glance it was impressive.

Nevertheless, my own analytical mind forced me to correct the couplet to say, “God said it. THAT SETTLES IT!”

It does not matter what I believe about a given issue. What matters is what God has said. I need to know what God says, and not what others wish He had said.

The smallest words recorded in the Bible, words that some might argue are insignificant, are given for our sake by God who seeks what’s best for us.

You may recall Jesus’ affirmation concerning the Word.

The Master said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished” [Matthew 5:17-18].

Elsewhere, the Saviour is recorded as saying,

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” [Matthew 24:35].

I believe all that has been recorded as the Word of God for the Children of God is morally essential toward a fuller understanding of the mind of the Living God.

God has provided a perfect revelation of His character and of His will in His Holy Word.

The seemingly least significant words are essential for a complete revelation of the Person of God.

This is apparent in multiple instances, but at one point when the Apostle is presenting an argument in his Letter to the Christians in Rome this truth is emphasized in dramatic fashion.

Paul had just made the argument that Abraham’s faith was counted to him as righteousness. Then, ensuring that we grasp the correct application of what he had presented, the Apostle wrote,

“The words ‘it was counted to him’ were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” [Romans 4:23-25].

Paul’s point is that we must not pass over seemingly insignificant words such as these, “it was counted to him.”

God carefully guided the writers as they penned the words we now read in the Bible.

Peter emphasized this precise truth when he wrote,

“We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,’ we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” [2 PETER 1:16-19].

More germane to the issue now before us, the Big Fisherman informed readers,

“No prophecy of Scripture ever comes about by the prophet’s own imagination, for no prophecy was ever borne of human impulse; rather, men carried along by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” [2 Peter 1:20b-21 Net BIBLE].

“Men carried along by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”

We are informed that the Holy Spirit of God was both the motivator and the divine guide ensuring what God wanted to be recorded was what was written.

God did this for our benefit, so that we would have a firm foundation on which to base our faith.

In the Letter to Roman Christians, we are taught that Abraham’s faith was sufficient for salvation.

The point of this information is that if Abraham’s faith sufficed for salvation, then our own faith in God’s promise is enough for salvation.

God was showing by this means that He is not attempting to mask what He has done for fallen people.

The Living God has acted openly so that no one need feel that God somehow was unfair or unjust.

All people alike are invited to come to life in the Beloved Son of God.

In other words, we are instructed by God with the very thoughts of God because the Spirit of God was overseeing Paul, directing Him as he wrote, to ensure that what was written would be precisely what God wanted to be written.

This was done to ensure what is written would be beneficial for His redeemed people. God did this so we would not fall into the trap of crafting a narrative, but that we would reflect His perfect will.

Therefore, we are not attempting to construct a narrative, we are carefully presenting what God has revealed through His Word.

This is the truth expressed through the Apostle’s plea,

“Do your best to present yourself to God as an approved worker who has nothing to be ashamed of, handling the word of truth with precision” [2 Timothy 2:15 ISV].

Our responsibility as witnesses is not to make the teaching of the Word “more” palatable or acceptable to those who hear us, our responsibility is to strive for accuracy in declaring what God has already revealed.

The Spirit of God will work in the hearts of those who hear us as we teach.

He will “prov[e] the world wrong concerning sin and righteousness and judgement” [John 16:8 Net BIBLE].

It is instructive to observe how the arch-deceiver of mankind operates.

We have an example of Satan’s methods revealed when he approached Eve.

Satan did not begin by calling God a liar; he raised doubt in Eve’s mind. Satan approached Eve with the seemingly innocuous question, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’” [Genesis 3:1b]?

This was not a direct attack against God’s warning—it was tangential, asymptotic, it was Satan’s sidling up to the woman in an attempt to disarm her.

Satan couldn’t topple God with one question, though toppling God was the ultimate goal.

Satan sought only to generate doubt in Eve’s mind.

The devil seldom will come to the child of God and say, “God is a liar!”

No! He will seek to create lingering doubt, which leads to dishonoring God in our mind. The ultimate goal of Satan is to cause us to cease worshipping God; but the immediate act will always seem quite completely innocuous.

Having raised the question of what God said, or what He might have meant, Satan then dismissed God’s warning, saying

“You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” [Genesis 3:4b-5].

Eve sinned.

The text makes it apparent that she walked into sin knowingly; nevertheless, she was deceived, just as people continue to be deceived.

John warns believers,

“All that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever” [1 John 2:16-17].

The world can offer “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life,” but the world cannot offer life.

The world can promise complete satisfaction, but the world can never deliver.

Perhaps you will recall the proverb that states:

“Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied,

and never satisfied are the eyes of man.”

[Proverbs 27:20]

How many ways to our Sunday Worship does that proverb condemns us?

Nothing ever satisfies the desires that bubble up from within!

The human condition seems to create a thirst for more.

Whatever acquisition we believe will satisfy the longing that drives us, it is certain that obtaining that thing will not satisfy.

What we believe will satisfy can never quench the thirst driving us in our mad pursuit to acquire more.

Later in this same collection of sayings of the wise, we read,

“The leech has two daughters:

‘Give! Give!’

There are three things that are never satisfied,

four that never say, ‘Enough’—

the grave, the barren womb,

land that is not satisfied with water,

and fire that never says, ‘Enough!’”

[Proverbs 30:15-16 NET BIBLE]

Eve sinned in the areas that plague us to this day.

Therefore, Scripture reveals, “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate” [Genesis 3:6a].

We are told that Eve saw “that the tree was good for food.”

What is described is nothing less than the desire of the flesh.

She also saw that “[the fruit of the tree] was a delight to the eyes.”

What can this be other than the desire of the eyes?

Then, Eve saw “that the tree was to be desired to make one wise.”

She succumbed to “the pride of life.”

What is described are the same elements that cause us to stumble to this day.

The great need for each one who follows the Risen Son of God is to ensure that he or she is conversant with the truth.

This means that we must know the Word, we must know what the Lord has caused to be written, especially since it was given for our benefit.

We know the Word when we are familiar with the Word; and this means that we have actually read the Word.

We are not to be content with reading about the Word, we are to read the Word.

We allow the Spirit of God to guide us as we read so that we are instructed by Him.

Then, having more than a passing familiarity with the Word, we must invest time speaking with the Author of the Word.

This is nothing less than getting back to basics!

THE CONCLUSION OF MAN’S PUERILE EFFORTS

— Followers of the Christ are responsible to know the Word He has given.

We are susceptible to being put off stride primarily because we are ignorant of what the Master has said.

We fail to have a viable theology, and that is the most dangerous theology of all.

The theology we espouse too often consists or a few trite phrases divorced from daily life.

Our theology is most often stale and flaccid at best, or utterly detrimental and dangerous at the worst.

We want a theology that makes our life easy now, with Heaven thrown in as a bonus. We want to live as though our reward for our obedience was given now!

Much as was true for the Corinthians, so it is true for too many of the saints in this day.

Paul confronted these saints with their discordant attitude that dishonored the Spirit of Christ when he wrote,

“Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you” [1 CORINTHIANS 4:8]!

They seemingly held the attitude that being a Christian was all about fulfilling their desires. Perhaps they saw Jesus Christ as some sort of genie in a bottle. Certainly, that attitude is not unheard of among professed saints in this day.

Paul concludes the passage that serves as our devotional text today by observing of those who rely on narratives,

“Their condemnation is just” [Romans 3:8b].

That is significantly more than a dismissive remark, it is an acknowledgement that God holds us accountable for what we teach by His word and by our lives.

When we distort the Word of God, whatever the reason, we place ourselves in conflict with the Lord who is holy.

Should we turn others away from pursuing righteousness, we must answer God.

If we fail to receive the grace that He offers, we will have ensured that our soul is in eternal danger.

There is no recovery from the disaster of presumptuous sin.

David pleaded with God,

“Who can discern his errors?

Declare me innocent from hidden faults.

Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins;

let them not have dominion over me!

Then I shall be blameless,

and innocent of great transgression.”

[Psalm 19:12-13]

The Psalmist realized how easy it is to drift into error, which is bad enough in its own right; however, he truly feared presuming against the LORD.

To act in such a manner is to exalt oneself against God; and there is scant chance that one can recover from such sin.

Do you recall the pronouncement against Saul that Samuel voiced when the king had spared the life of Agag, king of Amalek?

“Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,

as in obeying the voice of the LORD?

Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,

and to listen than the fat of rams.

For rebellion is as the sin of divination,

and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.”

[1 Samuel 15:22-23a]

That is a frightful thought.

A choice that fails to consider the will of the Lord, a choice which exalts our own self-interest above the will of the Savior, means we’ve all positioned ourselves as inviting divine judgement.

The Apostle Paul wrote of his fear that after preaching to others, he himself could be disqualified [see 1 CORINTHIANS 9:27].

I confess that I have the same fear.

I constantly check what I am writing, investing time in prayer as I seek God’s guidance.

I do not want to lapse into delivering narratives. Rather, my concern is that together we may know the truth and thus honor the Lord who redeems us.

I struggle for the redeemed to walk in holiness, to pursue a life that honors the Lord. I am convinced that God redeems us, giving us eternal life.

We cannot be cast away when we sin, but we can dishonor Him.

We can lose rewards and cease to be effective in our service to His cause.

Few thoughts distress me more than the thought that I may act in a manner that dishonors the Lord who redeems me.

Therefore, I seek what pleases Him.

I want to know what His will is and how I can glorify Him.

And that is what I want for His holy people.

I want you to walk in holiness, to learn to choose and speak wisely how to respond to the challenges of life.

Paul voiced his concern for the saints in Corinth, just as I have concerns for you, for your walk with the Master.

The Apostle revealed his heart when he wrote these saints,

“I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ” [2 Corinthians 11:2-3].

I want you, for whom Christ gave me charge, to walk in purity before the Lord, to avoid adopting your own narratives, choosing rather to pursue truth through knowledge of the Word and through talking and walking with the Risen Savior.

My desire is to so live that I need not be ashamed and so that you will not be ashamed of me. Above all, I want to honors Christ the Lord by a holy life.

To the lost, this is the call of God: “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” [Acts 16:31].

Here is life.

“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart, one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” [Romans 10:9-10].

Salvation is this simple:

“Everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord will be saved” [Romans 10:13].

Here is life, if you are willing to receive it.

In Christ, you will find hope and the forgiveness of sin.

Do this now. Believe Him and be saved. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.

In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,

Let us Pray,

Father, my Guide and Guardian, illuminate my mind so I can understand how you want me to live. Your word tells me that people of integrity who follow your instructions are joyful. You have said that those who obey your laws and search for you with all their hearts are blessed and happy. I want that joy! Holy Spirit, please guard me against allowing evil to influence what I believe and do. Help me walk only in your paths. May my actions consistently reflect what you have said is right and good. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.

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My Personal Faith. Social Justice and our God’s Call for Justice. Isaiah 1:10-26.

Probably most of us have heard people speaking about their faith in humanity as a very intimate and private thing, something you feel in your heart, in your soul, with all of your might, all of your strength something you don’t talk about.

Sometimes you hear politicians say that they have a deep personal faith in God, but they assure us that they won’t let their religion, or lack of it, have any sway or influence on the decisions they make in office on behalf of the people served.

Corporate executives are expected to toe the line of maximizing profits above all else and not worrying about the impact that their decisions have on society.

And they might just face severe backlash and stockholder lawsuits if they stray.

Social commentator, Glen Beck has said if you are in a church and the pastor is about to teach or sermonize about social justice, quickly get out of that church.

He felt rather strongly that talk of social justice has no place in church.

I must confess right here and right now, that until rather recently, I would have readily agreed with the Social Commentator, avoided such teaching, sermons.

Right now, my attitude about “social justice” and the Body of Christ, the Church in God’s neighborhood, God in God’s own neighborhood, is being re-written by my intentional and my purposeful engagement with our God’s Holy Scriptures.

My own deeply held personal beliefs wrought through the fires and floods and furnaces and crucibles of my lifetime of experiences, I now find were informed by biases and prejudices I was not wholly aware of nor would ever acknowledge.

My information was faulty and based almost exclusively on my floods, my fires, my crucibles and my furnaces.

My purposeful, intentional engagement with the “deepest truths” of my God’s Word is now being weaved into and throughout my heart, my soul, by my God.

I am learning to ask questions – learning to challenge my biases, my prejudices, and where God, the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit inform my soul differently through His Scriptures, I repent of the former, to seek out the latter.

Isaiah 1:10-26Amplified Bible

God Has Had Enough

10 
Hear the word of the Lord [rulers of Jerusalem],
You rulers of [another] Sodom,
Listen to the law and instruction of our God,
You people of [another] Gomorrah.
11 
“What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me [without your repentance]?”
Says the Lord.
“I have had enough of [your] burnt offerings of rams
And the fat of well-fed cattle [without your obedience];
And I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls or lambs or goats [offered without repentance].
12 
“When you come to appear before Me,
Who requires this of you, this trampling of My [temple] courts [by your sinful feet]?
13 
“Do not bring worthless offerings again,
[Your] incense is repulsive to Me;
[Your] New Moon and Sabbath [observances], the calling of assemblies—
I cannot endure wickedness [your sin, your injustice, your wrongdoing] and [the squalor of] the festive assembly.
14 
“I hate [the hypocrisy of] your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts.
They have become a burden to Me;
I am weary of bearing them.
15 
“So when you spread out your hands [in prayer, pleading for My help],
I will hide My eyes from you;
Yes, even though you offer many prayers,
I will not be listening.
Your hands are full of blood!

16 
“Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean;
Get your evil deeds out of My sight.
Stop doing evil,
17 
Learn to do good.
Seek justice,
Rebuke the ruthless,
Defend the fatherless,
Plead for the [rights of the] widow [in court].

“Let Us Reason”

18 
“Come now, and let us reason together,”
Says the Lord.
“[a]Though your sins are like scarlet,
They shall be as white as snow;
Though they are red like crimson,
They shall be like wool.
19 
“If you are willing and obedient,
You shall eat the best of the land;
20 
But if you refuse and rebel,
You shall be devoured by the sword.”
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Zion Corrupted, to Be Redeemed

21 
How the faithful city has become a prostitute [idolatrous, despicable],
She who was full of justice!
Right standing with God once lodged in her,
But now murderers.
22 
Your silver has turned to [b]lead,
Your wine is diluted with water.
23 
Your rulers are rebels
And companions of thieves;
Everyone loves bribes
And chases after gifts.
They do not defend the fatherless,
Nor does the widow’s cause come before them [instead they delay or turn a deaf ear].

24 
Therefore, the Lord God of hosts,
The Mighty One of Israel, declares:
“Ah, I will be freed of My adversaries
And avenge Myself on My enemies.
25 
“And I will turn My hand against you,
And will [thoroughly] purge away your dross as with lye
And remove all your tin (impurity).
26 
“Then I will restore your judges as at the first,
And your counselors as at the beginning;
Afterward you will be called the city of righteousness,
The faithful city.”

The Word of God for the Children of God. Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia! Amen.

For our scripture text this morning we are still in Isaiah chapter 1.

Will God ever let us get out of chapter 1?

It takes 66 chapters to save all of Isaiah’s writings; will we ever get out of chapter 1?

Yes, eventually, by God’s grace alone we will be released from chapter 1.

But first, there are still many important lessons we can take with us into 2022.

But please remember, chapter 1 introduces many of the themes developed in the following 65 chapters, so I’m happy to hang out in chapter 1 for a while longer.

Our scripture lesson is Isaiah 1:10-26. After I read it, and then re-read it, I now challenge you to read it and re-read. You tell me whether Isaiah saw religion as an inward thing, related to the realms of personal faith and feelings, or whether he saw religion as something impacting all of life, even including social justice.

Yesterday we talked about God’s complaint against the people of Judah, which was a very personal complaint. They were his beloved children and he wanted them to love him as He loved them, but we read they were rebelling and getting themselves into serious trouble and he really wanted them all to come back.

By reading and re-reading these verses, I hope and pray you heard that for God, being a Christian, even in 2022, can never stop with just a heart relationship with God. It also includes a right-relationship with our fellow human beings.

And this day, which the Lord hath made for you and me and all of His children, I want to try to look quickly at 5 commands in verse 17 that make that concrete.

God told His Children, the people of Israel to “always learn how to do good.”

In the New Testament the apostle Paul repeatedly told the early Christians to do good works, and when he specifies what he’s talking about, often the context is clearly the good work of sharing with others in need.

