The Light of Love

 

Text: John 1:1-8

Focus: Advent 3 Love

Function: to help people wonder at the mystery of the incarnation.

1:¹In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.

⁶There was a man sent from God whose name was John. ⁷He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

During this advent season, and all year long, we celebrate Jesus as the Light of the World.

I have to tell you that I did you a disservice a few weeks ago when I was speaking of mystery and the mystery of the light and I told you that understanding what is meant in scripture by Jesus being “The Light of the World” remains a mystery today.

I might have been wrong, or I might have overspoken.

It is part of the job of the Spirit of God to draw us into the scripture and into prayer so that we can draw closer to God. Through those mediums, we get to know the will and the character of God.

And so, since I made that statement, the Spirit of God has been nagging me to find out more about the what it might have meant to the first century Jewish reader by the phrase “light of the world.”

Jesus is the light of the World.

I didn’t know this, but I read that St. Francis of Assisi started the practice of placing candles in Christmas trees to demonstrate that the tree and along with it, all nature is part of creation and bears the light of God.

It is interesting to me that right there in the first few verses of the entire Bible light is mentioned. In Genesis 1 we read that God, on the first day, created light.

The earth already existed but was without form, so the first thing God did to give us a home was to create light.

The second day, God created the sky. The third day, God created vegetation. And it wasn’t until the 4^th day that God created the sun, moon and stars.

So the sun and moon coming after the creation of vegetation shows us that these verses are not literal, but highly symbolic.

That tells us something about the symbolism of the light.

Light as seen as the power of God. It is the manifestation of God.

The Jewish people were deep thinkers. And they saw the peculiar relationship, metaphorically, between God and light through the science of light.

I had to ponder this to get it:

You can’t see light, but because of light, you can see. And, you know that light exists, because you can see.

You can’t see God. But, you can sense the presence of God and you can also believe, that just like light, God permeates everything God touches because, God created it.

It is like, on the first day, God created a reminder that God exists. We worship the light, because it is God. We don’t however worship the sun because it was created after the light was created.

There is also a relationship between light and love.

Love is another thing you cannot see. But like light, and God, you can sense love.

The Jewish people also understood light to be the light of love.

The mechanism for that is the way that love shines a light on the darkness and dispels it.

And just like light is a metaphor for God, and God is light in that sense, also, more directly and better from a scriptural understanding is this: GOD is Love.

The Jewish people understood that love and light are similar, just like God and light are similar.

And the New Testament picks up that theme in 1 John 4:8 when the writer states “God is Love.” And right before that he says, that everyone who does not love does not know God.

Love is the constant theme throughout scripture.

So, just as God is love and God is light, Love is God and Love is light. All of these things are connected metaphorically in the both the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. And, in the Quran, if I am not mistaken.

Love is light and it brightens the darkness.

I think, or hope, every year, during this sermon on love that I can remind you that our Job as Christians is not to curse the darkness, but to shine a light so that others can see.

And that concept is not unique to Christianity. It actually is a Buddhist proverb.

The Spirit of God is still working across the face of the earth, as described in Genesis 1 leading and calling people to soften their hearts and love the other.

So how do we shine a light instead of cursing the darkness?

Acts of charity stem against the darkness.

We give gifts at Christmas because God gifted us with the light of the world in our presence. The gifts are acts of charity toward loved ones to facilitate, in a consumerist society, love for that person.

That is good and wholesome and giving those gifts is my favorite part of Christmas.

And we add to that other acts of charity. When we do acts of Charity, the Spirit of God is moving inside of us to love and care for the other. We are standing against the narrative of the world that is selfish and values self-promotion over the common good.

Acts of Charity remind us and the world that we are all human, all loved by the God, all favored creatures in the eyes of the divine and when we do them, we perpetuate the truth to the world about our faith that God is love.

So, let love be the light you shine.

A Just Peace

 

Text: Isaiah 40:1-11

Focus: Peace

Function: Advent 2

40:¹Comfort, O comfort my people,
    says your God.
²Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
    and cry to her
that she has served her term,
    that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
    double for all her sins.

