Before we get started, I want everyone to take a few minutes and meet someone new. Greet each other and tell them you are glad that they are here tonight. Make sure to ask people their names.
[Allow a few minutes for this. ]
Now, write down the name of everyone with whom you shook hands or patted on the shoulder. Just keep those lists. We’ll come back to them in a little while.
The way some Christians talk about sex, one wonders how Christians ever have children. Ever since Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter, the puritans of the New England colonies have been the public representatives of Christianity’s views on sex.
Let’s take a few minutes and write down some of the negative views on sex that Christians have held or taught. You guys holler them out, and I’ll write them down. [I’ll let them give as many as possible, and then I’ll add the rest from my list.]
Sex is a necessary evil.
Sex is dirty or bad.
Sex is only for procreation.
If a person gets pleasure out of sex, s/he is bad.
The “Virgin” Mary (supposedly never had sex even after Jesus was born because that would “defile” her).
Jesus was supposedly born by supernatural C-section, so that he would not have to pass through Mary’s sexual organs, and so that all the parts of virginity would still be in place for Mary.
God hates homosexuals.
We should be ashamed of our bodies and our sexuality.
The woman’s duty is to submit to her husband whenever he wants it.
No contraceptives; any “unnatural” birth control measures are wrong.
[Put a big red “X” over the board.] I am delighted to tell you that this is not the Christian perspective on sex. To understand the Christian perspective on sex, we need to understand what the ideal picture looks like.
First, we need to look at the very beginning when humans were first created. Genesis, the first book of the Bible, tells the story of creation. The passage I’m going to read is a collection of pieces of the Genesis 1 and 2 that are most relevant for our topic.
And the LORD God formed a man’s body from the dust of the ground and breathed into it the breath of life. And the man became a living person. … And the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a companion who will help him.” … So the LORD God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep. He took one of Adam’s ribs and closed up the place from which he had taken it. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib and brought her to Adam. “At last!” Adam exclaimed. “She is part of my own flesh and bone! She will be called ‘woman’ because she was taken out of a man.” This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one. Now although Adam and his wife were both naked, neither of them felt any shame (Gen. 2:7, 18, 21-25).
So God created people in his own image; God patterned them after himself; male and female he created them. God blessed them and told them, “Multiply and fill the earth…” Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was excellent in every way (Gen. 1:27-28a, 31).
We can gather several important conclusions from the story of our creation. First of all, God created us as sexual beings. (To which I say, “Thanks be to God.”) God created us as male and female, in his image. I guess there was just too much of God to represent his likeness in one homogeneous sex.
God made us. He shaped and designed our bodies. He designed our sexual organs to fit together perfectly. God was not surprised when the first humans had sex! He wasn’t like, “Oh my goodness, what will they think of next?” He intended it all along. They were both naked without shame. He told them to go forth and multiply, and he said that everything he had made was excellent in every way.
Second, we are more than sexual beings. (To which I say, “Thanks be to God.”) God created Adam before Eve. Adam was still a human being before Eve was made. He needed a helper, but he was a complete person. The essence of who he was did not change when Eve came along. That means that our identity, our worth, and our sense of meaning as people is not limited to our sexuality. We can be whole people whether or not we have a satisfying sex life.
Third, as Paula Reinhart put it, “God designed sex to be a powerful bonding force, one meant to help ‘glue’ a man and a woman together for a lifetime.”1 Through sex, two become one in a physical, emotional, and spiritual sense. “Casual sex can’t do that. … Imagine what it would be like to repeatedly tear off and reattach your arm. [Imagine the scarring.] … It is the same when you repeatedly tear off and reattach your various sexual partners.”2 God’s design is for us to be joined to one person for life.
This next passage I want us to look at is from the Song of Songs. This book is a collection of erotic love poems that are traditionally attributed to King Solomon. We have worked up a little video to present this Scripture in a more contemporary way. All of the letters that he reads are paraphrases of Scripture. Let’s watch. [Play clip: “Solomon – The Ultimate Lady’s Man”]
One time when I was at a junior high camp, our counselor, a man in his sixties, asked if anyone wanted to read a passage of the Bible for our group devotions. I was as ornery then as I am now, and I started reading this passage. I don’t think a group of junior high boys have ever been more interested in the Scripture reading than they were that night. They were all on the edges of their beds, jabbing each other and giggling.
The old man made me stop when it got to the part about climbing the tree and taking hold of the fruit. I said, “What?! It’s in the Bible.” That was the end of devotions for that night. Afterward, several of the guys came to me and said, “Hey where was that passage again.”
Perhaps those junior high boys had more theological wisdom than they realized. God and the Bible don’t shy away from sex or the beautiful pleasure that it involves. This passage of scripture was included in the Bible because it is important to affirm that sex within marriage is supposed to be beautiful, passionate, and deeply satisfying. Physical passion and eroticism are God given and approved by God, but they have an appropriate place for expression: marriage.
The next passage I want to look at is from Proverbs, which is a book about how to live a wise and satisfying life.
Drink water from your own well – share your love only with your wife. Why spill the water of your springs in public, having sex with just anyone? You should reserve it for yourselves. Don’t share it with strangers. Let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you. Rejoice in the wife of your youth. She is a loving doe, a graceful deer. Let her breasts satisfy you always. May you always be captivated by her love (Prov. 5:15-19).
Well, we get to read some of my favorite passages of Scripture tonight. Here again, we have the affirmation that sex is good and intended for pleasure. But the writer makes an additional point. The bond between a husband and wife is like a flowing fountain that refreshes deeply. It is their own private fountain for their own enjoyment.
Having sex with other people is like poking a hole in our well and letting its water flow out into the street. Having sex outside the bounds of marriage depletes the joy that is available through beautiful matrimonial sexuality, but protecting the marriage relationship and enjoying it fully makes the fountain flow even more. In modern terms, having sex outside of marriage is like cashing in a CD early; you loose the interest, and you have to pay a penalty.
I can give personal testimony to the deep joy that comes to a married couple that has saved themselves. Sarah and I both went farther than we should have before we started dating each other, but when we married, we were both virgins. Knowing that, when we make love, we are doing something neither of us has ever done with anyone else is intensely satisfying and uniting.
Christianity joyously affirms that sex is a beautifully sacred part of marriage and is intended for pleasure, procreation, and the deepening of the marital union. In his article, “What’s Good about Sex,” J. Budziszewski points out that “Christianity espouses a higher view of sex than any other religion. That’s why it also has the strictest rules about it. Anything so important has to be handled carefully.”3
OK, now that we understand what the Biblical perspective on sex is, let’s take an honest look at the current state of sex in America. I suppose you could call this next portion of the talk a “State of the Sexual Union Address.”
Frankly, America is obsessed with sex. Sex seems to be in every sitcom, every movie, every song. A case in point is a popular song by the Bloodhound Gang, “You and me, baby, ain’t nothin’ but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.”
Sex sells. “Americans spend more on pornography in one year than the annual sales of the Coca-Cola corporation.”4 Actually sex sells everything from cars to couches, toothpaste to tennis shoes. We are inundated with sexual images, sexual innuendoes, and sexual language at every turn.
One factor that keeps this fixation on sex going is our myopic focus on pleasure. We have already disconnected intimacy from commitment, and now we are disconnecting sex from intimacy. We tend to see sex solely as a means for pleasure.
To many people these changes seem like great progress. However, we are caught in what is called the “hedonistic paradox.”5 Hedonism is the philosophy that the meaning of life is the pursuit of pleasure. The problem is that some things in life can’t be captured by looking for them.
If you seek happiness, it will evade you. Happiness must come to you. Happiness is a byproduct of living life the right way. In a similar way, if a person devotes his life to pursuing pleasure, he eventually wears himself out on pleasure so that nothing is pleasurable anymore.
This focus on pleasure necessarily leads to selfishness and to people using and abusing one another. 1 out of 3 girls and 1 out of 7 boys have been sexually abused by the age of 18.6 Beyond that, most of us have either used or been used in a sexual way. I regret to inform you that I have both used and been used. I wish neither were true, but they are.
On a more positive note, sociological studies have found that people who keep sex within marriage are happier and more satisfied sexually. The Social Organization of Sexuality, a book published by the University of Chicago, reports that “compared to all sexually active people, faithfully married couples experience the most physical pleasure and emotional satisfaction with their sex lives.”7 The Journal of Family Issues reports that people who lived together before they got married are likely to have greater marital instability and lower marital satisfaction.8 Another study reports that the earlier a young woman began having sex, the more likely she was to be dissatisfied with sex later in life.9 Living God’s way just works better.
OK, our last part of the State of the Sexual Union Address is a little game. I want you to number off from one to three. Everybody needs to have a number. [Give time for the audience to get a number.] According to statistics from the Center for Disease Control, currently about 30% of Americans have an incurable sexually transmitted disease, and that percentage is on the rise.10 Everyone who is a 3, please stand up. Congratulations, you represent the 30% of the American population that has an STD.
Now, get out your lists of the people with whom you shook hands or greeted with your hands in some way. For the sake of an illustration, we are going to let greeting with hands represent sexual relations. If any of these people are on your list, please stand up. Congratulations, there is a high probability that you, too, have contracted an STD, but you probably won’t know it for a long time. You can sit back down.
“Safe sex” is a myth. Condoms are helpful against some STD’s like HIV but are woefully ineffective against the most highly contagious STD’s like Human Papillomavirus (which can involve genital warts and can cause cancer) and chancroid (which involves genital ulcers). The problem is that a condom simply doesn’t cover the infected and contagious body parts.11
This could be the single greatest argument for living by Christian standards for sexual behavior. The only sure way to avoid the trap of STD’s is to keep yourself only for your spouse and for your spouse to do the same. Otherwise, you are rolling dice stacked against you. Living God’s way just works better.
So here is the State of the Sexual Union in a nutshell. Our society’s obsession with sex pushes us to be selfish and to seek immediate gratification in an unhealthy way. The best and most satisfying sex is within marriage, and sex outside of marriage is becoming increasingly dangerous.
Almost all of us have fallen short of God’s design for our sexuality. I know I have. However, God does not abandon us because we have sinned and especially not because someone has wronged us. He is with us, and he wants to draw us back to his heart and toward his original plan for us. Let’s look at some of the steps to recovering God’s design in our lives.
1.Acknowledge that we are designed for desire. We do not need to feel guilty for being sexual people. God made us this way. God ingrained sexual desire into our hearts.
2.Recognize that our greatest desire is for God. Our desire for sex is only a small part of our overall desire. By God’s design, our deepest desire is for a loving relationship with him. No amount or quality of sex can satisfy that desire. Only an intimate relationship with God can fill our hearts. The problem is not having strong desires. The problem is settling for the lesser satisfaction of those desires rather than doing the work that it sometimes takes to find deep satisfaction in God.12
3.Receive God’s grace and forgiveness. Sexual sin leaves scars that take time to heal. However, God’s grace can clean us spiritually in an instant. After King David slept with another man’s wife and then had that man killed, David prayed with faith, “Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow” (Ps. 51:7). God wipes our slate clean. He blots out our sin and gives us the chance to start again. We may still have scars and memories, but God is strong and his grace is robust. He is able to forgive completely and to bring us very nearly to his original purposes for us.
4.Passionately commit yourself to living by God’s design. Romans 12:1-2 says, “ I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice – the kind he will accept. When you think of what he has done for you, is this too much to ask? Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is.” Commit yourself to God. You will need God’s help to follow through with your commitment. But stick with him and his plan for you, and you will be amazed how he blesses you.
5.Be part of an accountability group. This world is too full of sexual temptation for any of us to face this battle alone. Find another Christian whom you trust. Be completely honest with each other about your struggles, your temptations, your successes, and your failures.
I have been meeting with Joseph Willey in accountability groups of some form about five years now. We have shed the masks and have been honest to the core with each other. Time and time again, our accountability with each other rescues us from giving in to sexual temptation. For women accountability is important. For men accountability is almost a matter of spiritual life and death.
By way of conclusion, I want you to imagine what the world would be like if every person on earth only had sex with his or her spouse. Don’t say, “Boring.”
Almost no children would be born out of wedlock.
Teen pregnancy would nearly disappear.
Much fewer broken marriages and divorces would occur.
STD’s would virtually disappear.
If the statistics are correct, sex and marriage would be more satisfying for everyone concerned.
Ultimately, we would have more mature and more satisfied adults, who led more stable families with healthier children.
On the issue of sex, God’s way is clearly the best way. God’s way is the best for us as individuals, for our families, and for society as a whole. God’s way just works better.
John tells a story that we all need to hear today (John 8:1-11). One day Jesus was teaching, and a crowd of people was gathered around him. Suddenly, there was a disturbance at the back of the crowd. Some of the religious leaders shoved their way through the crowd dragging a half-naked women behind them.
They tossed her into a huddled heap the dirt in front of Jesus, and threw down the gauntlet. They demanded, “This woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to kill her by stoning. What do you say?”
Now this was a trap. They figured one of two things would happen. Either Jesus would say let her go and, thereby, say that the standards of the Bible don’t matter, or Jesus would let them stone her and prove that he is not really as merciful as he acted.
What did Jesus do? He bent down and scribbled in the dirt with his finger. Maybe he was thinking. Maybe he was making them sweat.
The religious leaders were not used to being ignored, and they didn’t take it well. They demanded an answer.