That’s a Christianity that goes many echelons beyond feeling good and secure inside. It’s a Christianity that purposely, intentionally, reaches out for others.

Then, also in verse 17, Isaiah tells the people of Judah to “always learn how to seek out justice and learn how to always walk humbly with your God.”

Now there are a lot of different ways of defining justice.

There’s a kind of justice which says,

“I’ve got mine, and nobody’s going to take it from me.”

And we believe in protecting personal and property rights.

We are against theft and criminal behavior.

That’s kind of, sort of, a start to defining, writing, an encyclopedia of justice.

But Isaiah tells the people of Judah, and he tells us, too, that we need to go beyond that encyclopedia.

“I’ve got mine” justice can be content to look at a kid whose lost his parents or is born into a one parent situation where one party felt incapable of meeting the demands of parenthood and maybe feel sorry for the kid but feels no obligation to go “the extra mile or two or three or more if necessary” to volunteer, “help.”

And that’s no justice at all. It’s not fair to that kid at all.

The kid has very little chance in life. The kid is really hurting inside. Justice shouts out to us, “When the parents aren’t there, we need to help that kid.”

“I’ve got mine” justice can build a really nice life for itself, but it takes upon itself limited accountability, personal. professional, responsibility for others.

The Word of God revealed through Isaiah in chapter 1 tells us that justice is about more than me. And our responsibilities in life never stop with just me.

These verses from the first chapter of Isaiah calls for God’s kind of justice that intentionally, purposely watches for the oppressed, those who are held down.

And what are we supposed to do when we see them?

Are we supposed to feel sorry for them?

Are we supposed to analyze whose fault it is that they are in that shape?

Are we supposed to argue about whose job it is to help them, the government, the church, business or private charity?

God’s Prophet Isaiah does not let those arguments distract him.

What do we do if we see someone oppressed? Strive to Rescue them?

And who is that talking about?

The idea is someone who is weighed down, held down, doesn’t have a fair chance. How does one, in 2022, define what “have a fair chance” means?

If we’re talking about people who are oppressed, how about the people whose homes and businesses and livelihoods were just wiped out by “Acts of God?”

UMCOR is there.

FEMA will carry the bulk of the assistance, but UMCOR is great about finding the people who fall between the cracks and for sending in teams long after the immediate emergency to help people clean up, rebuild, restore what can be.

UMCOR goes straight to the United Methodist Churches who have been on the spot, who know the needs, who know who is hurting, so it can intentionally do the most good, efficiently, purposely, conscientiously, serve the most people.

Isaiah gives another example of what biblical justice looks like by calling us to defend the orphan.

What theory of justice in this world could say “I’ve got mine, too bad about that orphan”?

For Example ….

Today, it is estimated that Africa has some 17 million children who have lost their parents to AIDS.

How big a number is 17 million orphans?

Take the entire population of metro Chicago, some 8.9 million, and then add to that population the entire population of San Antonio, Texas being 2.413 million plus the population of the Baltimore, Maryland metro area being 2.845 million plus the population of the Portland Oregon Metro area being 2.5 million plus the population of the Buffalo, New York metro area being 1.137 million people.

That’s approximately how many children are AIDS orphans in Africa today.

What chance do they have as orphans in villages where there isn’t much hope of healthy food, clean water, quality healthcare for kids who have both parents?

https://www.unicef.org/eap/press-releases/child-was-infected-hiv-every-two-minutes-2020-unicef#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20sub%2DSaharan%20Africa,were%20in%20sub%2DSaharan%20Africa.

What justice would there be in a world that does “not nearly enough” to defend, place greater value on the sanctity of the lives and wellbeing of those children?

Well, Praise and thank God for volunteers, organizations like World Vision and UMCOR and many others who are there. And let us do all we can to help them.

But there are a lot of vulnerable children and adults in all areas, too.

What about underserved kids whose parents are failing them, in jail or even abusing them so badly that the court needs to take them out of their home?

We have dedicated social workers to help them, but as budgets have been cut their ability to give the kids the support they need is really, really stretched.

What about the Homeless populations? The Homeless Veteran populations?

Right now, our nation is in a major crisis as we have spent a whole lot more money out of the national treasury than we could afford, and we are desperately looking for places to more efficiently, more intentionally, purposely, love our God in His Neighborhood, serve our communities, our neighbors in some way.

Let’s remember that Isaiah calls us, that God calls us through these timeless and most ancient of words from Isaiah chapter 1, to defend the orphans.

And I think it’s exceedingly, abundantly fair to expand that to include children who have both parents, and those single parent households where economically parents can’t provide proper nutrition or proper medical care for their children.

And in all the talk of needing to cut our government deficits, too often it is programs to defend vulnerable children that people want to cut. I think that rigorous and vigorous advocacy is most definitely appropriate ‘social justice.’

And, finally, the words of Isaiah chapter 1 tell us to plead for the widow.

Isaiah lived long before social security, in a time when women may not have even had clear property rights.

And if their husband died, they could be in big trouble. Today our government has stepped in with social security and Medicare and they really, really help.

But any sense of God’s justice calls us to watch out for our widows, to comfort, advocate and support them as they grieve, to support them as they may struggle with maintaining their homes, providing meals, and to visit them when lonely.

While we are engaging God in His neighborhood, what more can be done here?

But still, the lingering questions always remain when we engage our Faith in Humanity with our Faith in an Engaging and Intimate and Loving and God.

1 John 4:7-21Amplified Bible

God Is Love

7 Beloved, let us [unselfishly] [a]love and seek the best for one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves [others] is born of God and knows God [through personal experience]. 8 The one who does not love has not become acquainted with God [does not and never did know Him], for God is love. [He is the originator of love, and it is an enduring attribute of His nature.] 9 By this the love of God was displayed in us, in that God has sent His [One and] only begotten Son [the One who is truly unique, the only One of His kind] into the world so that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation [that is, the atoning sacrifice, and the satisfying offering] for our sins [fulfilling God’s requirement for justice against sin and placating His wrath]. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us [in this incredible way], we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has seen God at any time. But if we love one another [with unselfish concern], God abides in us, and His love [the love that is His essence abides in us and] is completed and perfected in us. 13 By this we know [with confident assurance] that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given to us His [Holy] Spirit. 14 We [who were with Him in person] have seen and testify [as eyewitnesses] that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.

15 Whoever confesses and acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 We have come to know [by personal observation and experience], and have believed [with deep, consistent faith] the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides continually in him. 17 In this [union and fellowship with Him], love is completed and perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment [with assurance and boldness to face Him]; because as He is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love [dread does not exist]. But perfect (complete, full-grown) love drives out fear, because fear involves [the expectation of divine] punishment, so the one who is afraid [of God’s judgment] is not perfected in love [has not grown into a sufficient understanding of God’s love]. 19 We love, because [b]He first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates (works against) his [Christian] brother he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should also [unselfishly] love his brother and seek the best for him.

Before we begin to or continue engaging with God in God’s Neighborhood,

Before making a personal decision about where we engage our neighbors,

Many, Many Examples of Essential Questions to ponder with God about:

Decisions, Actions, and Consequences

  1. What is the relationship between decisions and consequences?
  2. How do we know how to make good decisions?
  3. How can a person’s decisions and actions change his/her life?
  4. How do the decisions and actions of characters reveal their personalities?
  5. How do decisions, actions, and consequences vary depending on the different perspectives of the people involved?

Social Justice

  1. What is social justice?
  2. To what extent does power or the lack of power affect individuals?
  3. What is oppression and what are the root causes?
  4. How are prejudice and bias created? How do we overcome them?
  5. What are the responsibilities of the individual in regard to issues of social justice?
  6. How can literature serve as a vehicle for social change?
  7. When should an individual take a stand against what he/she believes to be an injustice? What are the most effective ways to do this?
  8. What are the factors that create an imbalance of power within a culture?
  9. What does power have to do with fairness and justice?
  10. When is it necessary to question the status quo? Who decides?
  11. What are the benefits and consequences of questioning / challenging social order?
  12. How do stereotypes influence how we look at and understand the world?
  13. What does it mean to be invisible? (context: minorities)
  14. In what ways can a minority keep their issues on the larger culture’s “radar screen?”
  15. What creates prejudice, and what can an individual overcome it?
  16. What are the causes and consequences of prejudice and injustice, and how does an individual’s response to them reveal his/her true character?
  17. What allows some individuals to take a stand against prejudice/oppression while others choose to participate in it?
  18. What are the causes and consequences of prejudice and how does an individual’s response to it reveal his/her morals, ethics, and values?

Culture: Values and Beliefs, Traditions and Rituals

  1. How do individuals develop values and beliefs?
  2. What factors shape our values and beliefs?
  3. How do values and beliefs change over time?
  4. How does family play a role in shaping our values and beliefs?
  5. Why do we need beliefs and values?
  6. What happens when belief systems of societies and individuals come into conflict?
  7. When should an individual take a stand in opposition to an individual or larger group?
  8. When is it appropriate to challenge the beliefs or values of society?
  9. To what extent do belief systems shape and/or reflect culture and society?
  10. How are belief systems represented and reproduced through history, literature, art, and music?
  11. How do beliefs, ethics, or values influence different people’s behavior?
  12. How do individuals reconcile competing belief systems within a given society (e.g., moral beliefs conflicting with legal codes)?
  13. When a person’s individual choices are in direct conflict with his/her society, what are the consequences?
  14. What is morality and what are the factors that have an impact on the development of our morality?
  15. What role or purpose does religion / spirituality serve in a culture?
  16. What purpose or function do ethics / philosophy have in governing technological advances?
  17. How do our values and beliefs shape who we are as individuals and influence our behavior?

There are undoubtedly many more questions to ponder as anyone individually seeks to engage God side by side with His Words of hard truth and harder love.

In such weighty matters, be patient with God and be patient with yourself ….

Matthew 6:25-33Amplified Bible

The Cure for Anxiety

25 “Therefore I tell you, stop being worried or anxious (perpetually uneasy, distracted) about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, as to what you will wear. Is life not more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow [seed] nor reap [the harvest] nor gather [the crops] into barns, and yet your heavenly Father keeps feeding them. Are you not worth much more than they? 27 And who of you by worrying can add one [a]hour to [the length of] his life? 28 And why are you worried about clothes? See how the lilies and wildflowers of the field grow; they do not labor, nor do they spin [wool to make clothing], 29 yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory and splendor dressed himself like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive and green today and tomorrow is [cut and] thrown [as fuel] into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! 31 Therefore do not worry or be anxious (perpetually uneasy, distracted), saying, ‘What are we going to eat?’ or ‘What are we going to drink?’ or ‘What are we going to wear?’ 32 For the [pagan] Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; [but do not worry,] for your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But first and most importantly seek (aim at, strive after) His kingdom and His righteousness [His way of doing and being right—the attitude and character of God], and all these things will be given to you also.

This morning I want to affirm, with Isaiah, that our faith in God is not just an awkward, inward, personal thing. Our God is very concerned we “do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” AMEN?

1 Corinthians 15:58Amplified Bible

58 Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord [always doing your best and doing more than is needed], being continually aware that your labor [even to the point of exhaustion] in the Lord is not futile nor wasted [it is never without purpose].

In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,

Let us Pray,

Father, Son and Holy Spirit ……

“I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things
to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.”

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Church Worship which truly Counts: “I am the Church. You are the Church. We are the Church Together.” Isaiah 1:10-17

“A man’s got to take care of himself!” Yeah, we do have to be responsible folks. But part of being responsible, part of being blessed — at least as God sees it — is to care for others, to stick up for the disadvantaged, and to intervene when someone else is being exploited. After all, we are our “brother’s and sister’s keeper!”

Poverty in any form, in all forms, in all circumstances, is too often caused by injustice. While justice occurs where relationships are “just right,” injustice happens when by some human mechanism, those relationships are broken.

Injustice includes the misuse of power, exploitation of the weak, denial of basic human rights, valuing money more than people, and self-indulgence in the face of all human sufferings. It can take many forms. It can be personal or societal.

One thing we know for sure is that God hates such injustice because it harms his children, whom he loves. Through His prophet Isaiah, God shows that even our own best worship can be utterly distasteful to him if we do not practice justice.

Injustice makes our religious practices unacceptable to God. Prayers, songs, lavish worship services—they are all 100% meaningless if we do not do justice.

The role of prophets was to call people back to faithful living, to repent of their unjust practices, to embrace justice as a lifestyle.

Isaiah talks about seeking justice, advocating and defending the oppressed, and speaking up for the fatherless and the widow, and in Isaiah chapter 58 he adds that we should share of our abundance with the hungry, provide shelter to the poor wanderer, and more and far more. God’s prophet Micah adds we should all “act justly,” “all love mercy,” and “all walk humbly” with our God (Micah 6:8).

The good news is that God yet loves those who are unjust, summons them and accepts repentance and transforms us to do justice out of joyful service to him.

Isaiah 1:10-17Amplified Bible

God Has Had Enough

10 
Hear the word of the Lord [rulers of Jerusalem],
You rulers of [another] Sodom,
Listen to the law and instruction of our God,
You people of [another] Gomorrah.
11 
“What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me [without your repentance]?”
Says the Lord.
“I have had enough of [your] burnt offerings of rams
And the fat of well-fed cattle [without your obedience];
And I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls or lambs or goats [offered without repentance].
12 
“When you come to appear before Me,
Who requires this of you, this trampling of My [temple] courts [by your sinful feet]?
13 
“Do not bring worthless offerings again,
[Your] incense is repulsive to Me;
[Your] New Moon and Sabbath [observances], the calling of assemblies—
I cannot endure wickedness [your sin, your injustice, your wrongdoing] and [the squalor of] the festive assembly.
14 
“I hate [the hypocrisy of] your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts.
They have become a burden to Me;
I am weary of bearing them.
15 
“So when you spread out your hands [in prayer, pleading for My help],
I will hide My eyes from you;
Yes, even though you offer many prayers,
I will not be listening.
Your hands are full of blood!

16 
“Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean;
Get your evil deeds out of My sight.
Stop doing evil,
17 
Learn to do good.
Seek justice,
Rebuke the ruthless,
Defend the fatherless,
Plead for the [rights of the] widow [in court].

The Word of God for the Children of God. Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia! Amen.

Justice.

What does your heart hear when it hears that word uttered in your company?

What does your soul hear when it hears that word uttered in your company?

What do your hands and feet want to do when your heart and soul summons them into some manner of action when that word is uttered in your presence?

“Justice” is one of those words that is loaded with meanings and different interpretations.

Definitions, Perceptions, Understandings, “Hands On, Hands Off” Applications of “justice” swiftly divide people, political parties, countries, even churches.

While “justice” is almost impossibly hard to define, and apply, many people of note have tried to describe it or illustrate it. Here are just a few examples:

  • “The more laws, the less justice” (Cicero).
  • “True peace is not merely the absence of war; it is the presence of justice” (Jane Addams).
  • “Justice that loves gives is a surrender, justice that law gives is a punishment” (Gandhi).
  • “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice” (MLK).
  • “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (MLK).
  • “Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public” (Dr. Cornel West).

The best definition, illustration, and description of “justice” are the words of Jesus, “Do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12).

What does that look like in real life?

Jesus shows us in His parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25:31-46.

In that parable Jesus says that true disciples feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, show hospitality to the immigrant (regardless of their legal standing), clothing the naked which includes taking care of the homeless, providing health care for the sick, and advocating and speaking out against mass incarceration.

All of these are “social justice” issues. Jesus makes them a heaven and hell issue. Thus, ought they better be a central part of our 2022 church’s mission?

Justice and the Kingdom of God

The Old Testament idea of “justice” became the New Testament concept of the “kingdom of God” or “kingdom of heaven.” 

During the four-hundred-year period between the close of the Old Testament and the birth of Jesus, the phrase, “Kingdom of God” became a rallying cry for the Jews, creating an anticipation of the coming of the Messiah.

At that time, what God wants done in heaven will be realized on earth.

By the time of Jesus’ birth, the anticipation that the Messiah would soon come was at a fever pitch. Before Jesus came, there were others who came, claiming to be the Messiah, and the Roman Empire killed them all!

After His baptism, Jesus proclaimed, “The time has come…the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15).

God’s kingdom would be characterized by love of justice, love of mercy and walking humbly with God.

By stating God’s kingdom was “near,” 

Jesus was proclaiming that His kingdom had arrived (present reality), is arriving (continued presence), and will arrive in the future (future hope).