³A voice cries out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord;
    make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
⁴Every valley shall be lifted up,
    and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
    and the rough places a plain.
5Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
    and all flesh shall see it together,
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

⁶A voice says, “Cry out!”
    And I said, “What shall I cry?”
All flesh is grass;
    their constancy is like the flower of the field.
⁷The grass withers; the flower fades,
    [[when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
    surely the people are grass.
⁸The grass withers; the flower fades,]]
    but the word of our God will stand forever.
⁹Get you up to a high mountain,
    O Zion, herald of good news;
lift up your voice with strength,
    O Jerusalem, herald of good news;
    lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
    “Here is your God!”
¹⁰See, the Lord God comes with might,
    and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him
    and his recompense before him.
¹¹He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
    he will gather the lambs in his arms
and carry them in his bosom
    and gently lead the mother sheep.

In the Messiah, by Handel, there is a song from verse 11 about how God will feed his sheep like a shepherd. And to me, the style of the music in that one song is unique to the concert because it is sung as a lullaby.

This passage is about the comfort that peace brings. A just peace, not necessarily the absence of conflict, but God’s new kingdom bringing love and kindness to all.

The passage starts out with the Rhema word of God speaking with God’s creative omnipotent power commanding the heavens, and all the physical and spiritual forces to bring comfort to God’s people.

The Spirit of God seems to be speaking here and she is saying that God is done with the accusations and the whole scenario of retribution and punishment for error. God will instead, reckon the weakness of the sheep and come among them and be their shepherd. God will help them. God will comfort and help us.

Let me explain what I mean by the Rhema word of God.

In the Greek, there are two words translated as the “Word of God.” Rhema and Logos. *

Logos is a direct reference to Jesus, in John 1:1, The Word of God. The Logos is literally “the words of” and it refers to the fact that although God is infinite, God gave us a sort of finite being, Jesus, to understand what God was all about in relationship to humanity. The coming of this “Word,” the Logos, is what we celebrate and hope for during the Christmas season.

When the passage says “The Word of the Lord stands forever, it is speaking of Jesus the Logos. That means we don’t worship the scriptures, but the Christ shown to us in those scriptures.

But In a few places the Greek word Rhema is used and is translated as “the Word of the Lord.” It is different from the Logos. It might be more closely understood as the creative voice of God.

Hebrews 11:3 indicates that God spoke and the worlds came into existence. Creation came into being through the command of God’s voice. It is powerful and creative.

Ezekiel speaks of it at the valley of bones when the prophet, speaking the Rhema word of God prophecies to the bones and says “Live” and they start creaking and moving and joining together and flesh grows on them and they become a mighty army. The words created life.

Again, it is symbolic of what happens when God breathes life into something. God’s word, in this case, God’s spoken word, uniquely referred to in the Greek as the Rhema, brings comfort supernaturally to God’s people.

And it is this Rhema voice of God with all the power of creation behind it which speaks to us, just as Ezekiel spoke to the valley of bones and they lived, life from death, God speaks this comfort to us.

We are comforted by the power of God. And that brings us peace.

The biggest change I notice in my aging is that I rise very early. And lately, I have added Christian contemplation and mysticism to my morning routine. It is an effort to reconcile my mystical and supernatural relationship with God through the gifts of the Holy Spirit and my understanding that God loves everyone, not just we who call ourselves believers.

God now reminds me that They love the person with whom I am upset or I disagree with. More importantly, God loves the person on the other side of the aisle from me on whatever topic I am passionate about.

When I take the time to practice this meditation I try to enjoy the beauty of the earth around me, to allow wonder and childlike faith to grow inside of me. I begin to see how this creative power of God which speaks comfort right into our souls and our spirits transforms us and begins to give us peace.

I love the idea of peace, and fostering it during advent. It is a great theme. And Isaiah is speaking of a corporate peace given by God as part of God’s desire to take care of Their children.

Essentially, God promises by the power of the Spirit to clear the path for them so that they can survive and maybe even prosper.

When God promises to level the field for them, God is showing them that God wants a peace that is just and fair for everyone.

We think of peace oftentimes as the absence of conflict. But no. God wants a just peace. One that cares for the least of these as well as those who are privileged by their wealth and power.

He speaks of the valleys being raised up and the mountains brought down. He speaks of a level playing field. A peace that works for everyone.

In contrast, I remember during the civil rights marches hearing phrases about Black people like “If they only knew their place…”

The people who said that were seeking a peace that was merely an absence of conflict, but not justice for the oppressed people.

It took courage for me as a teenager to speak against that kind of speech. It just wasn’t consistent with us singing Jesus loves them all, black, brown, red, yellow and white.

You can’t have second class citizens in an egalitarian society. But most importantly. We are members first of God’s kingdom and in that kingdom there is no race, class or gender, all are one in Christ.