So Jesus stood up and said, “All right, stone her. But let those who have never sinned throw the first stones!” Then, he went back to his etch-a-sketch in the dirt.
As the accusers thought about this, they quietly slipped out, one by one. Finally, only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Where did everybody go? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”
With tears in her eyes, and just a little bit of hope in her voice, she said, “No, Lord.”
Then, in one of the most beautiful blendings of grace and accountability, Jesus tenderly says, “I don’t condemn you either. Go on home, and don’t sin any more.”
There will be no stones thrown today, or any other time around here. None of us is in a position to condemn someone else. We have all been in the middle of that circle in one way or another. We all need Jesus to say, “I don’t condemn you.” But just as much, we all need to hear Jesus say, “Don’t sin any more. Go and live a healthy life.”
Journaling:
1.Do you think God’s way really does work better?
2.Is the idea of making a new start and leaving behind whatever happened in the past appealing to you?
3.What do you think it would take for you to live like this?
Thursday, May 7, 2009
6. Don't We All Want to Be Served?
Celebrity Cruise Line used to run a pretty cool commercial. It showed different people wearing a T-shirt that said in bold, black letters, “CELEBRITY.” As each person appeared, a British-butler voice relayed an order. “A strawberry daiquiri with a pink umbrella for Miss Anderson.” “Sunscreen SPF 25 to the sitting deck for Mrs. Franklin.” “Mr. Johnson requests a pepperoni pizza, with mushrooms.” Then, the narrator breaks in, “On our cruise line everyone is treated like a celebrity.”
I’m a sucker for good TV ads, and I bought right into this. Wouldn’t it be nice to be treated like a celebrity? Wouldn’t it be great to have someone waiting on us hand and foot? How awesome would it be to ring a bell and get sunscreen or the beverage of our choice?
We would all like to experience service like this. It feels good; it helps us feel important and valued. This is natural, and there may even be a place for it on occasion. However, Jesus gives us a different perspective in the gospels. I’ve asked a few people to help me to help me tell a story from Matthew chapter 20 that illustrates Jesus perspective.
[This is a reader’s theater. The narrator should be the person who is giving the talk.]
Narrator: The story begins with a request from a mom. She reminds me of my mom. She wants the best for her boys, and she’s not above embarrassing them to get it. She comes to Jesus with her two boys in tow. Now, remember, her “boys” are full grown adults, soon to be two of the Twelve Apostles. She respectfully kneels before Jesus and probably hands him a plate of brownies or baklava. Jesus can see that she is buttering him up. He’s not one to beat around the bush, so he takes a brownie and says,
Reader 1: What is your request?
Narrator: The ever-vigilant mother appreciates his directness and comes right out with it.
Reader 2: In your Kingdom …
Narrator: She recognizes that he is a King; that ought to help.
Reader 2: In your Kingdom, will you let my two sons sit in places of honor next to you, one at your right and one at your left.
Narrator: Then, the Bible says, “But Jesus told them.” It seems that Jesus knew that James and John weren’t victims of their mother’s pushiness. They wanted the seats of honor, too. Jesus answers the men,
Reader 1: As much as I like you, a plate of brownies can’t get you those seats. My Father arranges the seating around the throne, not me.
Narrator: When the ten other apostles caught wind of this conversation, they were hot!
Reader 3: What audacity! What makes you think you deserve the spots right next to Jesus? I suppose you think you’re better than all the rest of us!
Reader 2: Well, as a matter of fact, that’s a distinct possibility.
Reader 3: Well, I never … I’m every bit as good as you and then some!
Narrator: Right about then, Jesus steps in.
Reader 1: Gather ‘round boys. I’ve got something to say. You know that in this world kings are tyrants, and officials make a big show of it and make those beneath them feel “less-than.” But among you it should be very different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must become your slave. For even I, the King of heaven and earth, came here not to be served, but to serve others and to give my life as a ransom for many” (slightly paraphrased from Matt. 20:20-8). [Bold on power point slide.]
Jesus’ life shows that he practiced what he preached. He is seen time and time again healing people, talking with people who have been rejected by the rest of society, and ultimately laying down his life for all humanity.
Jesus also asks his followers to live this kind of life. That’s what it means to be a Christian. It is to be a Christ-follower, to model our lives after Jesus.
Not long before Jesus went to the cross, he said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must put aside your selfish ambition, shoulder your cross, and follow me. If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for me, you will find true life. And how do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul in the process? Is anything worth more than your soul?” (Matt. 16:24-26).
That’s the beautiful mystery of life. You’ve got to give your life away to really live. If we live only for ourselves, if we hoard and work harder and push others out of the way and bury ourselves in entertainment, we will actually miss the fullness and richness of life.
There is nothing better than to know that we are actually making a difference in someone’s life. We give, but we receive just as much. Our giving changes us. We become less selfish. We become more aware of the world around us. We become more grateful for what we have. The world has more color.
Mike Warenky, a Christian comedian, explained this by saying we finally get our heads out of our belly buttons. Often we spend so much time turned inward and focused on ourselves that we miss out on so much beauty and wonder.
To be a Christian is to have an outward focus, to be involved in service to others. It means to have a conscious awareness that we no longer live just to please ourselves. It doesn’t mean we become masochistic and start eating bowls of rice for the rest of our lives. It does mean that we live with different priorities. It means we ask God what role he wants us to play in serving others in our world.
Today we get to spend a little time giving our lives away in service.
CHOOSE APPROPRIATE PIECE OR WRITE ONE APPROPRIATE TO YOUR SERVICE PROJECT.
Crisis Care Kits
We are going to assemble Crisis Care Kits. The Church of the Nazarene packs these kits into boxes and stores them until there is a crisis in the world. Then, the kits are shipped to that world area and distributed to people in need.
Churches I’ve attended have been putting together these kits for years, and I used to think it was pretty trivial. I wondered how much difference a little soap and some toothpaste could do.
A few years ago, I happened to be in Europe during the Kosovo crisis. Serbia was raging through Kosovo and kicking out and/or killing lots of people. Refugees flooded the neighboring countries. People left on foot, on tractors, in the backs of pickup trucks, carrying only what they could hold in their hands. The Church of the Nazarene in Albania started impromptu relief centers in their church buildings.
A few friends and I had the opportunity to go to Albania to help with the relief process. Part of the relief effort was to distribute Crisis Care Kits. That may not seem like much to us, but to those people who had been sleeping along roadsides or hiding out in the woods for weeks, hygiene supplies were great treasures.
I have a few pictures from one of the Churches. (Show pictures.) When the line was longest, I was too busy to take pictures, but the line that you see went for a long way down the street. The churches also distributed food, cooking utensils, baby formula, diapers, and clothes. A few days a week, doctors offered free medical care.
Somewhere in the world, people who are in need and in a desperate situation will get these Crisis Care Kits. This half hour or hour that we spend making these kits will make a difference in their lives.
Food Drive
We are going to collect and organize food for two local food pantries here in Olathe. Catholic Charities has told us that they can’t keep food on their shelves. As soon as it comes in, they give it out to families in need.
I called Catholic Charities on Wednesday to do little research for you, so that you will know what your efforts are going toward. I talked with Marcella Luetkemeyer, a case manager.1 She told me that they offer food assistance to four categories of people.
Retired people. “Often seniors don’t have enough money to pay for both their medications and their food, so they come to us for help with their food.”
Working poor. Many of these are just scraping by, and then they have an unexpected expense (like a car problem or a medical bill) that pushes them over the edge financially.
Single parents. “We have more and more single dads now. It is just so hard to make it as a single parent. A lot of people need a little help.”
Injured or laid-off workers. Often the workman’s comp. isn’t enough to pay the bills, or the unemployment or workman’s comp. runs out. Then, they really need extra help.
I asked Marcella to tell me about one individual who recently came in for assistance. Here is what she told me:
This week, a young woman came in. I started to ask if she just needed food today, but I sensed that she needed more than that, so I brought her back to my office. She had never had to ask for food before. They have an autistic child that requires one of the parents to be home all of the time. The husband had lost a job, and the income was just nonexistent. She was telling me some of the problems of raising an autistic child, and I asked how long they were planning to have him in their home. She said, “Oh, he’s always going to be with us. He’s such an important part of our family.” It was just such a touching moment. They just needed a little extra help to get them through this hard time.
The other charity we’re supporting is Second Mile Friends a holistic ministry of College Church of the Nazarene to single parents. They do everything from financial planning to yard work to spiritual counseling. Some of the single mothers in the Second Mile Friends program have access to the food pantry each week as something like a stipend to relieve money for other bills.
A few years ago, Sarah and I had the opportunity to baby-sit a few times through Second Mile Friends. One time we baby-sat for a single mother with three kids. I think she told us that, other than work, she hadn’t been anywhere without her kids for two years. She could never afford a babysitter. So we watched her kids while she went to a movie with a friend. I don’t know if she ever received food from the food bank, but I wouldn’t be surprised. She worked a low paying job in food service. Even if she didn’t need help every week, she probably would have needed help if she had some unexpected expenses.
O.K. now we have a few pictures to think of as we’re working tonight.
Let’s address the embarrassment factor. Most of us have plenty to eat. Unfortunately, I usually have too much to eat. Many of us work at good jobs. Some of us work at pretty high paying, and high skilled jobs. It may feel a little awkward to knock on someone’s door to ask them for food. It might feel like begging. Most of us would probably rather give money than go ask others for food. Here are a few thoughts that might help with this discomfort.
You aren’t asking for yourself. We are asking for food for the poor.
Remember the story we read two weeks ago. Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. He took the job that nobody else wanted. Washing feet was a disgraceful task in that culture. Jesus rose above the cultural prejudices to serve others. Then, he said, “I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you” (John 13:15).
Often our service for others becomes a “means of grace” in our lives. God uses our service to change our hearts. As we confront our discomfort and give of our time for others, God changes us. We become more humble and more tender toward those in need.
The people in the neighborhoods we will be visiting need to give just as much as the poor need the food. Serving others is a basic need of all humanity. We are enabling others to touch the lives of someone else and to get their focus off themselves and their lives, even if only for a few minutes. You will find that some of the people you talk with tonight will genuinely thank you for giving them the opportunity to help someone else.
So tonight, we’re going to beat the streets for Jesus. We’re going to collect food to give to people who cannot buy it for themselves. We’re going to help people give who would not give by themselves. We are going to make a difference in people’s lives.
This is part of what it means to be Christian. Being a Christ-follower means following Jesus’ example of humble service. We all want to be served. It’s nice to have an excellent server at a restaurant. It would be great to take a Celebrity Cruise. But tonight, it’s our turn to serve. Let’s have fun being Christian.
1 Marcella Luetkemeyer, Case Manager, Catholic Social Services, Olathe Office. Interview by phone. March 17, 2004.
7. What's So Special about Jesus?
Psychologist Milton Rokeach wrote a book called The Three Christs of Ypsilanti. This story is relayed in a book by John Ortberg. He worked in a hospital in Ypsilanti, Michigan with Leon, Joseph, and Clyde, who all suffered from a Messiah complex. “Each one maintained he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Each one believed he was the central figure around whom the world revolved: three little messiahs.”
Rokeach decided to try some group therapy. For two years the three self-proclaimed messiahs ate, slept, and worked side by side. “He wanted to see if rubbing up against other would-be messiahs might diminish their delusion – a kind of messianic twelve-step recovery group.
His experiment didn’t seem to help much, but it did lead to some interesting conversations. One of the men would claim, ‘I’m the messiah, the Son of God. I am on a mission. I was sent here to save the earth.’
“’How do you know?’ Rokeach would ask.
“’God told me.’
“And one of the other patients would counter, ‘I never told you any such thing.’”1
Jesus is not the only person who has claimed to be the Messiah. Many people before him gave themselves that title, and many people have claimed it since. What makes Jesus different?
Nicki Gumble, an English pastor, reports that a communist Russian dictionary defined Jesus as “a mythical figure who never existed.” Nicki rightly points out that “no serious historian could maintain that position today. There is a great deal of evidence for Jesus’ existence.”2
A Jewish historian by the name of Josephus wrote about Jesus in A.D. 94. His account says that Jesus performed miracles, taught truth to many people, and was crucified. It also says that he was called the Messiah and that he came back to life on the third day after he was killed.3
Jesus is an unquestioned part of history. What he said and did is debated, but that he existed is an established fact.
Alright, given the fact that he existed, who is he? Many people say that he was just a human being. One frequently held view is that Jesus was a good moral teacher, who never claimed to be anything more than that. However, much evidence supports the claim that Jesus was and is the Son of God.
Let’s look first at what Jesus said about himself. A general observation about Jesus teaching is that all of his teachings center on himself.4 He says that he himself satisfies humanity’s deepest needs.
Listen to what he said about himself.
“I am the bread of life. No one who comes to me will ever be hungry again. Those who believe in me will never thirst” (Jn. 6:35).
To a woman at a well, Jesus said, “People soon become thirsty again after drinking this water. But the water I give them takes away thirst altogether. It becomes a perpetual spring within them, giving them eternal life” (Jn. 4:13-14).
“I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t be stumbling through the darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life” (Jn. 8:12).
Jesus told anyone that would listen that if they wanted to satisfy their deepest hungers they should come to him. He said he could fill the aching longing inside that nothing else can fill.
