Christmas is a Time for Caring

Text: Romans 15:1-7

Focus: Love at Advent

Function: To help people see the welcome that God gives to humanity.

Form: GOK

Intro:

What a strange scripture for advent and Christmas season.

But today's lesson and emphasis focuses on love.

For those who have been in Churches most Sundays for their entire lives, how many have ever heard a sermon about Christian Love titled “Sloppy Agape?”

Agape is one of the 4 words for Love in the Greek language, the language in which the New Testament was written. Some theologians say that the meaning of this love can only be fully described by in the context of Christianity.

However, the word existed before the Christian faith began. The ancients understood the concept. I remember the first time I heard a sermon titled: “Sloppy Agape.” It was a rebuke toward the Church I attended about how because of their fighting they lost their Christian identity. They were harboring bitterness, envy, and unforgiveness and the pastor was calling an end to it.

I heard the sermon, and I was a babe in Christ. My wife was not really buying into my fanatic Christian faith at the time and that caused some conflict.

And the pastor, speaking from 1 John 4:7-8 says “God is love and everyone who knows God, knows love.” And then, he said: “Everyone who does not yet know God, does not yet know what love really is.”

So I took that last statement too far, went home and told my wife, a year and a half into our marriage, that I didn't love her when I married her because I didn't yet know God and therefore, could not have known love.

Guys, that isn't a good way to win your wives love, or to bring her to a relationship with Jesus. Learn from my mistake.

Actually, that was really bad bible theology. Ephesians 5: 21-33 tells us that everyone gets a view of God and His love for humanity in the way that a man and wife should love each other. Marriage, in God's eyes is a covenant of commitment, self-sacrifice, love and respect that also illustrates the love, respect, commitment and self-sacrifice that God has for us.

The word agape is unique in that it expresses love that is an act of the will, not based on a feeling. It is a choice we make. That is perhaps why the King James translates “Love” as “Charity” in 1 Corinthians 13.

Agape love, self-sacrificing love, is something that believers and unbelievers, those who are in the family and those not yet in the family of God can understand.

Christmas, is a time when everyone celebrates that idea. That is why crimes committed against Christmas, like stealing presents, or defrauding someone's good nature around the Christmas Spirit offend us more than others.

This passage deals with the love inside God's family.

It talks about how members of God's family should treat each other. And that love is a test for whether or not a Church can grow. If they can treat each other right, then God will entrust them with His babies to care for.

So, look at what God is teaching us in the lesson the Apostle gives about accepting those who are weaker in faith.

I love the clear words: “we put up with each other's weaknesses.” And, “we do it because as Christians, we are no longer living to please ourselves.”

Did you know that before Brethren baptized, and the reason they never baptized Children, was because the decision to follow Christ was and is not to be taken lightly. The phrase: “Count well the cost” was preached to every candidate for baptism.

It comes from the biblical commands to put others first, to accept both Jesus' salvation and His lifestyle of service to God and others.

Too often, the Church has turned away from the idea of living sacrificially. It sometimes has turned in on its head. I remember a youth retreat once, one of the advisors came to me in a panic because it was raining and the kids weren't having fun.

But love, Christian love, demands sacrifice. Sometimes it isn't easy.

You probably know the history of the fish symbol and Christianity. During the first 3 centuries, Christians were hunted down and murdered, placed in the Coliseums as entertainment for the crowds and sacrifices for the lions and gladiators. So they hid. And in Rome, and most Roman cites across the empire, they dug underground tunnels to bury the dead. Christians hid in those tunnels. In order for them to find each other, they marked their hiding places with a fish. The Greek Letters that spell fish, IKTHUS are an acrostic for Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.

When they were baptized, they did indeed count the cost. Their conversion into the family of God would cost them their lives if they were caught.

Count the cost. The symbol of baptism is this: We are buried (in death to ourselves) when we are plunged under the water and we are born again to a new life, a life living for Jesus when we are brought back out of the water.

The image is death to ourselves.

And so, back then, as it is now, people made the covenant to live for God and others, as living sacrifices, but soon crawled back off the altar and started criticizing others.

And what was happening was nothing more than religious pride. In the previous chapter, we read how the Church got into a battle of legalism. Legalism happens when we place the rules over the relationship. When we elevate the letter of the law over the Spirit of the law. Or, when we use the letter of the law to denounce our brother and sister just because we are having a personal conflict that Jesus is testing us with. For example, the Pharisees condemned Jesus' apostles for cracking open wheat to eat on the Sabbath day. And Jesus said, the law of the Sabbath wasn't made to place a burden on people, but to give people rest. And so, if a person is forced to be hungry, then they can do what ever it takes to eat.

At the time of writing the letter, there were three practices that some did which didn't bother their conscience, but they bothered others.

The first was eating meat. If you read the Old Testament, or go to a 7^th Day Adventist Church you may hear this. When God created humanity, all the way back in the garden of Eden, it wasn't His original intent for humanity to eat flesh. And this group of legalistic people believed it was more spiritual to go back to the created order, and therefore decided that if you really love God, you will not eat meat.

I AM NOT SAYING THAT VEGETARIANS ARE LEGALISTIC. There are good reasons to be vegetarian, even the idea that they do not want to take the life of any other animal. But in Rome, they turned it into spiritual competition.