Sometimes peace takes bold preaching to change the culture. But Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the sons and daughters of God.

So, let us claim the promise of that peace and spread it.

*I know the OT was written in Hebrew and Aramaic, but it was translated into Greek in the Septuagint and that was sort of their standard for scriptures in that day, so a Greek study is appropriate.

Vigilance

 

Text: Mark 13:24-37

Focus: Hope

Function: Advent 1

²⁴“But in those days, after that suffering,
the sun will be darkened,
    and the moon will not give its light,
²⁵and the stars will be falling from heaven,
    and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

²⁶“Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. ²⁷Then he will send out the angels and gather the elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

²⁸“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. ²⁹So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. ³⁰Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. ³¹Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

³²“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father. ³³Beware, keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come. ³⁴It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. ³⁵Therefore, keep awake, for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening or at midnight or at cockcrow or at dawn, ³⁶or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. ³⁷And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

Keep awake. A command in the imperative form. It is something for us to focus on while we are living here on planet earth.

And it is a great way for us to start the Advent season this year. Jesus is speaking here, and like Matthew 25, when he speaks of the foolish servants who didn’t prepare for a long time coming by the master, he calls for us to remain vigilant until Christ’s return.

In the bible, one needs to do a lot of study to discern what is to be taken literally, and what is to be taken symbolically. Jesus used a lot of symbolic language. In John 8:12, he calls himself the light of the world and yet, he never really explains what that means. He speaks in mystery and trusts that the Holy Spirit will help us understand the symbolism in the message.

He speaks here, what appears to be literally, of a physical return where the sun is darkened, the moon doesn’t give its light and a third of the stars cannot be seen. And then, he says, the son of man will come in the clouds. We talked a lot about that the last month or so. And we look forward to the time when Christ does return.

And as it says in a parallel passage in the book of Matthew, and Paul’s writings in Thessalonians that we just studied, there will be signs like wars and rumors of wars and other things and that is not the end. It is not the end. It is the precursor to the end. But it is not the end.

In this passage, the end is described as what appears to be the end of the planet with the sun and earth lessening their light.

But as we studied, this is the event where Christ returns in the clouds, not the event where we are taken to heaven. All of this takes place right here on planet earth and we believe that it is God coming back to earth to set things right.

One of my favorite hymns is “We’ve a Story to Tell to the Nations.” And it describes the second coming of the Lord in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox tradition.

And those traditions believe that this second coming is manifested in the way that Christ Jesus rules in hearts of humanity.

The line in the chorus goes like this “for the darkness shall turn to the dawning, and the dawning to noon day bright and Christ’s great kingdom shall reign on earth, the kingdom of love and light.

The light shines in our hearts and quickens us to be followers of Christ. The song refers again to the symbolic nature of Jesus being the light of the world.

And when I think of advent, I think of how that light dawns on me.

I really love Christmas lights. I love it when neighborhoods are lit up, almost in defiance of the long winter evenings with no light. And not in defiance of God or of nature, but in hope for the pleasure of beauty and love and all that is good, we resist the darkness with the lights as a symbol that we too are looking to be the light of the world.

Advent starts for me in the heart where during the season I am reminded of the goodness inside of humanity because I believe that the light of God shines inside of everyone. As Richard Rohr puts it, the Spirit created everything, so everything is divine. And according to Ephesians 4:6, another symbolic passage, God is all and in all.

I believe that we have to look for the light. Again, in Matthew 25, Jesus, speaking of what appears to be a delay in his coming, describes the wise servants as those who prepared and kept vigilant while they were waiting.

So, what can we do this advent season to shine the light and be vigilant?

Well, today we focus on hope.

Hope keeps us encouraged. Hope, I believe, is something about which we we have a choice. We choose to have hope or we choose despair.

We walk by faith trusting in the reality that we are God’s children and God cares for us. It gives us hope. Hope builds our faith and give us the power to love sacrificially.

I could not forgive if I did not have the hope that God forgave me. It helps me to see the other as just as valuable to God as me.

So, we don’t know when Christ is coming. But then also, we realize every generation had a hope that perhaps the time is now.

And that is true. Christ is indeed, always coming into this world to transform it.

Last week we read that we are the body of Christ. We are Christ on earth. So Christ is indeed here on earth to redeem it. It happens when we ourselves, individually practice the Christmas spirit of love and peace all year long. But during advent, we get to take the time to remember the importance of having that perspective while we are living here.