Thus, the kingdom of God is both “now and not yet.” 

You see the “now and not yet” of the kingdom in Jesus’ words, reading from the Prophet Isaiah, in Luke 4:18-19, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed… (this is the NOW of the kingdom of God) …to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” 

(a reference to the Year of Jubilee, the NOT YET of the kingdom). 

Justice, and a just society, are at the very heart of who God is and what He wants His people to be!

But justice is, by no one’s definition, easy work and neither is it glamorous.

Advocating and fighting for justice will make you infamous, not famous.

It is dirty work. It requires sacrifice.

It can ruin your reputation and your life.

It could lead to “crucifixion.”

But advocating and fighting for justice is what it means to follow Jesus.

Dr. Cornel West said, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” 

I would most definitely add, “Justice is what Jesus looks like in public.”

The Prophet Isaiah

Since the Old Testament idea of “justice” is the New Testament concept of the “kingdom of God,” and since Jesus quoted from Isaiah more than any other Old Testament book or person, I now draw your prayerful attention to Isaiah 1:17.

Isaiah prophesied during a time when both Israel and Judah had reached their zenith in prosperity and political power. (Sound familiar?)

But the people of God had turned their backs on God. (Sound Familiar?)

Not in obvious ways, but in subtle ways of saying they trusted in God but were relying on their own prosperity and political power. (Sound familiar?)

Their problem was not atheism, but syncretism, adding other philosophies and world views into your faith in God. (Sound Familiar?) In other words, the people were not denying God, but “adding” to their belief in God. (Sound familiar?)

Furthermore, there were two competing political ideologies vying for their attention, allegiance. (Sound familiar?) One was Egypt. The other was Syria.

With whom would God’s people align themselves and their “ideologies”?

Isaiah, whose name means, “the Lord is salvation,” comes on the scene and says, “You, God’s people, don’t pledge your allegiance to anything or anyone but God, Himself, who is the only source of true salvation.” 

Isaiah, more than any other prophet, prophesies that God is going to send the Messiah, who will set up a new government, a new nation, and a new way of life.

Our citizenship is in His kingdom, not in any kingdoms of this world. 

And that new kingdom, God’s kingdom, is characterized by the love of justice, love of mercy, and “their love” of their walking humbly with their loving God.

In chapter one, Isaiah condemns God’s people for being a rebellious nation. Listen to what God says through His prophet…

  • “…I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me…” (v. 2).
  • “…the ox knows his master, the donkey his owner’s manger, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand…” (v. 3). Could I re-word this verse? “The elephant knows his master, the donkey his owner’s manger, but my people neither know me nor understand me.”
  • “…they have forsaken the LORD; they have spurned the Holy One of Israel…” (v. 4).
  • “…your country is desolate, your cities burned with fire…” (v. 7).
  • “…the multitude of your sacrifices—what are they to me?’ says the LORD…” (v. 11).
  • “…stop bringing meaningless offerings…” (v. 13).
  • “…when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen…” (v. 15).

After fifteen verses of strong condemnation, Isaiah’s tone and tenor starts to change.

He writes, “Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right!” (vv. 16-17).

Now, notice the very first thing Isaiah tells the people of God to do after telling them to “Stop doing wrong, learn to do right!”

It wasn’t to go out and build large churches.

It wasn’t to go out and create incredible youth programs so kids don’t get bored.

It wasn’t to coddle up to people in power so you can have a seat at the table.

It wasn’t even a list of personal sins you need to confess.

NO!

The very first thing God tells His people to do is to “Seek justice” (v. 17).

And if you are unclear on where to start, “…encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow” (v. 17).

Two things stand out for me about the biblical idea of justice in this verse.

First, justice is at the very core of who God is.

Second, justice is about standing with and speaking with the most vulnerable in our society.

The simplest meaning of the Hebrew word for justice, mishpat (pronounced mish-past) is to treat people equitably.

The idea is to grant people their rights, giving people what they are due.

Mishpat occurs over 400 times in the Old Testament.

Ultimately, the biblical idea of justice is about restoration and reconciliation more than it is about punishment.

Proverbs 31:8 reads, “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.” 

In ancient days, the “destitute,” the extremely vulnerable, were categorized in four groups:

(1) The widows. The Hebrew word, almanah, denotes not just a woman whose husband had died but also a once married and now divorced or abandoned woman who is need of financial and legal support.  

(2) The orphans. The Hebrew word, yathom, means “fatherless.” Thus, a child of a single mom was also an “orphan.” 

(3) The immigrants.

(4) The poor. The Bible is full of verses about our care for these “destitute” and vulnerable people. Here is just a sampling:

  • Deuteronomy 10:17-18 – “For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow…”
  • Exodus 22:22-24 – “Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. My anger will be aroused, and I. Will kill you with the sword.”
  • Deuteronomy 27:19 – “Cursed is the man who withholds justice from the alien, the fatherless or the widow.”
  • Psalm 35:10 – “Who is like you, O Lord? You rescue the poor from those too strong for them, the poor and needy from those who rob them.”
  • Psalm 72:4 – “He will defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy; he will crush the oppressor.”
  • Proverbs 13:223 – “A poor man’s field may produce abundant food, but injustice sweeps it away.”

“Added to the quartet of widows, orphans, immigrants, and poor would be all those who suffer at the hands of injustice. It could be the prisoner, the leper, the prostitute, the drug addict, the sinner (including sexual sins of all orientation), the person with AIDS or some other communal disease, the mentally disabled—the list could go on. If the good news of God’s kingdom is not good news to the least and the last—the widow, the orphan, the immigrant, and the poor—then it is not good news for anyone” (Evangelism for the 21st Century, p. 84).

In addition to people, the Bible also talks about systemic injustices that the church is to be addressing.

Just like there were four categories of people, there are four categories of systems:

(1) Economics. (2) Equality. (3) The environment. (4) The sanctity of life.

Here is just a brief sampling of what the Bible says:

  • Proverbs 22:16 – “He who is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward him for what he has done.”
  • Proverbs 20:23 – “The LORD detests differing weights, and dishonest scales do not please him.”
  • Acts 10:34-35 – “Then Peter began to speak: ‘I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.”
  • Galatians 3:28 – “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you all one in Christ Jesus.”
  • Jeremiah 2:7 – “I brought you into a fertile land to eat its fruit and rich produce. But you came and defiled my land and made my inheritance detestable.”

“Standing up for life most definitely means vigorously fighting for the rights of the unborn, but it could also mean speaking out against capital punishment…We need to expand sanctity of life to include fighting against human trafficking and for affordable housing, affordable, and available education. Furthermore, it should include speaking out against war…Finally, included in a comprehensive sanctity of life would be understanding the need for better and more affordable, healthcare for all” (Evangelism for the 21st Century, p. 94).

CONCLUSION

Look back with me at the beginnings of this 1st chapter of God’s Prophet Isaiah.

After a very strong condemnation in Isaiah 1:1-15, God tells us what we, as His people, are to be doing, and it’s all about, (gasp! gulp! gasp!) dare I even say it,

“Social Justice.”

Isaiah then concludes this section of his prophecy by stating something that if you have been in church for any amount of time have heard.

These are very familiar verses.

And I bet you have heard them, but every time you have heard them it has been in the context of confessing your personal sins so you can receive forgiveness.

But notice, in context, these verses are not about personal sins, rather, they are about the sin of God’s people not fighting for justice in their society!

Isaiah says, “‘Come now, let us reason together,’ says the LORD. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land; but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.’ For the mouth of the LORD has spoken” (Isaiah 1:18-20 AMP).

May we understand that justice is at the very heart of God. Thus, fighting for justice should be at the very core of who we are, and what we do, as His people.

May the church understand justice is at the heart of God. Thus, our fighting for justice should be at the very core of who we are, and what we do, as His people.

I am the church! 
You are the church!
We are the church together!
All who follow Jesus,
all around the world!
Yes, we're the church together!

(Richard K. Avery and Donald S. Marsh 1972)

In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,

Let us Pray,

Remove the hearts of stone, of division and of selfishness, O God, which keeps me and your church from caring for the downtrodden, abused, forgotten, and broken. Give us your eyes of concern and Jesus’ heart of compassion to see them and minister to them. In his name, the Lord Jesus Christ, I pray. Alleluia! Amen.

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How might our Church Respond to our God’s Sovereignty over its Life: “Mold Me and Make Me, This is what I Pray?”

I have always been told there are several ways to do things.

There are “always” several ways to “get things done” by the “right way.”

There are always several ways to get things done by the “legal” way.

By My Way!

By Your Way!

By No One’s Specific Way!

By Everyone Else’s Way!

By Any and ‘All’ ‘Legal’ Means Necessary!

By the Highway!

By the Churches Way!

By the Book – step by step by step!

By the Manufacturers Manual!

By the “Bosses” Manual! (Who is the ‘Boss’?)

By the “hands on” Way which is generally found somewhere in between!

There is the way of man defined and shaped and molded by their own hands.

Then there is the Master’s Way ….

The Master’s Way which is(?) held to be Sovereign above all other ways.

So, now we have the place where resistance and conflict inevitably collide.

Just who is “The Master?” “Who is Sovereign?” “Who is it who holds sway?”

Deep Questions … Shall a Mighty Debate now Ensue between “the Master’s?”

Or should one “Master” simply recognize their sovereignty is as nothing?

We are aware there is a well-known hymn entitled, “Have Thine Own Way.”

The first line of this hymn says,

“Have Thine own way, Lord! . . . Thou art the potter, I am the clay! Mold me and make me after Thy will, while I am waiting, yielded and still.”

When Adelaide Pollard wrote the words to this hymn she was speaking of the ancient biblical imagery of God as the Master Potter, which is used many times throughout the length and breadth and width and heights of God’s Scriptures.

The prophet Isaiah used the imagery of the potter to stress God’s sovereignty.

For example, Isaiah 29:16 says, “Shall the potter be esteemed as the clay; for shall the thing made say of him who made it, ‘He did not make me?’ Or shall the thing formed say of him who formed it, ‘He has no understanding?’”

God’s Prophet Isaiah was saying that people have no perception of the ways of God, and to question Him is foolish, for we are just weak and fragile vessels.

Romans 9:21 The Apostle Paul used the imagery of the potter when people were complaining that God is unjust.

He asked, “Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?” Paul was saying, “Who are we to question God? He can do whatever He wants with our lives!”

From our biblical text today, we are going to look at how Jeremiah used the imagery of God as the potter, as he was trying to communicate the Lord’s sovereignty concerning his life and our lives.

Let’s pray we can see what our Sovereign God led Jeremiah to share with the people of Judah, or southern Israel, and let’s try to apply it to our lives today.

Jeremiah 18:1-6 Amplified Bible

The Potter and the Clay

18 The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will make you hear My words.” 3 Then I went down to the potter’s house and saw that he was working at the wheel. 4 But the vessel that he was making from clay was spoiled by the potter’s hand; so, he made it over, reworking it and making it into another pot that seemed good to him.

5 Then the word of the Lord came to me: 6 “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” says the Lord. “Look carefully, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel.

The Word of God for the Children of God. Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia! Amen.

Jeremiah went to the potter’s house as the Lord commanded him, and while he was there, he saw a potter spinning his wheel and molding a piece of clay.

The potter’s wheel in that ancient day and time was actually two wheels linked together by a pedestal. The potter would spin the bottom wheel with his feet, while the clay spun on the upper wheel to be moistened, shaped by his hands.

Jeremiah was standing in awe as he watched the potter fashion a piece of clay.

He saw the potter’s fingers ever so naturally and gently glide along the slippery clay, shaping and molding it with the slightest touch.

The potter with his vision, only had to touch the tip of his finger against the clay, and its shape would be changed. Jeremiah said that the clay was marred in the potter’s hand, and he made it again into another vessel that pleased him.

If a potter is displeased with the shape of the clay he is molding, all he has to do is squash it flat and start over again.

Jeremiah realized that this is a picture of our lives. Our lives are as fragile as wet clay in the hands of a potter, and the Lord has the ability to reshape our lives.

The potter uses several implements, or tools, to bring the clay to a place where it is usable:

First, he uses a shovel.

This is the tool he uses to dig the clay from the earth.

This is a picture of the Spirit of God who comes to where we are in sin and speaks to us in convicting power and draws us to Jesus.

Secondly, he uses a mallet.

After the clay has been cleansed and processed, it is laid on a table and beaten with a wooden mallet.

The potter does this to remove any air bubbles that might be trapped in the clay.

If he doesn’t, the air bubble will form a pocket that will produce a weak spot and cause the vessel to be fragile and unusable.

This is a picture of the trials . . . and chastisements of life that tend to work together to mold us and to shape us into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thirdly he uses the wheel.

Jeremiah saw the wheel turning constantly, bringing the clay against the potter’s hand.

The wheel stands for the turning circumstances of our life, under the control of the Potter . . . As our life is being shaped and molded by the Great Potter, it is the circumstances of our life, the wheels of circumstance . . . which bring us again and again under the Potter’s hand, under the pressure of [His] molding fingers.

Fourthly he uses his hands.

While the clay spins around on the wheel, it is never out of contact with the potter’s hands. He is in constant contact, molding, shaping and bringing the clay along through his loving guidance.

If the potter were to ever remove his hand, the clay would spin right off the wheel and would be splattered everywhere in the room and lost. Therefore, he stays there, in contact with the clay . . . until it become what he desires it to be.

As the Great Potter, God’s desire is to make us into a beautiful creation that is useful to Him. The key we must remember is that the Lord can only shape us if we stop “naturally resisting,” submit to His loving hands, allow Him to do so.

You Can Be Remolded (vv. 5-10)

Jeremiah 18:5-10Amplified Bible

5 Then the word of the Lord came to me: 6 “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” says the Lord. “Look carefully, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel. 7 At one moment I might [suddenly] speak concerning a nation or kingdom, that I will uproot and break down and destroy; 8 if that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will [a]relent and reverse My decision concerning the devastation that I intended to do. 9 Or at another time I might [suddenly] speak about a nation or kingdom that I will build up or establish; 10 and if they do evil in My sight by not obeying My voice, then I will reverse My decision concerning the good with which I had promised to bless them.

Judah had been disobedient to the Lord by worshipping other gods.

Through Jeremiah, the Lord informed the people of Judah that if they didn’t repent, they would be destroyed. While people are in God’s hands, meaning under His shaping influence, it is much easier to humble oneself and repent.

Proverbs 16:1-3 Amplified Bible

Contrast the Upright and the Wicked

16 The plans and reflections of the heart belong to man,
But the [wise] answer of the tongue is from the Lord.
2 
All the ways of a man are clean and innocent in his own eyes [and he may see nothing wrong with his actions],
But the Lord weighs and examines the motives and intents [of the heart and knows the truth].
3 
[a]Commit your works to the Lord [submit and trust them to Him],
And your plans will succeed [if you respond to His will and guidance].

In other words, beloved Children of God, brothers and sisters in Christ, when God asks us to repent, we had better do so before we decide to go our own way.

Pay close attention, dear Body of Christ, God’s Church in God’s Neighborhood,

Once He allows us to make our own choices, then our way leads to destruction.

The late Country Music singer John Denver said,

“The potter’s wheel takes love and caring, skill and patience fast and slow. The works it makes are easily broken, once they survive the potter’s throw.”

What he meant is that when the clay survives the throwing and molding process on the wheel, and then becomes fired in the kiln, at this point it is easily broken.

If someone drops a pot that has been hardened as glass, it will so easily shatter.

While clay is still wet in the potter’s hands it has a chance to be reshaped, made into a new creation, but once it has been set and fired in the kiln and made hard, it cannot be reshaped.

The only way it can change its shape after it is dried is when it’s thrown on the ground and shattered into tiny pieces, which not a shape to be desired.

In Isaiah 30:14, the prophet told the people of Israel that if they failed to repent, then God

“shall break it like the breaking of the potter’s vessel, which is broken in pieces; He shall not spare. So, there shall not be found among its fragments a shard to take fire from the hearth, or to take water from the cistern.”

If the nation of Israel became set in her ways and did not listen to the Lord, then she could no longer be molded.

The nation would soon be dropped and broken into countless pieces.

If the Lord is speaking to your heart this evening to accept Jesus Christ, then you had better do so before it’s too late.