It also centered on the day for worship. Some said, the OT law establishes Saturday, the Sabbath “forever.” Therefore the day of rest should be Saturday. Others said, But Jesus rose on Sunday. They called it “The Lord's Day.” And in order to celebrate the resurrection they switched worship to Sunday. There is New Testament support for both practices. He also mentions those who don't practice a day, but use the concept of Sabbath as a Spiritual metaphor. The exact phrase in Romans 14:6 is One person believes it is one day (Saturday), another person believes it is another day (Sunday) and some people regard every day the same.

And finally, he mentions the drinking of wine.

All of these areas are areas that are subject to personal conviction and preference. We are not to make a moral judgment about another person because they are not convicted in the same way we are. These things are are a test to see if we can love.

The Spiritual principle in the test is this: ”The way we treat each other is to live `not just to please ourselves' but to please others.”

So when people who call themselves Christians walk around letting everyone else know just how badly they have been hurt by someone else, or how uncomfortable they are with someone else's music or worship preferences. When people complain that the other way of doing something doesn't please them, then they have forgot to live in a manner that pleases Christ by pleasing others.

We have died to ourselves and have come alive to Christ Jesus.

Christmas is this time of giving, sharing, extending hope, expressing love. The whole idea behind the presents was supposed to be about self-sacrifice.

When I was in Bible College, we had 2 children born without health insurance. I was working part-time and going to school full-time. Kathy was baby-sitting up to 16 kids. Our lives were hectic and we were really poor. But it was beautiful time.

I remember one year we decided to give sacrificially. We weren't focused on our own poverty, because we saw the poverty in 3^rd world countries and compared to them, we were living rather well.

So, we gave $50. $50 that we didn't have. Someone gave us $100. We turned around and gave away that $100 and someone gave us $500. So we gave away $500, and a car to someone whose needs were greater than our own. Someone gave us $1,000 and then, a wealthy family decided to spend their Christmas on us and showed up with two huge bags of presents, toys, coats, clothes and etc.

We finally realized that we couldn't out-give God.

I've told that story many times. And inevitably, I hear: “You should have given away the $1,000!”

I was tempted. But I needed that $50. I needed that $100, I needed that $500 and I needed that car. Everyone of those was still a sacrifice.

By then, I learned the lesson. You can't out give God. I believed that to have given away that $1,000, I would have sinned by putting God to the test. I wasn't doing a financial transaction, or an investment.

You see it, don't you? The Command is to live self-sacrificing lives to please God and others.

There is only one way to be self-sacrificing. Count the cost.

I was talking with Dave Beebe last Thursday. Dave was a seminary student who attended here while he was preparing for ministry.

He told me that he preached here, about three years ago, the Sunday before I came to this Church as its pastor. He said his sermon was this: He showed you Ephesians 4:12, that the Pastor's job is to equip you, the Church, to build the Kingdom and he said: “Pastor Phil isn't responsible for building this church up, you are.”

Many of you know and love Dave. He called me for some encouragement. When he was posted at the Church he pastor's, I told him this: “No one should have to go there for their first pastoral placement. That church is a pastor killer.” I know the history of the Church. So, I didn't congratulate him.

And he is having quite a bit of problems with some shenanigans created by a few who have leadership authority. They are trying to fire the youth pastor and they are fudging the budget numbers to justify it when he knows the real problem is lack of forgiveness and loss of control.

Pray for Dave. He needs prayer support. He recognizes that it is spiritual warfare.

We talked a little bit about here. He is aware of what is happening, the conflict around this criminal case and he said this when we were talking about Brethren values.

I want you to hear it. He said: “The problem with American Christianity, the churches that buy into a form of civil religion is this, people don't count the cost when they are baptized. They are told that becoming a Christian is a smart financial move, a solid political move, and a move that will bring the blessings of God into every area of your life.”

His point was that maybe we need to remind people that when we are in conflict, we made a vow to God, a promise to Jesus, and a promise to this Church that we will live for each other instead of ourselves, we will put our pettiness aside. And if we have counted the cost, then whatever price that costs us, we will pay it. If that means we have to repent, if that means we have to call out the sinful behavior of someone whose actions put everyone at risk. If that means we have to grow up and put aside our own pettiness for the common good, then so be it.

Dave was speaking about his situation. He said, there is this beautiful older generation of believers there who founded Timbercrest nursing home. They placed it next to an orphanage and they sacrificially funded and staffed it themselves. These people lived the Christian life. They lived sacrificially. He said: If I could resurrect those Brethren values in the younger generation, (and he would be talking about people MY AGE), we can get back to being the Church Jesus called us to be.

Then he said, “remember Phil, just because a Church has a cross on its steeple, it doesn't mean they are following Christ Jesus.” I know he was trying to convince himself, because we don't have a cross on our steeple.

But he went on to say about counting the cost, and easy believe-ism. Too many people “got Jesus as a fire escape from hell” but have no willingness whatsoever to actually put their own pleasure aside and live for the good of God and others.

Then, he was getting wound up. He said, “way too many people, people who refuse to accept the price and live sacrificially will get to heaven and tell Jesus how they preached His name, and prayed for people, and tried to witness with words and Jesus will say, “I never knew you because I was naked and you didn't clothe me... I was hungry and you didn't feed me....”

I know he wasn't talking about you all because he went on to speak of the great saints here. He told me about Hazel's faith, Doris' faith, Hilda's faith, Bill Farrel's faith, Bub's faith, Ray's faith, Garry's faith, Gloria's faith and Jill's faith. He said, you have a core of people there that understand what it means to count the cost and live for God and other's. I think he was jealous. Pray for him. But let me remind you, don't give up doing good. Great is your reward in heaven.

