Random Thoughts in Ministry

Jumping Ship

2011-01-29T23:47:00.001-05:00

Hey everybody! I know it's been a while since I've posted anything on here.

Well, I'm jumping ship. I'm relocating the blog to Wordpress, and you can find it at:

http://pastorswish.wordpress.com

You'll also be able to find Bases Loaded Balk on Wordpress as well:

http://basesloadedbalk.wordpress.com

The primary reason for the change is that I'm thinking about upgrading so that I have my own domain name without the .wordpress, or .blogspot adding to the address. Simply put, I can't do that on Blogger.

We'll see how the move goes, but for now, I want to encourage you to make the changes in the necessary places.

Peace!

King of the Jews, King of All

2010-11-21T23:03:00.001-05:00

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, November 21, 2010. The text for this week's message is Luke 23:33-43.

You may or may not remember a couple weeks ago, when I said that the story of Zacchaeus for All Saints’ Day wasn’t going to be the only passage that you might be wondering about this month. Well, in case you haven’t figured it out, this week is the other week that I was talking about. After all, who in the world preaches on the crucifixion story on the Sunday before Thanksgiving? Who does that? To be honest with you, I never would have thought about it, but after studying this passage all week, I can’t help but think that it is the perfect passage for this Sunday.

You’ve heard me talk from time to time about the Christian calendar. The Christian calendar is a way to help us remember the different seasons of the Christian year. You may or may not know that next week begins Advent. Advent is the four weeks that lead up to Christmas, and actually mark the beginning of the Christian calendar. This Sunday, then, is kind of like the final Sunday of the year. The Christian calendar culminates in a celebration of Christ the King. It is a week in which we remember that Christ reigns. We may not think about it in our daily lives, but perhaps there is nothing more important for us to remember as we enter into a week in which we celebrate Thanksgiving – that Christ indeed reigns.

What we read in this passage is something fundamental to the Christian life: the element of paradox. A paradox is a statement or group of statements that points to some kind of inherent contradiction. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, there is a part that says, “All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others.” In Hamlet, the title character says, “I must be cruel to be kind,” which is a saying that you may be more familiar with from Nick Lowe’s 1979 song of the same title.

As we really look at the Christian faith, we find that it is full of paradox. To truly live, you must die to the self. Love your enemies. But perhaps there is no greater paradox to the Christian faith than what we read about in today’s passage: a suffering and dying Messiah. Because the Messiah wasn’t supposed to be killed. The Messiah was supposed to be the one who led Israel back to its glory days. The Messiah was supposed to be the one who pushed out the occupying forces and governed Israel as in the days of David. The idea of a Messiah who would give his life for the people was not even in the realm of possibility. It was a paradox.

In the first century, there were several figures that claimed to be the Messiah. They would always try to overthrow the government, but once they were killed, the movement died with them. Nobody continued to follow a Messiah once he was killed, because if he was killed, then clearly he wasn’t the Messiah, and there was no need to follow him in his death. But that wasn’t the case for the followers of Jesus. In fact, his death was the catalyst that helped the movement become a worldwide phenomenon. It’s a paradox.

We know about the life of Jesus. We know about his birth, which we will celebrate over the next month. We know about the miracles, the healings and the teaching. We know about his innocence and the false trial that caused him to end up where we find him in this passage. And when we come to today’s passage, we want to know more, but we don’t necessarily get that. We simply read in verse 33, “they crucified him.” That’s it – “they crucified him.”

Of course, to crucify a person meant all sorts of torture and degradation. A crucifixion is quite possibly one of the worst ways to die, not just in the ancient world, but in all of history. The goal of crucifixion wasn’t just death, but the utter humiliation of the victim, and a warning for those who would follow after that person: don’t do what this person did, or this is where you will end up. Every element was intended to make a person suffer – whether it was physical pain, emotional pain or psychological pain. And here, in Luke 23, the Messiah, the Anointed One, is crucified like a common criminal. In fact, he is crucified between two criminals, one on either side.

In his life, Jesus surrounded himself with a ragtag group of disciples; common people, not the religious elite. He was criticized over and over again for spending time with the tax collectors, the prostitutes and the sinners. In response to this criticism, he even says, “It is not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick.” Jesus dedicated his ministry to reaching those who were left behind; those who were ignored and looked down upon by the rest of society. And now, in his death, he is surrounded by the same kind of outcasts, the same kind of seedy people that we would like to avoid in our own lives.

The Roman soldiers that were overseeing the execution took his clothes because that’s part of the humiliation of the cross. You were exposed for all to see. They took clothes and started casting lots to determine who got what. The same clothes that, not long before, healed a woman who had been bleeding for several years. There had been no cure for this woman. She was permanently outcast because of her condition. In fact, she was breaking the law just by being around all these people, and by reaching out to touch Jesus’ garments, hoping that she would be healed. And she was. She was healed because of her faith. Now, those same clothes were being divided up between a bunch of Roman soldiers with nothing better to do while they were waiting for the owner of those clothes to die.

The soldiers mocked him. The people stood by, watching and waiting. The religious leaders hurled insults at him. Even one of the criminals who was hanging on the cross beside him railed against him. It’s part of our story, as Christians. It’s part of who we are, as followers of this Messiah who is hanging on the cross before us now, but what about this story should cause us to give thanks? There’s nothing glorious about this type of death. What about the death of the Messiah should lead us into a time of thanksgiving and even praise? It is a paradox, isn’t it?

But, we give thanks and praise in spite of what we see happening in this passage, and, in part, because of what else we see going on. In the midst of all this – the torture, the humiliation, the dehumanizing things that are going on – we see something greater. In verse 34, right after we are told that Jesus is crucified between two criminals, his words are, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” While, in the context of the passage, it’s pretty clear that Jesus is asking forgiveness for those who are committing these atrocious acts, that forgiveness extends far beyond those people. That forgiveness extends even today, to us.

