Resting In God

 

Text: Luke 12:22-29

Focus: faith

Function: to help people learn to rest instead of fear.

²²He said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. ²³For life is more than food and the body more than clothing. ²⁴Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! ²⁵And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? ²⁶If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? ²⁷Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ²⁸But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, you of little faith! ²⁹And do not keep seeking what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying.

Good morning to the beloved children of God!

Today we are going to continue a little bit in our study about faith.

Or, more specifically, we are going to contrast faith with fear.

Fear kills our faith. And I wonder most of the time, fear has to to with our need to plan so that we can attempt to control our circumstances.

According to the book of Proverbs, there is nothing wrong with planning ahead, getting good advice and acting wisely with one’s resources.

Our need for money is real because it is the commodity by which we conclude our transactions. There is nothing wrong with money.

It is the love, or worship of money, that leads us into doing acts of evil or sinning. Jesus also warned us about the idolatry of money. He said we cannot serve God and money. We have to choose. We have to choose between being selfish or resting in God and being generous with what God has given us.

And for us, serving God is our choice.

I believe that family of God, or the Church, is the people who live to serve God. They live by faith and God promises to provide for them.

Jesus, as a teacher, explained the significance and spirit of the OT law. And you know it because you have heard it from me, it is summed up in the statement love your neighbor as yourself.

But when one studies the OT, one can see that there are three major areas that are called sin in the OT. One is lack of faith in God. The second is idolatry and the third is lack of concern for the poor and the marginalized.

This passage about worry covers all three of those areas.

We’ll start with the second one, idolatry. We don’t think about bowing down to idols anymore since Jesus came and the introduction of Christianity and Western philosophical notions changed the world religions. Many still have icons and statues that they use as symbols for prayer, but they understand that the object itself is inanimate, not a god.

So, it is almost prophetic that idol worship would largely cease in the future and yet Jesus still warns us off about the idolatry of money in our lives.

Money is the god of this world.

Now the passage we are looking at is about worrying. And I am tempted to worry about money. And it is mainly about worrying about how we will provide for ourselves now that we are following Christ and we no longer embrace the value system of living only for ourselves instead of the living for the welfare of the entire community.

The Holy Spirit changes our focus from only ourselves to the whole of God’s creation since God loves all of it, especially us.

Jesus says to us: Don’t worry!

And I understand why: God loves us and will take care of us when we rest in God.

Faith, as I mentioned, is trust or rest.

The word for faith in the Greek is Pistis. And it always has the preposition “into” following it.

It isn’t that we believe that God is real when we say we have faith in God. The bible says even the demons believe that God is real.

No, faith is trust IN God. I like to call it rest.

We believe into God. We place our trust into God instead of ourselves and we trust God to do with our lives the plan that God has for us.

And that plan isn’t some big mystery either. God’s plan for us is to be loved by God and to love others in the power of God’s spirit to bring about the healing that Jesus intended for the entire world.

We rest in God.

Hebrews chapter 4 speaks of God’s rest for God’s people. He speaks of how the Jewish people when they escaped Egypt and settled Palestine first had to wander 40 years in the desert because they didn’t believe that God was powerful enough to keep God’s promise to Abraham to bless him and give him the land. They looked at the size of the problem instead of the size of God and they let fear take over.

Remember, three major areas of sin in the OT. Idolatry, which today is the love of money. And the first I mentioned was a lack of faith. It was the problem the Jewish people faced and it ended badly for them.

God wants us to believe that God loves us and will take care of us according to God’s plan. God’s Spirit helps calm our fears, especially through prayer.

God isn’t promising a magic life with no suffering. No. God is promising to be present with us in the midst of the trials in our lives and bring God’s love, comfort and guidance to us during those times.

Do not forget the promise that God loves us and wants to care for us because we are indeed God’s children.

So, Jesus uses nature and the care that God has for nature to help us see what it is like to rest in God.

He says that both the lilies of the field and the sparrows flying in the sky are also loved by God along with the rest of creation.

And they don’t worry.

We might say that they do not know enough to worry because of their level of sentience compared to ours. God created us in God’s own image. But the point is this: God cares about them. God made everything wonderful in its own time. God cares about creation. AN d God placed us at the top of creation.