Can we count the cost and forgive each other?

The Kindom is Already Here!

Text: Matthew 13:44-52

Focus: Hope

Function: 1^st Sunday in Advent, To help people realize that the hope of advent is already present and worth everything.

Form: Storytelling

Intro:

Christmas presents. What a blessing for kids and adults alike! What a blessing to receive, and much more, to give!

Remember the fun of shaking the package? The fun of pressing around the edges if the package wasn't in a box? My dad always had so much fun wrapping the presents. He would do things like tape boxes together with cardboard tubes and make a reindeer, and hide all kinds of presents in different compartments. One year, a beautiful piece of ruby jewelry was in a box on the nose of Rudolf!

Those presents represented a treasure. They represented hope and excitement.

And Jesus gives these three parables about the worth and the value of God's kingdom, represented as treasure. And He gives this treasure in three forms. 1^St, a hidden treasure. 2^Nd, a known treasure, and 3^rd a reward for hard work, but also a treasure that can be faked.

The fish are already in the sea, the exquisite pearl is also already formed, and the treasure is already hidden in the field.

The gift, the prize, the desire that we hope for is already realized. The Kingdom of God is already here!

What is the Kingdom of God?

When you hear that term, what image does it inspire in you?

Do you imagine an image of an huge white-bearded man with a big golden crown on His head and these eyes that flash like lightning? Do you imagine this big booming voice that shakes the room? Do you see this great big huge throne, and all these angels around it?

When we get the picture of the throne room of God, there is this glassy sea, or sea made of crystal, billions of people are standing on it, angels with 6 wings are flying overheard, around the room, are 24 other thrones, with great people sitting on them, there is this emerald rainbow, I guess in various shades of green behind it and the building is shaking with the sound of thunder and the flashes of lightning.

The image is both beautiful, and terrifying. Every human ever born will stand on that crystal sea. It is an overwhelming image!

Or, when you hear the Kingdom of God, do you picture a person, sitting on a throne, with a miter hat, and men in robes around him, and incense burners putting out strange smoke and all the while, there are poor people at the door starving? Do you picture a version of religion that doesn't actually care for the poor?

Do you picture a worship service, the music is stunning, people are in the presence of God, warmed by His Holy Spirit, there is either the steady beat of a drum, of the beautiful overtones from a grand organ, either or.

When we think, “Kingdom of God” do we think of the day when the last trumpet will blast, and every eye will see Jesus return in the clouds to set the world to the right, for the first time since the fall of Satan himself?

Jim and Pat Shepard have this beautiful painting of what heaven could be like. There is this golden gate, the tree of life, and the celestial city. When you see it, it makes you long for that place of peace. I saw a famous picture of the feast of the Lamb. It was a table, set up for a love feast, and the way the author drew it, it goes on forever. At every seat is a pitcher of wine and a loaf of bread. It is the wedding feast of the lamb.

And Jesus, Jesus said, I won't break this bread or drink from this cup again, until I do it with you in heaven.

What thoughts goes through our minds when we think of the Kingdom of God?

Every one of those images I placed in your minds, is a place that we are not in at the present time. Well, the music was good this morning. But still, all of those things and places are not the place where we generally dwell. Some of them, we physically cannot get to while these bodies of our still have breath in them.

Note this: there is one common theme in these three parables. The Kingdom is already here.

Two of the parables, the one about the hidden treasure and the one about the pearl of great price have a secondary theme: It is worth everything we own.

And that brings us to hope. What is the thing about hope?

Hope is the decision to hang on to a belief that something good will happen.

1 Corinthians 13:13 tells us that there are three main pillars of our Christian life: Faith, Hope and love, and the greatest of these is love.

Christian living does not exist without hope.

Hebrews 11:1 tells us that faith is the confidence that what we hope for will happen. I like the King James Version, it is the substance, the proof, the reality of what we hope for.

Hope is the decision to hang on to belief. I keep telling people that faith is a gift from God, but hope is the decision to accept and trust in those gifts from God.

So what is the connection between hope and this hidden treasure, the Kingdom of God?

When we hope, we hope for something that we do not yet see.

So here it is, advent. It is this time for hope. I think of the presents that will come underneath the tree, and even though they are right there, the hope of what they can be is still this glorious mystery.

It is like, we have it, and yet we don't.

But it is a gift, it cannot be taken away.

Although... one year... I was being a boy, and the back of the couch was moved for the tree, with some presents under it. There was this one spot that was the best location for viewing the TV. My brother was heading for that spot by walking around the back of the couch.

I beat him to it, but jumping over the back of the couch. Except, dad was there watching. Jumping on furniture was a no-no. Dad gave me a choice, take a spanking now, or lose one of the presents. I told him I would think about it (with the hope that he would forget).

Every day, and then once or twice a week, the question came to me. Finally Christmas came, I grabbed my presents and proceeded to open them all. He did forget, but for that year, Christmas was a rough one, always wondering if what I hoped for would be taken away.

What if our hope is taken away?

Can our hope in God be taken away?

In these parables, Jesus is saying that the hope we have is already here. Not just like the Christmas present under the tree, but the Kingdom of God is here and now.

Right now we have the choice to accept or reject it.

Jesus refers to it as a “pearl of great price.” It is something that is worth all that we have.

He refers to it as a treasure hidden in the field. It is the present, and we already know what its value is. And again, it is worth all that we have.

And it is like a great catch from a fishing net.

Wasn't it great the two times the apostles threw their nets into the water and got so many fish in return that they could quit for the day?