Think of all the times in your life that you have let people down. Think of all the times that you’ve let yourself down. Think of the times in your life when you lived in sin. I don’t just mean that you did a few bad things, but that you surrounded yourself in sin. You breathed it in. You ingested it; it was a part of every fiber of your being. Think of those times, because what we see in the crucifixion is what happens when sin controls our lives, and yet… and yet. In Jesus Christ, there is forgiveness.

Mark 10:45 tells us that the Son of Man, Jesus, did not come so that all would serve him, but that he would serve the world, and give his life as a ransom for sin. Jesus told his disciples that, but they didn’t know what to make of it. It didn’t make any sense. Jesus wasn’t going to die. Jesus was the Messiah. But here we are at the end of Luke, and indeed Jesus is giving his life. While he is surrounded by sinners, while he is surrounded by people who don’t know and don’t care who he is, while he is surrounded by people who are nailing him to the cross, insulting him, and mocking him, he says, “Father, forgive them.”

While this horrible atrocity is playing out before us, what we see is, in fact, an act of love. Not on the part of those who are nailing, insulting and mocking, but on the part of the one who is being crucified, the one who is being insulted, the one who is being mocked. The target of all their hatred and sin displays love and forgiveness, and it becomes more personal when we look at another character in the story, the criminal who isn’t railing against Jesus. The criminal who looks at his life, knowing that Jesus hasn’t done anything to deserve to be here, but has given himself for the sake of others.

Maybe this is the person with whom we can identify more readily. This is the person who recognizes his faults and failures, and knows that ultimately he is getting what he deserves. He says that he is receiving the due rewards for his deeds. And yet, in faith, he asks Jesus to remember him. In faith. This man whose story we don’t know. This man who probably wasn’t that great of a guy, who probably did some things that hurt other people. He knows that he is getting what he deserves, but he asks for something that he doesn’t deserve – forgiveness. He asks for forgiveness. And it is given to him.

If we’re honest with ourselves, we know what we deserve and what we don’t deserve. I don’t think there is a person here who can honestly look at his/her life and say, “Yes, I deserve to be in Paradise with Jesus.” Nobody knows our mistakes and faults better than we do. No matter how hard we try to hide from them or cover them up. We know that we have fallen short of the ideal. We know, like the criminal on the cross, that we are getting our due rewards. And yet, Jesus says, “Father, forgive them.”

One last detail about this passage. I haven’t touched on it yet, but it is probably the most important detail when we start to look at why this passage on this particular Sunday. Above Jesus hung a sign: “The King of the Jews.” Officially, this was his charge. This was why he was hanging on the cross. The Romans would do this so that the people would know what he did to deserve this punishment.

The King of the Jews. He wasn’t treated like a king. He was nailed to a cross. Mocked. Insulted. His clothes were divided up among the soldiers. He was beaten. It’s a paradox, isn’t it? A dying Messiah. Other people declared themselves the Messiah. Few remember their names. Hundreds, even thousands, of people were crucified in the history of the Roman Empire. Why would the people of the first century remember this one particular Messiah and this one particular crucifixion? Because it wasn’t the end of the story. There was another chapter to be written, yet it was a chapter that was written before the beginning of time. Another paradox.

Three days later. The crowd is gone. The religious rulers were tucked away in their Temple. The soldiers were back on duty. The criminals were buried in their shallow grave. But there was a tomb, a tomb that belonged to a man from Arimathea named Joseph, a tomb that housed the body of Jesus. A tomb that was empty. The resurrection happened. This king of the Jews who was killed, buried and was supposed to be forgotten was raised from the dead. The forgiveness that he had asked the Father to extend was extended, not just to those who were there, but to all. No longer was Jesus the king of Jews, as the sign has so appropriately, albeit unintentionally, stated. He was the king of all. All who submit themselves to him, and all who refuse to do so.

As Paul says in Philippians, one day every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. He may have died as king of the Jews, but he was raised to be king of all. I’d say that is a pretty good reason to give thanks, wouldn’t you? So Thursday, or Friday, or Saturday, or whatever day you stop to give thanks. Don’t just give thanks for the four “f’s” – friends, family, food and football. Give thanks that there is indeed a king who reigns. A king whose reign is a bit of a paradox, but a king who is indeed Lord of all creation.

All Will Be Thrown Down

2010-11-20T17:10:00.001-05:00

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, November 14, 2010. The text for this week's message is Luke 21:5-6.

Last week, we looked at the second chapter of the prophet Haggai. What we saw there was a very encouraging word from the Lord in the midst of a discouraging time for the people of Israel. They had just returned from exile in Babylon when they were charged with the task of building a new temple to replace the one that had been destroyed nearly 50 years before. It was certainly a daunting task, but it was not an impossible one. Regardless, the people became discouraged and the building of the temple halted.

It is into this situation that the Lord speaks. He speaks because complacency is not the ideal state for those who have been given a task by God. The Lord comforts the people, reminds them of His presence with them, and encourages them to press on. What we saw in that passage is that things change. Plain and simple. Things change. And while it is good for us to remember and honor our past, we cannot live in the past. We have to look forward to what could be, even when the road is unclear. God has given us a great task, and we need to spend more time looking forward to where God is leading us, and less time looking back at the way things used to be.

When we come to today’s passage, we are several hundred years into the future. The temple that the people were encouraged to continue with in Haggai was eventually completed. It wasn’t the most magnificent building in the history of architecture, but it didn’t have to be. That’s not what God intended for the people at that time. By the time we get to the first century, the second temple has been torn down by Herod the Great, and he started rebuilding a new temple. The previous temple was torn down in 20 B.C., and nearly fifty year later, which is where we find ourselves in today’s passage, the new one is still being built. It would not be complete until 63 A.D., but at this point, it is already a magnificent building.

