Focus:
Humility
Function:
To
help people see that humility produces gentleness, mercy and
compassion.
Form:
gok
Intro:
The
Message, 3:17-18
17-18Real
wisdom, God’s wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized
by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable,
overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the
next, not two-faced. You can develop a healthy, robust community that
lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the
hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with
dignity and honor.
I
mentioned last week how Scot Miller said that 9/11 was one of the
biggest events in our collective history. It is certainly the biggest
event since the great depression, the New Deal, the bombing of Pearl
Harbor, the Civil Rights marches, and the breakup of the Soviet
Union.
A
lot has changed.
And,
a lot has changed much quicker than it did in the past.
The
7 billion people alive today are more than the collected numbers of
all of humanity up until 1950 or so.
Starting
with the printing press, knowledge has increased exponentially.
We
now live in a day and an age where almost any bit of information is
readily accessible in almost every American household.
I
remember attending a journalism seminar when I was in the 9th
grade. The parent driving us to Ball State University was the lead
engineer at Bowmar corporation in FW.
Having
found out that my interest was photography. He then proceeded to tell
me that his company had figured out a way to take a picture of an
integrated circuit and that by the end of the year, they would have a
hand-help computer that would add, subtract, multiply, divide and do
square roots.
I
remember thinking to myself, “If that is true, it will change the
world, just as the wheel did.”
Sure
enough, my twin brother's best friend's dad was the VP of that
company and he showed up in Algebra class with a prototype model of
the world's first hand help electronic calculator.
And,
by the 10th grade, the local high school no longer issued
slide-rules because Bowmar corporation donated 100 printing
electronic calculators for the science/math lab.
To
quote Brooks from the movie The Shawshank Redemption, “The
world done gone and changed. It got faster.”
I
realize that some of this is still new to many who are more
computerese challenged. SO, I'll explain another phenomena.
Social
Media has grown up with this new electronic communication age.
My
mom's best friend has a daughter of whom I grew up with who never
married, but instead has spent her life in Sierre Leone, Africa
working to stop the human sex-trafficking that is coming from that
region.
And
through the miracle of the internet, she is able to have a video chat
with her daughter every Friday night completely free of charge.
Apple
and Google now both are marketing watches that are as fantastic as
Dick Tracey's tv wristwatch.
With
Social media, Facebook specifically, the oppressive regime in Egypt
was over thrown.
With
Social Media, the lecherous regime of the Ukraine was overthrown.
There
is real power and great activity happening out there in the
electronic world and all of it is just beginning.
I
am sort of an electronics/computer nerd.
As
a matter of fact, my social media handle is “RevNerd” instead of
Reverend.
And,
the social media world is not for the light of heart.
People
now engage in conversations with complete strangers and because there
is the anonymity of a computer screen, sometimes the attacks can get
downright mean and vicious.
I
think the electronic age is great and exciting.
But
a lot of what goes on has a dark underbelly.
The
Internet has shut down countless adult bookstores and movie houses
because one can access all that smut in the privacy of their own
home.
But
one of the real problems is that people engage in conversations
without any consequences.
And,
because they like a certain view, sport, or style, the programmers of
these web sites are really good at marketing directly towards one
peculiar niche.
And
sadly, we don't really get a good understanding of the validity of
the other side's thinking.
Those
who watch the 24 hour news cycles see the same thing happening.
People gravitate to what reinforces their own tribe mentality.
And
those pulling the strings, especially those advertising and investing
lots of money in Internet communication and 24 hour news know that in
order to keep people listening so that they will buy their
advertisers product, they have to keep up controversy.
I
find it sad that Christians can watch this kind of mean spirited
behavior being demonstrated by worldly people and somehow, maybe
because they see so much of it, somehow they believe that it is
acceptable.
And
you know that just because we see it all the time, it does not mean
that the behavior is acceptable.
The
wisdom that comes from God is first Peaceable.
It
is gentle.
It
is respectful.
It
leads to(ward) community,
not away from it.
We
want to rise above the vitriol, not contribute to it. (AMEN)?
Yesterday,
a dear saint, a devout Republican who is one of the most generous
people I have ever met, he would literally give you the shirt off his
back because his shirt belongs to God, not him, but, he has one rule:
“you have to work for it.”
He
may take a 50 year old preacher whose church had to cut back his
wages because of the recession and give him hundreds of dollars a
week, provided he did work, mowing the lawn, pulling weeds, fixing
the tractor or whatever.
He
lives by the Christian principle of generosity without sacrificing
his own principle of rewarding hard work.
But
we learned last week that we all sin. And this dear saint posted
something about the Syrian refugees.
And
immediately, someone else posted something terrible about how evil
they all are because Islam is the dominant religion of Syria.
She
claimed to be a Christian. So, I just posted this: “I read this
somewhere... love your neighbor... ...love your enemies... ...pray
for those who persecute you...” and then, from the OT, I posted the
command to treat the alien as a neighbor.
All
I said was Jesus' teachings and the OT principle of caring for the
alien.
To
which she said, nicely: “dear Phil... you are naïve... ...God
would not let the Devil into heaven...
And,
she was pretty nice, but I was taken back by that statement. And this
is where kindness comes in, I could have said, “what about Job?”
She
is right, we are naïve.
We
choose to live by faith, and if God calls us to treat the alien as we
would any neighbor, and that is to love my neighbor as ourselves,
then we have to believe that God will protect us when we are obedient
to God. And, if God doesn't protect us, then God is doing something
bigger than us, and since our lives were bought with the price of
Jesus' blood, and we no longer possess it, we died with Jesus in our
baptism to come alive to being a partner with God in God's new and
better kingdom, then we are not to live in fear over the kingdoms of
men. (AMEN?)
And
yes, that is naïve given the global evil that is out there.
But,
that is what God called us to be.
We
are innocent as doves, as vulnerabnle as sheep. We live by faith, not
fear.
And
I needed that lady to remind me not to get upset, angry, or fearful.
I
did answer her with a statement like: “I am just quoting Christian
Scripture. How you listen to it is between you and God. But, I don't
think faith in God is naïve.
Isn't
that what James is talking about here?
Especially
when James is talking about human conflict.
We
are always going to have conflict.
How
we love in the midst of it determines our testimony to Christ. Is it
faith or fear?
Let
me rearead the opening line: “You can develop a healthy, robust
community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only
if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating
each other with dignity and honor.”
In
the hiatus between the end of Chapter 3 and the first few verses of
Chapter 4, we read more about the evil of conflict and human failure.
And
I love verse 6: 6But
the grace that God gives is even stronger.
God's
grace is stronger, always.
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