On both occasions, they had been working all night without any success, but when the master came, they found their purpose.

The funny thing was, on both occasions, they left the catch behind, gave up everything and followed Jesus.

Again, finding Jesus is more important than anything.

But then, think about the terms: “Kingdom of God” and “finding Jesus.”

To get us thinking about this subject, I started with the question as to what the Kingdom of God actually is.

The term Kingdom means that first and foremost, it is the reign of Christ Jesus, the Messiah, the anointed one, the one who came to set the prisoners free, to restore sight to the blind, to proclaim "the year of jubilee." Jesus quotes Isaiah 61:1-2. The year of Jubilee was to be a great year.

The Kingdom of God is no earthly Kingdom. Don Krabill, the author of “Amish Grace” calls it “an Upside Down Kingdom”

It was a year when all the property went back to the original families. All slaves were set free. All loans were canceled. It was a “start over,” “do over” year. It was a redistribution of wealth.

The unlucky and even the lazy got another chance.

And God wants to protect people, even the least of these.

When Jesus came, He started His ministry with proclaiming that God's Kingdom is here and now, and this is the kind of Kingdom that He was establishing.

Now here is the thing. Too often, I myself. And too often, too many of us are waiting ONLY for the Kingdom to come. (Point away)

Too often, we think that when we get to heaven, that is the time for Jesus to reign in our lives.

And right now, we have to strive and fight and do whatever it takes to succeed in this world.

Sometimes, that can mean exchanging eternity, the Kingdom of God that is already here, for the momentary pleasures of sin.

Or, it can mean we exchange our Christian values for the momentary pleasure of revenge, unforgiveness, and bitterness.

Or, it can mean we value our citizenship in this world over our citizenship in the Kingdom of God.

That would be like we are double dipping. All the pleasure of the here and now, and heaven at the end. After all, one may justify themselves in saying, we have stood faithful against all the sinners out there and proclaimed the evil of their deeds, therefore the reward of riches here on earth is ours to claim.

But that is not the kingdom that Jesus came to establish.

Jesus' words in this passage, the man gave up everything here on earth to obtain the Kingdom of God. Jesus' parables indicate sacrifice now for a better way of living.

And isn't that what sin is all about? Momentary pleasure in exchange for eternal life? Isn't that what Satan himself offered Adam and Eve in the garden? Isn't that the temptation of Moses, become the ruler of Egypt, the greatest kingdom on the face of the earth, or suffer in the wilderness with God's people, doing God's will?

Hope is what this sermon is about. And it isn't hope in something we cannot see, it is hope in something that is here and now. When we conclude, we are going to invite you to return to the altar and pick up a hope stone. The idea is that the hope is something that we already possess.

But I would be remiss if I didn't go into the only part of the parables that Jesus explains. He mentions the fishermen with all the fish, and the angels at the end of the age separating the good fish from the bad.

When I think of that, in relationship to hope, I think back to the Christmas where my hope was in question with the decision to forgo a present, or get a spanking. I lived that Christmas season without a lot of hope, ashamed.

I understand my father's discipline. Son, your actions have consequences. Sometimes, the smallest thing can bring the biggest trouble. It was a good lesson to learn and I don't fault him for that.

And Jesus is giving that same warning, some, just like the bad fish, are going to be caught up in the “search for the Kingdom” and still are not going to make it.

Jesus is saying that the citizens of the Kingdom of God already live that way. Those who say that Jesus' only purpose was to save us for heaven miss the fact that the kingdom is already here.

Those are the bad fish.

I wanted us to think about the image that is created in our minds by the title “Kingdom of God” in order to understand just what we have been taught about it.

Is it a kingdom of domination, or a Kingdom of compassion?

Rick Warren, the author of “The Purpose Driven Life” has spent almost all of the income from the millions of copies he sold in places like Darfur, Rwanda and the thousands of villages that have been lost an entire generation to the AIDS epidemic. He recognizes this basic principle, everything he owns belongs to Jesus, so he will not hoard it for himself.

He was working with an interfaith group on behalf of the poor, at a college in Colorado and during a question and answer time, someone completely changed the subject and asked him how they could work with him since he, as an evangelical Christian believed that she, a person of the Jewish faith, was going to hell.

I appreciated his response. She was attacking the concept of a Kingdom of God that dominates others and his response was from the upside-down kingdom.

He said, I have tenets of my faith that are important to me, I believe what I believe, but that doesn't prevent good people from different faiths from coming together and doing good on behalf of the poor.

Good answer. Two pastoral friends of mine are starting studies in a book with a weird title: “The Naked Anabaptist, what would Christianity be if Christendom had never occurred.”

The idea is that the Kingdom of God is not a bad place. It isn't about politics and power, it's about hope, faith, justice and love for one another.

To live that way takes sacrificial living. That is why Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of God is worth everything we possess.

When, instead of marketing a scheme to justify our wealth and our lack of concern for the least of these, our faith is about caring as Jesus did and the Kingdom that we preach is upside-down in comparison to human kingdoms, then instead of being a place that keeps others out, it becomes the place to invite others in. It is a place to invite sinners in. It is a place to invite sinners like me, and you, to find help, hope and healing and to give that same mercy toward others.

Instead of the museum for saints, we are the hospital for sinners, and as we get well, we get to share in the treatment of others.

I love the example of Rick Warren. Because he got saved, he took the millions of dollars in revenues from his books and he turned them upside-down. That didn't translate into mansion after mansion, and the latest jet, but instead he spends it on the least of these.