In verse 5, the disciples have spent the entire day with Jesus as he taught in the Temple. They were getting ready to head back for the night, and on the way out, they were admiring the workmanship of the temple. It was truly a wonderful sight to behold. And yet, Jesus is not as impressed as the disciples. Instead of taking part in the conversation and marveling at the beautiful building before him, Jesus uses it as a teaching moment. He says, “As for these things that you see the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”

Put yourself in the shoes of the disciples for just a minute now. You are just walking around, after a very long day at the temple, looking up and taking in the sights. It’s a beautiful building, and you can’t help but make a comment about it. And along comes Jesus. “Hey, Jesus!” you shout. “Check out this building! Isn’t it incredible?” Then Jesus looks at you and says, “Eh, it’s not going to last forever. It’s going to be torn down soon.” Talk about a buzzkill, right? I mean, can’t the guy just enjoy the splendor for just a few minutes? Well… no. Because there is something bigger going on here.

As beautiful and magnificent as this building was, it was just a façade. What the disciples see and admire is the external adornment, but all that was doing was hiding a spiritual emptiness that had become the temple and the religious institution of the day. At this very moment, the spiritual leaders of the Jewish community were plotting how to get rid of Jesus so he would stop being such a radical and stirring up trouble for them.

The problem was that the religious elite was not concerned about sharing the message with others. Their primary concern was how they could hold on to the power that they had obtained. The things that Jesus said, the way he undermined their authority in the religious sector was enough to make them want to kill him. These are not the types of thoughts that spiritual leaders need to entertain. The glory of the temple had nothing to do with the presence of God at this point, but that didn’t seem matter to those who just wanted an amazing looking building. So, the disciples, like so many before them, were caught up in the beauty of the building, and Jesus very quickly had to bring their focus back to what was really important.

In some sense, Jesus is retelling a message given six hundred years prior by the prophet Jeremiah. In the time of Jeremiah, the people were in trouble, but they didn’t know it. Spiritually, they were just as empty and devoid of life as the people of Jesus’ time. They had fallen into the trap that the Lord was there to serve their needs. It was an easy trap to fall into in those days, because that is exactly what their neighbors believed.

In the polytheistic religions, or the religions with multiple gods, of ancient times, the basic belief was that if you did the right thing, or said the right thing, then the gods would take notice of you and do whatever it was that you asked of them. Many times, in their prayers, the ancient people would call on the name of all the gods that they could possibly think of, especially if they were in dire need. The thought was that surely one of them would respond. Even worse, some believed that if you followed a particular formula, the gods had to help you in whatever way that you asked.

So, it’s not surprising that the Israelites came to believe that the Lord was there to serve them. Everyone else they came into contact with had that same kind of thought. However, there is a significant difference between the gods of the others nations and the Lord Almighty. The God that we read about in Scripture is the Living God. The gods of the nations were nothing more than wood carvings or metal figures. They were idols. They were nothing more than little toys to which people prayed.

There was a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of God in the time of Jeremiah. The people believed that as long as the presence of the Lord was with them – which was symbolized by the Temple – then they didn’t have to worry about anything. They could just go on and live their lives in whatever way they wanted as long as they performed their sacrifices and kept their ritualistic duties. In Jeremiah 7, the prophet says to the people, “Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!’”

Jeremiah is telling them that the temple doesn’t mean a thing. And indeed it didn’t. Not long after Jeremiah shared that message, the Babylonians came in and conquered Jerusalem, exiling most of its citizens back to Babylon. The temple was still there. Solomon’s Temple, in all its glory, did no good to the people of Jerusalem because they placed too much trust in the external trappings of their religion that they forgot the true purpose of their faith. Later on in Jeremiah 7, God asks, “Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight?”

And now, you may be wondering to yourself, “Haven’t I heard that phrase before?” Hopefully you have. Jesus refers to it. Jesus comes into the temple one day, and in the Court of the Gentiles, moneychangers and people selling animals for sacrifices are making all kinds of noise. They turned that part of the temple into a marketplace. It’d be like putting a bank and a pet store in the back of the sanctuary. The difference – the Court of the Gentiles was the only place in the temple where non-Jews were allowed to worship. Because of all the commotion surrounding the busyness of the buyers and sellers, the Gentiles who came to worship God could not do so without significant distractions. Jesus sees what is going on and he starts turning over the table, driving the animals out of the court and generally making a whole lot of people really upset.

The temple was supposed to be a place where all people could come and worship God. But that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t a sacred space anymore; it was a marketplace. People were being cheated on money exchanges. People were being forced to pay ridiculous prices for sacrificial animals. This is the state of the temple; the same temple that the disciples are marveling about in today’s passage. There nothing marvelous about such a place.

Jesus shuts down their amazement, not because he’s a buzzkill, but because they were missing something much more important. What the temple looks like on the outside doesn’t matter if the inside is messed up. That’s the key message that Jesus wants to get across to the disciples. It doesn’t matter how the outside of something looks if the inside is rotten and worthless. This place that was supposed to be for worship turned out to be a place of liars and thieves.

And what is it that Jesus says to them? He says that all will be torn down. This building, this marvelous structure, this great human accomplishment will be torn down one day. And, indeed, it was. The Jewish people finally revolted against the Romans in 66 A.D., taking control of Jerusalem and killing the Roman soldiers that were at the garrison. They managed to hold on for another four years until Titus, son of the recently proclaimed Emperor Vespasian, destroyed the city following a seven-month siege. Caught up in the destruction of the city was the temple, which was torn to the ground.

Jesus wasn’t just talking about how someday, eventually, the Temple would just fall apart. He knew what was ahead for the people of Israel. He knew not just because he was the Son of God, but because he could see the direction that things were going. He was looking forward at the path the people were on, and there was only one destination for that path. While all of this is interesting and informative, let me just go ahead and throw out the question that y’all are thinking, “So what?”