And here we are, the pinnacle of God’s creation and Jesus tells us that God cares for us much more than God cares for the flora and the fauna that they made.

Faith, from this perspective then, is resting in the fact that God cares for us and is powerful enough to keep their promise to us.

Let us rest in God.

A Steadfast God

 

Text: Hebrews 11:29-12:2

Focus: faith

Function: to remind people that even in suffering, God is faithful

²⁹By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they were drowned. ³⁰By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days. ³¹By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace.

³²And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, ³³who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, ³⁴quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. ³⁵Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. ³⁶Others suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. ³⁷They were stoned to death; they were sawn in two; they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented— ³⁸of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains and in caves and holes in the ground.

³⁹Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, ⁴⁰since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.

12:¹Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, ²looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

Good morning to the beloved children of God. It is important for us to understand that we are precious in God’s sight. We are God’s children, and just as we love our children and have their backs, even when they fail, God loves us and has our backs even if we fail. God has our backs in the midst of the suffering and trials that come into our lives.

We conclude the chapter on faith this morning by being reminded again that it is by faith that the ancient peoples found favor with God.

It is by faith that we find favor with God today.

Abraham did it by following the promise of God and took a great risk to leave his own people and immigrate to a foreign land.

And again, the chapter reminds us of the importance of the story and how remembering the story and what God has done, all the higher power moments in our own lives, because remembering and reciting the story keeps the power of its lessons fresh in our minds. That is why believers throughout the centuries celebrate Advent and Lent before the big holidays in our calendar.

When we remember the story, then the story is reinforced and the story is this: God is with us and cares for us.

The chapter speaks of how all these people were looking for a different kind of kingdom, a different kind of city dwelling, a heavenly one created here on earth by our just and loving responses instead of greed and evil.

Just like one side in politics this week succumbed to a practice that denies fair elections because the other side did it, we too, are faced with evil and with the choice to respond in kind, or in faith and in Christian love.

It isn’t easy to turn the other cheek in this society. It takes faith.

Christians cannot stoop to the level of evil that their oppressors use. We trust God for deliverance remembering that God has already given his own life for our salvation.

And this chapter helps me to build my faith.

The author reminds them of the suffering and either miraculous victories of supernatural origin, or the strength to endure persecution and even martyrdom through the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us.

He mentions the fire. I love the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

They refused the evil and the king threw them into the furnace and the Angel of God appeared to them and rescued them. Their bold statement to the enraged king was that even though God can rescue them, God may not, and either way, they will not participate in the wickedness.

They lived by faith. These men didn’t die for their boldness, but the text goes on to mention several who either died for their faith or faced terrible circumstances without wavering in their convictions.

It kind of reminds me of Corrie Ten Boom and the way her family rescued hundreds of people whose existence became illegal. She eventually went to a concentration camp and suffered terribly herself. She lived by faith resisting the evil that was present in the fascist regime of her day.

She lived for the heavenly kingdom of peace and justice that cared for the least of these and saw the humanity in every single person they met.

May we live the same way, by faith, regardless of the culture that seems to care less and less for people who are different from us white folks.

I am glad the chapter includes those who did not receive a miraculous deliverance but instead endured during the suffering.

Christian faith is not a magic formula for a perfect life.

It is the power of the Holy Spirit to see life better from God’s perspective through the Holy Spirit and have the discernment to see that the mission of Jesus, to redeem humanity, is still going on through us: the Church.

We do have an ultimate reward in heaven. I love the verse that praises these people of faith as people of “whom the world was not worthy.”

Heaven, is the implication. God loved them and brought them home to him.

God’s love for us is steadfast, both here and in the future in heaven.

So, let us take our courage from the faith of these ancients as well as our courage from the faith of each other as we share our journey together in the name of Jesus.

Seeking Heaven

 

Text: Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

Focus: faith

Function: to help people live the new kingdom life by faith

11:¹Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. ²Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. ³By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.

⁸By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he set out, not knowing where he was going. ⁹By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. ¹⁰For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. ¹¹By faith, with Sarah’s involvement, he received power of procreation, even though he was too old, because he considered him faithful who had promised. ¹²Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, “as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.”