He shared the hope that the gospel gives.

That hope is here, now. The kingdom is here now. As we close, you are invited to come and take a “hope stone” with you. It is a symbol that you will not forget to trust God. It is a symbol that you are partners with sharing His hope with a lost, bleeding and hurting world. It is a symbol that the hope you have is not just for yourself, but for Jesus' kingdom of peace, love and justice be spread upon the face of the earth.

As our scripture says, there will be many collected in the great dragnet at the end, in the day of judgment, and He will separate the just from the evil. I invite you to embrace His kingdom. Stop waiting for it, and get in on the great project today.

The Purpose of Suffering

Text: Luke 21:5-24

Focus: Suffering

Function: To help people see the divine purpose of God in the midst of suffering.

Form: Story telling/bible study.

Intro:

Have you ever heard anyone say: “If there is a God, why is this happening to me?”

I remember reading a terribly graphic story of Auschwitz by Rudolf Vrba titled “I Cannot Forgive.” He was around 14 years of age, when he became a prisoner there. He describes the methodical brutality of his German oppressors. He describes the incredible betrayal by his fellow prisoners, who were elevated to positions of authority, called Kaypos, over their own race. He describes the carelessness with which both the Germans and they Kaypos murdered his friends and of course, the victims.

His job was to transport the dead bodies from the gas chamber to the furnaces. He arrived healthy, and even though all the other young men his age who were imprisoned at the same time as him died, somehow he survived, and eventually escaped.

He was raised as an orthodox Jew with a strong faith, but as he watched as at least 1.1 million people died there, he concluded one thing: There certainly cannot be a God because if there was a God, He would certainly intervene and stop this.

He too asked the question, if there is a God, why is this happening to me?

One of my sons was turned down for a position at a job, a job he diligently tried to obtain. He questioned the faith. He said: “Dad, I prayed, I tithed, I went to Church, I did everything you told me to do in order to maintain a relationship with God, and God didn’t answer my prayer. Is God real?”

Having dreams, working hard, studying hard, being diligent in order to better oneself, and contribute to society by doing a special kind of service work, protecting people, is noble. Certainly God is in that and would bless those actions. It is noble. We believe that if we strive to do well, then God will bless us.

I thought of that book when my son was asking the question if God was real and I thought of telling him that situation to put his own problem into perspective. But then, I decided not to, because at the time the problem was real to him. God is big. God is big enough to care for smaller problems as well as huge ones.

Listen to this scripture: Romans 2:7-11:

⁷To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. ⁸But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. ⁹There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; ¹⁰but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. ¹¹For God does not show favoritism.

So Look at the promise here in Romans. The promise is, if you do right, you will be blessed, if you do wrong, you will suffer.

It all sort of makes sense. It makes sense of the world. The world is ultimately fair and we can trust it.

But remember Job’s counselors. It was too much for them to imagine that God had another purpose. The tragedy that happened to Job was so swift and complete that it was obviously divine in nature. And since God is always fair, then Job must have sinned.

It makes a lot of sense. As a matter of fact, it seems to be the only way we can get up in the morning and function. We need this hope in order to try.

But the thing is: the world is not always fair. God is always fair, but sometimes He has bigger purposes in mind for us. Job had no idea that God was proving a point to Satan and that was the reason for his suffering.

Job’s friends had no idea that God was proving that He is completely sovereign over humanity.

They did not understand God was teaching a lesson to the entire world, in scripture, that mankind can never fully comprehend what God is doing.

I find some big comfort in the times when I have suffered unfairly. I see Job as a soldier in God’s army and God uses Job to God’s best interest. I trust God. I trust that He has a greater purpose in the way He spends my life.

There is a privilege in being one of those people whom God uses for His purpose and not our own. That is what it means to take up our cross and follow Christ.

So why did this happen to this young Jewish man, the author of this book?

I wonder: Did he experience survivors guilt? All of the other young and healthy boys who were initially imprisoned with him died and he survived. Maybe it was because he was a great writer, maybe God kept him alive in order to record the story. But at the same time, he blasphemes God constantly because he cannot reconcile how a loving God would not, or could not, do something on their behalf. Why? He cries out time and time again in the book. Why doesn’t God stop this?

The interesting thing is, this passage itself alludes to the fact that God knows what happened to His people in WWII. Look at the last verse, from the Message: “Jerusalem under the boot of barbarians until the nations finish what was given them to do.”

I heard an extremely racist pastor once dismiss the entire holocaust because God had ordained it.

Just because there is this prophecy, it doesn’t make it right.

The scripture in Romans still applies. We don’t understand God’s purpose and fairness, but that doesn’t give us an excuse to live for ourselves only and not care about the consequences of our actions.

As I mentioned last week, this passage of scripture is a prophecy about the fall of Jerusalem which happened in 70 AD. Most, if not all of it has been fulfilled.

The great Jewish historian, Josephus, records that 1.1 million were killed, 97,000 were taken into captivity back then. He said this, “the ran out of trees to make crosses for all the people that they murdered.”

Jesus speaks of signs. In verse 8, Jesus mentions people who would capitalize on our fear. He says: “There are many who will come and say “I am he” and “the end is near.” DON’T LISTEN TO THEM.

I loved what I heard on October 30, a pundit said: “We live in hard times, not end times.”

Jesus Himself tells us to be careful about making too much of it. Others worry that we make to little of it, so He gives to us some balancing points.

Verse 10: You will hear of wars, and rumors of wars, but the time isn’t yet.