Jesus said that anyone who wants to have a relationship with God has to go through him (John 14:6). “He said to receive Him was to receive God (Matthew 10:40), to welcome him was to welcome God (Mark 9:37), and to have seen him was to have seen God (14:9).”5 Basically, Jesus said, “If you want to get to God, if you want to know what God is like, I’m your man. Right here. It all goes through me.”
Jesus also made some indirect claims that show that he regarded himself as God. First, he forgave people’s sins.
One time, when Jesus was teaching, some people brought a paralyzed man to see him. Jesus said, “My son, your sins are forgiven.” The religious teachers in the crowd went into a quiet uproar. They were whispering back and forth in shock, “Who does this guy think he is, God? You can’t just go around forgiving people’s sins. Only God can do that.”
Jesus was no dummy. He knew what was going on, so he said, “You think I have no right to forgive sins. Well, this ought to settle your doubts.” Then, he turned to the paralyzed man and healed him. The man took up his mat and walked home.
Let’s look at one more indirect claim that indicates that Jesus believed he was God. He said that one day he would judge the world.6 He said that “he will sit upon his glorious throne” and pass judgment upon everyone on earth. He said that he would be the one who decides who goes to heaven and who goes to hell (Matthew 25:31-46). Only God could rightly make that kind of claim. I think we would all agree that any ordinary human being who said things like this would earn a free ticket to Ypsilanti to join Leon, Joseph and Clyde, yet we respect and honor Jesus.
If all of this weren’t enough to convince us that Jesus believed he is God, sometimes Jesus just came right out and said it. First of all, he claimed to be the long awaited Jewish Messiah. When Jesus was on trial the night before he was crucified, “the high priest asked him, ‘Are you the Messiah, the Son of the blessed God?’” Then, Jesus, knowing his life was on the line, answered, “I am, and you will see me, the Son of Man, sitting at God’s right hand in the place of power and coming back on the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:61-62). That sealed it for his inquisitors. They promptly sentenced him to death for blasphemy.7
In the tenth chapter of John, Jesus’ critics restate Jesus’ claim even more directly. The Jewish leaders surrounded Jesus and demanded, “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus responds by saying that he gives eternal life to those who follow him and that he and God the Father are one. At that point the Jewish leaders start grabbing rocks to stone him. Jesus asks them why they would want to kill him, and they reply “For blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God” (John 10:24-33).8
O.K. Jesus clearly believed he was God, but who was he really? We are faced with a decision. We have three options, and “just a good moral teacher” isn’t one of them.
Option 1: Jesus belongs with our crew at the Ypsilanti Psychiatric Hospital. That would not be the kind of person I would want to use as my moral gage.
Option 2: Jesus is possibly crazy but definitely evil, in the same category as a David Koresh or Jim Jones. With this option, Jesus knew he was not divine, but he intentionally lead people astray just for the sake of the power trip. That is not quite up to the standards of a moral teacher.
Option 3: Jesus is right. He is a good moral teacher, but he is much more. He is God come to earth to open the way for everyone to have a lasting, fulfilling friendship with God.
So what do you think? Where does Jesus belong? In a padded room in Ypsilanti, in Hell, or on his throne in heaven and in our hearts guiding our lives? To make an intelligent decision on this question, we ought to look at the evidence. What evidence is there that Jesus is who he said he is?
First, Jesus’ teaching has never been surpassed in 2000 years.9 The Bible is still the best selling book world wide, four books of which center on Jesus life and teaching. We still rely on sayings like “Love your enemies,” “Turn the other cheek,” “Go the extra mile,” “Do for others what you would like them to do for you.” We still pray the Lord’s Prayer. We still tell the story of the Good Samaritan; we even have Good Samaritan laws.
Second, the things Jesus did were God-like. Jesus performed many miracles. He healed the blind, the deaf, the paralyzed. He fed thousands with one kid’s sack lunch. He calmed storms.10 At least three different times, he raised someone from the dead.
But it was not just the miracles. Jesus lived out the compassion and mercy that we have always hoped to find in God. Jesus loved the outcasts of society, the prostitutes, people with leprosy, the traitors and cheaters, as well as ordinary folks. He had genuine compassion for those who were hurting and rejected. Even more, when he was hanging on the cross, he prayed, “Father, forgive these people, because they don’t know what they are doing” (Luke 24:34). Does this sound like a crooked conman to you?
Third, Jesus’ character was supreme and unmatched, perfectly balanced and pure. His enemies couldn’t find any stains in his character. The only case they could bring against him was his own claim to be God. His friends who knew him best said he was without sin. He loved raucous parties, but he often woke up before dawn to pray. He was the most important person around, but he still took time to chat with children. Sounding evil or unbalanced to you?11
Fourth, Jesus fulfilled hundreds of prophecies from the Old Testament. The Old Testament predicted that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem from a virgin, that he would be known as one from Nazareth, that King David would be his ancestor, that he would heal the deaf, the blind, and the lame. The Old Testament predicted the exact manner of his death, even the tomb in which he would be buried. A conman might be able to arrange some of the events in his life to fit prophesy, but could anyone arrange the circumstances of his own birth? It’s a little late by then.12
For many people, though, the most compelling evidence that Jesus claims are true is Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus died on the cross. He was buried in a tomb. Three days later, God raised him back to life. The Bible says that Jesus appeared to some 500 people after that. That God raised Jesus from the dead is the surest proof that Jesus is who he says he is.
Some have argued that Jesus never died, that he was just faking it or was in a comma. Remember though, that for the Roman soldiers in charge of his execution, his certain death was necessary for their continued life. Letting a prisoner go free carried the death penalty.13
Others argue that Jesus’ disciples stole the body and started the rumor that Jesus had come back to life. This just doesn’t make sense when we consider what the disciples went through because they preached that Jesus is risen.14
John was whipped, imprisoned and exiled to a lonely island to die. Peter was whipped, beaten, imprisoned and crucified upside down. James was beheaded. Tradition tells us that all of the other original twelve apostles and many other disciples met similar violent deaths because they held fast to their belief that Jesus rose from the dead and is in fact God.
I hope that I would be as strong if my faith were ever tested like that, but I am certain that I would not go to my death for the sake something I knew was a lie. Josh Hatcher summarizes the point well, “Only God could claim to be God and live it in such a way that people believed it so devotedly.”15
One final piece of evidence that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, is that he is still changing lives. When Pastor Dave Pendleton gave this talk, he shared his personal story. I’d like to share part of that with you now.
I was a preacher’s kid. Sometimes affectionately, or unaffectionately known as a PK. And then, for some reason PK’s tend to have bad reputations, they tend to be bad kids. Well, that was true; I was just a bad kid. In my teen years, I really didn’t have any interest in the Christian faith. I had no use for God; I didn’t want to go to church. I really didn’t want to have anything to do with any of that stuff at all and I kind of let my dad know that and began to live that way, accordingly.
So since I couldn’t live in my home like that, I quit high school when I was a junior. And I went back to Boston and lived in these dive apartments and was evicted from three of them because of my lifestyle. By the time I was evicted from the third one, I really didn’t have anywhere else to go so I had to swallow my pride and call my dad. I asked him if I could come home, and he let me come home but he said, “You can stay here until you finish school, but when you finish school you need to get out again. Or if you go to the military, I’ll let you stay in the house until you go to service.”
There was a song in those days that was pretty popular that said, “Sex and drugs and rock and roll is all you needed to win your soul.” And that’s pretty much what I got involved in. That was my whole life; it was pretty centered in that. I really wanted to be about that, and I hung around guys who shared that, and that was my life. I was very wrapped up in me. I didn’t really care about anyone or anything, including how I treated my parents.
My dad would be preaching the gospel like I do now, and I would fall under what we would call conviction. My heart would be really heavy, and I knew that God was speaking to my heart, if you can understand that. And anytime my father would give an invitation to people who would want to pray to receive Christ, I would run out of the church. I wanted nothing to do with any of that. And I would literally get up and run out of the church, and I wouldn’t go back for weeks.
So the day finally came that I had to go into the Air Force in active duty. I don’t know how many of you have had a military experience but for me this tough, cocky, Bostonian kid, it was pretty eye opening.
So about the fifth night into basic training, we were all in our bunks. All the lights were out, and all those years and all that running and all that teaching that my father would do to try to convince me, well, it kind of came to a head that night in my bunk. I didn’t get out of my bunk. I just kind of bowed my head and said something like, “Lord, I’m sorry. Would you forgive me?” And He did.
The thing I remember is, it felt like there was a pack on my back, I mean literally, physically. And I felt free, like someone had just come and lifted something off of me, and I never felt so free in all my life. And I knew that God in Jesus Christ came to this earth and He suffered death on a cross. And I couldn’t escape that kind of intense love for me. It really wasn’t about fearing hell. I’m not sure it was really about making sure I was going to get in heaven. It was really about Someone who loved me like that. That He would die for me. I just believed in my heart, and He confirmed it inside my soul. My life has never been the same since, ever.
The final evidence that Jesus is God is that he is still changing lives. He changed Pastor Dave’s life.
Jesus changed Bill Todd’s life. Bill Todd decided to follow Jesus after 50+ years apart from him, and since that time Bill has experienced peace and joy like never before.
Jesus changed Melanie Harbold’s life. She was caught in self-destructive cycles and felt out of place and unloved. Jesus lavished her with love and gave her a place to belong, and she has not stopped telling people about Jesus ever since.
Jesus changed my life. I was lonely, arrogant, and dishonest. I thought Christianity was a psychological trick that people played on themselves. But Jesus met me, confronted me and changed me. He has given me joy and peace, and he is in the ongoing process of humbling me.
We aren’t the only ones. Around the world, millions of people have met the risen Christ, have given their lives to him, and have been thoroughly changed.16 If Jesus was just an ordinary man who died 2000 years ago, how could he still be changing lives?
So who is Jesus? He claimed to be God. C. S. Lewis was famous for stating things bluntly. He said, “There is no parallel in other religions. If you had gone to Buddha and asked him, ‘Are you the son of Bramah?’ he would have said, ‘My son, you are still in the veil of illusion.’ If you had gone to Socrates and asked, ‘Are you Zeus?’ he would have laughed at you. If you had gone to Mohammed and asked, ‘Are you Allah?’ he would have [torn] his clothes and then cut off your head.”17
Thomas bowed before Jesus and said, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus didn’t say, “Get up, you fool! Don’t call me God!” He said, “Finally, you believe” (Jn. 20:28-29).
Matthew tells a story about a time when Jesus gathered his disciples together to talk with them. He said, “Who do people say I am?”
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets who was come back to life.”
Then Jesus focused his question, “But what about you? Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, with a gust of inspiration, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Mt. 16:13-16).
People are going to say a lot of different things about Jesus. He was a good moral teacher. He was the greatest man who ever lived. He is a fable. He was a crazy person.
But it all comes down to this. Jesus is asking you, “Who do you say I am?”
Journaling:
1. Who do people today say Jesus is?
2. Who do you believe Jesus is?
Rokeach decided to try some group therapy. For two years the three self-proclaimed messiahs ate, slept, and worked side by side. “He wanted to see if rubbing up against other would-be messiahs might diminish their delusion – a kind of messianic twelve-step recovery group.
His experiment didn’t seem to help much, but it did lead to some interesting conversations. One of the men would claim, ‘I’m the messiah, the Son of God. I am on a mission. I was sent here to save the earth.’
“’How do you know?’ Rokeach would ask.
“’God told me.’
“And one of the other patients would counter, ‘I never told you any such thing.’”1
Jesus is not the only person who has claimed to be the Messiah. Many people before him gave themselves that title, and many people have claimed it since. What makes Jesus different?
Nicki Gumble, an English pastor, reports that a communist Russian dictionary defined Jesus as “a mythical figure who never existed.” Nicki rightly points out that “no serious historian could maintain that position today. There is a great deal of evidence for Jesus’ existence.”2
A Jewish historian by the name of Josephus wrote about Jesus in A.D. 94. His account says that Jesus performed miracles, taught truth to many people, and was crucified. It also says that he was called the Messiah and that he came back to life on the third day after he was killed.3
Jesus is an unquestioned part of history. What he said and did is debated, but that he existed is an established fact.
Alright, given the fact that he existed, who is he? Many people say that he was just a human being. One frequently held view is that Jesus was a good moral teacher, who never claimed to be anything more than that. However, much evidence supports the claim that Jesus was and is the Son of God.
Let’s look first at what Jesus said about himself. A general observation about Jesus teaching is that all of his teachings center on himself.4 He says that he himself satisfies humanity’s deepest needs.
Listen to what he said about himself.
“I am the bread of life. No one who comes to me will ever be hungry again. Those who believe in me will never thirst” (Jn. 6:35).
To a woman at a well, Jesus said, “People soon become thirsty again after drinking this water. But the water I give them takes away thirst altogether. It becomes a perpetual spring within them, giving them eternal life” (Jn. 4:13-14).
“I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t be stumbling through the darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life” (Jn. 8:12).
Jesus told anyone that would listen that if they wanted to satisfy their deepest hungers they should come to him. He said he could fill the aching longing inside that nothing else can fill.
Jesus said that anyone who wants to have a relationship with God has to go through him (John 14:6). “He said to receive Him was to receive God (Matthew 10:40), to welcome him was to welcome God (Mark 9:37), and to have seen him was to have seen God (14:9).”5 Basically, Jesus said, “If you want to get to God, if you want to know what God is like, I’m your man. Right here. It all goes through me.”