If you continually deny Jesus, then your heart will become hardened to Him, like a pot that has been fired in the kiln. If you harden your heart to Jesus, then you are no longer moldable by the Great Potter. You are heading for a great fall, and when you hit the ground, you will break! It’s not going to be a pretty sight!

You Must Repent Now (v. 11)

Jeremiah 18:11Amplified Bible

11 Now then, say to the men of Judah and to the citizens of Jerusalem, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Behold, I am shaping a disaster and working out a plan against you. Turn back, each of you from his evil way; correct your habits and change your actions for the better.”’

God spoke through Jeremiah and told Judah to repent. He said that if Judah didn’t turn from her evil ways immediately then she was heading for destruction. When God said, “I am fashioning as disaster and devising a plan against you,” He was telling Judah that He was getting ready to drop her on the ground to be shattered to pieces. We know the outcome of this situation. Judah was indeed shattered and broken to pieces when her people were taken captive by other nations and separated like a glass jar that has burst apart and its pieces scattered abroad.

Revelation 2:25-27 Jesus says we should be faithful to Him until the very end.

He says of those who are unfaithful,

“They shall be dashed to pieces like the potter’s vessels.”

If you have not given your life over to Jesus Christ, then you are headed for destruction. I encourage you to give your life to Him now, before it’s too late.

Jeremiah said everyone then and ergo, now, is to

“return now from his evil way.”

To “return now” means this very minute.

You see, we don’t know for certain if we have another minute left to live.

We could die as we leave for work or shopping today, or Jesus could return to take His people home. We are not guaranteed another minute, so we should accept Jesus Christ into our hearts right now. Paul said, “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2b).

Time of Reflection

What Jeremiah has revealed to us is that the Lord continually and continuously loves us and desires for us to be in contact with His loving hands at all times.

He wants us to drop our natural resistance, welcome His touch, connect with His entire vision for our lives, be sensitive to the shaping forces of His fingers.

If we are choosing to remain naturally insensitive and go our own way and do our own thing, “shape our own vessels” then we are saying that we don’t need His sovereign guidance. We are saying we are already in our preferred shape.

If we fail to give our lives to the Master Potter, then He will let us be whom we desire.

We may be some ugly, deformed pot and not even know it, but the Lord will send us to the kiln to be fired as we are.

If we do not innately turn our lives over to the Potter and remain in His hands to be continually remolded and made anew, the Lord will stop shaping us, and He will let us alone. When He lets us alone, we are in a very fragile state. One wrong move could send us unceremoniously crashing, shattering all over the ground.

If you have never known God in an intimate and personal relationship, then you need to allow the Potter, Jesus Christ, to make you anew.

Hearts of stone to hearts of flesh. From our death, raised unto new life, He will come into your heart and give you a newfound joy if you will allow Him to do so.

He who has Ears – let them Hear!

He who has Eyes – let them See!

He who has a Mouth – let them Speak!

He who has a Voice – let them Sing!

He who has Hands and Feet – let them Serve!

He who has THEIR OWN ‘SOVEREIGN’ WAYS …. What do you do NOW?

In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,

Let us Pray,

A Covenant Prayer in the Wesleyan Tradition

I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee,
Exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O Glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
Let it be ratified in heaven. Amen

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God’s Message for God’s Church. God is at His Wheel: It’s always a Time of New Beginnings inside the Potter’s House.

Many of the Bible’s images are challenging for us to understand because we live in a culture which is so radically different from that of the ancient Middle East.

But here’s an image that doesn’t need much translation.

Even young children who make finger bowls from clay at home or in an art class or in Camp can identify with and feel the force of this image in their fingertips.

Both young sculptors with their Play-Doh and master sculptors in their studios are intimately involved in their creations’ beginning. This is hands-on work.

And that tells us something about God our Creator. The biblical image of the potter challenges us not to picture God as an aloof or isolated figure, but busy.

No, when God deals with an individual, a nation, a people group, a community, a neighborhood or a church, he engages in some intimate, hands-on creativity.

Picture God as the ‘busy’ One who molds and shapes your community of faith.

Picture God as the One who sometimes chooses to remold and remake that community into something that no one would have ever guessed possible.

Considering the state of our churches right now, how can we live as good clay?

For starters, we can be pliable, flexible, moldable. Brittle clay is almost useless.

Miraculously, we can also somehow figure out how to actually begin living in hope and expectation, full of wonder about what God is forming us to become.

Jeremiah 18:1-6Amplified Bible

The Potter and the Clay

18 The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will make you hear My words.” 3 Then I went down to the potter’s house and saw that he was working at the wheel. 4 But the vessel that he was making from clay was spoiled by the potter’s hand; so, he made it over, reworking it and making it into another pot that seemed good to him.

5 Then the word of the Lord came to me: 6 “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” says the Lord. “Look carefully, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel.

The Word of God for the Children of God. Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia! Amen.

The prophet Jeremiah lived at a very difficult time in Judah’s history.

The revivals led by King Josiah were a distant memory.

Idolatry and immorality plagued the nation.

They were following in the footsteps of the Northern Kingdom and soon the judgment of God would meet them – walk right into their faces and slap them.

In Jeremiah chapter 18, God issues a very solemn, yet fruitless plea beckoning His people to return to Him.

History tells us they refused to repent and would not return to the Lord.

As a consequence, Jerusalem was destroyed, and the people were taken captive by the Babylonian Empire.

From that tragedy, however, the beauty of this passage (chapter 18, verses 1-6) worthy to be noted: that God while God’s own judgement is upon them, is also God who is yet busy reaching out unto His people –even well into the 11th hour!

The message God had for Jeremiah was a poignantly visual sermon at the potter’s house.

From the visually nondescript impact of outside the potter’s house, to in the potter’s house, God is busy offering His people a fresh start – a new beginning.

We all want a new beginning. We have all said something or acted in a particular way and afterward wished we could take it back or do it differently. We have all had times, happy times and wonderful memories that we would like to re-live.

We are the Body of Christ – the Church – God’s Church in the year of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ – 2022. Could we be anymore broken and or fractured?

Our brokenness and our division and chards of controversy are perpetually at our feet – piled chard by chard miles and miles high – like the Tower of Babel.

We raise them ever higher as “altars of our own self-righteousness” unto our grieving God in the undeniably vain hope our altars will be ‘more’ acceptable than those altars being raised by those we have great and growing contentions.

Contention? Whose ‘altar,’ whose “Tower of Babel” is more “self-righteous?”

The arguments go on and on – and their “self-reported” unobstructed views to the Potter’s House becomes more and more distant, more and more obstructed.

Both declare their steadfast belief their “view” and “vision” of the outside of the Potter’s House – is the most accurate and correct, ‘viable’ representation.

Meanwhile, somewhere, who really knows from where anymore, is God’s Word of Judgement upon His church from HIS Weeping Prophet Jeremiah Chapter 18. 

The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will make you hear My words.” 3 Then I went down to the potter’s house and saw that he was working at the wheel. But the vessel that he was making from clay was spoiled by the potter’s hand; so, he made it over, reworking it and making it into another pot that seemed good to him. 5 Then the word of the Lord came to me: 6 “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” says the Lord. “Look carefully, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel.

But, amidst all of the rancor and contention, the ‘altar’ and ‘tower’ building, who is actually paying attention to the Word of God, wondering about whether or not the Potter is still at His house, working clay into His image of the church?

When was their last visit to the Potter’s House to see the Potter at work at the Potter’s Wheel? When did they last try to knock on the Door to His House to see HIM at work? Do they see all the “empty” wheels waiting for HIS new students?

Do they see The Master Potter at work? Do they see that they are the ones being shaped and reshaped, molded and then molded, moistened and remoistened?

Do they see it is their “so called,” “self-reported” “self-righteousness” altars, towers sitting on top, in the center of all things on the Master Potter’s Wheel?

Do they hear the whirring of the Master Potter’s Wheel calling them to account?

Hearing the “Not so Silent” invitation of the Master Potter – “Please sit down?” (Isaiah 58 Amplified)

58 “Cry aloud, do not hold back;
Lift up your voice like a trumpet,
And declare to My people their transgression
And to the house of Jacob their sins.
2 
“Yet they seek Me day by day and delight [superficially] to know My ways,
As [if they were in reality] a nation that has done righteousness
And has not abandoned (turned away from) the ordinance of their God.
They ask of Me righteous judgments,
They delight in the nearness of God.
3 
‘Why have we fasted,’ they say, ‘and You do not see it?
Why have we humbled ourselves and You do not notice?’
Hear this [O Israel], on the day of your fast [when you should be grieving for your sins] you find something you desire [to do],
And you force your hired servants to work [instead of stopping all work, as the law teaches].
4 
“The facts are that you fast only for strife and brawling and to strike with the fist of wickedness.
You do not fast as you do today to make your voice heard on high.
5 
“Is a fast such as this what I have chosen, a day for a man to humble himself [with sorrow in his soul]?
Is it only to bow down his head like a reed
And to make sackcloth and ashes as a bed [pretending to have a repentant heart]?
Do you call this a fast and a day pleasing to the Lord?
6 
“[Rather] is this not the fast which I choose,
To undo the bonds of wickedness,
To tear to pieces the ropes of the yoke,
To let the oppressed, go free
And break apart every [enslaving] yoke?
7 
“Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry
And bring the homeless poor into the house;
When you see the naked, that you cover him,
And not to hide yourself from [the needs of] your own flesh and blood?
8 
“Then your light will break out like the dawn,
And your healing (restoration, new life) will quickly spring forth;
Your righteousness will go before you [leading you to peace and prosperity],
The glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
9 
“Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
You will cry for help, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’
If you take away from your midst the yoke [of oppression],
The finger pointed in scorn [toward the oppressed or the godly], and [every form of] wicked (sinful, unjust) speech,
10 
And if you offer yourself to [assist] the hungry
And satisfy the [a]need of the afflicted,
Then your light will rise in darkness
And your gloom will become like midday.
11 
“And the Lord will continually guide you,
And satisfy your soul in scorched and dry places,
And give strength to your bones;
And you will be like a watered garden,
And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.
12 
“And your people will rebuild the ancient ruins;
You will raise up and restore the age-old foundations [of buildings that have been laid waste];
You will be called Repairer of the Breach,
Restorer of Streets [b]with Dwellings.

As much as we, the Body of Christ, the Church, in God’s neighborhood, all would like to turn back time to re-live a happy moment or take back hurtful words, forget the debts and sins of the people against us –we do not, cannot.

You and I, the Body of Christ, the Church, in God’s neighborhood, are at this very exact moment the complete sum of every decision we have ever made.

No matter how much to sit down in Pottery School with the Master Potter – (Isaiah 2:2-4 Amplified)

2 
Now it will come to pass that
In the last days
The mountain of the house of the Lord
Will be [firmly] established as the [a]highest of the mountains,
And will be exalted above the hills;
And all the nations will stream to it.
3 
And many peoples shall come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
To the house (temple) of the God of Jacob;
That He may teach us His ways
And that we may walk in His paths.”
For the law will go out from Zion
And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
4 
And He will judge between the nations,
And will mediate [disputes] for many peoples;
And they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not lift up the sword against nation,
And never again will they learn war.

Verse 4 (for “our” “contemporary” Church)

And He will judge between the CHRISTIANS,

And will mediate [disputes] for many CHRISTIANS,

And they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.

CHRISTIANS will not lift up their swords against FELLOW CHRISTIANS

And never again will they learn war ….

As much as we may profess that want to make a brand-new beginning for ourselves – rewrite Isaiah 2:1-4 for our “modern contemporary church,” it is probably next to, if not, virtually impossible in the mindset of too many.

Too many “self-righteous,” “humbled” “Christians” from all the theological spectrums are standing too far distant, too far apart from the Potter’s House.

Too few dares to look for or dares to explore, discover, see a need to get closer.

The good news is: “with man it is 100% impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). God is able to keep His wheel moving, give you and I, a fresh start! That is the message our God is preaching unto His Church today.

This visual message has but three main contributors. Consider them briefly.

The Master Potter

Perhaps Jeremiah had seen this particular potter before.

No doubt Jeremiah was familiar with the work of pottery as it was very common in that day.

In fact, the Hebrew Testament uses no less than 30 references to this skill in conveying spiritual truth.

But on this day, it was radically different for Jeremiah.

This day, God was preaching to him.

At the potter’s wheel we see the potter’s ability.

Not everyone can make a piece of clay into something desirable. And even smaller number of people are able to create a piece of artwork that is highly sought after by museums and collectors. The potter is a man of ability.

At the potter’s wheel we also see his sovereignty.

That wheel is the potter’s universe in a sense, and he is in complete control of whatever is taking place within. The speed of the wheel; the shape into which the clay is molded and shaped and worked –all are completely subject to him.

These are valuable lessons for Jeremiah to learn.

Because the potter he was learning about was no ordinary potter.

The master potter in this poignant sermon was not the man in the shop.

The Master Potter has a different identity. Consider Isaiah 64:8

“But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.”

The Master Potter is GOD the LORD.

He has infinite ability and sovereign in all things.

The Marred Clay

It takes 9-12 months to prepare the clay.

As it is found, it is completely unsuitable for the potter’s wheel. The clay is dug out and goes through a detailed process of filtration and refining to remove all the unwanted debris. The clay is trodden under foot to increase its plasticity and then it is left to weather for months. So much care is given to preparing the clay.

Even though such attention is given to its preparation, sometimes small rocks and other debris remain in the mix.

These go completely unnoticed until placed upon the potter’s wheel. As the potter begins his work of shaping and molding, suddenly the rubbish is brought to the surface and in a moment the new creation is marred. A deep groove is cut into the vessel and the smooth surface is suddenly out of shape.

I heard of a man who was stuck in the mud at the bottom of a steep hill and needed to be towed to the top. At the top of the hill, the driver of the tow truck said, “I didn’t think we were ever going to make it to the top that hill.”

The driver in the other car replied, “Neither did I, so I kept both of my feet on the brakes to keep us from rolling backwards!”

That may sound silly, but you and I behave that way more times than we would like to admit. God desires to mold us and shape us and make us after HIS will, but as God looks forward, we are “stomping on the brakes” looking backward.

The apostle Paul, said,

“I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” in Philippians 3:14.

But before he could press forward, in verse 13 he declares: “This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before.”

Let go of the past, relinquish your plans and yield yourself to the hands of the Master Potter! Sometimes the clay is marred –not because of a mistake of the Potter, but because of a bit of debris left-over from the former life still in it.

The Miracle on the Wheel

What happens when God finds a little rubbish in the clay?

It’s obvious. He annihilates it. Utterly destroys it and casts it away. Right?

No. He does the exact opposite.

Note again Jeremiah 18 verse 4.

“And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so, he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.”

The Master Potter did not throw the clay away.

He started over with the same lump of clay!

We have all made a mess of things at times. Attitudes and actions of the old man, the sin nature, comes to the surface and we lack wisdom to do anything.

But God in HIS grace and HIS mercy, with tender hands removes the rubbish.

As we confess our sins to Him and miraculously yield to His plan,

–He enters the breeches in the walls, He rebuilds and restores OUR ruins.

John 3:16-18Amplified Bible

16 “For God so [greatly] loved and dearly prized the world, that He [even] gave His [One and] [a]only begotten Son, so that whoever believes and trusts in Him [as Savior] shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send the Son into the world to judge and condemn the world [that is, to initiate the final judgment of the world], but that the world might be saved through Him. 18 Whoever believes and has decided to trust in Him [as personal Savior and Lord] is not judged [for this one, there is no judgment, no rejection, no condemnation]; but the one who does not believe [and has decided to reject Him as personal Savior and Lord] is judged already [that one has been convicted and sentenced], because [b]he has not believed and trusted in the name of the [One and] only begotten Son of God [the One who is truly unique, the only One of His kind, the One who alone can save him].

God has a definite plan in mind for HIS Church.

2 Timothy 2: 20, 21

But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour, and some to dishonour. If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work.

We are embarking on a brand-New time and season in the church. In many ways it is a clean slate –a fresh start. We cannot tell what 2022 will hold for us.

We do not know what challenges we will face, what mountains we will climb (other than God’s) or what hard lessons from deepest valleys we will endure.

But I do know this: God is still God, and His ways are perfect.

I know that He is still at work at HIS wheel and His hands do not rest.

The wheel of time continues to turn and as I will yield to the Master Potter, He can make something beautiful within me and in you and within HIS CHURCH.

I know that I am prone to failure,

I know you are prone to failure,

I know the Church is prone to failure.