That perspective helps keep us vigilant as we practice the love of God when we work with God through conflict and struggles with people.

As Christ is always coming, Advent is always here. We are always hoping in the light of the world casting out the darkness.

Close with reading from Advent: “Take time, in the busyness of this season, for quiet reflection, for the light of God’s love is discernible everywhere. Welcome Christ into your heart this season and go forth with the knowledge that Christ is coming and is our Hope.”

Potential

 

Text: Ephesians 1:15-23

Focus: The Spirit

Function: To help people realize the potential of the Holy Spirit inside of them.

¹⁵I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason ¹⁶I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers, ¹⁷that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, ¹⁸so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may perceive what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, ¹⁹and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. ²⁰God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, ²¹far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. ²²And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, ²³which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Again, in this passage, Paul talks to us about the power of the hope that we have as believers.

And I have been focusing on the hope of the second coming of Christ, but in this passage, when Paul is speaking of the hope that we have, he is speaking of something entirely different.

He isn’t speaking of the future hope of believers, but of the present hope of the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us.

This is in the introduction to his letter to the Ephesian Christians and his introductions tend to be lengthy and are oftentimes filled with prayers for the people to whom he is addressing.

So, here is his prayer that he has for the Ephesian believers. He prays that they might understand, as he says in the passage, “the immeasurable greatness of his power” for us who believe. He makes the prayer for the filling of the Holy Spirit a priority in his pastoral ministry.

God loves everyone equally, black, white, Christian, Jew, Muslim, female, male, citizen or not, rich and poor alike. God loves everyone because everyone and everything is a part of the whole of the Creation.

So, we don’t get proud or arrogant, but he does mention the unique fact that those who believe are also made aware of the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of them.

It does not make is better than other people, or “more loved” by God. But it does give to us the power that we need to transform both ourselves and the culture that we live in.

Jesus didn’t accept the status quo, and they killed him for it.

We are following in his footsteps and we do not have to follow the status quo as well. That means we change the narrative. That means we change the story by our actions. We are called to love everyone and to see in them the potential that Paul is talking about that is given to us by God through the Spirit.

Jesus died and rose again to transform the world into a place where wars cease and people stop being greedy and start treating others as well as they want to be treated. I believe the golden rule is the perfect application to the command to love God by loving our neighbor as we do ourselves.

Again, the status quo of our culture is to live for ourselves and to hoard our wealth against a rainy day.

We sometimes forget that the scripture, in Deuteronomy 8:17-18 tells us that even if we have prospered by our own industry and hard work, a commendable thing, something to feel good about, it was God who gave us the strength and the opportunities correlated with that. We have to remember that many people are poor simply because they are unlucky and we are called by God to care for the least of these.

Remember, we are talking about the hope that we have that dwells inside of us, the power of God to fulfill the missions to which Christ has called us.

But what does this mean for us to be filled like this with the power of the Holy Spirit?

I am a bit of a mystic, and I glimpse it, but I don’t really understand the mystery of God’s Spirit. Every time think I have her figured out, she blows me away with new possibilities. God’s Spirit is still moving.

He reminds us that we, as believers, are Christ’s body here on planet earth.

The scripture calls us the ones who are called out of the worldly values into God’s value of loving our neighbor as ourselves. He means “called out” from the selfish values of the world in which we live.

We are both called and commissioned by God to be Christ’s peacemakers, filled with his Spirit in this broken and fallen world.

We are, as Jesus said, the light of the world. We are here. I believe, not to curse the darkness but to light a candle to show the way.

Jesus did not come to judge the world but that the world might be restored, saved and healed through him. He is the first one who is called the light of the world. And we are his body, so we share in that distinction.

It is an interesting phrase when Paul says “...with the eyes of your hearts enlightened….” It is his prayer that they have Spirit of Wisdom and revelation while they are in the process of learning to know Christ Jesus.

God’s Spirit leads us to be like Christ. These people didn’t have the access to scriptures that we have today. God depended then and still does, not on the preacher with the scriptures as much as God depends on the internal leading of the Spirit in the life of the believer.

When he prays that they understand, he hints that they have a level of ignorance that needs to be corrected, again, BY GOD through the Spirit’s leading and not necessarily through him. He trusted in the work of the Holy Spirit and made the filling of the Spirit a priority for them in his prayers.