Jesus also made some indirect claims that show that he regarded himself as God. First, he forgave people’s sins.
One time, when Jesus was teaching, some people brought a paralyzed man to see him. Jesus said, “My son, your sins are forgiven.” The religious teachers in the crowd went into a quiet uproar. They were whispering back and forth in shock, “Who does this guy think he is, God? You can’t just go around forgiving people’s sins. Only God can do that.”
Jesus was no dummy. He knew what was going on, so he said, “You think I have no right to forgive sins. Well, this ought to settle your doubts.” Then, he turned to the paralyzed man and healed him. The man took up his mat and walked home.
Let’s look at one more indirect claim that indicates that Jesus believed he was God. He said that one day he would judge the world.6 He said that “he will sit upon his glorious throne” and pass judgment upon everyone on earth. He said that he would be the one who decides who goes to heaven and who goes to hell (Matthew 25:31-46). Only God could rightly make that kind of claim. I think we would all agree that any ordinary human being who said things like this would earn a free ticket to Ypsilanti to join Leon, Joseph and Clyde, yet we respect and honor Jesus.
If all of this weren’t enough to convince us that Jesus believed he is God, sometimes Jesus just came right out and said it. First of all, he claimed to be the long awaited Jewish Messiah. When Jesus was on trial the night before he was crucified, “the high priest asked him, ‘Are you the Messiah, the Son of the blessed God?’” Then, Jesus, knowing his life was on the line, answered, “I am, and you will see me, the Son of Man, sitting at God’s right hand in the place of power and coming back on the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:61-62). That sealed it for his inquisitors. They promptly sentenced him to death for blasphemy.7
In the tenth chapter of John, Jesus’ critics restate Jesus’ claim even more directly. The Jewish leaders surrounded Jesus and demanded, “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus responds by saying that he gives eternal life to those who follow him and that he and God the Father are one. At that point the Jewish leaders start grabbing rocks to stone him. Jesus asks them why they would want to kill him, and they reply “For blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God” (John 10:24-33).8
O.K. Jesus clearly believed he was God, but who was he really? We are faced with a decision. We have three options, and “just a good moral teacher” isn’t one of them.
Option 1: Jesus belongs with our crew at the Ypsilanti Psychiatric Hospital. That would not be the kind of person I would want to use as my moral gage.
Option 2: Jesus is possibly crazy but definitely evil, in the same category as a David Koresh or Jim Jones. With this option, Jesus knew he was not divine, but he intentionally lead people astray just for the sake of the power trip. That is not quite up to the standards of a moral teacher.
Option 3: Jesus is right. He is a good moral teacher, but he is much more. He is God come to earth to open the way for everyone to have a lasting, fulfilling friendship with God.
So what do you think? Where does Jesus belong? In a padded room in Ypsilanti, in Hell, or on his throne in heaven and in our hearts guiding our lives? To make an intelligent decision on this question, we ought to look at the evidence. What evidence is there that Jesus is who he said he is?
First, Jesus’ teaching has never been surpassed in 2000 years.9 The Bible is still the best selling book world wide, four books of which center on Jesus life and teaching. We still rely on sayings like “Love your enemies,” “Turn the other cheek,” “Go the extra mile,” “Do for others what you would like them to do for you.” We still pray the Lord’s Prayer. We still tell the story of the Good Samaritan; we even have Good Samaritan laws.
Second, the things Jesus did were God-like. Jesus performed many miracles. He healed the blind, the deaf, the paralyzed. He fed thousands with one kid’s sack lunch. He calmed storms.10 At least three different times, he raised someone from the dead.
But it was not just the miracles. Jesus lived out the compassion and mercy that we have always hoped to find in God. Jesus loved the outcasts of society, the prostitutes, people with leprosy, the traitors and cheaters, as well as ordinary folks. He had genuine compassion for those who were hurting and rejected. Even more, when he was hanging on the cross, he prayed, “Father, forgive these people, because they don’t know what they are doing” (Luke 24:34). Does this sound like a crooked conman to you?
Third, Jesus’ character was supreme and unmatched, perfectly balanced and pure. His enemies couldn’t find any stains in his character. The only case they could bring against him was his own claim to be God. His friends who knew him best said he was without sin. He loved raucous parties, but he often woke up before dawn to pray. He was the most important person around, but he still took time to chat with children. Sounding evil or unbalanced to you?11
Fourth, Jesus fulfilled hundreds of prophecies from the Old Testament. The Old Testament predicted that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem from a virgin, that he would be known as one from Nazareth, that King David would be his ancestor, that he would heal the deaf, the blind, and the lame. The Old Testament predicted the exact manner of his death, even the tomb in which he would be buried. A conman might be able to arrange some of the events in his life to fit prophesy, but could anyone arrange the circumstances of his own birth? It’s a little late by then.12
For many people, though, the most compelling evidence that Jesus claims are true is Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus died on the cross. He was buried in a tomb. Three days later, God raised him back to life. The Bible says that Jesus appeared to some 500 people after that. That God raised Jesus from the dead is the surest proof that Jesus is who he says he is.
Some have argued that Jesus never died, that he was just faking it or was in a comma. Remember though, that for the Roman soldiers in charge of his execution, his certain death was necessary for their continued life. Letting a prisoner go free carried the death penalty.13
Others argue that Jesus’ disciples stole the body and started the rumor that Jesus had come back to life. This just doesn’t make sense when we consider what the disciples went through because they preached that Jesus is risen.14
John was whipped, imprisoned and exiled to a lonely island to die. Peter was whipped, beaten, imprisoned and crucified upside down. James was beheaded. Tradition tells us that all of the other original twelve apostles and many other disciples met similar violent deaths because they held fast to their belief that Jesus rose from the dead and is in fact God.
I hope that I would be as strong if my faith were ever tested like that, but I am certain that I would not go to my death for the sake something I knew was a lie. Josh Hatcher summarizes the point well, “Only God could claim to be God and live it in such a way that people believed it so devotedly.”15
One final piece of evidence that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, is that he is still changing lives. When Pastor Dave Pendleton gave this talk, he shared his personal story. I’d like to share part of that with you now.
I was a preacher’s kid. Sometimes affectionately, or unaffectionately known as a PK. And then, for some reason PK’s tend to have bad reputations, they tend to be bad kids. Well, that was true; I was just a bad kid. In my teen years, I really didn’t have any interest in the Christian faith. I had no use for God; I didn’t want to go to church. I really didn’t want to have anything to do with any of that stuff at all and I kind of let my dad know that and began to live that way, accordingly.
So since I couldn’t live in my home like that, I quit high school when I was a junior. And I went back to Boston and lived in these dive apartments and was evicted from three of them because of my lifestyle. By the time I was evicted from the third one, I really didn’t have anywhere else to go so I had to swallow my pride and call my dad. I asked him if I could come home, and he let me come home but he said, “You can stay here until you finish school, but when you finish school you need to get out again. Or if you go to the military, I’ll let you stay in the house until you go to service.”
There was a song in those days that was pretty popular that said, “Sex and drugs and rock and roll is all you needed to win your soul.” And that’s pretty much what I got involved in. That was my whole life; it was pretty centered in that. I really wanted to be about that, and I hung around guys who shared that, and that was my life. I was very wrapped up in me. I didn’t really care about anyone or anything, including how I treated my parents.
My dad would be preaching the gospel like I do now, and I would fall under what we would call conviction. My heart would be really heavy, and I knew that God was speaking to my heart, if you can understand that. And anytime my father would give an invitation to people who would want to pray to receive Christ, I would run out of the church. I wanted nothing to do with any of that. And I would literally get up and run out of the church, and I wouldn’t go back for weeks.
So the day finally came that I had to go into the Air Force in active duty. I don’t know how many of you have had a military experience but for me this tough, cocky, Bostonian kid, it was pretty eye opening.
So about the fifth night into basic training, we were all in our bunks. All the lights were out, and all those years and all that running and all that teaching that my father would do to try to convince me, well, it kind of came to a head that night in my bunk. I didn’t get out of my bunk. I just kind of bowed my head and said something like, “Lord, I’m sorry. Would you forgive me?” And He did.
The thing I remember is, it felt like there was a pack on my back, I mean literally, physically. And I felt free, like someone had just come and lifted something off of me, and I never felt so free in all my life. And I knew that God in Jesus Christ came to this earth and He suffered death on a cross. And I couldn’t escape that kind of intense love for me. It really wasn’t about fearing hell. I’m not sure it was really about making sure I was going to get in heaven. It was really about Someone who loved me like that. That He would die for me. I just believed in my heart, and He confirmed it inside my soul. My life has never been the same since, ever.
The final evidence that Jesus is God is that he is still changing lives. He changed Pastor Dave’s life.
Jesus changed Bill Todd’s life. Bill Todd decided to follow Jesus after 50+ years apart from him, and since that time Bill has experienced peace and joy like never before.
Jesus changed Melanie Harbold’s life. She was caught in self-destructive cycles and felt out of place and unloved. Jesus lavished her with love and gave her a place to belong, and she has not stopped telling people about Jesus ever since.
Jesus changed my life. I was lonely, arrogant, and dishonest. I thought Christianity was a psychological trick that people played on themselves. But Jesus met me, confronted me and changed me. He has given me joy and peace, and he is in the ongoing process of humbling me.
We aren’t the only ones. Around the world, millions of people have met the risen Christ, have given their lives to him, and have been thoroughly changed.16 If Jesus was just an ordinary man who died 2000 years ago, how could he still be changing lives?
So who is Jesus? He claimed to be God. C. S. Lewis was famous for stating things bluntly. He said, “There is no parallel in other religions. If you had gone to Buddha and asked him, ‘Are you the son of Bramah?’ he would have said, ‘My son, you are still in the veil of illusion.’ If you had gone to Socrates and asked, ‘Are you Zeus?’ he would have laughed at you. If you had gone to Mohammed and asked, ‘Are you Allah?’ he would have [torn] his clothes and then cut off your head.”17
Thomas bowed before Jesus and said, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus didn’t say, “Get up, you fool! Don’t call me God!” He said, “Finally, you believe” (Jn. 20:28-29).
Matthew tells a story about a time when Jesus gathered his disciples together to talk with them. He said, “Who do people say I am?”
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets who was come back to life.”
Then Jesus focused his question, “But what about you? Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, with a gust of inspiration, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Mt. 16:13-16).
People are going to say a lot of different things about Jesus. He was a good moral teacher. He was the greatest man who ever lived. He is a fable. He was a crazy person.
But it all comes down to this. Jesus is asking you, “Who do you say I am?”
Journaling:
1. Who do people today say Jesus is?
2. Who do you believe Jesus is?
8. Why Did Jesus Die?
Crosses are popular as jewelry. People wear crosses on necklaces, earrings, and bracelets. I have a cross necklace that Sarah gave me for Christmas a few years ago. I get a lot of compliments on it. Today I’d like to sport a different piece of jewelry. (Put on a miniature gallows as a necklace.)
What? What’s the big deal? People were killed on crosses. People were killed on gallows. It’s just another execution devise. I’m thinking of getting some electric chair earrings.
Seriously though, doesn’t it strike you as a little odd that crosses would be worn as jewelry? Crosses were the ancient equivalent of the gallows or the electric chair. Only the worst criminals were executed on crosses. It was a slow and painful way to die. Death by crucifixion was so gruesome that even the Romans outlawed crucifixion in the fourth century. Why would an execution device like this be worn as jewelry, something to beautify your body? What is beautiful or fashionable about execution?1
This is a little shocking when we put it into our contemporary context, but this helps us to see what a dramatic change has happened regarding society’s attitude toward crosses. The cross is the central symbol of Christianity. Something that was horrible and ugly, the sign of utter defeat 2000 years ago, has become something beautiful and a sign of power and dignity. In fact, the cross has become the single most important image of Christianity. Why?
I like to explain this by drawing a picture. (I couldn't get the picture into this blog, so you'll just have to imagine it, or you can click here.) The picture isn’t perfect, but what I’m going to draw is a general description of why the cross is so important. It is a visual description of why Jesus died.
First of all there are us and God. God created us, loves us, and wants a relationship with us. I love Ephesians 1:4. “Long ago, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.” Doesn’t that make you feel valued? Before God made anything in this world, he chose you. Before he made anything, he loved you and me and chose us to be with him forever.
But there is a problem.
The problem is that we have sinned and rejected God. Isaiah 53:6 says, “All us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God’s paths to follow our own.” We have all done this. I have, and so has everyone else in this room. That sin creates a barrier between us and God. It puts a block in our relationship.
This is normal. That is the way it works in relationships. If I say something mean to my wife, you better believe there is going to be a block in our relationship until we get that wrong out of the way. If we do something that we know is wrong, there is a block in our relationship with God. We have to take care of that before things can be right between us again.
To further complicate the matter, Romans 6:23 says that “the wages of sin is death.” Not only are we separated from God, but we are also stuck in death because of sin.
Not only are the consequences of sin eternal death in hell, but sin costs us in this life, too. The more we sin, the more we give up of the life that God has for us. Sin has a way of getting its claws into us so that we do things that we wouldn’t even have considered before and reap all kinds of negative consequences.