Verse 11: You will hear of earthquakes, but the time isn’t yet.

The only sure sign is in verse 12: Global persecution for all of God’s people.

So Jesus tells us how to respond to that: don’t be alarmed… … but God is in control. Some of us will be forced to defend our faith, and our lives in courts, don’t prepare your speeches, Trust Christ, He is with you and knows the struggle you are facing.

Now, as I mentioned most if not all was fulfilled already. 39 years after Jesus gave this prophecy, the entire nation of Israel was destroyed. The Romans tore down the Temple, that was just finished. History says it looked like gold covered white mountain. It was huge.

The people were brutalized. It was horrible.

This prophecy took place in the first generation after Jesus was crucified and rose again. So, when Jesus said, “this generation will not pass away…,” that prophecy was indeed fulfilled.

This isn’t necessarily a prophecy about the generation that sees Israel restored as a nation. It could be, many prophecies have two fulfillments. But many have looked at 1948, the rebirth of Israel and have said, it must be this generation, the one we are currently living in.

You may remember the book “88 reasons why Jesus will return in 1988.”

So people bought the book, some spent their fortune since they wouldn’t need it anymore.

But Jesus didn’t return then.

And before that was 1981. If the 7 year tribulation was to be before the return of Christ, and that couldn’t be any later than 1988, and if the rapture was to happen before the tribulation, then the rapture had to happen no later than 1981. I remember reading “11:59 and Counting” by Dr. Jack Van Impe. It was his 1979 addition, in it, he proclaimed that there was no possible way that Jesus would delay His coming into 1982 and that anyone who disagreed with him was probably not really a Christian.

I was buying a mobile home on contract from a Christian brother of mine. I owed him $600 on it. He called me, in a panic and told me he needed me to pay him off completely, right away because his pastor told him that if he had any outstanding debt, like a car loan, or a mobile home loan, he would not get raptured.

So I prayed, and God provided the funds. And my friend still hasn’t been raptured.

I am not mocking.

The Bible also says that in the end times, there will be scoffers who mock our belief in Jesus’ second coming and make fun of us by saying “You guys have been saying that for years and it hasn’t happened, yet, it probably never will.”

I am not mocking. I was looking for the title of that book by Jack Van Impe, and I found 27 other books by him. For less than $100 you can purchase a leather-bound “prophecy” bible, complete with proof of the next time he says Jesus will return. But his latest is the best. For $24.95 you can purchase a book providing direct biblical proof that your pet will be in heaven with you.

He has up to 6 versions of 11:59 and counting, all revised because his dead on sure prediction of the event was wrong. Finally he gave it up.

God said you will know a false prophet…

In this passage, Jesus is saying, the one who makes a sure date of it, did not come from Christ. Do not listen to that person.

But this guy keeps on selling. He keeps on selling Jesus. He keeps on marketing a commodity to people who would rather suspend their own thinking and buy into his financial empire.

Now listen, I am not mocking the Second Coming of Christ.

1 Thessalonians 5:3 gives an even more accurate sign, after the signs of the earthquakes, wars, rumors of wars and persecution. It says, the return will come when everyone is saying peace and safety. It is almost as if the time when wars, and those other signs and wonders is past that Christ will return.

It isn’t wars, and catastrophe’s, but Paul says “Peace and safety.” I wonder if hard times mean it isn’t ready to happen yet?

So why are we lead to believe otherwise when the scripture is clear?

I believe he is coming back.

Did you ever read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? I haven’t. It is 734 pages long. And that is fine print.

Contrast that one volume with the 13 larger print, wider margin average 200 pages books of the “Left Behind” series by Jenkins and LaHaye. These guys drug out the one book, into 13, books, at $20 a crack. Okay, they could have done it in 2, or 3 volumes, that is what is average, but no, they maximized their profit.

Jesus said, “Don’t go after these kinds of things.”

I read the books, up until about the 11^th one. They were fascinating, but then I got to thinking about what they said, and what the Bible actually says and I started to pause.

The stories had these great miracles of sovereignty by God doing the things that God can do, and all the while, we were kept in suspense because the main characters could die at any moment. It was like they had faith and fear at the same time.

Jesus said, “Don’t prepare your defense, trust me, I am going to be with you.” In our passage, we see “not a hair will be harmed” and that is right after, you will be persecuted and killed for my sake. He is talking about spiritual protection, our hope of glory and perhaps the honor of being a martyr for Him.

Now I read the books because unbelievers were reading them, and asking me about end times prophecy and I wanted to be ready to point them to Jesus. But as the series drug on, my friends started mocking because they could see through the obvious marketing scheme.

Sadly, when I mentioned this to a brother in the Lord, mentioning how an unbelieving friend of mine mocked how they were dragging out the story so they could sell more books, they said that maybe I should spend less time with unbelievers.

But then, here was Jesus, a friend of sinners.

So what about the second coming of Christ?

Do I believe it?

You bet I do.

⁶In that day the wolf and the lamb will lie down together, and the leopard and goats will be at peace. Calves and fat cattle will be safe among lions, and a little child shall lead them all. ⁷The cows will graze among bears; cubs and calves will lie down together, and lions will eat grass like the cows. ⁸Babies will crawl safely among poisonous snakes, and a little child who puts his hand in a nest of deadly adders will pull it out unharmed.

Isaiah 11:6, 65:25 The lion lays with the lamb. A child places its hand in the rattlesnakes nest. The Lion eats hay like cow.

Jesus is coming back. I believe in His ultimate rule of justice.