I do the same here in my pastoral prayer and in my preaching. But as Paul is leading by example to me here, do not depend on me but rest in the fact that God promises to give the Sprit to you because you believe.

He uses the word “revelation” here. He is speaking of the mystery of the infilling of the Spirit .

When I was a Charismatic praise team leader and wanna be Pentecostal preacher, I thought I knew a lot about the Holy Spirit because I was familiar with the more outward manifestations of the filling of the Spirit recorded in the bible such as speaking in tongues, interpreting tongues, prophecy and discerning of evil spirits.

To me, faith was about power. Mainly the power to prove that God existed by praying for and seeing miracles happen. And I have seen a few miracles in my life.

In Matthew 16:4, Jesus said it was a wicked generation that needed signs to prove the faith.

And Paul prays that they will know the power of the Spirit inside of them. He understands like all of us that we are growing and are still learning things as we grow from level to level by the leading of the Spirit.

The power is important. But not to do miracles, as I once believed, but to transform both ourselves and the culture in which we live. We pray by faith for God to do acts of justice and to stop the violence and we don’t lose hope. We don’t lose hope even though it seems as if we are becoming numb to the frequent mass shootings.

We have the power and God is with us. We believe that if we act, God will help us. That is why I keep on preaching that we cannot be silent in the face of injustice. Silence is oftentimes consent.

And I mention this because God sends the Spirit inside of us to transform both us and through that process the culture around us.

Jesus said, the witness of the Spirit of God in our lives, of course, is the way we love others.

So, I corrected my thinking from when I was a wanna be Pentecostal preacher and switched my focus to the loving justice that Jesus preached so much about.

I realize now that the proof of the faith, this love that overwhelms us, is a result of us drawing near to God.

Paul is praying here and there is power for us in our prayers.

As we pray, we learn to submit to the will and love of God in our lives and we keep on being filled with the Holy Spirit.

And the fruit of the Spirit, Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness, Faithfulness, and Self-Control will become more and more manifest in our lives.

Sisters and brothers, take your time for your own prayer and meditation. Take time to listen to God and be honest about your doubts and fears.

The Holy Spirit is here to lead us and will not let us go. God h as filled us with potential. We were made to thrive.

Destiny

 

Text: 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Focus: resurrection

Function: to build our hope in God

5:¹Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. ²For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. ³When they say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape! ⁴But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; ⁵for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. ⁶So, then, let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober, ⁷for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. ⁸But since we belong to the day, let us be sober and put on the breastplate of faith and love and for a helmet the hope of salvation. ⁹For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁰who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him. ¹¹Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.

We a e continuing our theme from last week about the great hope that we have as believers in the power of the resurrection.

And our focus is verse 9: “God has not destined us for wrath but for obtaining salvation...”

According to this passage, it is NOT our destiny from God to endure wrath, but to obtain the salvation that God has for us in Christ.

Think of what salvation means. When we think of salvation, I wonder if our minds go to the right place?

I see salvation as the healing restoration to God and to others through the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.

But because I was taught a God of retribution, or wrath,0 instead of a God of restoration, when I was growing up I was taught that salvation merely meant that we were not destined for hell anymore.

And, there is truth to that, the text tells us that we are not destined for wrath. When he is speaking of wrath, he is speaking of retribution. And he says that God is not a God who delights in getting even with people for their sins. God is the God who sends the Spirit of God to them, either through their own faith in God, or through the loving response of a believer that draws them to the family of God as well.

People wonder about the mystery of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be “born from above.” Jesus was speaking of the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in the life of the individual.

God sends God’s Spirit to transform us.

If you read through the Old Testament you see that although the people knew the greatest commandment was to love their neighbor as much as they love themselves along with loving God, they simply had a hard time obeying that command. Their selfish nature got in the way.

So, God promises them through the prophet In Ezekiel 36:24-27 that they will be able to obey because God will send the Spirit to transform their hearts. And Jesus reiterates that prophecy by speaking mysteriously of being born from above. I grew up calling it born again and the meaning is pretty similar.

What happens is this: the Spirit of God moves us to love the other. That is why I believe that God is the God of restoration, not retribution.

Retribution implies wrath and revenge.

God loves us. Now, God does discipline us like a parent corrects their children. The discipline is not in anger or revenge, but in restoration toward the full potential of loving the other that God provides through the Spirit.

According to this passage, the Holy Scriptures of the Christian faith, it is not revenge that God practices. Jesus said: It is no longer an eye for an eye.