Why does it matter that the Temple was destroyed? Why does it matter that Jesus wouldn’t let them admire the architecture? Why does any of this matter? It matters because, if we aren’t careful, we can miss out on the lesson of this passage. Don’t get so caught up, don’t get so enamored with the things of this world. They aren’t always what they seem, and they won’t last in the first place.

We talked a lot last week about remembering and honoring our past, but that it is more important for us to look to the future. Whatever happened in 1972 is nice. It was a good time. It helped shape us into who we are today. But we can’t recreate it. We can’t go back to 1972 and have a grand ol’ time. We have to start thinking about 2011, 2015, 2025. Because, if we don’t, 1972 isn’t going to matter because nobody will be around to celebrate it.

The disciples thought that the Temple was the neatest thing that they had ever seen. And, who knows, at the time, maybe it was, but it wasn’t going to be around forever. In about 30 years, the construction on the temple would finally be completed, and in about 40 years, it would all be destroyed. The things of this world simply don’t last. No matter how much we adore them, no matter how hard we try, they simply aren’t meant to last for eternity.

Even some of the things that we think will last, things that are beautifully adorned, can have some major issues that we may not necessarily see on the outside. Once again, we come to the question, “What is the condition of your heart?” I certainly don’t mean your physical health either. Is your heart in a place spiritually where you are receptive to the things that God is saying to you? Do you put yourself in positions to hear from the Lord? The condition of your heart is so much more important when it comes to matters of eternity, but we make it a habit to spend less and less time paying attention to it.

Let me encourage you this morning to really hear what it is that Jesus is trying to say because he’s not just talking to his disciples on one spring evening two thousand years ago. He is speaking to us, right here in Veedersburg/Hillsboro on this November morning. Don’t get too caught up in the things of this world. Examine what is going on inside yourself, and don’t take things at face value. Remember, that one day, all will indeed be thrown down, and only that which is truly eternal will last.

God's Building Plan

2010-11-19T17:09:00.000-05:00

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, November 7, 2010. The text for this week's message is Haggai 2:1-9.

We are in the little-known book of Haggai this morning with a message that seems very appropriate as we look at the task of reaching others with the good news of Jesus Christ. This can be a daunting task, one that we may feel incapable of accomplishing. However, what we will see in today’s passage is that our deficiencies and inabilities are not obstacles to God when He has something that needs to be accomplished. To start off this morning, let’s take a look at some of the background of Haggai so we can understand where we are in history, and then move forward from there.

Haggai was a prophet in the time after the Israelites had returned from exile. In 587 B.C. the Babylonians came into Jerusalem, conquered the city and exiled the majority of the Israelite people. Nearly fifty years later, in 539 B.C. the Persians, led by Cyrus conquered the Babylonians. The Persians had a very different policy regarding conquered nations, allowing them to continue in their cultures and traditions, including their religions. In 538, Cyrus issued an edict allowing the Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple.

Construction began the following year, but was quickly stopped because this new Temple was nothing like Solomon’s Temple. It paled in comparison, and the people were discouraged. When they saw the foundations of the new temple, they wept out loud because they knew that the new temple would be inferior to the first. They knew that there was no way they would be able to build a Temple that even somewhat resembled Solomon’s Temple. How could they? Solomon had a workforce of over 30,000 people. They were just the remnant that returned from exile. When we get to prophet Haggai, we are in about 520 B.C., roughly 17 years after construction on the Temple began, and the Temple was still not finished. This is where we are as we come to the second chapter of Haggai.

At the beginning of today’s reading, we are told that the word of the Lord came to the prophet Haggai. Before we go much further, let’s take a look at what this tells us right from the get-go. We come to a situation in which the people have grown comfortable and complacent in their inability to rebuild the Temple. Because they didn’t think they could accomplish the task that was set before them, they didn’t even bother trying. Eventually, they got to the point where the foundations of the Temple just became a part of the landscape. It was no longer a reminder to press on to accomplish their task. It was no longer a goal that they were trying to meet. It was just the foundation of a failed attempt to build another Temple, and they had accepted it as part of the scenery in Jerusalem.

When the Lord speaks into this situation, we know that He cannot be pleased with what has been going on in Jerusalem, or rather, what hasn’t been going on. The Lord is not pleased with a defeatist attitude and complacency with the status quo. He is not pleased that the people have abandoned their task because they felt as though it was too difficult for them to accomplish. We know that God cannot be pleased with this situation because if He was, then He wouldn’t have said anything at all. He would have just allowed them to continue in their complacency, and the Temple never would have been rebuilt. But that’s not what He does, is it? No, the Lord speaks into this situation through the prophet Haggai.

One of the problems that we have in the church worldwide, but particularly in contemporary American culture, is that we’ve grown comfortable. While we make think that comfort is a good thing, the truth is, comfort is not always the ideal, and should not be the goal. It’s okay to be comfortable when you are trying to go to sleep, but when we are faced with a task from the Almighty God, comfort should be the last thing on our minds. If we ever find ourselves too comfortable with where we are, then maybe we need to

step back and reexamine what it is that we are doing.

For too long the Israelites had been just living their lives without any regard or concern with accomplishing the task of building the Temple. Some of them had put more time and effort into their own house than they put into the house of God. And it was unacceptable. When God gives us a task, it is imperative that we actively seek ways to accomplish that task. It is unacceptable if we have a call from God in our personal or collective lives, and we are not seeking ways to fulfill that call.

When the Lord begins to speak through Haggai, the first thing he says is, “Who among you saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now?” In other words, who here remembers the way things used to be? Does it look the same now? There would have been a few people around that remembered what the previous temple looked like, but not very many.

Remember, they were in exile for 50 years. Many of the people that are around at this point either were really young when the exile occurred, or they were born after the exile. But there would be some who would have remembered. The older crowd would have in their minds what Solomon’s Temple looked like prior to the exile to Babylon, and they already knew that this new temple could not measure up. That is why they stopped in the first place. They were stuck in the glory days, and didn’t see that God was doing something new in their midst.