To make matters worse, we cannot make it over the gap by ourselves. Give me some feedback. What are some things that people try to do to make up for the wrong that they have done? [Answers may be: going to church, giving money, being good, helping others. Write the answers on the left side of the cliff. When everyone is done, draw a line going down into the ravine.] These are all good, but they aren’t enough.
Those are all good things to do, but they can’t bridge the gap between us and God. The truth is that we can never do enough. Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious standard.”
Imagine that this wall here is a scale of righteousness. Mother Theresa is somewhere near the top. Hitler is down at the bottom. Imagine where you are. I guess that I am somewhere in the middle area or a little lower. The problem is that the standard isn’t the ceiling. The standard is a mile high. The bar by which we all are measured is Jesus, and he is perfect in every way. By our own efforts, we all far desperately short.2
Max Lucado put it like this, “We have attempted to reach the moon, but scarcely made it off the ground. We tried to swim the Atlantic but couldn’t get beyond the reef. We have attempted to scale the Everest of salvation, but we have yet to leave the base camp, much less ascend the slope. The quest is simply too great; we don’t need more supplies or muscle or technique; we need a helicopter.”3
Jesus is our helicopter.
Let’s look at a few verses from Romans chapter 3 that describe how this happens.
For no one can ever be made right in God’s sight by doing what his law commands… But now God has shown us a different way of being right in God’s sight – not by obeying the law but by the way promised in the Scriptures long ago. We are made right in God’s sight when we trust in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And we can all be saved in this same way, no matter who we are or what we have done. For all have sinned and fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet now God in his gracious kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sins. For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins… (3:20-25a).
I have a confession to make. Two of the verses I quoted to you earlier are bad news / good news verses, but I only told you the bad news. Now it’s time to look at the whole verses.
BAD NEWS: For the wages of sin is deathGOOD NEWS: But the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23)
BAD NEWS: All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God's paths to follow our own. GOOD NEWS: Yet the Lord has laid on him [Jesus] the guilt and sins of us all (Isaiah 53:6).
The good news is that there is a free gift of eternal life available to us through Jesus Christ. The good news is that God has laid on Jesus our guilt and sin. The good news is that Jesus has paid the price for our sin. He has done what we could never do. He lived a perfect life. Then, he died instead of us. Jesus died on the cross so that we can be close to God forever. Jesus is the bridge.
We’re going to watch a video from the Jesus Film that depicts Jesus death on the cross. I think this will help us grasp what really happened a little better.
He did this for us. Jesus is our bridge to God and real life.
Real Christianity is not about working harder or doing more. Real Christianity is about receiving the gift of what Jesus has already done for us.
Why did Jesus die? I think the answer has three parts.
First, Jesus died on the cross to forgive our sins. The just cost of sin is death. Jesus took our punishment instead of us. Now, no matter who we are or what we have done, we can be free of our past sins. Our slates can be wiped clean.
Second, Jesus died to restore our relationship with God. One of my favorite verses is 2 Corinthians 5:19, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them.” God didn’t just bridge the gap to help us avoid death and hell. He saved us from death so that we can have life! He bridged the gap so that we can be with him! Our basic sin was focusing our lives on ourselves. Our basic salvation is God’s transforming us to focus our whole lives on God.
Third, Jesus died to form a holy community in love with him. One biblical author put it like this: “Jesus suffered and died … in order to make his people holy” (Heb. 13:12). In Ephesians 5 Paul said, Jesus “gave up his life for [the Church] to make her holy and clean.” When we cross this bridge, we aren’t the only ones there. We enter a whole horde of people who are also putting their faith in Jesus Christ and being transformed moment by moment. Why bother with Church? We’ll talk about that next week, but for now, the simple answer is: Jesus died so that we could be part of the Church and be made holy all together with everyone else.
Now these three parts - forgiveness, transforming relationship, and holy community – aren’t the three reasons why Jesus died. They are they three components of the reason why Jesus died. If we leave out any of the parts, we get a really skewed understanding of the cross and Christianity.
Accepting forgiveness and neglecting transformation just doesn’t cut it. It’s like receiving a pardon from death row and staying in the prison. We are free to leave that awful place, but we all we do is sit there and rejoice that we’re forgiven. Jesus died to set us free from the prison of sin. If we don’t follow him out the door of the jail cell and breathe the clean air of his Life, we missed the whole point.
Along the same lines, we can’t just cross the bridge and try to go it alone. God made us for each other. Jesus died for us to be a whole people full of his love. His grace flows best when we’re connected with others in holy community. Solo Christianity isn’t a live option. Jesus didn’t die to have little individual islands of people following him. He died to have one swarming mass of people with waves of his love circulating in and out among us and him and us and each other. That’s just part of the deal. In some ways, that’s the best part of the deal.
Going to church and trying to be a better person won’t do either. That puts us back on the other side of the gap trying to earn our way over. No matter how moral or good we become, we will always need the cross of Jesus Christ to reconcile us to God. We can’t make it on our own. We have to accept God’s forgiveness and put our trust in Jesus.
Jesus died so that we could have forgiveness of our sins, transforming relationship with Him, and holy community. The way is open for us to enter this new life of transformation and love. Jesus has made a bridge for us to go across, but we have to cross over. How do we do that? How do we cross over the bridge? How does one go about putting her faith in Jesus?
Crossing the bridge basically involves two things: believing and repenting. Both of these words are often misunderstood, so we’re going to spend a little time unpacking each of them.
To believe is to put one’s faith in something or someone. Mentally acknowledging that something is true is only a fraction of what the Bible means when it talks about believing. Here is an example. I can look at this stool and speculate that it can hold my weight. I can touch it, examine its construction, and see that it looks structurally sound. I might even put my weight on it a little to test it. However, I haven’t really put my faith in it until I sit in it. [Sit on stool, and put legs up in the air.] Now, I’m really trusting in this chair. This is what the Bible means by “belief” or “faith.”
We can study the Bible, and read The Case for Christ. We can understand all of the theological terms surrounding the cross. But until we put the weight of our whole lives down on Jesus, we haven’t really trusted him; we haven’t really believed. Crossing the bridge is entrusting your whole life to God. It is trusting in Jesus’ death on the cross as the only way your sins can be forgiven. It’s getting in the car with Jesus and trusting him to chart your course.
Having faith doesn’t mean that you don’t have any doubt. You might have lots of doubts and questions that are still unanswered. It might even feel like you have more questions than answers. However, if you have enough faith to take the leap and to entrust your life to Jesus, that is believing.
The first part of crossing the bridge is believing. The second part, repenting, naturally flows out of believing. Jesus’ essential message was “Repent for the Kingdom of God is near” (Mark 4:7),5 but “repent” isn’t a word we use much any more. Let’s talk a little about what it means to repent.
There are two aspects of repentance. The first aspect of repentance is reflective: recognizing we have done wrong and asking for forgiveness. Guilt can be good if it leads us to repentance. Prisoners who don’t show remorse don’t get parole. Before we can get on the right path, we have to understand that we’ve been on the wrong path. We ask God to forgive us for going our own way, and we ask God to help us to walk in his way.
That leads us directly to the second aspect of repentance, which is active. The second part is doing something about what we say we believe. It is not enough to acknowledge the bridge. We have to actually walk across it.
In biblical language, “to repent” actually means to turn, to do a 180. Repentance is turning away from all that we know is evil and turning to God with all we are. We leave our old way of life behind us and follow Jesus.
Jesus told a story that helps illustrate this second part of repentance. It is in Matthew 7.
Anyone who listens to my teaching and obeys me is wise, like a person who builds a house on a solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse, because it is built on rock. But anyone who hears my teaching and ignores it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will fall with a mighty crash. (7:24-27)
According to Jesus, it doesn’t do any good to confess our sins (the first half of repentance) unless we follow Jesus and his teaching (the second half of repentance). We have to put our faith in Jesus, and real faith brings a changed life along with it. We are saved by grace, and we live by grace.
Confessing with out turning and following is like going the wrong way down a one way street even after we realized what we’re doing. It’s like saying over and over again, “AH! I’m going the wrong way,” but never changing our direction. Repentance is recognition of wrong and change. We have to leave behind some of the old stuff and take up Jesus’ new way of life.
But what’s it like to go across the bridge? What’s it like to experience God’s kind of life here on earth? Let me give you a few word pictures.
First picture: one of my friends was a little girl when she first trusted in Jesus. Her grandma asked her to describe it, and she said, “It’s like taking a bath on the inside.” That is a pretty accurate picture. All debt and sin is forgiven. God washes us away our sin. He cleans us up like no bath of water could ever do. In Isaiah, God says, “No matter how deep the stain of your sins, I can remove it. I can make you as clean as freshly fallen snow. Even if you are stained as red as crimson, I can make you as white as wool” (1:18).
The second picture is the old Eagles song, “Desparado.” Let me read a few lines for you.
Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?
You been out riding fences for so long now
Oh, you're a hard one, But I know that you got your reasons,
These things that are pleasing you, can hurt you somehow
Desperado, oh you ain't getting no younger,
Your pain and your hunger, they're driving you home
And freedom- freedom, well that's just some people talking
Your prison is walking through this world all alone.
Desperado, why don't you come to your senses
Come down from your fences, open the gate
It may be raining, but there's a rainbow above you
You better let somebody love you, let somebody love you
You better let somebody love you before it's too late
Putting our faith in Jesus is like coming home. We’ve been out doing life on our own for too long, but now we come home to God. Remember that in the very first week I quoted Augustine’s prayer, “Our hearts are restless until they find rest in You.” This is how we come home and find rest for our souls.
Think about where you are on this picture. Wherever you are is OK. We are not here to condemn you. We want you to know that God is calling you toward him. He is wooing you, beckoning you toward the Bridge, his Son Jesus Christ.
In the last book of the Bible, Jesus makes this plea, “Look! Here I stand at the door and knock. If you hear me calling and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal as friends” (Rev. 3:20). Some people today might hear Jesus knocking and be ready to open the door of their heart to him for the first time. We want to give you space to do that. Some people here today might have started across the bridge at some point, but for one reason or another, you went back in the other direction. You might be hearing Jesus knocking and asking you to start the trip with him again. Some of you might not even be close to being ready to cross over, but you’re interested in thinking about it and learning more.
I’m going to pray two different prayers in a minute. One of these prayers is for people who are ready to cross over the bridge, for people who are ready to take the leap of faith and to repent and follow Jesus. The other prayer is for people who are still thinking about it. Please feel free to pray along with whichever prayer fits you or just to reflect quietly.
I’ll start with the prayer of repentance. You can just repeat these words after me quietly or silently. “God, I have gone my own way, and I’ve done some things that I’m sorry for. Please forgive me. I believe that Jesus died for me, and I want to live life your way. I want you to call the plays in my life. Help me to follow you. Amen.”
Now, for the people that are still thinking, you can repeat these words quietly or silently. “God, I’ve got a lot to think about. I’m willing to investigate putting my life in your hands, but I still have some big questions. I might even be a little scared. Please help me to search for you with all my heart, and please show yourself to me. Amen.”
Journaling: Song - “There’s a Bridge to Cross the Great Divide” by Point of Grace
1. Where are you on this picture?
2. In what direction are you moving?
3. Is there anything stopping you from crossing over today?
.
1 This illustration is from Gumble, 43.
2 Nicki Gumble uses this illustration in the Alpha talk “Why Did Jesus Die?” , but it is not in Questions of Life.
3 Experiencing the Heart of Jesus, (Nashville: Nelson, 2003), 52.
4 Adapted from The Bridge, (NavPress, 1981), as represented by Bill Hybels and Mark Mittelberg, Becoming a Contagious Christian, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994), 156-159.
5 The thoughts on repentance in the next several paragraphs (except for the illustration about my friend) come from Thomas, Coffehouse Theology, 103-4.
9. Church - Why Bother?
When we did a survey of people who don’t normally go to church, the number one religious question that they had was, “Why are there so many hypocrites in the church?” Why bother with church when the church is full of hypocrites?
People want to know why Christians don’t live up to what they preach, especially preachers. This issue has come into the forefront lately as sexual abuse scandals within the leadership of the church have dominated the media.
Saying one thing and doing another has always been a problem for God’s people because it is easier to say something than to do it. The apostle James tried to deal with this problem in the early church. He wrote,
Dear brothers and sisters, what’s the use of saying you have faith if you don’t prove it by your actions? That kind of faith can’t save anyone. Suppose you see a brother or sister who needs food or clothing, and you say, “Well, good-bye and God bless you; stay warm and eat well” – but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do? So you see, it isn’t enough just to have faith. Faith that doesn’t show itself by good deeds is no faith at all – it is dead and useless (Ja. 2:14-17).
Brennan Manning “The single greatest cause of atheism in the world is Christians who confess Him with their lips and go out the door and deny him by their lifestyle.”1 Unfortunately, hypocrisy is a real problem.
However, this is still not a reason to give up on church. Rather than giving up on church all together, we need to seek a church that is really trying to live what the Bible says and seems to be doing so with some consistency.
We also need to be realistic and gracious. I say I love my life, but sometimes I speak unlovingly to her. I get upset when people fly by me on the freeway, but when I am running late for an important meeting, I do the same thing. I get frustrated when others skip in line, but if I see a friend near the front of a long line, I might start a conversation with him and casually blend into the line.