But the Good News is this: God will not throw the clay away.

God will continue His work; day by day, making and remaking me into a vessel that is fit for the Master’s use.

God will continue His work in and within the Church, day by day, making and remaking, shaping and reshaping, molding and remolding, it into a vessel that is 100% fit for His Son, Jesus, to return to one day and reclaim as His very own.

In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,

Let us Pray,

Prayer to the Holy Spirit

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Your faithful and kindle in us the fire of Your love.  Send forth Your Spirit and we shall be created.  And You shall renew the face of the earth. 

O, God, Who by the light of the Holy Spirit did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy Your consolations. 

​Through Christ our Lord. 

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.

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In the Potter’s House, at the Potter’s Wheel: God, our Creator, is not even close to being finished with You and I and His Neighborhood. Jeremiah 18:1-11

God is like a potter, and we are like clay. In his work of spiritual formation, God constantly molds and shapes us. This can be a slow process of gradual growth.

Or, at times, an encounter with the living Christ through his Word will infuse us with grace that moves us quickly to a new level of devotion and commitment.

At other times, the potter must stop spinning the wheel. look carefully at their work, decide if the shape of the pot is as they had originally envisioned it fits the original purpose for which the potter originally intended. Sometimes, break the pot down and then start over again because the clay has become misshapen.

Through each effort at reshaping the vessel, our spirit, each of these types of spiritual formation shows a different way God deals with us. If I can no longer be molded, I need to repent and experience the shattering grace of God’s love.

If I somehow believe I have somehow reached a spiritual plateau, achieved a measure of spiritual maturity where I do not feel or know where my spirit can mature in God anymore, I need to begin a process of discover by God’s Spirit into the unknown and undeveloped and woefully underdeveloped areas of my personality or giftedness that God knows need his powerful touch. And if I’m then gradually growing, I need simply to rejoice and increase my thanksgiving.

A process of discovery! What concrete ways do we see the Potter at work in our lives? A new biblical perspective might have to be developed, new directions set, moral values instilled, old habits broken, positive attitudes fostered, deeper commitments chosen and cherished, a family reunited, emotional hurts healed, a serious crisis resolved, spiritual gifts utilized, and new ministries started.

As God, our Creator, continually and continuously shapes you and me, (is God ever finished?) and His neighborhood, life all around us is being transformed.

God’s neighborhood is not transformed into the vision we desire or believe is best for what greater “more politically correct” purposes we set aside for it.

It is, after all, when all is said and done, God’s neighborhood and not ours.

Jeremiah 18:1-11Amplified Bible

The Potter and the Clay

18 The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will make you hear My words.” 3 Then I went down to the potter’s house and saw that he was working at the wheel. 4 But the vessel that he was making from clay was spoiled by the potter’s hand; so, he made it over, reworking it and making it into another pot that seemed good to him.

5 Then the word of the Lord came to me: 6 “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” says the Lord. “Look carefully, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel. 7 At one moment I might [suddenly] speak concerning a nation or kingdom, that I will uproot and break down and destroy; 8 if that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will [a]relent and reverse My decision concerning the devastation that I intended to do. 9 Or at another time I might [suddenly] speak about a nation or kingdom that I will build up or establish; 10 and if they do evil in My sight by not obeying My voice, then I will reverse My decision concerning the good with which I had promised to bless them. 11 Now then, say to the men of Judah and to the citizens of Jerusalem, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Behold, I am shaping a disaster and working out a plan against you. Turn back, each of you from his evil way; correct your habits and change your actions for the better.”’

The Word of God for the Children of God. Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia! Amen.

God is Not Even Close to Being Finished with Me Yet!

God is Not Even Close to Being Finished with You Yet!

God is Not Even Close to Being Finished with Anyone in HIS Neighborhood!

I’m going a bit off-script this day.

Lately, I have been spending a great deal of time reading and studying and pondering and writing these devotions from the Gospel and New Testament.

However, today, and probably for a few more days hence, my spirit felt lead to the Hebrew Testament Prophet Jeremiah.

The night before, God woke my mind up in the middle of the night again. It was with the clear message this biblical reading is meant to be timely for us today.

Pondering and praying about it throughout yesterday, I realized sometimes we need spiritual encouragement. God knew that. Jeremiah knew that, and he told the story of a potter’s wheel. I hope this devotion today can be inspiring for this coming group of readers – and that together, with God, we can all know it too.

Hear what the prophet Jeremiah said some twenty-six hundred years ago again:

The word of the Lord said to Jeremiah, “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” So, I went down to the potter’s house, and there he worked on the wheel. As he worked on a piece of pottery, it crumbled in his hand. Then he made it into another piece that pleased him more.”

The prophets used analogies and images to teach essential spiritual lessons.

This text is an example of storytelling to show Israel God’s mercy.

The imagery of as a pottery maker in his house illustrates God’s patience.

I know I have read this passage dozens of times, I’ve listened pastors preach it, and I’ve preached it through the lectionary cycle before. But there’s something I have somehow missed until yesterday as I pondered, prayed, this devotional.

One scholar said that the “potter’s house” was not a single person. Rather, all of Jerusalem’s pottery came from one area considered “the house of pottery.”

That neighborhood was outside the city walls. Jerusalem rested on a hill.

To reach the potter’s house a person had to go out the gate, thorough the valley of Hinnom, and up the hillside.

The valley is where Israel burned their garbage, and they called it Gehenna.

The kings of Judah sacrificed their children by fire in the valley, so the ancients believed it a cursed place.

Our notion of hell comes from this valley of burning: the abode of the dead.

The prophet walked through the people’s sin’s, their garbage, and even what they believed dead before he saw the potter.

I’m the same way: I’ve had to confront my fears, my doubts, and walk-through memories of loves and hates I thought dead before I reached the potter’s house.

After Jeremiah waded through the trash heap, he then made it to God’s pottery wheel. He saw God with dirty hands that were dried and blistered and cracked from the weight of the clay, the pottery wheel and the intensity of the fire.

The vision of the potter taught Jeremiah a lesson about Israel: God is always at work. God would continuously collect their misshapenness, continually remold and reshape it, and make them into people with hearts of flesh instead of stone.

So, my devotional writing today is along those lines: God’s not finished with us.

God didn’t give up on Israel. God will not give up on us.

Years ago, before my wife and I were married, we were looking for gifts for wedding parties. We were looking for wine goblets for our reception table.

We found a pottery shop where we introduced to the owner and the “master potter.” He took us on a tour of his classroom where he gave both children and adults of all ages both beginner, intermediate and advanced pottery lessons to.

He sat down at a pottery wheel and showed us how to mount the clay on the wheel and how to use our hands to begin forming and shaping the pottery.

At first, the force he used with the clay surprised me. Then, as he taught us that clay is not ready for the wheel until it goes through the pressure of shaping, I realized the necessity of preparation.

He carefully, but ever more forcefully, worked the wheel with his foot, worked the clay with his hands, kneaded it, squeezed it, and saturated continually with the water it to prepare it for whatever the potters’ vision was of its final shape.

It didn’t have form immediately. It needed time and water before it looked like a water pitcher. I noticed the clay would crumble if it didn’t have adequate water.

Life is a process of kneading, water – our baptismal identity, and shaping by the potter’s hands before we become “whole.”

Genesis says that God formed us in his image and molded us into his likeness.

Some of the earliest images of God in Genesis is a potter, with muddy hands, creating human beings.

God’s still working on us, shaping us toward wholeness.

God is not even close to being finished with anyone of us yet.

There were times I wanted to give up on dreams, relationships, and desires.

As I frequently take the time to reflect on my relationship with my wife, what it has been before we were married, after we were married, and what it is right now, and what I fervently pray it will be for all of our remaining tomorrows,

I see in my married life where God has been continually, continuously at work. He has been at work both with and within both of us to shape and reshape our marriage into His image and not ours. Somehow, miraculously God is at work, shaping me and my wife, pushing the mud into position to create a new vessel.

Our lives are messy at times, yet we both desire the perception that everything is okay. We know people who portray the ideal life and a perfect family on social media. But deep down inside we know something is missing. We both feel like a warped piece of bit pottery instead of the perfect piece on display in a museum.

After frequent searches through Scripture and in both individual and corporate prayer sessions, we finally accepted there’s nothing wrong with imperfection.

These days we are striving for vulnerability instead of perfection. God didn’t give up on Israel because of imperfection, and God will not give up on us either.

That leads me to another point I notice in this text:

It’s never too late to work together with God to begin being reshaped again.

In any relationship, in any covenant of marriage, there are always areas where more shared and mutual growth and maturity into God’s image are necessary.

Again, we can both envision God, in His Potter’s House, at His Potter’s Wheel.

The final thing I learned at the pottery studio was a spiritual lesson still informs my theology of my marriage to both God and to my wife who are my whole life.

“Living Life in God’s neighborhood happens because there is no perfect clay.”

Then the potter taught us what happens when ‘life happens,’ clay falls apart.

The clay pitcher he had carefully made, spun in perfect balance on the wheel until he moved his fingers ever so differently and gently into the clay. The clay gradually caved in on itself and became misshapen, spun lopsided on the wheel.

Sometimes when the pressure of life pushes us, we cave in on ourselves and spiral out of control. But then he said, as I can envision God is saying to us now; “When the piece you’re carefully making falls apart, you can always start over.”

The prophet Jeremiah saw a broken piece of pottery on God’s table.

He said God selected the moment, selected the brokenness, reformed it, and put the clay back on the potters’ wheel, created something new from broken pieces.

That should give us confidence. Even when our hearts shatter into a million pieces, God can take our pain, our fears, our guilt, and our grief, and transform the broken pieces of the self into a new creation. The prophet said the broken pottery became better than it was before the fall on the ground and shattered.

There’s never any perfect clay (relationship, family, ideal, dream, job, vocation, ministry or mission…). But it’s never too late to appreciate the beauty of flaws.

Conclusion

There’s an art in Japan, kintsugi, that is a unique way to fix pottery.

In Japan, people often inherit pottery from family members.

When a meaningful piece breaks, they do not discard it. Some cultures are like God; they do not throw things away just because of blemishes or brokenness.

They collect the pieces and repair the pottery.

But they do not use invisible glue that makes the pottery appear flawless.

They leave it with visible vulnerabilities.

They understand that scars can be signs of refinement.

The gift of imperfection is credibility.

The artist collects a special tree sap and mixes it with gold.

Then they carefully join the separated fragments together with gold.

The gold and the sap make the piece stronger at the cracks than it is elsewhere.

When they finish, the pottery is a one-of-a-kind heirloom with bright gold lines giving it a unique beauty and character it did not have before the fall.

Hear the words of the prophet again, “The first piece crumbled in the potter’s hand, but he made it into another piece that pleased him more.”

With God, our Creator, scars, imperfections, and brokenness, become inspired stories of triumph and grace.

They are stories where God turns lead to gold and things become greater than we ever dreamed possible. Remember, when we put hopes and dreams in tombs when we mourn them, and when we assume they are dead, God raises the dead.

The Tomb is STILL empty!

Jesus is STILL ALIVE ….

— God is not even close to being finished with anyone of us yet.

In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,

Pick up a lump of clay and mold it in your hands

Think about the creation of the world—

the touch of God’s hands on the very substance of the universe

As you change the appearance of the clay with the touch of your hands,

think how the world you live in has touched and changed you…

Think of how your hands have touched other people –

in love, in anger, in sorrow and in joy…

Think of the things and people who have touched your life

and molded you into the person you are today…

“Yet, O LORD, you are our Father.

We are the clay; you are the potter.

we are all the work of your hand.” (Isaiah 64:8)

Prayer

Look, Lord, on an empty vessel that needs to be filled.

In faith I am weak—strengthen me.

In love I am cold—warm me and make me fervent

so that my love may go out to my neighbour.

I doubt and am unable to trust you completely.

Lord, strengthen my faith and trust in you.

You are all the treasure I possess.

I am poor, you are rich,

and you came to have mercy on the poor.

I am a sinner, you are goodness.

From you I can receive goodness,

but I can give you nothing.

Therefore I shall stay with you.

(Martin Luther)

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Jesus’ Sense of Mission. Jesus Came not for the righteous but for Sinners.

One of the things we must always keep in mind when we are studying or even just reading the Scriptures is that context is king. We must understand the context if we are to understand what the passage means.

Today we are going to look at a passage of Scripture that has been the basis for many preachers for sermons which were isolated their setting.

The story of the call of our Lord to Matthew to follow him and the resulting change in Matthew’s heart as seen by the feast he gives so that Jesus can speak to all of his friends has been the basis of some very motivating sermons.

Jesus’ statement that He “did not come to call the righteous, but sinners” is a rich statement that could be preached on for days, if not weeks, on end.

There have also been many inspirational sermons presented on the nature of the new life we have in Jesus Christ based on what Jesus says in Matthew 9:17 about new wine being put into new wineskins.

In fact, there have been church renewal and evangelism movements started based on these two passages. However, no matter how motivational and inspirational a sermon or a renewal or movement may be, if it misses the point of the Biblical text, it is a very poor effort and could even descend into chaos.

A passage of Scripture cannot be properly understood without its context.

Turn with me to Luke 5:27-39. The parallel passages are Matthew 9:9-17 and Mark 2:13-22. As you are turning there, let me set the context for you.

Luke 5:27-39 Amplified Bible

Call of Levi (Matthew)

27 After this Jesus went out and noticed a tax collector named Levi (Matthew) sitting at the tax booth; and He said to him, “Follow Me [as My disciple, accepting Me as your Master and Teacher and walking the same path of life that I walk].” 28 And he left everything behind and got up and began to follow Jesus [as His disciple].

29 Levi (Matthew) gave a great banquet for Him at his house; and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others who were reclining at the table with them. 30 The Pharisees and their scribes [seeing those with whom He was associating] began murmuring in discontent to His disciples, asking, “Why are you eating and drinking with the tax collectors and sinners [including non-observant Jews]?” 31 And Jesus replied to them, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but [only] those who are sick. 32 I did not come to call the [self-proclaimed] righteous [who see no need to repent], but sinners to repentance [to change their old way of thinking, to turn from sin and to seek God and His righteousness].”

33 Then they said to Him, “The disciples of John [the Baptist] often practice fasting and offer prayers [of special petition], and so do the disciples of the Pharisees; but Yours eat and drink.” 34 Jesus said to them, “Can you make the wedding guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? 35 But days [for mourning] will come when the bridegroom is [forcefully] taken away from them. They will fast in those days.” 36 He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and puts it on an old one; otherwise, he will both tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. 37 And no one puts new wine into old [a]wineskins; otherwise, the new [fermenting] wine will [expand and] burst the skins and it will be spilled out, and the skins will be ruined. 38 But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. 39 And no one, after drinking old wine, wishes for new; for he says, ‘The old is fine.’”

The Word of God for the Children of God. Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia! Amen.

The theme of Matthew’s gospel is that Jesus is the promised Messiah and throughout his account Matthew continually stresses that point.

Mark and Luke make similar emphasis in their accounts.

Mark’s focus is that Jesus is the Son of Man who came to serve and give His life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). Luke’s emphasis is that Jesus is the Son of Man who came to seek and save sinners (Luke 19:10).

In all three accounts, whether they are chronological such as Luke or thematic such as Matthew, there is a progression in presenting Jesus’ authority as the promised Messiah.

Luke’s narrative simply presents Jesus’ miracles in the order they happened while Matthew’s narrative groups them thematically to demonstrate that Jesus has authority over disease and sickness, nature and the supernatural.

We have seen Jesus’ authority over nature in His turning the water into wine at the wedding in Capernaum (John 2) (See: The Wedding at Cana).

Jesus will continue to demonstrate that authority by instantly calming the waters of the sea (Matthew 8:23-27; Mark 4:36-41) and walking on water (Matthew 14:24-33; Mark 6:47-51).

Jesus has authority over sickness and disease as demonstrated in His healing Peter’s mother-in-law of the fever that had put her in bed and many others of their various diseases that same day (Luke 4:38-41)

Jesus put his hands on the leper and healed him and made him clean (Matthew 8:1-4), healed a boy who was near death and 16 miles or more away by speaking a word (John 4:46-54).

Jesus has authority over the supernatural demonstrated by casting demons out of hosts of people. One of the first was immediately after he had finished teaching in Capernaum and a demonized man cried out.

Jesus rebuked the demon and commanded it to come out, which it did, and the people were amazed (Luke 4:31-37).