Our past is incredibly important. We could not be who we are today if we did not have the influences that we had in the past. However, we can’t live in the past. We have to live in the here and now. We have to look forward to the future. When you think about this church, this place that you find yourself this morning, do you think about how things were 10, 20, 30, even 40 years ago? Or do you find yourself thinking about how things could be in 5, 10, even 15 years? We honor our past, we remember our past, but we don’t live in our past. The Israelites had lost sight of their future because they were so focused on their past. They had become complacent and ineffective in their present because they didn’t look forward to what God was going to do through them. We need to learn this lesson from the Israelites. We cannot be so focused on the way things used to be that we lose sight of the way things could be.

When the first temple was built, Solomon had a massive workforce. They didn’t have that kind of workforce after the exile, and they became discouraged. There problem, however, wasn’t that they didn’t have enough people to do the work, but that they tried to do the work in the same way that it was done before. A smaller workforce didn’t mean that they had to abandon the project; it just means that they needed to take a new approach. A different time calls for a different approach.

Ministry as it existed 10 years ago is not the type of ministry that will be effective today. What worked in 1985 is not necessarily going to work in 2010 and beyond. This is true in all facets of ministry – youth ministry, discipleship ministry, outreach, missions, everything. We cannot do the things that we have always done and expect different results. We live in a different time, and it is necessary for us to take a different approach in order to effectively reach people with the good news of Jesus Christ. The days when we can just expect people to come to church on a Sunday morning are over. I’m sorry to say that, but it’s the truth. We must be intentional about reaching out to those who need the message of the gospel, both by our actions and by our words.

Notice what else God says in this passage. Two times, He says, “Take courage,” or “Be strong.” God is calling them to a new way of life. They have been living in discouragement. They have been living in hopelessness. They have been living in fear. God calls them away from those things. God calls them to take courage. God calls them to have hope. God calls them to be faithful. How? How can they move from this place of discouragement, hopelessness and fear? By realizing something critical to their mission – the Lord is with them.

They are not alone in their task. God gave them this great task, but did not leave them to figure it out for themselves. The Lord never left them. Twice, He reminds them of His presence. In verse 4, He says, “Work, for I am with you.” In verse 5, He says, “My Spirit remains in your midst; do not fear.” Knowing that God is with us in our endeavors helps us approach them with a sense of confidence. Trusting in God’s presence helps move us out of complacency and comfort, and into faithful obedience, which is where we need to be if our task is to truly be accomplished. We have to remember that the Lord does not call us to something and then leave it up to us to figure out how to get it done.

I’ve talked to my dad a few times about his job. He does drafting for all kinds of buildings. Many times, the biggest challenge he faces is the fact that sometimes architects come up with really neat designs, but figuring out how it practically comes together can be difficult. It is his responsibility to put it down on paper and figure it out. It’s not like that when we are given a task from God. God gives us the design, but He has already put together the plans. That is what is so great about this call that we have from God.

God has called us to reach others with the good news of Jesus Christ. We do need to figure out what that means in our context, but it is not up to us to figure out every last detail. What we have to do is spend time in prayer, discerning the design that God has already put together for us. We need to have discussions with one another about how God is speaking to us in this time. We need to remember that this awesome task that has been given to us has been given by an awesome God, whose Spirit resides within us. We need to turn away from the fear and anxiety. We need to take courage and rest in the hope that we have in Christ Jesus. God knows what needs to be done. We just have to trust in Him, open ourselves up to Him, listen to Him and respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

What is so great about this passage today is not that God is coming down on the Israelites for their lack of effort because He’s not. This is a very encouraging word from the Lord. Yes, they have to face the reality of their situation, which isn’t always that easy, but ultimately, God is encouraging them to press forward. They don’t know what the Temple is going to look like, nor do they have any idea how it is going to be accomplished. But God doesn’t call us to understand His plans, just to be obedient to the task that He has given us.

Take this passage as a reminder today. Remember the past, but don’t be trapped by the memories. Push forward. Think about where God is leading us, not about what has already been accomplished. Take courage and know that the Lord is with you.

The Making of a Saint

2010-11-18T17:08:00.001-05:00

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, October 31, 2010. The text for this week's message is Luke 19:1-10.

Today is a very special day in the life of the church. Not because Halloween happened to fall on a Sunday this year, but because we have the opportunity today to remember those who have gone on to the promises that we have in Christ Jesus. It’s not as commonly celebrated in contemporary American culture, but November 1^st is known as All Saints Day on the Christian calendar. It stands in stark contrast to Halloween, which we usually associate with goblins and candy and hayrides and bonfires. All Saints Day is a day to remember why it is that we do what we do as a congregation. It’s a day to remember and celebrate the saints who have moved on to glory.

Perhaps the story of Zacchaeus is an odd story for us to examine on All Saints Day, but I can guarantee you that it’s not going to be the only Scripture passage over the next several weeks that may seem out of place at first. The story of Zacchaeus doesn’t have anything to do with the saints who have left us to meet the Lord. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Zacchaeus is not a saint in this story. He is a tax collector, which, according to Jewish thought in the first century, was even worse that being a sinner.

Tax collectors were so despised by the Jewish people that when we read through the gospels, they are often given their own category. Many times you’ll read about the tax collectors and the sinners. They were so despised that to lump them together with sinners was not good enough. Even sinners deserved more consideration than the tax collectors. Why is that? Why is it that tax collectors were so despised by the Jewish people in the first century? We may grumble about the IRS today, but we don’t go out of our way to identify them as worse than any other group of people. A lot of the hatred towards tax collectors had to do with the way they went about their business.