I believe Isaiah 2:4, Micah 4:3 Men will not war anymore. The oppressive nations will be brought under Jesus’ rule, men will beat their swords into plowshares and they will not learn war anymore.

I believe that the evil rich will no longer be able to enslave the poor, eliminate the middle class and cry moral superiority as hard working wealthy people.

I believe that the poor will have the chance and hope to earn a living and will no longer believe it necessary to abuse the system because they will be given a real chance.

Yes, Jesus is coming back. We long for His returning. We long for His justice to reign. And those who read Him, those who want to live like He did, those who take up their crosses to follow Him and live for the good of humanity instead of their own selves will also be the ones who long for His returning.

In the opening video, we saw the picture of the twin towers, and their destruction, and at the same time, we heard the words to the great hymn: “This is my Father’s world…” It says, and though the wrong, seems often strong, God is the ruler yet.

Jesus gives this sermon for us to have confidence that no matter how bad it looks, God is still doing His purpose. We may never understand it, but we live by faith.

The God of the Living

Text: Luke 20:27-38

Focus: Resurrection

Function: To tie together PO-MO and MO in the hope of the resurrection

Form: GOK

Intro:

Well, isn’t it great that the elections are over? Praise God we aren’t subject to all that negative advertising! I hate the way they play with our emotions with sound bites that are neither provable, or defendable. It makes me sick.

People feed on negativism. The true wickedness of gossip is the way it is supposed to make a person look better than another by comparison. But the gossip has already lost.

In this passage, the Sadducees are trying to make themselves look good by making Jesus look bad.

My twin brother called me this week about some advice about his Church, were he serves as Board Chairman. It is a pretty conservative Nazarene Church. The pastor is under attack. I have met the pastor, he is sort of a jerk. My brother admits it.

And Pete’s position is that he is Pastor, God called him there and he is going to support him in spite of his personality.

The Nazarenes are pretty conservative. If you drive into Bourbonnais, Illinois where there big undergraduate School, Olivet, is you will see a lot of women without any jewelry, all in skirts, no makeup, long hair, and a lot of men, who although they are married, they don’t have a wedding ring on.

It is a pretty conservative denomination. And yet, the College Church has come under attack for being too liberal.

Now, liberal to them means that more and more women are wearing jewelry, pants and cutting their hair. I am not mocking different dress codes, or people whose have dress codes that are so conservative they are obviously affiliated with some sort of religious group. I am not mocking it, but because it goes on in a “college” town, people are concerned that their children are being corrupted by these modern ways.

It is becoming such a controversy among the Nazarenes that my other brother, who attends a Nazarene Church in Colorado Spring won’t let his daughter attend a Nazarene school.

So my twin was regarded with suspicion in his church until they got Pastor Ray. Pastor Ray, is heavily involved with Mt. Vernon Nazarene College, where Zach Patterson just graduated from. I am pretty sure that his children and Zach attended there together.

Now, so we can see how silly this fighting is (SHOW WEDDING RING) wearing a wedding ring has become proof that someone has become liberal. Now, consider Zach Patterson. He graduated that school with a tremendous passion for mission. He is full-time serving Christ. I would say his spiritual development in one of those so called “liberal schools” has been tremendous.

And of course, liberal for Nazarenes, and Liberal for us Brethren mean something completely different.

But here is the point, just as our nation is divided, stymied from any forward movement, stagnant to the point that recovery looks impossible, there will always be liberals and conservatives. And they will always fight.

And that is exactly what is happening in this passage. There were two groups of leaders in the Jewish Religious community. The Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Pharisees managed the system of teaching points called the synagogues. The Sadducees worked primarily alongside the priests in the Temple.

So, in order to understand Jewish culture at this time, they had this centralized official place where Jehovah was worshipped and it included both conservative and liberal theological elements. But it was primarily liberal because in the synagogues, the Pharisees would not tolerate the infidelity of the Sadducees. Rabbis, by the way, were teachers involved with both groups and they aligned themselves with whatever theology their identifying group was.

The Pharisees were the fundamentalists. Most of them missed Jesus as the Messiah because they had done so much studying about how the Messiah would come, they had argued it till their faces were blue, they missed the mystery of God’s word. But since they had such a heart for the OT Scriptures, some of them become believers in Jesus. Nicodemus, from John 3 and Gamaliel are two of them.

The Sadducees believed only in the First 5 books of the Bible, the writings of Moses. Those books are also called the Pentateuch (Pente – 5 books) or the Torah.

So, at the time of Christ, it was like the Jews had their own sort of New Testament and Old Testament.

The Pharisees, in the synagogues used the entire Old Testament, but the Sadducees, and the priests used only the writing of Moses.

The same traditions go on today, even here in Dayton. There is a Jewish Temple, downtown and several Jewish Synagogues.

The Temple is going to be the more liberal group and the synagogues are divided into other sects of Judaism. Almost like Christianity with Baptist, Brethren, Methodist, and etc.

I grew up in the Jewish section of Fort Wayne. I went to school with the children of the Rabbi’s from both the Temple and the Synagogue. Most of them lived in the same area, the area around the Synagogue, because they weren’t allowed to drive on the Sabbath, so they had to walk.

Rabbi Gephardt was the Rabbi at the Temple, Rabbi Weller was Rabbi at the Synagogue. Rabbi Gephardt’s daughter, Rachel was a friend of mine and invited me to her bas-mitzvah.

A few years after High School, I had occasion to be in their house. I was doing service work for them. I had this great big belt buckle “Jesus Saves.”