¹³All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, ¹⁴for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. ¹⁵If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. ¹⁶But as it is, they desire a better homeland, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.

Good morning to the beloved children of God!

We’re gonna do a little bit of bible study on the text this morning. This passage reminds me of my early years in the faith as I was motivated to follow Jesus because of the possibilities that faith in Christ could bring me.

Faith is a difficult concept for us to muster because I believe that the ability to believe in God, the ability to trust God for our healing and restoration comes as a work, I believe of the Holy Spirit and not ourselves in our lives.

But at the same time, God has given to us choices and we have the choice to trust God or not with the way we live our lives.

So, although it is given to us through the Holy Spirit, it comes to us when we make the decision to rest in the love that God has for us and trust that God’s care for us is enough. We trust that in this day, God will give us our daily bread and we do not have to worry about the future. We can live lives that follow the love of Christ since God is with us in the form of the Spirit.

So, as a Christian, I don’t think there are things we can do, works that we can do, that can increase our faith because it comes to us from God and we have the promise that even when we are faithless, God remains faithful to us.

Think about breathing. We can hold our breath and stop breathing, a choice, if we want to. But we can’t forget how to breathe. In the same way our body breathes, the Spirit moves inside of us giving us the faith we need at the time. All we have to do is to let it flow and don’t hold our breath as the Spirit moves inside of us. It is kind of like, “we give in to the kind and loving impulses that we find welling up inside of us.”

The passage is explaining to us the importance of faith. Remember, there are three things important to our religion, Faith, Hope and Love and the greatest of these is love.

In our text, the author of Hebrews tells us that this is the way the ancient people found favor with God. They did it through living by faith in the fact that God was watching over them to bless them so that they can be a blessing to others.

God blessed them and through them, the savior was born to humanity. God was trying to show humanity what it means to walk with God.

The 11^th chapter of Hebrews is a retelling of a bunch of stories found in the Old Testament.

The story of the Old Testament gives it so much of its power, I love reading through the history of the people of Israel every year in my yearly devotions because I see how they remember the love and protection that God provided for them and kept them in a place where and when trials came, they could remember to rest in God’s love for them.

Like us, the Old Testament is full of “Higher Power” stories whereby the people deliberately point out the activity and blessing of God through difficult circumstances. God is with us.

It is the stories that keep us in the faith. We share our own stories with each other of how God has blessed or encouraged us and that builds the faith in others as well. There is power in our story.

The text recounts the story of the immigration of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob back and forth between the lands of what is known today as Iraq down to Palestine/Israel/ back again and finally settling in Palestine Israel. And it says it like this, however: It says that they were seeking a city whose architect and builder is God.

It was a spiritual journey of living a life of service to God and knowing that they were there to be the blessing of God that would lay a new foundation for the way people cared for each other.

They lived with the kingdom of heaven in mind. To be heavenly minded was not merely waiting to go to heaven when they die, but actively trying to bring the values and healing of the kingdom of heaven here on earth. Abraham was a blessing to the people he met.

We don’t completely understand this heavenly mindset until Jesus comes along and talks about a different way of living. Jesus teaches us how to live in love for others as much as ourselves and gives humanity, especially the poor and downtrodden, hope.

Along with faith, God gives us hope.

He speaks of how these people have this promise that God is going to build this new kingdom, this new city that is inspired by heavenly principles, and they died without receiving the promise but they held on to God’s promise for them.

Hope kept their faith alive.

And they were looking for the kind of human civilization that Jesus preached about.

This chapter about faith does give me help when I am in the middle of trials because it reminds me of my own stories and how God has always made a way for us in the end.

Right now we are living in difficult times with all of the uncertainty of politics and how much these new import taxes are going to affect us. I confess, when I look at my finances, I get scared and wonder realize like others here that there is no such thing as retirement in this economy.

But then I remember this chapter of faith and I remember that I am God’s child and when I placed my faith in them, they, God, promised to care for my needs. Fear of circumstance leads me to remember to live by faith.

Seeking heaven is seeking God's plan for the here and now.