On the most basic level, a tax collector was an agent of the Roman Empire. A tax collector was given a particular area, and a particular amount of money that they had to raise for taxes. Anything above that amount would be their pay. As you can imagine, corruption is built into this tax system. Let’s say that Zacchaeus had to raise $100 for taxes this month. He could go around to every person in his district and demand payment for taxes with the full backing of the Roman Empire meaning, in this case, the Roman military. If Zacchaeus shows up at your door with a handful of soldiers and demands payment for taxes, the chances of you fighting him on his demand are pretty slim, unless you happened to like fighting professional soldiers.

Tax collectors often abused their power for the sake of their own gain. If Zacchaeus went out and collected $200 dollars in this scenario, then he just made $100. Put this on a much grander scale, and you can see how tax collectors were often wealthy, but at the expense of the people with whom they lived. It had to be hard living in the same town as Zacchaeus knowing that the reason why he has a 63” flat screen and a Cadillac was because he cheated you out of your hard-earned money. Suddenly it makes sense that the people hated tax collectors so much.

Notice what Luke tells us in verse 2. Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector. He was a supervisor. He had responsibility over a larger area and had people working for him to collect taxes. He’s the guy in charge in this area as far as collecting taxes was concerned. This is the background as Jesus enters the city of Jericho at the beginning of today’s reading.

When we get to Luke 19, we are at the tail end of Jesus’ journey towards Jerusalem in Luke’s gospel. Shortly after this encounter with Zacchaeus, Jesus enters into Jerusalem in what we have come to call the Triumphal Entry, which we celebrate on Palm Sunday every year. In Luke’s narrative, we are coming down to the end. We are almost at Jesus’ ultimate purpose here on earth.

As so often happens in the gospel stories, there is a crowd. We are told that when Jesus enters Jericho, a crowd comes to see him. Stories of Jesus had spread all over the territory. People knew his name, they knew the things that he had done, and they wanted to catch a glimpse of this person who some were calling the Messiah. But in the midst of this crowd was Zacchaeus, the despised chief tax collector. Even Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus.

And perhaps this is the first lesson that we can learn from today’s Scripture: people need to see Jesus. It’s so simple, but I don’t want you to miss it. People need to see Jesus, especially those who have not seen him before, especially those are despised because their sins, especially those who are despised because of their betrayals. Zacchaeus was despised because he was a tax collector. He was hated because he betrayed his people in order to profit alongside the enemy. On the outside, it may have looked like Zacchaeus had everything, but in fact, he was missing something.

We know that he was missing something because he went out of his way to see Jesus. This man of high position risked embarrassment and ridicule because he was too short to see Jesus with the crowd standing in the way, so he climbed a tree. He climbed a sycamore tree so he could get a better look at the man they called Jesus.

One of the neat things about the Magic Kingdom at Disney World is that every night, twice a night, they have a parade. People will line up along the route over an hour before it starts just so they can have a good seat to see the Parade of Lights. And as I was thinking about the position that Zacchaeus found himself in today’s Scripture, I couldn’t help but think of all the little children who were sitting on their parents’ shoulders just so they could see some of their favorite Disney characters in this Parade of Lights. Children, little people who were too short to see everything unfold had to be helped so they take in the wonder of this experience. But there was nobody there to help Zacchaeus see Jesus. So, he climbed a sycamore tree.

As I thought more and more about this story, I started to wonder: what are the things that we do that prevent people from seeing Jesus? How are we like the crowd that gets in Zacchaeus’ way so that he cannot see the Savior? What are the things that we hold onto, the rituals that we take for granted, the traditions that we place above allowing people like Zacchaeus to see Jesus for the first time?

There are things that we place above allowing others to see Jesus. Whether we know it or not, and whether we do it intentionally or not, it doesn’t really matter. Some people insist on a particular type of worship. Others may insist on a particular translation of Scripture. Still others may have their personal list of theological or political opinions with which you must agree or you risk being on the outside. What are the ways that we are just like the crowd?

Take a moment to think about your life and about the things that we do as a congregation that may seem perfectly normal to us, but in reality, to somebody who has not seen Jesus, these things would simply be a crowd that stands in the way of seeing the Savior. It is a fairly difficult task for us to examine everything that we take for granted, but that is exactly what Jesus has us do in this passage.

After Zacchaeus climbs the tree, Jesus walks by that spot, stops, looks up at him and says, “Zacchaeus, hurry up and get down here. I must stay at your place today.” What is amazing here is that Zacchaeus doesn’t start waving his arms and crying out for Jesus to pay attention to him. Zacchaeus doesn’t yell down, “Hey Jesus, I’m grilling out tonight, do you want to come by for a while?” He just wanted to see Jesus, and next thing you know, Jesus calls him out of the crowd and says, “I must stay with you today.”

Jesus takes the initiative here. Jesus calls upon Zacchaeus. Jesus invites himself over for dinner. Jesus chooses somebody who the rest of the crowd thinks is unworthy of such an honor. It’s all Jesus. The reason why you are probably here this morning is because at some point in your life, Jesus looked to you and said, “Get down here; let’s go have dinner.” God’s grace works in our lives and brings us closer to him before we ever decide to follow Jesus. He may have used all sorts of people and events to bring you to that point, but don’t doubt for a second that Jesus was the person bringing it all together in the first place.

Zacchaeus immediately responds in a radical way to Jesus’ call. He doesn’t just say, “Okay, fire up the grill! Let’s go!” He says, “Lord, I’m going to give half of all that I have to the poor.” I imagine the people weren’t all that impressed because they know how he got his money. He is a tax collector after all. But then Zacchaeus says, “If I’ve defrauded anybody, I’m going to give them back four times what I took from them.” Suddenly, this isn’t just a rich man offering to give away half of what he had so he can look good but still be rich. It is a man who so believes in the message of Jesus that he is willing to give up everything. I imagine a few people probably took Zacchaeus up on his offer, and he ended up worse off than anybody. That is what the grace of God will do to a person.