The retribution in the Old Testament did not work. People can be stubborn, selfish, even greedy and unforgiving. It is human nature. God sends the Spirit to help us overcome, I believe, our evolutionary tendency to love one group by hating the other.

Jesus showed us that living by hate and revenge is not the way of the Kingdom of God. By Jesus’ example, through his death and subsequent resurrection, we can forgive, forget revenge, and focus on restoration.

2 Corinthians 5:17-21 says: God wants to restore everyone to become loving and kind people.

However, that is not the way of the world we live in. That doesn’t excuse us, it calls us to depend more on Christ and the resurrection.

We live in a culture of independence. We live in a culture that encourages greed. I believe that it is immoral that 8 people have more wealth than the combined masses of 3.6 billion people on this planet. What is immoral is that we praise these people as examples for us.

The Bible says that it is the rich who oppress us and treat us unfairly. And yet we honor the rich as somehow better people than others even though many got that way by refusing to pay their workers a living wage.

It never has trickled down to the poor people and the Bible makes that clear.

But there is no eating sour grapes about not getting to be rich for the believer because our reward is laid up in heaven and it is eternal, not temporary.

And there is not eating sour grapes about the rich because the Bible the same passage in James that I quoted says that God has chosen the poor in this world to be honored and rich in spiritual things. Jesus said it as well in the beatitudes.

I sort of understand that concept.

I have spent some time working on mission in Tijuana, Mexico. I met a community of believers there who are living in desperate poverty and are more happy and have less stress than we do trying to protect all this wealth that we have.

So, we live in this Un-Christlike culture of independence which values individualism, personal gain and honors greed, over the Christian culture that values the welfare of everyone. Remember, the scriptures call us to live and love sacrificially for others.

Being Christian in our culture means that we accept a different set of values than the ones that allow for personal gain over the welfare of others. We are to treat others as well as we treat ourselves.

Now remember: our destiny is not for wrath, but for salvation. And remember, salvation is the healing that God gives us. The way of Christ is a path to an abundant life if we live by the principle of treating others as well as we treat ourselves.

Now the context of the passage is what is known as “The Day of the Lord.”

As we saw last week in the previous chapter, we are to fix our hope in the fact that Jesus is coming back and will reward us for living a life of love. It goes again with the Matthew 25 theme of being vigilant while waiting for the coming of the Christ.

He speaks in the passage about how at times we get distracted and fail. But here is the cool thing: he reminds us that even in failure, God has not destined us to be the recipients of wrath, but of restoration.

When we fail, the Spirit is there to lead us to confession and repentance.

I like to think of it as acknowledging our need for healing and correcting behavior that keeps us from experiencing that healing.

We teach the guys at Kairos that forgiveness, giving up the need for retribution and asking God to restore the individual who harmed us, is absolutely imperative for our own restoration.

And, during the forgiveness ceremony, through that act of giving revenge over to God, many are born from above and become Christ’s brothers in the spiritual realm.

My son Philip told me on the last weekend, three of the guys were not able to go through the forgiveness ceremony. And we do not push in Kairos, we let the Spirit convince, so we treated them the same and kept on loving them.

Forgiveness is hard. It is a sacrifice. It is a huge step in faith because it places its trust in the healing power of God instead of the human need for vengeance.

But remember, our destiny is not wrath, but restoration.

In John 12:47 we read that Jesus did not come to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

Again, I can’t emphasize this enough. God is no longer, if God ever was, the God of wrath. God is love, healing and restoration.

Let us let God heal and restore us to continue to be loving people as well.

Keeping Hope

 

Text: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

Focus: Hope

Function: to help people not be afraid.

¹³But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. ¹⁴For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. ¹⁵For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. ¹⁶For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever. ¹⁸Therefore encourage one another with these words.

This morning we are going to look in a bible study on this passage and hopefully understand better the great hope that we have.

I have to give credit where it is due. I got a lot of help for this sermon from an article the website Patheos.com I post links to all my sources and bible references on the web version of my sermon, so if anyone ever wants to know what I said and maybe why I said it, you can check it out later. Or if anyone wants to read the sermon because they missed a Sunday, they are there for you to study.

I love to use this passage of scripture at funerals. Brother Paul talks to us about grieving and I believe, implies that grief and grieving are necessary parts of the healing process.

He tells them that he wants us to grieve but not as those who have no hope. I can sort of change that to say, “grieve in hope.”