Later that same evening Jesus cast out many demons while He was healing people at Simon Peter’s home (Luke 4:40-41).

All of these miracles were signs which had demonstrated Jesus’ identity as the Messiah, God in human flesh. His abilities to do these things were the proof He also had the authority to forgive sin.

He told the paralytic man “Your sins are forgiven.” When the scribes and Pharisees who were present questioned His authority to forgive sins since only God can do that, Jesus healed the man in their presence to prove that “the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Luke 5:17-26).

The power to forgive sins is of the greatest significance because sin is the root of all man’s problems and so is his greatest need.

This is the context for what occurs next in all three accounts.

Jesus forgave and healed a sinner who was paralyzed.

Jesus had already shown great compassion toward all those who were sick.

Many would understand His forgiving the man as just an extension of that compassion to someone stricken with a severe ailment.

But what about people who were so despised the Jews considered them to be the equivalent of Gentiles? People they thought were excluded from being forgiven.

Jesus Calls a Publican – Matthew 9:9; Mark 2:13-14; Luke 5:27

The context of these passages is the demonstration of Jesus forgiving sinners and the change in life that brings. 

Luke 5:27 summarizes what occurs, After that He went out and noticed a tax collector named Levi sitting in the tax booth, and He said to him, “Follow Me.” 

Mark 2:13-14 adds more detail, 13 And He went out again by the seashore; and all the people were coming to Him, and He was teaching them. 14 As He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting in the tax booth, and He said to him, “Follow Me!” And he got up and followed Him. 

Matthew 9:9 adds the detail that this man was also known as Matthew.

No text states how much time passed from when Jesus forgave and healed the paralytic until this event occurs, but it would not have been a long time.

Jesus has gone out from Capernaum and is walking along the road that runs by the shore of the Sea of Galilee when He comes to the booth of the tax collector.

We are not told exactly what the booth looked like.

It could have been a small building or just a table with some sort of covering for shade.

Sitting in the tax booth is a Jewish man named Levi the son of Alphaeus. He is also known at Matthew.

All three gospel accounts state that Jesus simply commanded him saying, “Follow Me!” While it seems so simple, this is an incredible command.

The common thought among the Jews at that time was that a person who was handicapped was crippled in direct relationship to their sin or the sins of their parents or grandparents.

That is why the paralytic man was such a good opportunity for Jesus to teach the religious leaders listening to Him that He had the power to forgive sins.

When Jesus said to that man, 

“Take courage, my son, your sins are forgiven.” 

It was already assumed that the man was a sinner in great need of forgiveness.

But now we have the example of Jesus calling one of the most despised classes of people in all Israel to follow Him.

Tax collectors as a whole were despised. They were called “publicani” and seen as traitors to the nation.

A publican was a national who bought a franchise from Rome that gave them the right to collect the taxes, the tribute, which Rome placed on the countries they had conquered.

The advantage to the one who held the franchise to collect the taxes was that Rome asked for a fixed amount, but anything collected above that could be kept by the publican.

This led to all sorts of abuses of the system.

Now, no one enjoys taxes (except certain politicians that like to levy them).

Even in our own country where we do have some say in our taxation through our elected representatives, few are happy have get a call from an IRS agent.

Now imagine IRS agents were not collecting taxes for the benefit of your own community, state and nation, but instead for another nation, an enemy nation such as North Korea or Iran

Add to that sense of indignation the fact he was getting mega rich in the deal by “collecting” more taxes from you than you actually legally owed.

That gives you some idea about the feelings against these publicans.

It was to Levi, or Matthew (gift of Yahweh) that Jesus says, “Follow Me!”

Matthew must have certainly known about Jesus either from personal experience in hearing Him in person or hearing about Him from the reports of the people.

I frequently tend to picture Matthew as a man who has heard the gracious words of our Lord but looking at himself and saying to himself something like, 

“What Jesus says is wonderful, but they could never apply to someone like me who is a publican.” 

But the day comes when Jesus is walking along the road by the seashore and comes upon Matthew sitting in his tax office and He says to him, 

“Follow Me!” 

It was clear to those who saw this take place, and it was clear to the early Jewish readers of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus, by acknowledging extended His forgiveness to even the most despised outcasts of society.

The Publican’s Response: Matthew 9:9-17; Mark 2:14-22; Luke 5:28-39

Matthew 9:9 simply states that Jesus commanded him, “Follow me!” And he rose and followed Him. 

There is no apparent hesitation. He gets up immediately and follows Jesus.

Matthew is modest about the personal cost of following Jesus in his own account. 

Luke 4:28 states that “he left everything behind and rose and followed Him.” 

Of all the disciples, Matthew paid the highest financial cost in following the Lord. There would be no returning to this job. Someone else would take his post.

Matthew alone knew the exacting cost and willingly paid it without hesitation.

He said not one single word, for his heart and his soul was locked deep inside the throes of a speechless surprise of unanticipated, and unexpected grace.

Matthew’s further response bears this out.

There was no mourning at all about what he had left behind.

Instead, he has extreme joy over the grace extended to him demonstrated by what he does next. 

Luke 5:29, And Levi gave a big reception for Him in his house; and there were a great crowd of tax collectors and other people who were reclining at the table with them.

What do you do when you are very happy and have great news that you want to celebrate and someone you want your friends to meet?

You throw a party, and that is what Matthew does.

But if you are in a class of people that is despised by most of the community, who do you invite?

Luke states that he invites “tax gatherers and others.”

The tax collectors are his co-workers and among the few with whom he could be friends, but who are the others?

The particular word used here (allos) means others of the same kind.

Matthew and Mark state that they were “sinners.”

These would be other Jews who were also outcasts of society for various reasons Perhaps – prostitutes, criminals, untouchables, and the non-religious.

It may well have likewise included Gentiles who were his friends as well.

There is no doubt that Matthew wanted them to know what Jesus had done for him and could do for them too.

Matthew invited Jesus and His disciples to his home for a reception and then invited his friends who were sinners to come meet Jesus, hear his good news.

The result was that these tax-gatherers and sinners were “reclining at table” with Jesus and His disciples (Matthew 9:10). Jesus, God in human flesh, the Holy one of Israel, is dining with the penultimate outcasts of Jewish society.

What an incredible scandal was taking shape here!

The Response of the Self-Righteous– Matthew 9:11, Mark 2:16, Luke 5:30

Luke 5:29 is specific that this banquet Matthew was holding in Jesus’ honor and so that his friends could meet Him was at his house, but apparently it was also a location in which those who were attending could easily be seen by those who were not attending.

Both Matthew 9:11 and Mark 2:16 state that the scribes and Pharisees saw Jesus’ dinning with those invited to Matthew’s banquet. 

Luke 5:27 tells us what resulted from that, 

The Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at His disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?” 

Matthew and Mark point out that it was not so much that the disciples were eating with sinners, but that Jesus, their Teacher, was eating with them.

These were not questions of inquiry.

They were grumbling.

These are rhetorical questions of rebuke to the disciples of Jesus aimed at Jesus.

The point of their statement to the disciples was a challenge to them along the lines of, 

“How can you dare to attach yourselves as followers of such a man who associates with such sinful people.” 

They reasoned that if Jesus was really a man of God, then He should not be in the company of such wicked people.

If Jesus was really a man of God, He should be dinning with good and upright people like themselves.

Of course, none of them had invited Jesus to a dine with them, but that was beside their point that Jesus should not be in the company of those people.

Let me stop to quickly give you a couple of questions that need to be considered concerning these Pharisees.

First, why are they following Jesus around and so interested to see with whom He is dining?

In current contemporary times, I suppose we expect it from the paparazzi who follow celebrities all around trying to get the latest gossip to publish in their tabloids, but these are the “highly respected” religious leaders in ancient times.

Are they also interested in gossip or are they already trying to find a way to discredit Jesus? Remember, Jesus had already challenged their evil manner of thinking when He forgave the sins of the paralyzed man and healed him.

Second, why do they put the challenge to the disciples of Jesus instead of to Jesus Himself?

If they were interested in the truth about Jesus, what He taught and why He did things, wouldn’t it be better to ask those questions directly of Him?

Perhaps they have felt the sting of conviction for their own sinfulness when they have heard Him teach or talked with Him in the past.

They avoid Jesus while striving to intimidate the disciples. You would think they would have something better to do.

The Pharisees judged everyone else by their own standards and traditions.

As far as they were concerned, righteous people associate with righteous people and sinners with sinners. Jesus claims to be from God, but He associates with sinners, therefore He could not be who He claimed.

This is their case against Jesus, all the proof they wanted to conclude Jesus was not from God regardless of His teaching and the many miracles He performed.

Jesus’ Response – Matthew 9:14-15; Mark 2:17; Luke 5:31-32

When Jesus heard about what the scribes and Pharisees were saying, He then went out and talked with them directly.

All three-gospel account record nearly the same thing, but Matthew 9:12 & 13 gives a fuller account of Jesus’ response. 

“But when He heard this, He said, ‘It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means, ‘I desire compassion, and not sacrifice,’ for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’”

Jesus makes three arguments against their premise that He should not associate with sinners and in favor of His ministry of forgiveness and reconciliation as demonstrated by His willingness to associate with sinners.

Argument from Medicine:

The first argument is based in the realities of medicine.

It is a very simple and logical argument.

“Healthy people do not need a physician.”

“It is the sick that need to see the doctor.”

This same principle applies to the spiritual world as it does for the physical one.

Those who are spiritually healthy do not need a spiritual physician, only those who are spiritually sick.

A doctor is expected to go out to those who are sick.

What sort of doctor would spend all of his time with healthy people and would refuse to associate with those that were sick?

The implied rebuke was blunt and crystal clear.

The Pharisees claimed to be those closest to God, but they avoided sinners instead of helping them.

The scribes and Pharisees were quick to diagnose the disease of sin in others, but they offered no cure, no comfort, and no compassion.

All they did was “stand on their marble pedestals” and pronounce “judgment.”

One other point should also be made here.

People who are sick but refuse to acknowledge it do not go to doctors.

I am sure all of us know people like that.

It is obvious to everyone else that there is a problem, but they say it is nothing,

they’re okay, they will be fine, and they do not go to the doctor even though it is plain to everyone else they need a doctor.

Only people who recognize that they are sick go to the doctor.

The Pharisees were spiritually sick as they could be because their hearts were twisted by self-righteousness yet saw themselves in perfect spiritual health.

For that reason, they just refused to seek the spiritual physician and instead criticized Him.

The publicans and sinners knew they were sick.

They desperately wanted a spiritual physician.

Argument from Scripture:

Jesus’ second argument is from Scripture.

He quotes from Hosea 6:6, “I desire compassion, and not sacrifice.” 

This was a very stinging rebuke to them for several reasons.

First,

Jesus preceded the Scriptural quote with the phrase, “go and learn,” 

which was the phrase used by the Rabbis to rebuke those who did not know something they should have already known.

It was a stinging rebuke against their supposed superior knowledge.

Second,

the scripture quote itself was directly against their thinking and actions.

They were more concerned with carrying out every minute regulation they had set up in their vain attempt to be righteous than in carrying out what the Mosaic Law actually said.

They missed the whole message of God’s patience, mercy, and forgiveness running throughout the Hebrew Scriptures.

Third, the fact the quote was from Hosea made the point even more forceful because the story of Hosea’s continuing love and forgiveness to his wife Gomer,

though she was unfaithful in the extreme, was God’s living illustration of His love and forgiveness to Israel, though they had been unfaithful in the extreme.

The story was a picture of God’s desire for compassion and mercy rather than sacrifice.

Without the heart, all the rituals, ceremonies, and sacrifices of the Pharisees were unacceptable to God.

Without mercy, they were shown to be more ungodly than the sinners who made no pretense of godliness.

Argument from Purpose:

The third argument was based on the very purpose for which Jesus came which was to save His people from their sins (Matthew. 1:21).

Jesus says here, “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” 

This is a common theme throughout Jesus’ teaching and actions toward people.

He is compassionate and forgiving as He was to the paralytic man.

There are only two groups for whom Jesus had harsh words and actions.

The first are the moneychangers and marketers who had made the temple a place for thieves.

The second are the self-righteous religious leaders who claimed to know and show the way to God but were instead leading people to hell.

To sinners, you never find this harshness.

Instead, there is compassion and mercy. Jesus healed their diseases and cast out their demons.

He wept over Jerusalem’s hardness of heart.

His consistent call was like He gave to the woman caught in adultery, 

“Where are your accusers? Neither do I accuse you. Go and sin no more.” 

He never excused sin

but was always extending grace to the sinner who admitted his condition.

Conclusions

Jesus did not come to call the righteous.

If a person could have been truly righteous, there would be no need for Him to call them.

If such a person existed, there would be nothing to forgive, and they would qualify for heaven on their own merits.

Jesus’ call to repent and be forgiven goes out to the self-righteous, but such people would not heed it because they see no need for it.

Jesus came to call sinners to Himself. It is the poor in spirit that enter the kingdom of God. Repentant sinners receive mercy, grace, and salvation.

Unrepentant sinners and the self-righteous remain condemned in their sins.

What a wonderful truth this is to me because it means that Jesus’ came to call me, the Chief of ALL Sinners unto Himself.

And if you will admit your own sinfulness,

it means He came to call every single “Chief of ALL Sinners” unto Himself too.

In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,

Let us Pray,

We thank you, O God, that you have given us an enduring hope—one which cannot disappoint us or mislead us.  We thank you, that through our faith in you and in your Son Jesus Christ, you enter into every believing heart and make new lives that have been torn asunder by the darkness of this world…

Lord, hear our prayer…..

We pray today O God that those believers who are asleep may awake and know that salvation is nearer now than when they first believed.  Help them, and us, to lay aside the works of darkness and to put on the armour of light that you bestow upon those who actively seek you day by day.  Grant that their faith and ours may be fully alive….  

Lord, hear our prayer…..

We ask today, O God, for those who have lost hope and for those who have never had it.  Grant to us, to those we lift before you in our hearts a new and abiding vision of what have you have done, and what you are doing, and what you will do, to save and redeem your people and indeed the creation itself.  Grant, O God, that all might see and believe and discover their purpose and the purpose of all that is and all that is yet to be….

Lord, hear our prayer….

We ask all this of you, O God, knowing that you are our hope and our salvation, a very present help in times of trouble, and the One whose purpose is to grant and new and abundant life to us and our world.  Praise be to your name.  Amen.

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Why Should I Walk with God and with His Blessings? Deuteronomy 5:32-33.

“Cause and effect” are a relationship between events or things, where one is the result of the other or others. This is a combination of an action and a reaction.

Something happens (a cause) that leads to an effect. 

For Example ……

Cause: As we were waiting for a bus, we received 7 inches of rain in 4 hours. 

Effect: My Umbrella did not keep me dry. The roadways were flooded.

Cause: I flipped the light switch. 

Effect: The light came on and I saw the mess I made last night all over again.

Cause: The boss was busy. 

Effect: Their secretary rolled their eyes skyward, took a telephone message.

THE REALITIES OF CAUSE AND EFFECT

From the time you are a child until you die, you understand cause and effect.

“Cause” is the action that produces a result or consequence.

And “effect” is the product, result, or consequence of that action.

As a baby you learn that if you cry, mom or dad will change you, feed you, or hold you. 

As you grow into a toddler you learn that if you drop something from your highchair, somebody will pick it up.

As a kid working your way through school, you learn that if you study hard, you will earn good grades and increase the likelihood you will receive scholarships.

As a college student you learn that if you study hard, you increase the likelihood of receiving great grades and Latin Honors and the likelihood of that great job.

As a young adult you learn that hard work pays great dividends and increases the likelihood you will gain an excellent reputation and promotions on the job.

As an adult, you also learn that if you are not a particularly hard worker and are making excuses, chronically late to work, you get into trouble and lose your job.

Proverbs 24:30-34 The Message

One day I walked by the field of an old lazybones,
    and then passed the vineyard of a slob;
They were overgrown with weeds,
    thick with thistles, all the fences broken down.
I took a long look and pondered what I saw;
    the fields preached me a sermon and I listened:
“A nap here, a nap there, a day off here, a day off there,
    sit back, take it easy—do you know what comes next?
Just this: You can look forward to a dirt-poor life,
    with poverty as your permanent houseguest!”

This thought comes to King Solomon after he considers the fields of a lazy man:

The field is overgrown and in general disrepair.

He sees the danger in staying in bed too long, although most of us might enjoy more of this practice. Poverty and lack attack if this behavior is not conquered.