None of us live up to all our expectations of others. We are all hypocrites to some extent. The church is made up of people like us. Why should we expect it to be any different?
What is more, some doctors are quacks or pill pushers, but if we get sick, we’re going to try to find a good doctor. Some lawyers are frauds, but if we need legal counsel we’re going to try to find a good lawyer. Some Christians are phonies, and some churches are unloving and inconsistent. The solution isn’t to abandon Christianity or the church. The solution is to find a good church where people are really living Christianity.
Pause for a minute, and get into groups of two or three. Talk with your groups about some activities that require a team effort. Come up with several different things that require joint collaboration.
In the face of growing commercial feel of some churches and ministries, some people feel that the church has sold out and is not worth being a part of. The organizational cover-ups inside and outside the Church tend to make people leery of any large institution. There is the sense that institutionalization leads to corruption. That begs the question: Why bother with church or any organized religion?
I guess I have to side with an area pastor and ask, “What do you prefer - disorganized religion?”2
The benefits of organization outweigh the costs. First of all, organization provides doctrinal and ethical accountability. We have seen examples lately of the organized church failing blatantly to provide ethical accountability. However, when the organization is working correctly, the structure of the church promotes consistency in belief and action. The only alternative is lone ranger spirituality with no one to check our own potentially skewed perception.
The greatest benefit of organization, though, is that we can do more together than we can apart. There is a synergy when people get together. Through the International Church of the Nazarene, people who give money to Christ Community Church are supporting the Kansas City Rescue Mission for homeless men, an orphanage for former child prostitutes in Thailand, hospitals in India and Papua New Guinea, services to the elderly in Moscow, agricultural training in Mozambique, immediate disaster relief whenever it is needed around the world, and countless other services to humanity. Very little of that would be possible without intentional organization as an international church.
Faced with the problems of the Church, and tired of fighting the battle, many people just give up on church all together. They say, “Why bother with church when I can be a Christian all by myself?” You might call this the “Jesus and Me” philosophy. It says that all that really matters is your own personal relationship with God.
It seems that some people in the early church may have felt the same way. The author of Hebrews wrote, “And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage and warn each other, especially now that the day of his coming back again is drawing near” (10:25).
In his article “Don’t Give Up on Church, Richard Kauffman had this insight, “To become a Christian disciple means not just deciding to follow Jesus, but also joining with a community of disciples bound together by their common commitment to their Lord.”3
My parents and grandparents are infamous for telling the same stories over and over and over again. One of the stories my dad has told me over and over again has actually made an impact on me.
Every time we went camping, I hung out around the fire poking and prodding it, burning anything that wasn’t nailed down. My dad would always squat down beside me and say that the fire is kind of like the church. The coals are the people, and the Holy Spirit is the fire. Then, he would ask me what would happen if he pulled one of the coals out of the fire and set it by itself. I said it would get dark and cold. Then he poked around with a stick and pulled one of the coals to the side. Sure enough it got dark and cold.
Then he said, “With out the other coals it can’t stay hot. It needs the other coals to keep burning. It’s the same thing with Christians. Sometimes, we decide that we don’t need the church and that we can make with just God and us. The problem is that when we pull away from the church we loose their heat and eventually we just die out.”
The good news is that Dad’s object lesson never ended there. We always pushed the coal back into the fire and watched it get hot again. Soon, it was glowing and burning just like all the rest. We are made to live in close relationship with each other. We experience the presence of God and live the Christian life best when we do it together. Without each other, our tendency is to fade away spiritually.
This leads us directly to the “One Body” philosophy in 1 Corinthians 12.
A spiritual gift is given to each of us as a means of helping the entire church. To one person the Spirit gives the ability to give wise advice; to another he gives the gift of special knowledge. The Spirit gives special faith to another, and to someone else he gives the power to heal the sick. He gives one person the power to perform miracles, and to another the ability to prophesy. He gives someone else the ability to know whether it is really the Spirit of God or another spirit that is speaking. Still another person is given the ability to speak in unknown language, and another is given the ability to interpret what is being said. It is the one and only Holy Spirit who distributes these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have.
The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up only one body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some of us are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptized into Christ’s body by one Spirit, and we have all received the same Spirit.
Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part. If the foot says, “I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand,” that does not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear says, “I am not a part of the body because I am only an ear and not an eye,” would that make it any less a part of the body? Suppose the whole body were an eye – the how would you hear? Or if your whole body were just one big ear, how could you smell anything?
But God made our bodies with many parts, and he has put each part just where he wants it. What a strange thing a body would be if it had only one part! Yes there are many parts but only one body. The eye can never say to the hand, “I don’t need you.” The head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you.”
In fact some of the parts that seem weakest and least important are really the most necessary. … This makes for harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other equally. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored all the parts are glad. Now all of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a separate and necessary part of it. (1 Cor. 12:7-22, 25-27)
When we become Christians, the Holy Spirit unites us into one body. This is the body of Christ, the physical representation of God in the world. The Holy Spirit gives each person different gifts.
These gifts are “for the common good.” In Ephesians 4:12, after listing the different spiritual gifts, Paul says, that these are all “so that the body of Christ may be built up.” A few verses later Paul says, “Under [Christ’s] direction, the whole body is fitted together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps other parts to grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love” (4:16).
Each part is necessary for a healthy body. A missing body part is a hindrance and a danger.
The “one body” philosophy is one of the biggest reasons to be part of a local church. God is working in the church through the members of the church to strengthen the church, to serve the poor and hurting, and to bring more people into his family. You cannot be the Christian God wants you to be without the Church. The Church cannot be the Church God wants it to be without you.
At this point I want to let you hear from someone who has returned to the church after a long time of thinking church is irrelevant.
Testimony: Bill Todd
Insert Text (Summary: He became a Christian at the age of 56, but even then, he thought the church was full of hypocrites. Eventually, he saw the authenticity of his Christian friends and decided to become involved in a church. He now serves on the board at Olathe Christ Community Church of the Nazarene.)
Walter Brueggemann understands where over-independence leads, “We had come to believe in self-fulfillment and have discovered that even a ‘filled’ life, if alone, results in an empty self.”4 We need community. We need close, loving, relationships with other people. We are designed for deep and spiritual friendships. The Church can be the place for those friendships to happen.
I especially advocate small groups. Participating in a small group has been the most meaningful part of my church experience. A small group is a group of 4-12 people who commit to meeting together on a regular basis to study the Bible, support each other, pray for each other, listen to each other, and maybe even to hold each other accountable to living according to our faith. Basically, a small group is a group of people who are intentional about being good friends.
In a small group, we receive support and encouragement. A small group provides a forum for voicing frustration and celebrating successes. A small group provides the opportunity to love and to be loved. Kent, a member of our small group, said our love for him helps him know God’s love and grace more. Debbie, a participant in the Journey, said that our acceptance of her is helping her to believe that maybe God can accept her, too.
Another great benefit of close community in the church is that it helps us to avoid hypocrisy. For five years Joseph Willey and I have participated in the discipline of accountability. We meet together on a regular basis to make sure we are living like we say we want to live. We get honest with each other on a gut level. We talk about our temptations, sins, and successes. Accountability has been the single most helpful activity I have participated in.
The answer to the Church’s problem with hypocrisy is not withdrawal from the church. The answer is close community within the church so that we can help each other to live like we really want to live.
Consider these ancient words of wisdom from the book of Ecclesiastes:
Two people can accomplish more than twice as much as one; the get a better return for their labor. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But people who are alone when they fall are in real trouble. And on a cold night, two under the same blanket can gain warmth from each other. But how can one be warm alone? A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken. (4:9-12)
Here is the whole talk in three sentences. 1. Even with its stains and wounds, Church is still beautiful and valuable. 2. The Church cannot be what God wants it to be with out you. 3. You cannot be what God wants you to be without the Church.
Journaling: Play: Cheers theme song
1. The biggest problem I have with church is …
2. The thing that excites me most about church is …
People want to know why Christians don’t live up to what they preach, especially preachers. This issue has come into the forefront lately as sexual abuse scandals within the leadership of the church have dominated the media.
Saying one thing and doing another has always been a problem for God’s people because it is easier to say something than to do it. The apostle James tried to deal with this problem in the early church. He wrote,
Dear brothers and sisters, what’s the use of saying you have faith if you don’t prove it by your actions? That kind of faith can’t save anyone. Suppose you see a brother or sister who needs food or clothing, and you say, “Well, good-bye and God bless you; stay warm and eat well” – but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do? So you see, it isn’t enough just to have faith. Faith that doesn’t show itself by good deeds is no faith at all – it is dead and useless (Ja. 2:14-17).
Brennan Manning “The single greatest cause of atheism in the world is Christians who confess Him with their lips and go out the door and deny him by their lifestyle.”1 Unfortunately, hypocrisy is a real problem.
However, this is still not a reason to give up on church. Rather than giving up on church all together, we need to seek a church that is really trying to live what the Bible says and seems to be doing so with some consistency.
We also need to be realistic and gracious. I say I love my life, but sometimes I speak unlovingly to her. I get upset when people fly by me on the freeway, but when I am running late for an important meeting, I do the same thing. I get frustrated when others skip in line, but if I see a friend near the front of a long line, I might start a conversation with him and casually blend into the line.
None of us live up to all our expectations of others. We are all hypocrites to some extent. The church is made up of people like us. Why should we expect it to be any different?
What is more, some doctors are quacks or pill pushers, but if we get sick, we’re going to try to find a good doctor. Some lawyers are frauds, but if we need legal counsel we’re going to try to find a good lawyer. Some Christians are phonies, and some churches are unloving and inconsistent. The solution isn’t to abandon Christianity or the church. The solution is to find a good church where people are really living Christianity.
Pause for a minute, and get into groups of two or three. Talk with your groups about some activities that require a team effort. Come up with several different things that require joint collaboration.
In the face of growing commercial feel of some churches and ministries, some people feel that the church has sold out and is not worth being a part of. The organizational cover-ups inside and outside the Church tend to make people leery of any large institution. There is the sense that institutionalization leads to corruption. That begs the question: Why bother with church or any organized religion?
I guess I have to side with an area pastor and ask, “What do you prefer - disorganized religion?”2
The benefits of organization outweigh the costs. First of all, organization provides doctrinal and ethical accountability. We have seen examples lately of the organized church failing blatantly to provide ethical accountability. However, when the organization is working correctly, the structure of the church promotes consistency in belief and action. The only alternative is lone ranger spirituality with no one to check our own potentially skewed perception.
The greatest benefit of organization, though, is that we can do more together than we can apart. There is a synergy when people get together. Through the International Church of the Nazarene, people who give money to Christ Community Church are supporting the Kansas City Rescue Mission for homeless men, an orphanage for former child prostitutes in Thailand, hospitals in India and Papua New Guinea, services to the elderly in Moscow, agricultural training in Mozambique, immediate disaster relief whenever it is needed around the world, and countless other services to humanity. Very little of that would be possible without intentional organization as an international church.
Faced with the problems of the Church, and tired of fighting the battle, many people just give up on church all together. They say, “Why bother with church when I can be a Christian all by myself?” You might call this the “Jesus and Me” philosophy. It says that all that really matters is your own personal relationship with God.
It seems that some people in the early church may have felt the same way. The author of Hebrews wrote, “And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage and warn each other, especially now that the day of his coming back again is drawing near” (10:25).
In his article “Don’t Give Up on Church, Richard Kauffman had this insight, “To become a Christian disciple means not just deciding to follow Jesus, but also joining with a community of disciples bound together by their common commitment to their Lord.”3
My parents and grandparents are infamous for telling the same stories over and over and over again. One of the stories my dad has told me over and over again has actually made an impact on me.
Every time we went camping, I hung out around the fire poking and prodding it, burning anything that wasn’t nailed down. My dad would always squat down beside me and say that the fire is kind of like the church. The coals are the people, and the Holy Spirit is the fire. Then, he would ask me what would happen if he pulled one of the coals out of the fire and set it by itself. I said it would get dark and cold. Then he poked around with a stick and pulled one of the coals to the side. Sure enough it got dark and cold.
Then he said, “With out the other coals it can’t stay hot. It needs the other coals to keep burning. It’s the same thing with Christians. Sometimes, we decide that we don’t need the church and that we can make with just God and us. The problem is that when we pull away from the church we loose their heat and eventually we just die out.”
The good news is that Dad’s object lesson never ended there. We always pushed the coal back into the fire and watched it get hot again. Soon, it was glowing and burning just like all the rest. We are made to live in close relationship with each other. We experience the presence of God and live the Christian life best when we do it together. Without each other, our tendency is to fade away spiritually.
This leads us directly to the “One Body” philosophy in 1 Corinthians 12.
A spiritual gift is given to each of us as a means of helping the entire church. To one person the Spirit gives the ability to give wise advice; to another he gives the gift of special knowledge. The Spirit gives special faith to another, and to someone else he gives the power to heal the sick. He gives one person the power to perform miracles, and to another the ability to prophesy. He gives someone else the ability to know whether it is really the Spirit of God or another spirit that is speaking. Still another person is given the ability to speak in unknown language, and another is given the ability to interpret what is being said. It is the one and only Holy Spirit who distributes these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have.
The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up only one body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some of us are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptized into Christ’s body by one Spirit, and we have all received the same Spirit.
Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part. If the foot says, “I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand,” that does not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear says, “I am not a part of the body because I am only an ear and not an eye,” would that make it any less a part of the body? Suppose the whole body were an eye – the how would you hear? Or if your whole body were just one big ear, how could you smell anything?
But God made our bodies with many parts, and he has put each part just where he wants it. What a strange thing a body would be if it had only one part! Yes there are many parts but only one body. The eye can never say to the hand, “I don’t need you.” The head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you.”
In fact some of the parts that seem weakest and least important are really the most necessary. … This makes for harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other equally. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored all the parts are glad. Now all of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a separate and necessary part of it. (1 Cor. 12:7-22, 25-27)
When we become Christians, the Holy Spirit unites us into one body. This is the body of Christ, the physical representation of God in the world. The Holy Spirit gives each person different gifts.
These gifts are “for the common good.” In Ephesians 4:12, after listing the different spiritual gifts, Paul says, that these are all “so that the body of Christ may be built up.” A few verses later Paul says, “Under [Christ’s] direction, the whole body is fitted together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps other parts to grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love” (4:16).
Each part is necessary for a healthy body. A missing body part is a hindrance and a danger.
The “one body” philosophy is one of the biggest reasons to be part of a local church. God is working in the church through the members of the church to strengthen the church, to serve the poor and hurting, and to bring more people into his family. You cannot be the Christian God wants you to be without the Church. The Church cannot be the Church God wants it to be without you.
At this point I want to let you hear from someone who has returned to the church after a long time of thinking church is irrelevant.
Testimony: Bill Todd
Insert Text (Summary: He became a Christian at the age of 56, but even then, he thought the church was full of hypocrites. Eventually, he saw the authenticity of his Christian friends and decided to become involved in a church. He now serves on the board at Olathe Christ Community Church of the Nazarene.)
Walter Brueggemann understands where over-independence leads, “We had come to believe in self-fulfillment and have discovered that even a ‘filled’ life, if alone, results in an empty self.”4 We need community. We need close, loving, relationships with other people. We are designed for deep and spiritual friendships. The Church can be the place for those friendships to happen.
I especially advocate small groups. Participating in a small group has been the most meaningful part of my church experience. A small group is a group of 4-12 people who commit to meeting together on a regular basis to study the Bible, support each other, pray for each other, listen to each other, and maybe even to hold each other accountable to living according to our faith. Basically, a small group is a group of people who are intentional about being good friends.
In a small group, we receive support and encouragement. A small group provides a forum for voicing frustration and celebrating successes. A small group provides the opportunity to love and to be loved. Kent, a member of our small group, said our love for him helps him know God’s love and grace more. Debbie, a participant in the Journey, said that our acceptance of her is helping her to believe that maybe God can accept her, too.
Another great benefit of close community in the church is that it helps us to avoid hypocrisy. For five years Joseph Willey and I have participated in the discipline of accountability. We meet together on a regular basis to make sure we are living like we say we want to live. We get honest with each other on a gut level. We talk about our temptations, sins, and successes. Accountability has been the single most helpful activity I have participated in.
The answer to the Church’s problem with hypocrisy is not withdrawal from the church. The answer is close community within the church so that we can help each other to live like we really want to live.
Consider these ancient words of wisdom from the book of Ecclesiastes:
Two people can accomplish more than twice as much as one; the get a better return for their labor. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But people who are alone when they fall are in real trouble. And on a cold night, two under the same blanket can gain warmth from each other. But how can one be warm alone? A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken. (4:9-12)
Here is the whole talk in three sentences. 1. Even with its stains and wounds, Church is still beautiful and valuable. 2. The Church cannot be what God wants it to be with out you. 3. You cannot be what God wants you to be without the Church.
Journaling: Play: Cheers theme song
1. The biggest problem I have with church is …
2. The thing that excites me most about church is …
10. How Can I Make the Most of the Rest of My Life?
We Americans get caught up in a flurry of activity. We are always going somewhere or doing something. A few years ago, I saw a large fold out ad in a newspaper. It was two full, glossy pages. The ad had pictures of the new Dodge Durango packed with the accessories for various activities: soccer games, camping, canoeing, gardening, home repair. Underneath each picture was either the word “Go” or “Do,” so in succession the add read: “Go. Go. Go. Do. Do. Do.”
I don’t think the Dodge add team was trying to be philosophical, but they succeeded. This motto illustrates America’s two philosophies of meaning or significance. The first of these is that meaning comes from productive work. This philosophy holds that the only thing that counts is what we do, what we accomplish. The second American philosophy is that meaning comes from pleasure. Adherents here say the essence of live is enjoying all you can every moment. Yet America is finding out that these two philosophies fall short of providing lasting significance to life.
In the movie About Schmidt, Jack Nicholson retires from a successful career in the insurance business. Let’s watch what one of his best friends has to say about how he has lived. [Show speech from the retirement party.] Include text of speech here.
However, as the story unfolds, Schmidt reflects on his life, and he falls into despair because he sees that, although he worked hard and played by all the rules, his life has had no lasting significance. He has not really made a difference in the world. Many people are equally disillusioned and find that the baskets into which they have put all their eggs are empty and filled with wasted years.
Some people choose a different path, and instead hope to find meaning in pleasure. However, they too are disillusioned when they discover that meaninglessness emerges from being weary of pleasure. Ravi Zacharias argues that “we have exhausted ourselves in this indulgent culture.”1 When we seek pleasure for pleasure’s sake, we are propelled into deeper, wilder, more extreme activities in pursuit of pleasure until finally, nothing is gives us pleasure anymore.
I have never seen this truth more dramatically lived out than in Marilyn Manson. When I read his autobiography, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, I was struck by this truth. His pursuit of pleasure led him deeper and deeper into drug use, into increasingly perverse sexual experiences, and into abusing others for the sheer entertainment value. Eventually he became so numb to pleasure that he turned to self-mutilation under the philosophy that feeling pain is better than feeling nothing. He eventually bottomed out in nothingness, and apparently proceeded with nihilism as his philosophy for life.2
Nitzche, an atheistic philosopher, developed the philosophy called nihilism, or “the philosophy of nothingness.” His unsuccessful search for meaning lead him to believe that there is no final meaning in life. He understood that without anything eternal, human life is finally meaningless, just a peak and a valley on the endless ocean of time.
Throughout history the search for meaning has been part of human thought, but it is especially part of being a 21st century American. We are slowly finding out that comfort, luxury, and activity do not ultimately satisfy. We realize that there must be some way to find enduring significance and meaning. But how? Everything on this earth is temporary. Everything here will die or breakdown.
We have some hope if we are not atheists. We believe in something eternal: God. If we can connect with the Eternal God and his purposes in the world, then our lives can have meaning for eternity. I want us to look at two passages of Scripture that shed light on our quest for meaning. These will lay the foundation for the rest of our discussion today.
First, Ephesians 5:15-20:
So be careful how you live, not as fools but as those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity for doing good in these evil days. Don’t act thoughtlessly, but try to understand what the Lord wants you to do. Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, let the Holy Spirit fill and control you. Then you will sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, making music to the Lord in your hearts. And you will always give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Next is Romans 12:1-2:
And so, dear Christian friends, I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living sacrifice – the kind he will accept. When you think of what he has done for you, is this too much to ask? Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is.
So, how can we make the most of the rest our lives? The first step to making the most of the rest of our lives is giving all to God. We give all that we have, all that we are, all that we ever hope to be or have to God.
The passage from Romans 12 says that we should give our bodies to God as living sacrifices. In the Old Testament system, the people of God sacrificed an animal as their offering to God. They killed it and gave it to God. Here the image is of a living sacrifice. It is somewhat different.
Has everyone been in church when they pass the offering plates or baskets? Prophets in the Bible did some strange things to illustrate their points, and I have often thought that a good visual image of what it means to be a living sacrifice would be to put oneself in the offering plate. “Right here, God. You can have all of me.” I have never had the guts to actually do this in church, but I think it makes the point. Being a living sacrifice is giving God everything that we are, our whole lives, our dreams, our possessions, our time, what we say, what we do, our sexuality, everything.
Here is another image. Giving all to God is also like signing a contract that only says, “Whatever God wants. Whatever God wants, I’ll do it, I’ll give it, I’ll go there. Signed Josh, or Bill or Melinde.”
This kind of commitment, this kind of trust only makes sense if God is trustworthy. The good news is that He is bigger, smarter, more loving, and more faithful than we are. The truth is that he is in better shape to manage our lives than we are. It just makes sense to trust him to take care of us.
The Psalms repeatedly affirm that God is a strong foundation for our lives. One of my favorite verses is Psalm 18:2 “The LORD is my rock, my fortress, and my savior; my God is my rock, in whom I find protection. He is my shield, the strength of my salvation, and my stronghold.” No matter what happens he will take care of us if we trust in him.
OK, here’s the second step to getting the most out of the rest of your life: let God fill you and transform you. Let God change you from the inside out. Real change has to start on the inside. If we let God fill and transform our hearts, our lives will naturally show the results.
The good life is not a building that we can manufacture but a fruit. You can build a building, but no one can build fruit. To produce fruit we can only try to create the right conditions for nature to work, fertile soil, plenty of water and sun.
The good life is a fruit that we can’t work up ourselves; only God can produce in us. Galatians 5:22-23 says “But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
Isn’t this what we all want? Isn’t this what we would consider a good and successful life? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and even self-control. I know there have been many times when I have longed for more self-control.
Consider the options from Ephesians 5 again, “So be careful how you live, not as fools but as those who are wise. … Don’t act thoughtlessly, but try to understand what the Lord wants you to do. Don’t be drunk on wine [or video games or work or the pursuit of pleasure], because that will ruin your life. Instead let the Holy Spirit fill and control you.”
The thoughtless foolish choice is to get drunk on pleasure or work and, thereby, to ruin our lives. The wise choice is to be filled with and guided by the Holy Spirit, and God will produce in us the life we’ve always wanted but could never construct ourselves, the life filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
The real trick here is staying filled with the Spirit. When people first started talking to me about being filled with the Holy Spirit, I thought I could come down to the altar, say a prayer, and be set for life. I quickly figured out that it doesn’t work that way. Often, the Biblical writers talk of God’s on going action in our lives. Go on being filled with the Spirit. Keep being reconciled to God. Always be in the process of being perfected. Life in the Spirit is a day by day, minute by minute journey. We have to give all to God and let him fill us everyday.
The third step to getting the most out of life is to join God in what he is doing in the world. This step is illustrated beautifully in Ephesians 2:10: “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.”
You are God’s masterpiece, but he doesn’t transform people just to sit on the shelf. He has a plan for you. When he was thinking long ago of how he was going to make you, even then, he was figuring out what good things he wants you to do. That is the beauty of being a Christian. God is establishing his Kingdom in the world, and we can be a part of it. Long after this world is gone, what we do with God will still be important. What we do with God makes an eternal difference.
Here is a passage may give some clues as to how to start joining in God’s work. In 1 Cor. 12:27-8, Paul is speaking to the church in the city of Corinth:
Now all of you together are Christ’s body, and each one of you is a separate and necessary part of it. Here is a list of some of the members that God has placed in the body of Christ: first are apostles, second are prophets, third are teachers, then those who do miracles, those who have the gift of healing, those who can help others, those who can get others to work together, those who speak in unknown languages.
In the human body, if we lose a kidney, we can’t keep our blood pure. If we loose a leg, our mobility is limited. If we loose our eyes, we will miss out on part of life.
Every person in this room who is a follower of Christ is a part of the body of Christ, the church. We are the physical expression of what God is doing in the world. We each have different roles to play, and we are each necessary to what God is doing. Something will be missing if we do not plug in and play our part.
You may be thinking, “I’m too far along to make a new start. It’s too late now. Maybe some of the other people here can start over, but not me. I’ve gone too far. I’ve messed up too bad.”
My Mom is the leftovers queen. She can take a couple of pieces of crusty old fried chicken, some left over vegetables, some rice that has been in the fridge for who knows how long, add some spices and a little cheese, give it a French name and voila! We have a dish fit for a king.
God can do the same thing with your leftovers. Your marriage may be struggling. Your career may be on the rocks. It may be months since you’ve had a loving conversation with your children. Wherever you are, give what you’ve got to God. Give him all of the broken pieces, and see what he does.3 He is a miracle worker.
One song that has become a favorite in the church goes like this, “All I had to offer him was brokenness and strife, but he made something beautiful out of my life.”4 That song has become so popular because it rings true with our experience as Christians. We give God a mess, and he gives us something beautiful. The only prerequisite is giving it all to God.
Let’s address one final question: Why should you give God everything and be filled with the Holy Spirit? We’ve hinted at this, but we haven’t come right out and said it. The answers are in Romans 12:1-2.
The last part of verse two says, “Then you will know what God wants you to know, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is.” When we are filled with the Holy Spirit and he transforms the way we think and act, we find out that God’s plan really is good and pleasing and the best thing for us. This is the path to true satisfaction.
Verse one challenges us to live our lives as an ongoing gift to God and then asks “When you think of what he has done for you, is this too much to ask?” Jesus died for us. The least we can do is live for him.
Braveheart is one of my favorite movies of all time. The English reigned the Scottish with an iron fist and tyranny, and the Scotts have finally banded together to fight for their freedom. The Scottish are a ragtag bunch of farmers who seem outnumbered and outmatched, and some of the Scotts are thinking about going home. Let’s watch and see what their visionary leader says to them. (Play clip.)