Mrs. Gephardt took one look at it and started in preaching at me.

She said this: “Eternal life has nothing to do with life after death. Eternal life is simply having children, and your children having children and their children having children.” It wasn’t any different that the “Circle of Life” idea that we saw in the movie “Land before time.”

Rabbi Gephardt is a modern day Sadducee.

When Jesus made enemies of the religious leaders, and those were the only enemies He made, He made enemies of those who were either extremely liberal, or extremely conservative.

Maturity, can only be demonstrated by having obtaining balance with both.

And Jesus is attacked by both extremes.

Do you know people who just refuse to believe? This group of people did not believe in Heaven or Hell, angels or demons. To them, all of that religious stuff was just superstitious nonsense.

And we thought that idea was just a modern one. We remember that in 1962, Nietzsche proclaimed that God is dead. He didn’t meant that anybody had killed God, he meant that the idea of God, man’s need to worship something that they couldn’t’ explain had been replaced by mankind’s newfound ability to learn and observe through the scientific method.

Listen, I praise God for what we have learned. My son walks because of radical new therapy designed to treat a birth defect that no had ever successfully treated before. When my youngest son had brain surgery, the doctors literally woke him up and placed electrodes on brain mass and showed him pictures of things. If he could identify them, it was tumor they were stimulating, if he couldn’t it was brain tissue. Wow! The Bible declares that mankind’s ability to learn will increase in huge amounts at the end and people will be able to travel with ease. And it is true.

But doubt in God, disbelief in an afterlife, disbelief in a God who cannot be proven by the scientific method is nothing new. It happened then, and it happens today. Even Pilate asked the question of Jesus “What is truth?” He was asking a question we hear today, a question we hear a lot today, and that question is this: “Can anyone really know truth?”

These Sadducees were brilliant men. They were so intellectual that they decided that religion was superstition, so they rejected anything miraculous.

And they thought they had a convincing argument. They bring up what they think is an illogical proof that the resurrection cannot be true. A question designed to trick Jesus. They said, if a woman marries 7 brothers, whose wife is she in the resurrection? Now the history of that question comes from this. If the firstborn brother dies, and he was to have inherited twice the amount as the other brothers, then his younger brother was to marry his widow and the children would belong to the deceased elder brother.

So, they thought they had tricked Jesus. And Jesus gives them a clever answer. In heaven, we won’t be married or given in marriage, but we will be like the angels, with no need to reproduce because we will live forever.

And then Jesus goes back to the first 5 books and tells them how out of those first five books, the idea of the resurrection is assumed. God spoke of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the ancestors of Moses as if they were still living. And they are living, in heaven. My niece’s husband is a Priest in the Orthodox Church. I was talking with her last week and she said, “We believe that the saints in heaven are still part of the Church. We see them as still very much alive.”

Jesus speaks about it in John 8 when He tells the Pharisees, not the Sadducees that He had a conversation with Abraham, the father of all the Jews about what was going on with Abraham’s children here on earth.

We reject the idea of praying to Saints because we have direct access to God, through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, we don’t need a mediator, not a man, not a priest, not a pastor, not a person living or dead, all of us have a direct line to God.

But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t aware of us. It isn’t a piece of theology that we are comfortable with, but the fact is, we are connected. It isn’t just a kingdom to come, it is God’s kingdom here and now.

God’s Kingdom transcends both planes. About the mature, sacrificial Christian life, Jesus said: 19-21"Don't hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or—worse!—stolen by burglars. Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it's safe from moth and rust and burglars. It's obvious, isn't it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.

I think the Sadducees had an excuse to disbelieve Jesus, and His warnings about the way they were living because to them, nothing here really mattered.

The Pharisees had an excuse to disbelieve Jesus, and His warning because only the things there really mattered.

Proverbs says: “The one who lends to the poor, lends to the Lord.”

There is a problem with preaching only about the fact that we are going to heaven.

By so doing, we can forget that Jesus left heaven to come to earth to teach us how to live here on earth, and then to provide the sacrifice to get us to heaven.

If Jesus didn’t care about how we live here on earth, He would have came, died and left, real soon. But instead, He spent 3 years teaching us, and 3 days saving us.

Because He saved us, rescued us from sin, we have the hope of heaven.

But the problem is, if that hope in heaven becomes an excuse to not care for the least of these, then we missed the point.

So He said to these men, there will come a day when you have to answer for how you treated others.

We know it is true because Jesus died and rose again.

I think our culture begins to understand that now. We are grateful for science and reason, but there is more, inside of us that connects on a Spiritual basis to God our Creator.

And that God chooses to define Himself with the word: “Love.” God is Love. The one who loves, knows God, the one who does not love his brother does not love God.”

Sometimes, I think flippantly about heaven. I can shoot 7 under par in golf, but then where would the fun of competition be? I can build a perfect hot-rod. I can play the bass saxophone. I can sing the lead in the Music Man. I can eat Fettuccine Alfredo to my hearts delight and not gain a pound. I can spend a couple of thousand years with each and everyone of you some afternoon.

I had a youth pastor who up and quit on me one day. I said, “I’m gonna short-sheet your bed in heaven.” He responded with “I won’t tell you where I live.”

All of that is there, waiting for us. Jesus said, “I go to prepare a mansion for you, that where I am, you may be also.”

Imagine that! He wants us up in the big house with Him. It is a real place.

But He wants us focused on the here and now. I ask myself, how many people does petty quarreling keep out of the Kingdom?