The hope that we he refers to in this passage is the hope of the resurrection.

And of course, the proof of that hope is the fact that Jesus died and then rose again.

When he rose, he was transformed. Remember, physically they did not recognize him until he did something that was personal or intimate for the people with whom he revealed himself.

Mary thought she was talking to the gardener until he called her name. With the disciples from Emmaus he burned the scriptures into their hearts and then broke bread with them and then they recognized him. With the eleven, he miraculously appeared inside the locked room where they were hiding. With Thomas, he singled out his doubt and addressed it and with again with the eleven, he filled their boat with fish. In all these cases, they didn’t recognize his physical form as the same.

When Jesus rose, they didn’t actually see the same physical body they remembered. What they saw was a glimpse of the glorified body that perhaps we will have as well. We don’t know what they will be. The Resurrected Jesus didn’t want Mary to touch him “because he was not yet glorified” but he also ate fish. So, who knows?

Even though the physical form was different, they believed in the fact of the resurrection That took some faith. And Paul reminds them that the same faith that overcame their doubts is the hope that they have now.

I point this to help us understand this passage and the rapture. The rapture is the belief that sometime either before, in the middle of, or at the end of, the Great Tribulation spoken of in the Book of the Revelations of St. John Jesus is going to snatch Christians off the planet and take them to heaven. If you read the Left Behind series, and many did, then you read how he imagined it happens at the beginning of the Tribulation and things get really bad on planet earth as God pours out his wrath on humanity.

This passage really isn’t referring to that scenario.

And for the King James readers, the word “prevent” meant “precede” in 1611.

But back to the doctrine of the rapture. It wasn’t taught or believed until 1827, John Darby published the doctrine from this passage. So, in the history of the church, it is a new doctrine and is really only embraced by the evangelical community.

I was raised the fear that Jesus was coming back and if I wasn’t ready, then I would be a victim of God’s final wrath.

But this passage is about hope. It says nothing about the wrath of God being poured out on humanity. It is the hope of a renewed heaven and earth with these same resurrected bodies that will never wear out.

Paul tells them us hold fast to this hope.

I do not believe that God wants us believers to dwell in fear. God gives God’s Spirit to believers in order to give them the power to be the witnesses for Christ in the brokenness of this world.

So, what about the rapture and the timing of it?

What Darby gets wrong in his interpretation is the difference between the Greek words for heavens and Air. The Greek word for Air is “air.” And the Greek word for heavens is “Oranus.”

Darby believed that the call of God by a Shout and the blast of the Trumpet were the final call to heaven for Christians off of planet earth.

But Paul is very clear in the passage that it is not heaven where we meet Christ, but in the clouds, or in the air. Jesus is coming back, indeed, and this phrase is another anchor for our souls. Matthew 25 gives us many considerations about the second coming of Christ. One of the things is “give me oil in my lamp and keep me burning.”

It is a reference to being prepared for the return to be a long time coming and at a time we don’t expect. He wants us to be vigilant about the fact that Christ is indeed returning.

And since Jesus was given this glorified body, I hope that so will we. Perhaps that is how we will meet Christ in the air.

The call and the Trumpet blast are references to the coming of God when He appeared to the Israelites in the wilderness when they escaped the Egyptians. When God gave them the first covenant.

The the call and trumpet are symbols that the next words coming were the Words of the Lord. And it appears that Paul is assuring them that these future events are destined to take place and we do not have to be afraid of death because they are ensured by the Word of the Lord.

He is reminding us that we are God’s and will be with God forever in our eternal reward.

And remember, the place where this happens is here on Planet Earth, not up in what Paul refers to in another place as the third heaven which is apparently the throne of God almighty.

There is a point to be made here that is very important and would have been understood.

We have been taught that the rapture is an escape from the wrath of God.

But this is not us leaving planet earth, this is God coming back to planet Earth to redeem and transform it.

Jesus is coming back, indeed. But not to bring God’s wrath to destroy planet earth, but to redeem it to its full potential by the power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the believer.

Paul preaches this passage because for some reason, they expected this second coming of Christ to be in their lifetime. But the Matthew Passage indicates that it is a mystery and at a time when we don’t expect it and it will appear to be delayed.

So, Jesus didn’t say it was in his lifetime, only that it was always going to be soon.

So, he calls us to be ready and waiting for his return, comforted in the hope of the certainty of it.