There is always a cause and effect.

This same principal is found in the kingdom of Heaven:

The Cause: God loves you with an everlasting love. God gave His Son as a sacrifice so that you could be reconciled to Him. Love has victory over death.

The Effect: You experience the love of our Father, which fulfills you in a way that nothing else can. You share in His victory over death. You desire to share God’s love with others, so they, too, will experience His 100% love for them.

There can be no effect without a cause. God’s love for you should always be the cause for your walking with, for Him. If it’s not, then your work will be in vain.

Without faith in God, it is impossible to please God.

Without hope in God, it is impossible to please God.

Without love for God, it is impossible to please God.

Without faith, hope and love in and for God, it is impossible to walk with Him.

Walking with God does not lead to God’s favor, but God’s favor leads to walking in favor with God. If I walk with the world, can I genuinely say I walk with God?

Deuteronomy 5:32-33Amplified Bible

32 Therefore you shall pay attention and be careful to do just as the Lord your God has commanded you; you shall not turn aside to the right or to the left [deviating from My commandments]. 33 You shall walk [that is, live each and every day] in all the ways which the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long in the land which you will possess.

Deuteronomy 5:32-33 The Message

32-33 So be very careful to act exactly as God commands you. Don’t veer off to the right or the left. Walk straight down the road God commands so that you’ll have a good life and live a long time in the land that you’re about to possess.

The Word of God for the Children of God. Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia! Amen.

After Moses instructed God’s people in the Ten Commandments, he added the Cause: they must walk “obediently in God’s way.” Then added the Effect, he said, God would bless them richly and make them prosper in the promised land.

To interpret this promise wisely, we need to know that prosperity in the Bible has more to do with spiritual blessings than material or physical things.

All over the world there are people who interpret God’s blessing mainly as a promise to make them healthy and wealthy and wise. But that is a mistake.

While some people do experience blessings of “never having spent a day in the hospital” or “never worrying about how to pay the bills.”

There are also those who have experienced the blessing of “having spent time in an ICU Bed, an Oncology ward or other long term care facility, their health in a critical state of flux: of life versus death.” Likewise, there are those who have experienced day to day struggles with how to pay the bills and feed their kids.

Trying to survive on our own strength and our own wit and wisdom is costly.

Frankly, genuinely walking with God can be even more significantly costly.

So many have lost their jobs and their health and their marriages. Have found themselves struggling through circumstances in life for which only the biblical Patriarch Job could Identify with, give the best counsel for surviving day to day.

Yet, amazingly, these same Christians will declare that in the midst of deep sacrifice they were blessed. Even Job declared his blessings. (Job 1:20-22)

When we walk with God, we live in community with our Lord. We feel God’s delight in all things good, and we sense his pain in the face of sin and evil. Such a close walk with God is itself a blessing. The joys and peace that flows from our relationship with God far outweigh the cost of being a follower of Jesus Christ.

Living our lives with God in it, makes things easier and gives us hope.

We may not be the most cognizant.

We may take God for granted, not realize it, not consider it for one moment, not pray over it, but walking with God is so much better than walking without him.

and here is why.

1. Walking With God Makes Things Possible

The Lord never said that our lives here on earth would be easy.

We are all absolutely going to go through hard times, and we are absolutely going to have our struggles. But our time here on earth will be worth it.

We are here to spread the Truth of God’s Gospel, the Truth of God’s love and light to others and spread the absolute greatest news ever that he is our Savior.

When we walk with God, it may not make things any easier, but it certainly and surely makes them infinitely more possible.

Walking with him gives us blessed assurance of his presence and power in our lives. Our God is powerful! With him all things are possible. We can endure trials and heartache. Because of Christ’s resurrection power in us, we can overcome.

“I will also walk among you and be your God, and you shall be my people” – Leviticus 26:12

2. He Is Our Comfort

The Lord is always walking beside you.

The Lord is always walking beside me.

He is going through every situation with you.

He is going through every situation with me.

He loves and cares for you and will always stand by your side.

He loves and cares for me and will always stand by myside.

Walking with Him will give you and me the absolute comfort of knowing that He is always there for you and me. He is always with you and me when we need someone to lean on and a shoulder to cry on; He is always there with open arms.

“Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” – Psalm 23: 4

3. He Will Help You

No matter what you and I are going through, God will help you and God will help me. We can always cry out to him for help. When we are frustrated and angry, cry out to him. When we are upset, feel like we cannot go on any longer, cry out to him. He will always be there to pick us up and move us ever forward.

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” – Hebrews 4:15-16

4. Walking Without Him Is an Unnecessary Struggle

When we are not walking with God, we are going to struggle even more because we are completely on our own. We feel we have no other choice but to just figure things out for ourselves, we are the only ones with all the right questions, all the correct, viable answers, and it will be much more difficult than it should be.

God is the only genuine light illuminating our path.

He will show us the way, but without him, we have to find our way through the darkness. Why do we permit the struggle, when we can have God to guide us?

“When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” – John 8:12

Hebrews 11:1-6Amplified Bible

The Triumphs of Faith

11 Now faith is the assurance (title deed, confirmation) of things hoped for (divinely guaranteed), and the evidence of things not seen [the conviction of their reality—faith comprehends as fact what cannot be experienced by the physical senses]. 2 For by this [kind of] faith the [a]men of old gained [divine] approval.

3 By faith [that is, with an inherent trust and enduring confidence in the power, wisdom and goodness of God] we understand that the worlds (universe, ages) were framed and created [formed, put in order, and equipped for their intended purpose] by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. 4 By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which it was testified of him that he was righteous (upright, in right standing with God), and God testified by accepting his gifts. And though he died, yet through [this act of] faith he still speaks. 5 By faith [that pleased God] Enoch was caught up and taken to heaven so that he would not have a glimpse of death; and he was not found because God had taken him; for even before he was taken [to heaven], he received the testimony [still on record] that he had walked with God and pleased Him. 6 But without faith it is impossible to [walk with God and] please Him, for whoever comes [near] to God must [necessarily] believe that God exists and that He rewards those who [earnestly and diligently] seek.

We know very little about Enoch.

His father was Jared, and his son was Methuselah, who lived longer than anyone else.

The most surprising thing about Enoch is that he did not die.

“By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: ‘He could not be found, because God had taken him away.’ For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God.”

Enoch was one of two people in the Bible who never experienced death.

The other was Elijah. (See 2 Kings 2:1-14.)

Enoch’s walk with God made him stand out from the crowd.

Only a few generations later, God would send a flood to wipe away a humanity that no longer understood what it meant to live close with God.

Only Enoch’s great-grandson Noah and his family would be spared so that human beings could make a new beginning.

God’s special gift to Enoch reminds us walking with God is the way to true life.

Of course, unless the Lord returns in our lifetime, we will all face death.

But Jesus, who identifies himself as the way to God (John 14:6), also said,

“I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die” (John 11:25).

Then Jesus turns that belief around and against us – “Do we Believe this?”

With Faith pleasing to God ….

With Hope pleasing to God ….

With Love pleasing to God ….

Do we believe the cause: walking with God in faith has this effect: puts us on a level road that moves us forward and takes us beyond death to life eternal?

In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,

Let us Pray,

God, my Guide and my Guardian,

Take me to task today,

Search me, and know me …..

Hold me accountable to thy Gospel Truth,

I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee,
Exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O Glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
Let it be ratified in heaven. Amen

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Imitating Jesus. Modeling Jesus. Learning to See Our Neighbors and Ourselves (Part 2). Ephesians 5:1-2

The Apostle Paul calls his fellow Christians to imitate God in order to live up to the reputation of God’s family.

He challenges generations of believers: “walk in the way of love,” as Christ did.

This is about our loving the way Jesus loved.

This is about our modeling love the way Jesus modeled love.

And Jesus always acted in line with the Father’s will.

The love of Jesus embraced outcasts, pardoned sinners, healed the hopeless, challenged the complacent, and willingly sacrificed everything so that we sinners could be reconciled with God.

Modeling Sacrificial love is our most visible and defining family trait.

The only reason we are in the family of God in the first place is because of God’s extravagant love.

As Paul calls us to imitate God’s love, he reminds us that we are defined by it—we are “dearly loved children.”

Our own love emerges from the depths of that eternal love.

Our love is an overflow of the love God has personally shown to each of us. Love is the DNA test that determines paternity with our Father God (1 John 4:7-8).

God loves you because you are his child, you are his child because he loves you.

Children of God are called: “be caught up into the infinite circle of God’s love.”

We are most like our Father in Heaven, most godly, when we allow that love to flow into us from above and flow like a river from us into the lives of others.

Ephesians 5:1-2 The Message

Wake Up from Your Sleep

5 1-2 Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.

The Word of God for the Children of God. Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia! Amen.

Theologian Brennan Manning spoke a challenging truth, when he wrote,

“How I treat a brother or sister from day to day, how I react to the sin-scarred wino on the street, how I respond to interruptions from people I dislike, how I deal with normal people in their normal confusion on a normal day may be a better indication of my reverence for life than the antiabortion sticker on the bumper of my car.”

Treating our neighbors and ourselves as eminently valuable is not easy.

And this leads us to the next thing we learn from Jesus ….

How could Jesus communicate the reality of what he saw?

Well… I think Jesus also teaches us to…

3. Ho to exercise the power of initiating.

Referring back to the Narrative Luke 19:1-10,

Jesus does not sit back to see if Zacchaeus will come out and express his hope.

He is high up in a Sycamore tree…. It’s sort of obvious that he is only hoping to “see” Jesus from an “untouchable” distance. So, Jesus takes the initiative.

Jesus calls out to Zacchaeus. (Luke 19:5 Amplified)

5 When Jesus reached the place, He looked up and said to him, “Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.”

Can you sense how significant that is? So many people can seek attention by becoming shy or fearful or by becoming dramatic and demanding …. but our demanding attention is entirely different than simply being given attention.

There is nothing more powerful than our initiative

…because it expresses what is really within us

…not merely responding to what we HAVE to respond to

…but what we WANT to respond to.

Love never just does what is required.

Love doesn’t just see people as an obligation

Love does not just see people … as a duty to fulfill when it is “required.”

Love initiatives: (1 Corinthians 13:4-8 Amplified)

4 Love endures with patience and serenity, love is kind and thoughtful, and is not jealous or envious; love does not brag and is not proud or arrogant. 5 It is not rude; it is not self-seeking; it is not provoked [nor overly sensitive and easily angered]; it does not take into account a wrong endured. 6 It does not rejoice at injustice but rejoices with the truth [when right and truth prevail]. 7 Love bears all things [regardless of what comes], believes all things [looking for the best in each one], hopes all things [remaining steadfast during difficult times], endures all things [without weakening]. 8 Love never fails [it never fades nor ends].

Our initiative speaks…… Are we risking it all trying to climb the Sycamore Tree?

Jesus makes a significant point of this when there is conflict in a relationship.

We won’t venture outside of our “comfort zones” into all that he teaches…

but the one striking element is that when… either … we should decide to stay on the ground, battle the crowds or should go… immediately, directly, to the tree.

And while we are deciding on whether we will “climb the Sycamore Tree” or if we will do what is always customary, stay on the ground battling the crowds,

If Christ is on our minds, if we reflect on our own…we realize he is teaching us how we treat another amidst life’s conflict… reflects how we will honor them… whether we can be trusted to care for their good and not just our protection.

It communicates whether they really matter to us.

The key word is “go” … we are to go pursue setting things right.

Do we realize we have the power of initiative with some people who are afraid?

And finally…we see from Jesus… the power to…

4. Embody the reality of grace with our presence.

If we step back and look at this scene… it was loaded for Zacchaeus.

The scene was full of hatred…. animosity … and judgment…

and Jesus took the initiative and stepped decisively, directly, into that space.

Imagine the awesome significance of Jesus looking beyond the crowds and calling out Zacchaeus…. then announcing he would be coming over for lunch.

Imagine what it communicated to everybody.

In essence… Jesus took the initiative, stepped into the line of fire… directly into harm’s way, he brought the power of his presence into the space of judgment.

And isn’t this the example Jesus was setting for us by doing it so frequently?

He was accused of being a friend of sinners…. because he didn’t join in practice and purpose of one group riling itself up, condemning, canceling one another.

It was the space he was unhesitatingly chose to be seen by everyone standing in.

When a woman was brought before him who had been caught in adultery.

When those who were disabled or diseased were shinned… or children told to be quiet… or a Samaritan woman deemed ethnically unclean.

It could lead some to think Jesus was either ignoring their sin… or ignorant of it.

The presence of Jesus was never one of ignorance…but of divine insight… he didn’t see less… he intentionally, innately saw more of our neighbors than us.

He didn’t worry about condoning their behavior…because he wasn’t.

Never with the slightest compromise of his own righteousness

In fact, what spoke volumes was he never saw these moments as a podium to speak about tax collecting… prostitution… or politics or government because the point was not that he didn’t see the outworking of sin…but that he saw more than the working of sin – but saw sinners for whom salvation was good news.

Some may recall that when he spoke to the Samaritan woman who had come out in the middle of the day to get water at the nearby well…

She said… “how is it that you a Jew speak to me a Samaritan… and a woman?”

She’s saying, “Don’t you see me like everyone else?”

She is saying, “Aren’t you as biased and prejudiced as everyone else?”

She is saying, “Are you here to try and cancel my life like everyone else is?”

Are you just that blind and ignorant …unaware of who I am, what I have done?

Jesus would answer that by asking her to go get her husband. And that opened up her heart to know he saw so much more… yet he did not simply reject her.

It was always clear if one looked… that Jesus was not PARTICIPATING in the behaviors of others…nor was he giving PERMISSION or CREDENCE to the behaviors of others…. He was simply being among, present, with such people.

What we can learn from Jesus …

is that our willingness to move away from what is “customary prejudices and biases” is simply to be among and present with those who presume judgment… can speak of our “above and beyond” efforts of imitating Jesus seeing “more.”

Jesus always risked his own reputation. In a world in which people rarely defy the obvious power of social reputation… Jesus showed the power to be trusted to truly, selflessly, serve the interest of others more than his own social interests.

If we want to love God, our neighbors and ourselves like Jesus… we will have to mature in being trustworthy… of being those who won’t just serve our social status… who will come be with someone who our friends may look down upon.

Are we or are we not someone who someone else can share their fears and failures with…and know that we won’t use it to serve our own personal gain?

This is essential to becoming safe people.

So, we would do well and better to imitate and model Jesus: embrace the Love of the Father and power of our presence. We may need to enter the space of grace.

Luke 19:1-10Amplified Bible

Zaccheus Converted

19 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 And there was a man called Zaccheus; he was a chief tax collector [a superintendent to whom others reported], and he was rich. 3 Zaccheus was trying to see who Jesus was, but he could not see [a]because of the crowd, for he was short in stature. 4 So he ran on ahead [of the crowd] and climbed up in a sycamore tree in order to see Him, for He was about to pass through that way. 5 When Jesus reached the place, He looked up and said to him, “Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” 6 So Zaccheus hurried and came down and welcomed Jesus with joy. 7 When the people saw it, they all began muttering [in discontent], “He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a [notorious] sinner.” 8 Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, “See, Lord, I am [now] giving half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone out of anything, I will give back four times as much.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this household, because he, too, is a [[b]spiritual] son of Abraham; 10 for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

That day… so many people could not fully see all that was going on around them. When someone (Jesus) saw more… someone came down from a tree….

I believe that each of us have a desire to help people both climb up to see Jesus, come down from hiding in the trees… where they hope nobody will see them.

The visual exchange between Zacchaeus and Jesus is unique in some respects…

People aren’t looking at us as the Messiah… if they did, they may not be so quick to look for us or to receive us… or to change with us…. but it DOES capture what our world needs. It captures how we can climb, mature grow in loving like Jesus.

It speaks to how we receive God.

It speaks to how we receive our neighbors.

It speaks to how we receive ourselves.

It speaks to how we experience God’s love through resurrected Jesus Christ.

It speaks to how we experience the love of God and model it for our neighbors.

It speaks to how I experience the Love of God and become inspired to share it.

it speaks to how others approach God,

It speaks to how willing our neighbors are to approach God and approach us.

It speaks to how our neighbors are to approach the Christ in us

It speaks to how willing our neighbors are to experience the Christ in us.

It speaks to how approachable we are… how safe we are.

It speaks to how approachable God is.

It speaks to how approachable Jesus is.