The grace of God will make a person realize the selfish, hurtful ways that he or she has lived life, and suddenly, everything comes into perspective. What we have in this world doesn’t matter if it comes at the expense of other people. God gives so freely that when we are faced with it, we cannot help but give freely as well. Now, inevitably, the question of worth comes up. Am I really worthy of the redemption that is possible through Jesus? Well, no. We’re not worthy. But neither was Zacchaeus and Jesus still called him. That is the beauty of grace – we aren’t called because of our worth, we are called because of our lack of worth.

What we see in the story of Zacchaeus is the making of a saint. We see the awesome grace of God at work. We see salvation as it happens, in spite of what the crowd may have wanted. Jesus picks the worst of the worst in Zacchaeus, and salvation is still waiting for him.

On All Saints Sunday, we remember the saints who have gone before. We remember and we celebrate their witness in our lives. But let us also remember – they weren’t always saints. At some point in their life, Jesus looked to them and said, “Hurry up and get down here. I must be with you today.” If we remember their flawed roots, we begin to remember ours. And in doing so, we remember that we need to stop being the crowd in this story. We need to stop preventing others from seeing Jesus, and we need to start making a way for those who are small of stature, those like Zacchaeus, to see the Savior.

What Covenant Groups Are All About

2010-11-18T12:46:00.000-05:00

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. This is what pastors do when they get together.

Greatest Interview Ever!!!

2010-11-18T10:02:00.001-05:00

Now, I could have sworn that I scheduled this one to post the day after I wrote it. Apparently I didn't. So, here you go now.

Here's former NFL coach Jim Mora appearing as a guest on the Doug Gottlieb Show on ESPN radio. This has to be the best interview I have ever heard.

"You were a real joy." That's fantastic.

P.S. - In case you were wondering, no I didn't post this during a worship service. I scheduled it last night!

Duo Ante Meridiem, Oink (It's Pig Latin, Folks!)

2010-11-18T02:57:00.000-05:00

It's 2 a.m. Do you know what your pastor is doing? Well, I don't either, but I can tell you what's going on in my life right now. I'm awake. I've been awake for quite some time. I could probably attribute it to the fact that my wife's dog (notice: he's my wife's dog when I'm frustrated with him.... unless you ask her, then he's my dog when she's frustrated with him) decided that he needed to go to the bathroom twenty minutes ago. I don't mind taking the dog out at 2 a.m. because, if I don't, he'll probably pee in our bedroom, which means I have to get up and clean it up... at 2 a.m.

It's possible that I'm awake because of the roasted garlic chicken pizza that I had for dinner. I know that I shouldn't eat too much of something that has garlic on it, especially if it is in the form of garlic butter. For whatever reason, garlic butter doesn't sit well with me. That's right, I just inadvertently told you that I have gas because of garlic chicken pizza... and now it's not so inadvertent. My stomach is slightly upset... at 2 a.m.

It's possible that I'm awake because I'm really, really thirsty. As I laid in bed, trying to get back to sleep, all I could think about was how thirsty I was at that moment. Being thirsty is not one of those things that just goes away the more you think about it. So, now I sit here with a glass of milk... at 2 a.m.

It's possible that, for whatever reason, I started thinking about our personal finances. Much like thirst, it's a little difficult to just stop thinking about finances when they pop into your mind. I'm not particularly worried about running out of money. Katie and I both have good jobs that pay us well. There's really no reason to worry about it... I've actually paid all the bills for the month already, but I'm still thinking about our financial future... at 2 a.m.

It's possible that I'm awake because I have things that have to be done today. I have a sermon to finish, a bulletin to put together, print and make copies, DVDs to watch (seriously, I have DVDs that I have to watch as part of my job... then I have other DVDs that I wouldn't mind watching, but probably won't get around to for a while). Things need to be done today, and they're on my mind... at 2 a.m.

It's possible that I'm awake because I'm thinking about some of the paperwork that I have to get done for ordination. I have a sermon to write, spiritual reflections to.... reflect, and a Bible study to brush up all in the next two weeks as I work towards becoming a full member of the Indiana Conference of the United Methodist Church.

It's possible that all of these things are playing a role in why I'm awake and writing at 2 a.m, but I don't think they are the primary reasons. I've been thinking, praying, wondering what the future holds. I'm wondering if the River Banks Cluster is going to do ministry that will make an impact on the world around us. I'm wondering if Vermillion and Fountain Counties will be any different because of the presence of the United Methodist Church. I wondering who in the world is going to want to take their free time and invest it in this thing that we are calling a ministry cluster, and if people from other churches are going to do the same.

The two churches that I serve in this area decided to join a different cluster. I think it was a good move (that's why I recommended it). What I only partially realized at the time was that by making this move, I suddenly would become the cluster leader. I don't know what that looks like (which is why I have to watch those DVDs). Honestly, I'm not sure if anybody really knows what that looks like, but I'm willing to give it a try. I guess a part of me has always seen myself as a reluctant leader - someone who had the job because nobody else would do it. Sometimes I forget that I have been called by God. I don't have to know exactly what to do, but I had better be prepared to listen for God's call in the midst of everything. That's always easier said than done.

I've also been doing some reading over the last couple of nights. I don't read as much as I would like to, but once I get an interest in a book, it doesn't take me too long to get through it. I started reading Communicating for a Change by Andy Stanley and Lane Jones. I love reading Andy Stanley's books. They are so simple, and yet so applicable in how I approach ministry. This particular book is about one of my passions in ministry - preaching.

I know, I know, it sounds obvious that a "preacher" should be passionate about preaching. Honestly, though, I don't think that is always the case. If some of the "preachers" that I have heard were passionate about what they were preaching, then they have a funny way of showing it. By the way, you've probably noticed that I keep putting "preacher" in quotation marks. That's partly because I hate the term. Pastors need to be more than preachers, they need to be visionary leaders... which is something that I sometimes struggle with. Anyway... back to the book.