Living The Life

 

Text: Colossians 3:1-11

Focus: holiness

Function: to find a positive way to reject the world’s values

3:¹So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. ²Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth, ³for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. ⁴When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

⁵Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). ⁶On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. ⁷These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. ⁸But now you must get rid of all such things: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. ⁹Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices ¹⁰and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. ¹¹In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, enslaved and free, but Christ is all and in all!

Good morning to the beloved children of the living God!

This morning, we are going to talk about holiness or what it means from scripture to be engaged in Godly living.

By Godly living, I mean, living for God. I don’t mean the pride that comes with being able to justify oneself with following a bunch of rules made up by people instead of God.

I mention this because I have been guilty of the pride of being religious and God has begun to show me that it is by God’s grace that I live and move and have my being. God’s grace forgives my weakness and personal failures. Praise God for God’s mercy towards us!

The Colossian Church had become infected with people what had come in and had added a bunch of rules to what it meant for them to become Christian. They were adding human rules to God’s grace.

Grace is hard for us to handle because there is nothing we can do about it. And we live in a culture with a value system that tells us that it is up to us individually to do something about our own problems and conditions. We are taught independence and self reliance, which is good, but it does get in the way of us trusting in God’s grace for us when we do what is called sin.

The first verse gives us a practical way to live a godly life of grace. And it is obvious: Think about God.

Well, maybe that is not so obvious. What does it mean to think about God?

I believe it comes from the scripture that tells us to pray without ceasing. We aren’t on our knees 24/7, but we are walking in a thought life that acknowledges the presence of God’s Spirit dwelling within our own souls or spirits.

So, we walk, humbly, with God.

Because the passage ends with that part of the baptism vows that made the church so attractive to loving people: “There is no difference…,” the whole passage is a recalling to the individual believer to their baptism.

So, inside the attitude of the heart implied in the passage is the idea of the symbol of dying to self so that we can come alive to Christ. We are buried under the water in baptism and we come alive to a new life, a new way of living.

I believe that God wants us to thrive when we are baptized. We are baptized into the power of God to transform the whole of our lives into the, as the passage says, the glory that God has for us.

So let me unpack the idea of dying to self. I mean dying to living selfishly.

The moral precept of Narcissism is that the moral good is what is good for me regardless of how it impacts my fellow human. It believes that we do not have to care for others.

When we follow God in the Kingdom of heaven, we change that perspective from living selfishly to living communally recognizing that God has given us enough to live on and to share with others.

So, he explains in the text a list of distractions that we put to death and it isn’t ourselves, our hopes, our dreams and our inspirations, but it is desires that keep our focus away from the love that God has called us to give to others.

The list of sins is short. He mentions passion which is being controlled by rage instead of the Spirit of God.

He mentions impurity both sexual and otherwise.

He speaks of evil desire, and I understand this to mean an action with consequences that will harm others.

And he ends with greed, which he idolatry. Greed keeps us from holy living.

Let me add today’s gospel lectionary text to the thoughts about holiness Luke 12:15-21:

16 Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17 And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 18 Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20 But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

The story tells us whether we are wealthy or poor to put our trust in God instead of our earning potential and what we have accumulated.

God was looking at the heart of the rich fool who had placed, in his heart, his confidence in his wealth instead of God.

Again, God blesses us and we are grateful.

What we don’t say is that we don’t need God anymore. That is what the rich man did.

But more than that. Brian McLaren pointed out that the rich man was expected to sell off his grain at a fair price because that was the just way that they conducted business. He was to sell it at a fair price because there were others who were starving. He might even have been trying to drive up the price of grain to get more for himself.

The world we live in calls that smart business. Jesus implies that it is exploitation and greed.

Most men, when they achieved the kind of wealth the rich fool achieved, instead of hoarding contributed to the society’s welfare. They would go to the center of the city and sit with the elders and participate in the governance of the city for the common good of the people.

This man, instead became selfish and did not consider the impact, or evil, of his actions.

He was not living in love for others, instead, he was living selfishly and Jesus condemns these actions.

I found it interesting that the lectionary writers combined these texts about the relationship of holiness to greed.

It boils down to following the command to love others as much as we love ourselves.

When we do that, selfishness seems to go out the window.

So, I hoped to help us understand what holy living is.

And from my perspective, Holy Living is living for the common welfare of my neighbor as much as myself.