Braveheart Freedom Speech - Awesome video clips here
Sometimes, when we think about living the Christian life, we feel a bit like the Scotts, outnumbered and ill equipped. Run from this challenge, and you can go on living life like you always have. It is true that if you accept this challenge, you may have to give up some things that you have enjoyed.
But when you are old and gray, and you are sitting on your deathbed looking back on your life, would you trade all of the days between this day and that for just one chance to live in freedom? Would you give up all of that time for one chance to live the God-filled life, for one chance to live life like it’s supposed to be lived? This is your chance.
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism and a true Christian said, “Only the life lived in total surrender is the life of no regrets.” I can testify to you that this is the most satisfying way to live. My life hasn’t been all roses and oatmeal raisin cookies, but through it all God has been my faithful companion, and he has given me a sure peace and a steady hope that he will provide.
Won’t you join me and countless others? Live with us lives of total surrender to God!
We are going to do an exercise called directed prayer. We will all pray together, quietly or silently, and I will give you directions on how to pray. If you do not feel comfortable praying according to the directions, I invite you to just reflect silently.
First, hold your hands out face down. You can rest them on your knees or hold them in the air, whatever is most comfortable for you. Give God your whole life, the bad and the good. You may need to confess some wrongs. You may need to turn over to God some talents or achievements you are especially proud of. Give God your dreams and hopes for the future. Trust him to work out the future.
Next, hold your hands face up, in a posture of receiving. Receive God’s forgiveness. “If we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong” (1 John 1:9). Receive God’s love. “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners,” and “God has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love” (Romans 5:8, 5b). Receive the Holy Spirit. Let him wash over you. Receive him into your heart and life. Receive his transforming power to make you what he wants you to be. Receive his promise for your life: “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the LORD. ‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope’” (Jeremiah 29:11).
Journaling: (Song: “Beautiful” by Plaid Understanding God)
1.How have you met God or seen him working during the Journey?
2.Paint a word picture of the life you want to live as you leave the Journey.
I don’t think the Dodge add team was trying to be philosophical, but they succeeded. This motto illustrates America’s two philosophies of meaning or significance. The first of these is that meaning comes from productive work. This philosophy holds that the only thing that counts is what we do, what we accomplish. The second American philosophy is that meaning comes from pleasure. Adherents here say the essence of live is enjoying all you can every moment. Yet America is finding out that these two philosophies fall short of providing lasting significance to life.
In the movie About Schmidt, Jack Nicholson retires from a successful career in the insurance business. Let’s watch what one of his best friends has to say about how he has lived. [Show speech from the retirement party.] Include text of speech here.
However, as the story unfolds, Schmidt reflects on his life, and he falls into despair because he sees that, although he worked hard and played by all the rules, his life has had no lasting significance. He has not really made a difference in the world. Many people are equally disillusioned and find that the baskets into which they have put all their eggs are empty and filled with wasted years.
Some people choose a different path, and instead hope to find meaning in pleasure. However, they too are disillusioned when they discover that meaninglessness emerges from being weary of pleasure. Ravi Zacharias argues that “we have exhausted ourselves in this indulgent culture.”1 When we seek pleasure for pleasure’s sake, we are propelled into deeper, wilder, more extreme activities in pursuit of pleasure until finally, nothing is gives us pleasure anymore.
I have never seen this truth more dramatically lived out than in Marilyn Manson. When I read his autobiography, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, I was struck by this truth. His pursuit of pleasure led him deeper and deeper into drug use, into increasingly perverse sexual experiences, and into abusing others for the sheer entertainment value. Eventually he became so numb to pleasure that he turned to self-mutilation under the philosophy that feeling pain is better than feeling nothing. He eventually bottomed out in nothingness, and apparently proceeded with nihilism as his philosophy for life.2
Nitzche, an atheistic philosopher, developed the philosophy called nihilism, or “the philosophy of nothingness.” His unsuccessful search for meaning lead him to believe that there is no final meaning in life. He understood that without anything eternal, human life is finally meaningless, just a peak and a valley on the endless ocean of time.
Throughout history the search for meaning has been part of human thought, but it is especially part of being a 21st century American. We are slowly finding out that comfort, luxury, and activity do not ultimately satisfy. We realize that there must be some way to find enduring significance and meaning. But how? Everything on this earth is temporary. Everything here will die or breakdown.
We have some hope if we are not atheists. We believe in something eternal: God. If we can connect with the Eternal God and his purposes in the world, then our lives can have meaning for eternity. I want us to look at two passages of Scripture that shed light on our quest for meaning. These will lay the foundation for the rest of our discussion today.
First, Ephesians 5:15-20:
So be careful how you live, not as fools but as those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity for doing good in these evil days. Don’t act thoughtlessly, but try to understand what the Lord wants you to do. Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, let the Holy Spirit fill and control you. Then you will sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, making music to the Lord in your hearts. And you will always give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Next is Romans 12:1-2:
And so, dear Christian friends, I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living sacrifice – the kind he will accept. When you think of what he has done for you, is this too much to ask? Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is.
So, how can we make the most of the rest our lives? The first step to making the most of the rest of our lives is giving all to God. We give all that we have, all that we are, all that we ever hope to be or have to God.
The passage from Romans 12 says that we should give our bodies to God as living sacrifices. In the Old Testament system, the people of God sacrificed an animal as their offering to God. They killed it and gave it to God. Here the image is of a living sacrifice. It is somewhat different.
Has everyone been in church when they pass the offering plates or baskets? Prophets in the Bible did some strange things to illustrate their points, and I have often thought that a good visual image of what it means to be a living sacrifice would be to put oneself in the offering plate. “Right here, God. You can have all of me.” I have never had the guts to actually do this in church, but I think it makes the point. Being a living sacrifice is giving God everything that we are, our whole lives, our dreams, our possessions, our time, what we say, what we do, our sexuality, everything.
Here is another image. Giving all to God is also like signing a contract that only says, “Whatever God wants. Whatever God wants, I’ll do it, I’ll give it, I’ll go there. Signed Josh, or Bill or Melinde.”
This kind of commitment, this kind of trust only makes sense if God is trustworthy. The good news is that He is bigger, smarter, more loving, and more faithful than we are. The truth is that he is in better shape to manage our lives than we are. It just makes sense to trust him to take care of us.
The Psalms repeatedly affirm that God is a strong foundation for our lives. One of my favorite verses is Psalm 18:2 “The LORD is my rock, my fortress, and my savior; my God is my rock, in whom I find protection. He is my shield, the strength of my salvation, and my stronghold.” No matter what happens he will take care of us if we trust in him.
OK, here’s the second step to getting the most out of the rest of your life: let God fill you and transform you. Let God change you from the inside out. Real change has to start on the inside. If we let God fill and transform our hearts, our lives will naturally show the results.
The good life is not a building that we can manufacture but a fruit. You can build a building, but no one can build fruit. To produce fruit we can only try to create the right conditions for nature to work, fertile soil, plenty of water and sun.
The good life is a fruit that we can’t work up ourselves; only God can produce in us. Galatians 5:22-23 says “But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
Isn’t this what we all want? Isn’t this what we would consider a good and successful life? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and even self-control. I know there have been many times when I have longed for more self-control.
Consider the options from Ephesians 5 again, “So be careful how you live, not as fools but as those who are wise. … Don’t act thoughtlessly, but try to understand what the Lord wants you to do. Don’t be drunk on wine [or video games or work or the pursuit of pleasure], because that will ruin your life. Instead let the Holy Spirit fill and control you.”
The thoughtless foolish choice is to get drunk on pleasure or work and, thereby, to ruin our lives. The wise choice is to be filled with and guided by the Holy Spirit, and God will produce in us the life we’ve always wanted but could never construct ourselves, the life filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
The real trick here is staying filled with the Spirit. When people first started talking to me about being filled with the Holy Spirit, I thought I could come down to the altar, say a prayer, and be set for life. I quickly figured out that it doesn’t work that way. Often, the Biblical writers talk of God’s on going action in our lives. Go on being filled with the Spirit. Keep being reconciled to God. Always be in the process of being perfected. Life in the Spirit is a day by day, minute by minute journey. We have to give all to God and let him fill us everyday.
The third step to getting the most out of life is to join God in what he is doing in the world. This step is illustrated beautifully in Ephesians 2:10: “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.”
You are God’s masterpiece, but he doesn’t transform people just to sit on the shelf. He has a plan for you. When he was thinking long ago of how he was going to make you, even then, he was figuring out what good things he wants you to do. That is the beauty of being a Christian. God is establishing his Kingdom in the world, and we can be a part of it. Long after this world is gone, what we do with God will still be important. What we do with God makes an eternal difference.
Here is a passage may give some clues as to how to start joining in God’s work. In 1 Cor. 12:27-8, Paul is speaking to the church in the city of Corinth:
Now all of you together are Christ’s body, and each one of you is a separate and necessary part of it. Here is a list of some of the members that God has placed in the body of Christ: first are apostles, second are prophets, third are teachers, then those who do miracles, those who have the gift of healing, those who can help others, those who can get others to work together, those who speak in unknown languages.
In the human body, if we lose a kidney, we can’t keep our blood pure. If we loose a leg, our mobility is limited. If we loose our eyes, we will miss out on part of life.
Every person in this room who is a follower of Christ is a part of the body of Christ, the church. We are the physical expression of what God is doing in the world. We each have different roles to play, and we are each necessary to what God is doing. Something will be missing if we do not plug in and play our part.
You may be thinking, “I’m too far along to make a new start. It’s too late now. Maybe some of the other people here can start over, but not me. I’ve gone too far. I’ve messed up too bad.”
My Mom is the leftovers queen. She can take a couple of pieces of crusty old fried chicken, some left over vegetables, some rice that has been in the fridge for who knows how long, add some spices and a little cheese, give it a French name and voila! We have a dish fit for a king.
God can do the same thing with your leftovers. Your marriage may be struggling. Your career may be on the rocks. It may be months since you’ve had a loving conversation with your children. Wherever you are, give what you’ve got to God. Give him all of the broken pieces, and see what he does.3 He is a miracle worker.
One song that has become a favorite in the church goes like this, “All I had to offer him was brokenness and strife, but he made something beautiful out of my life.”4 That song has become so popular because it rings true with our experience as Christians. We give God a mess, and he gives us something beautiful. The only prerequisite is giving it all to God.
Let’s address one final question: Why should you give God everything and be filled with the Holy Spirit? We’ve hinted at this, but we haven’t come right out and said it. The answers are in Romans 12:1-2.
The last part of verse two says, “Then you will know what God wants you to know, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is.” When we are filled with the Holy Spirit and he transforms the way we think and act, we find out that God’s plan really is good and pleasing and the best thing for us. This is the path to true satisfaction.
Verse one challenges us to live our lives as an ongoing gift to God and then asks “When you think of what he has done for you, is this too much to ask?” Jesus died for us. The least we can do is live for him.
Braveheart is one of my favorite movies of all time. The English reigned the Scottish with an iron fist and tyranny, and the Scotts have finally banded together to fight for their freedom. The Scottish are a ragtag bunch of farmers who seem outnumbered and outmatched, and some of the Scotts are thinking about going home. Let’s watch and see what their visionary leader says to them. (Play clip.)
Braveheart Freedom Speech - Awesome video clips here
Sometimes, when we think about living the Christian life, we feel a bit like the Scotts, outnumbered and ill equipped. Run from this challenge, and you can go on living life like you always have. It is true that if you accept this challenge, you may have to give up some things that you have enjoyed.
But when you are old and gray, and you are sitting on your deathbed looking back on your life, would you trade all of the days between this day and that for just one chance to live in freedom? Would you give up all of that time for one chance to live the God-filled life, for one chance to live life like it’s supposed to be lived? This is your chance.
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism and a true Christian said, “Only the life lived in total surrender is the life of no regrets.” I can testify to you that this is the most satisfying way to live. My life hasn’t been all roses and oatmeal raisin cookies, but through it all God has been my faithful companion, and he has given me a sure peace and a steady hope that he will provide.
Won’t you join me and countless others? Live with us lives of total surrender to God!
We are going to do an exercise called directed prayer. We will all pray together, quietly or silently, and I will give you directions on how to pray. If you do not feel comfortable praying according to the directions, I invite you to just reflect silently.
First, hold your hands out face down. You can rest them on your knees or hold them in the air, whatever is most comfortable for you. Give God your whole life, the bad and the good. You may need to confess some wrongs. You may need to turn over to God some talents or achievements you are especially proud of. Give God your dreams and hopes for the future. Trust him to work out the future.
Next, hold your hands face up, in a posture of receiving. Receive God’s forgiveness. “If we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong” (1 John 1:9). Receive God’s love. “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners,” and “God has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love” (Romans 5:8, 5b). Receive the Holy Spirit. Let him wash over you. Receive him into your heart and life. Receive his transforming power to make you what he wants you to be. Receive his promise for your life: “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the LORD. ‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope’” (Jeremiah 29:11).
Journaling: (Song: “Beautiful” by Plaid Understanding God)
1.How have you met God or seen him working during the Journey?
2.Paint a word picture of the life you want to live as you leave the Journey.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)