It speaks to exactly how worthy Jesus is to be the model of our maturing lives.

Ephesians 5:1-2Amplified Bible

Be Imitators of God

5 Therefore become imitators of God [copy Him and follow His example], as well-beloved children [imitate their father]; 2 and walk continually in love [that is, value one another—practice empathy and compassion, unselfishly seeking the best for others], just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and sacrifice to God [slain for you, so that it became] a sweet fragrance.

Christ as Our Only Example …

When we read a passage like the one in our Scripture for today, we recognize that God is totally different from us.

Christian teachers sometimes talk of God as being “wholly other.” That teaching reflects the words of God himself through Isaiah the prophet:

“To whom will you compare me?

Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One…

“I am the LORD,

and there is no other.” (Isaiah 40:25; 45:18)

Although the Spirit works in us to make us more like Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18), believers do not become divine. We cannot become God, but in God’s strength alone we can become godly. Sadly, in this life we still remain sinful, but through God’s charity, forgiveness and redemption we are reconciled to our Maker.

Except for the example of Jesus, who is divine as well as human, there is no human achievement that provides an adequate example for us.

So, we must rely on what God himself has done in Christ by his Spirit.

He showed us what love is.

God the Father has provided for our salvation, and Jesus, the Son of God, has given himself as the penultimate sacrifice in our place to be our Savior.

The Holy Spirit helps us to receive and live out that love.

So, all three persons of the Trinity work together for our salvation, for our good.

I imagine that there is someone in each of our lives…. who we can help climb up and come down from a tree… out of the place of not feeling safe in how we live.

Is there someone in your life that may need to know that you see more than others see….

More than they can, see?

Are there people in your life that need to experience that you are safe?

And how about ourselves?

Do we know that we can both climb up, come down from the Sycamore Tree?

In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,

I want to offer all of us a short prayer that has been serving me to take hold and stay ahold of life in God.

God, I see the Sycamore Tree Zacchaeus Climbed.

What should I do now? Climb into its heights or chop it down for my firewood?

If I choose to Climb, … what then?

Do I hide in it, remain anonymous or make myself known to Jesus from it?

I know Jesus is coming down the road …

I see the dust rising up from where he is approaching the crowds and me.

Do I fight against the crowds to see him, to touch the fringes of his garment?

I see the Sycamore Tree again ….

I see its branches inviting me to come forward ….

Do I stay on the ground or do I risk everything to climb into its heights?

God, I belong to you.

May your will become my will.

May your love become my love.

May your neighbor become my neighbor.

Today, may I be a better imitator and model of the life your Son has given to me.

Lord, grant us the love to serve others with such selfless devotion that our kindness will help transform their lives and draw them to Jesus, the source of all love. In his name we pray. Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.

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Selflessly Modeling Jesus’ Example: Learning how to see others, up to and including, Ourselves! Ephesians 5:1-2

I begin today’s devotional by asking each of us to reflect for a moment.

Are you a safe person?

I don’t mean are you likely to become violent… I mean… do you believe you are safe for other people to approach….and relate to? Do you relate to other people as a potential threat you need to defend against…. or as God’s gift to be opened?

What kind of space do you create for others?

Our Christian focus is on “being like Jesus,” on “imitating Jesus,” building better relationships… so this may be one of those most important questions.

This devotional is about building better relationships in every point of relating.

We are engaging the qualities that can help us develop better relationships with those “neighbors” we are just beginning to engage…as well as building better relationships with the family and friends who we have known for many years.

No matter what the state of our relational life is… we can all move further from self-isolation to His intimacy. We can all develop more meaningful connection.

It is incredibly, almost embarrassingly easy to say but it’s not ever so easy to do.

I hear the prophetic words of Isaiah’s Commission ringing through my soul.

Isaiah 6:8-10 Amplified.

Isaiah’s Commission

8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!” 9 And He said, “Go, and tell this people:

‘Keep on listening, but do not understand;
Keep on looking, but do not comprehend.’
10 
“Make the heart of this people insensitive,
Their ears dull,
And their eyes dim,
Otherwise, they might see with their eyes,
Hear with their ears,
Understand with their hearts,
And return and be healed.”

We do not love ourselves as naturally as we would all profess, we do

We don’t love our neighbors as naturally as we would all profess, we do

We do not love God as naturally as we would all like to profess, we do.

We do not imitate or model our Savior Jesus Christ as we all profess, we do.

So, now we are looking at the one who embodied the very nature of God…that is Christ Jesus, our Savior…and how he loved in this world…how the love of God was reflected within the patterns of his life…which we can embrace as our own.

Ephesians 5:1-2 Amplified Bible

Be Imitators of God

5 Therefore become imitators of God [copy Him and follow His example], as well-beloved children [imitate their father]; 2 and walk continually in love [that is, value one another—practice empathy and compassion, unselfishly seeking the best for others], just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and sacrifice to God [slain for you, so that it became] a sweet fragrance.

Ephesians 5:1-2The Message

Wake Up from Your Sleep

5 1-2 Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.

The Word of God for the Children of God. Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia! Amen.

Watch what God does, and then you do it …… like children who learn proper behavior from their parents.

Observe how Christ loved us. … then model Love like that. (1 John 4:7-12)

And today… the pattern we are about to be engaging is how to see others up to and including ourselves. Learning to see others EXACTLY as Jesus saw them.

Because (shamefully?) the way we see people determines how we treat people.

Most of us may fall into a dangerous snare: presume that we see people with respect and treat them well…like Christ treated us but what about if they aren’t being kind to us? What if they are being just plain annoying… or offensive?

Or, what if I am the one who is being just plain annoying?

Or, what if I am the one who is consciously or unconsciously giving offense?

Or worse… if I don’t see what they can do or me…maybe I don’t see them at all.

So how does God see people?

What did Jesus see?

As the Biblical account of Matthew describes…

Matthew 9:36? When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

Matthew is telling us how Jesus saw the crowds.

How Jesus observed his neighbors – The crowds.

Not the select. Not the special. But the crowds which represent the common nature of people like you and I…and everyone else in this world.

We can assume such lives included the same annoying offensive attitudes and behaviors that are, even in our days and seasons, common among human life.

There is no sense that they held much that Jesus could get from them… as he seemed to have already understood how the hearts of humanity would turn on him when any sense of transactional desires for power were deemed done with.

He sees these common lives with compassion.

Compassion is not simply having pity for someone at a distance.

It’s a word that speaks of actual connection. The word used here… translated as compassion… speaks of exactly how another life is allowed to be taken in… and to affect us deep inside our hearts. It’s about bringing them in toward yourself.

It’s helpful to understand that it is not simply the opposite of seeing someone critically. It is not a matter of being blind to the problems in another person.

Seeing with compassion is about seeing more that simply seeing with critical eyes and souls. Seeing critically and seeing compassionately are not simply opposites but rather a matter of one being more fundamental than the other.

A parent may be deeply critical of their child’s behavior…but they are more defined as a parent than a judge… more given to restore than to condemn.

And this is what we see in Jesus.

Jesus said…

“I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world.” – John 12:47

Jesus doesn’t summarily dismiss the behavior of others… but he sees more than simply our behavior. He saw they were lost… they had wandered …gone astray… like sheep without a shepherd… leaving themselves harassed and helpless.

He didn’t come to simply pronounce the judgment we face…but to provide the grace, charity, forgiveness, to come home…. and be who they were meant to be.

We have a great example of how Jesus saw someone…and related differently… which we can read an account of in the Gospel narrative of Luke… 19:1-10 Msg.

Zacchaeus

19 1-4 Then Jesus entered and walked through Jericho. There was a man there, his name Zacchaeus, the head tax man and quite rich. He wanted desperately to see Jesus, but the crowd was in his way—he was a short man and couldn’t see over the crowd. So, he ran on ahead and climbed up in a sycamore tree so he could see Jesus when he came by.

5-7 When Jesus got to the tree, he looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, hurry down. Today is my day to be a guest in your home.” Zacchaeus scrambled out of the tree, hardly believing his good luck, delighted to take Jesus home with him. Everyone who saw the incident was indignant and grumped, “What business does he have getting cozy with this crook?”

8 Zacchaeus just stood there, a little stunned. He stammered apologetically, “Master, I give away half my income to the poor—and if I’m caught cheating, I pay four times the damages.”

9-10 Jesus said, “Today is salvation day in this home! Here he is Zacchaeus, son of Abraham! For the Son of Man came to find and restore the lost.”

This encounter has long been a joy for me to imagine….and it captures how Jesus loved people in an “in your face” provocative and powerful way.

Jesus is once again nearing a city.

It’s the city of Jericho… which was no small town.

It was a town with plenty of merchant activity…and a choice spot for tax collectors.

Rome knew the best way to collect taxes was to employ some local Jews to do the work… which meant finding someone, or several someone’s willing to turn their hearts, souls and their backs on their own people and serve the oppressor.

And even worse…such tax collectors were known to use the opportunity to demand even more than Rome required…and to take for themselves…which made then hated by both their fellow Jews…and the Romans.

You can imagine the depth of hate the people felt towards one of their own both betraying his own people in service to the oppressor…and likewise, audaciously, cheating his own people out of sheer unadulterated greed.

A tax collector was the very definition of a moral outcast… the lost cause.

In fact, Jews of this time often use the phrase sinners and tax collectors… suggesting that the hated tax collectors were seen as a class of their own.

Jesus sees him… calls to him… invites himself over… and it becomes a complete reset for Zacchaeus.

In the end… a man came down from the tree in which he was hiding in shame.

How can we learn to “see’ people like Jesus?

How can we learn to “see’ people like Jesus… with compassion?

…. that allows us to model Jesus’ example and be “safe” and approachable?

The first thing we can learn from Jesus …is to….

1. Slow down… and maintain a margin for grace.

There’s a lot of people in this scene… and Jesus is just reaching his destination… so we can imagine for ourselves observing a biblical scene in which it’s time to first prioritize getting through the crowds and get a meal and some rest.

It’s the type of moment we only just want to get to what we immediately need.

But Jesus lived in what some call the pace of grace.

He never moved faster than the speed of love… and love requires slowing down.

We see how Jesus slowed down.

How slow?

Long enough to really see people.

How many of us know all too well that our professed busyness competes with how well we stop and care for others. We need to maintain a margin for grace.

As Carey Nieuwhof recently expressed, 

“You are …the most kind when you have the most margin.”

Many of us have probably felt the challenge of being so rushed we are not really present amidst various exchanges we may go through.

We have a sense of the challenge to maintain a margin for grace.

Despite those pushing him through, Jesus was able to stop and look up …and see him…and though on his way… he used the rhythm of a meal… a break for lunch.

Amidst sharing such a meal with “Zacchaeus”… there is the ability to listen to your heart and soul…not just your head. The Holy Spirit is able to help us see.

Our head might raise walls of busyness and fear and judgment…but if we slow down… the Holy Spirit will intercede and allow compassion…. space for another.

What we first see… is the outward… and we make a thousand calculations to help manage life … it’s easier for our minds to simply create categories …… and then associate them unconsciously… with clothing… context… behavior… social status… moral nature…all in about a grand total of less than one second.

That is what labels serve… like “tax collector.”

Everyone knew how to see a tax collector.

And the shameful truth is that most of us have similar ways of seeing those who we “categorize” as homeless…old… young…healthy or disabled or handicapped.

If we hope to connect with our neighbors as Jesus connected with his neighbors … then it means we will have to 1000% slow down to actually see the individual.

Jesus didn’t lose sense about his destination… but he also didn’t stop seeing people through the eyes of God alone, as being His children, along the way.

Slowing down to become available… means becoming both physically and emotionally available.

We all know that it’s possible to be physically and spiritually close to, with, someone and yet not really giving much thought to paying attention to them.

Try to talk to someone who’s engaged with their smartphone or TV… you really don’t have their full attention.

How did Jesus know Zacchaeus’ name anyway? We can only imagine.

But at the center… a man is seen.

But at the center … a Child of God is seen!

We live amidst how many 100’s of millions of people… of our neighbors, and there are so many millions more who will just wish someone could see them.

And I would venture to say

… there is a part of every one of us…that may not feel seen.

Here’s a question that can be hard for us to ask of ourselves … but so healthy.

Would the people who know you best say you’re largely available or distracted?

See others beneath the outward behavior… to the soul that bears God’s image.

Without anything else within our sights…we (shamefully?) tend to see people’s outward appearance and behavior…in relationship to how that does or doesn’t serve our own shamefully, embarrassingly fragile, sense of our self-esteem.

How easily we tend to see people outwardly.

We can tend to see people as merely annoying …as those with needs which should be avoided.

We tend to see people as potential sources of “micro-aggression” “triggering.”

We tend to see people as an “offensive” threat to our own fragile sense of value.

We can tend to see people as reflecting some radical element which we can rush in headlong and headstrong to judge … as a means to feel a sense of superiority.

Fortunately for us, our Living Savior Jesus saw infinitely more than “just a tax collector.” He saw through the eyes of His Father, a sheep without a shepherd.

He did not go to the home of a tax collector…. he was not just relating to a tax collector…but to one who was created by God, to be and live as a God’s child.

This is where Jesus confronts our religious nature.

By that I mean our (shamefully?) human ways of trying to be “religious.”

“Religion” sees people as the enemy…and rushes to condemn them as sinners. Jesus sees sin as the enemy…and wants to reclaim all God’s Children by grace.

How easily Jesus could have joined the common way of seeing Zacchaeus… as a betrayer… a traitor… labels that speak of what he does… as if it is who he is.

But Jesus intentionally looked and saw beneath the behavior that had come to define people’s lives…he saw then with great compassion and understanding.

What great compassion and even greater understanding? He never excused what they did by speaking of them as simply victims of someone’s else will…but he also understood they had given themselves to a system of destruction…and that they could choose to turn back…and through him… be reclaimed, restored.

That is what Zacchaeus appears to have found in Jesus.

Jesus saw what was beneath the grime of their sin and our own.

Jesus said … “Stop judging by mere appearances…” – John 7:21, 24

How can we learn to see people, like Jesus did, with only the grace of God… to see beyond and through what may elicit judgment… and develop compassion?

Many might presume that Jesus was failing the way of righteousness.

Many only chose to see that Zacchaeus was “only” a tax collector… living in a life of sin…and he needed to feel the shame of the community to help provide a clear message. In their minds, “What didn’t Jesus understand about that?”

As best as I can understand in this moment… Jesus wouldn’t have dismissed the obvious association of him being a sinner….and even of Zacchaeus being faced with the consequences of that decision …. but Jesus bore the power to see more.

Zacchaeus as “only just a sinner” was not his first nature… his original existence… not what he most fundamentally was created to be… nor what should be accepted as the most basic truth, fundamental claim over his life.

What Jesus saw were lives created to live in the love and will of the Father.

Psalm 139:13-16The Message

13-16 Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
    you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
    Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
    I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
    you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
    how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
    all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
    before I’d even lived one day.

Sin was no one’s original nature… it was by nature a sheep gone astray… and making the decision to repent was to turn around back to the arms of God.

Savior Jesus doesn’t see people simply as sinners in the sense that sin is simply a behavior… seeking behavior modification. Sin is about identity… about what we ourselves are choosing to self-identify with and then choose to react upon.

We can (shamefully) (embarrassingly) tend to simply judge people only as good or only as bad… then rush in, condemn them to a state of value or lack of value.

Compassion sees the tragedy of sheep that have gone stray… needing to be found and led back. Jesus didn’t focus on the symptoms but rather of the cure.

The Love and Charity and forgiveness of Jesus represents the Father’s love for each and every single one of His children that have not come home. (John 10:16)

God is set on reclaiming lives, not rushing in headlong and headstrong to, like man is shamefully, embarrassingly apt to do – to condemn them. (John 8:1-11)

What the crowds could not see…and Praise God, what Jesus did…is that God was not even close to finished with Zacchaeus. And He is not finished with any of us.

If we are to build better relationships…we need to learn to see people like God does…and to treat them with compassion. This means we need to see what lies beneath and beyond how we may appear…and sees the sacred value of every life.

PART 2 – TOMORROW ….

In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,

Let us Pray,

Father God, you created our life, you gave the sacrifice, Jesus set the example, and you’ve given me your Word to light my path. Help me to imitate you with everything I do. Help my heart to be as forgiving, my words to be as loving, and my thoughts to be just as pure. Go with me as I follow your commands with the faith of a child – Your child. In your Son’s name I pray, Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.

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