The first part of the book is written in narrative form, and it draws the reader in. I seriously can't believe that I read nearly 100 pages in about an hour and a half. It usually takes me forever (seemingly) to read that many pages of most books. I'm about to get into the nuts and bolts section of the book, and already, my preaching style is getting wrecked.

I want to preach messages that will make an impact on people's lives. I'm tired of hearing, "good sermon" and not seeing any real change in people's lives because of what I've said. I already know sermon topics until the end of May, but when I look at those topics, are they sermons that are going to move people to a place where God is calling them? Or, are they just going to be another series of "good" sermons that people remember for a grand total of 2 hours... if that.

It's 2:54 a.m. and I've been awake pondering these things for nearly an hour now. Soon sleep will set in once again, and I'll wake up with these issues still rattling around in my brain. Ever wonder what pastors do at 2 a.m.? Well, hopefully, for his/her sake, your pastor is sound asleep right now. As for me... well, you know what's going on tonight.

Movie Tour: The Expendables

2010-11-17T22:06:00.000-05:00

The Expendables was one of the summer's biggest action blockbusters. That should tell us two things: 1) people have been wanting to see action stars duke it out for a long time, and 2) there weren't a lot of great movies this summer.

Plot Summary
I'm not so sure there really was a plot to this one. This movie is all about explosions, fight scenes and seeing a bunch of old action start act like it is still 1987. Seriously though, I'm not sure what the plot was about. The Expendables is a group of mercenaries who do various jobs around the world. One of them somehow gains a conscience and tries to do the right thing... whatever that was supposed to be.

Review
I didn't expect a lot from this movie, and that's exactly what I got. I wanted to see some cool fight scenes, a lot of explosions and maybe get a few laughs. That about sums it up for this movie. The dialogue is ridiculous. The "plot" is just an excuse to get these guys together. Realistically, all in all, it's not that good of a movie.

Recommendation
If you like what you've read (i.e. explosions, fights, a few laughs), then go see it. Don't expect much and you'll enjoy it. I'm pretty sure that it's not out in theaters any more, but don't worry, you didn't miss that much by paying $8 to see it.

Best Part
Jet Li is a pretty funny guy. At one point, he is arguing that he should get a greater share of the payment because he's smaller. He has to travel farther... because he's smaller. It's pretty funny.

Final Words

2010-11-17T17:07:00.000-05:00

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, October 24, 2010. The text for this week's message is 2 Timothy 4:1-8.

As we enter our final week in Paul’s second letter to Timothy, I think it’s fair to say that there are a lot of lessons that we can pull from Paul’s final letter. When we read 2 Timothy, we are reading the final words that Paul has to share with Timothy and with us. Shortly after writing this letter, Paul was executed for his faith in Jesus Christ.

Today’s section is really Paul’s final words of advice to Timothy. After this section, he asks Timothy to come see him as soon as he can and to bring another with him. He sends greetings to the fellow leaders of the churches around the area, and that’s all we hear from Paul in this world. Much like how the prophet’s mantle was passed from Elijah to Elisha, Paul passes the torch to Timothy.

There are several things that we can pull from this passage, but I want to look at Paul’s final charges to Timothy. He lists seven things that he wants Timothy to do as he leads the church. We are going to look at some of those things, and see what it is that Paul may be saying to us today.

Paul begins by charging Timothy “in the presence of God and Jesus Christ.” This is reminiscent of what Jesus said to the disciples at the beginning of the Great Commission in Matthew 28. Jesus begins his final instructions there by saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, therefore…” What Jesus does there is remind them of his ultimate authority, and then gives them their instructions to go, evangelize and disciple the world.

In the same way, Paul is reminding Timothy of the ultimate authority. Not the authority that Paul has, but the authority of God. He reminds Timothy that, ultimately, he stands before God. This charge doesn’t come just from Paul, but from the Almighty, from the Lord, from Jesus Christ himself. When Paul charges Timothy in the presence of God and of Jesus Christ, he is reminding Timothy of his position before the Lord.

Once we realize our standing before God, it helps put everything else in perspective. What Paul is about to tell Timothy is some pretty important stuff. If Timothy ever forgets his standing before the Lord, then suddenly this stuff doesn’t become a call in his life, but a skill that he tries to develop. There is a definite difference between a developed skill and a call from God.

As individuals and as a church, we must remember our standing before God lest we treat the church like a business. There is business that needs to be taken care of in a local congregation, but the church is not a business. The church needs to be a place where people come into contact with the Almighty God and draw closer to Him and one another in Christian fellowship. As a congregation, we have a call to reach others with the good news of Jesus Christ. If we approach this call as strictly business, we are going to miss out on a deeper, and much more important, spiritual development in the lives of the people we come into contact with. In the Great Commission, Jesus tells the disciples to reach out to others and disciple them. It’s not just enough to reach others with the good news of Jesus Christ, but we also have to be intentional about faith development.

If we just want to get more people in the building, then there are things that we can do to draw a crowd. But we don’t want to just fill the pews; we want to reach people with a message of salvation. That is very different than simply filling up the space. As we improve the quality of our spiritual lives, we realize that there is so much more to our call as followers of Jesus Christ. It is on this foundation that Paul charges Timothy.

Paul’s first instruction to Timothy is to “preach the word.” Timothy’s primary responsibility as a person who stands under the authority of Jesus Christ is to share the gospel. He is to tell others of Jesus. He is to offer salvation through Jesus Christ. So, how does this apply to us today? Well, I don’t think it take a genius to make the connection on this one. Preach the word.

That doesn’t mean that every person here should expect to preach on a Sunday morning. In fact, I can guarantee you that not every person who preaches should do so. I have heard a lot of people preach on a Sunday morning, and I have heard a few people that shouldn’t preach from the pulpit on a Sunday morning. Perhaps the most famous quote on this subject is attributed to St. Francis of Assisi who reportedly said, “Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.”

You preach the word by how you live it out in your life. Are you wasting your life away in sinful living, all the while thinking that it’s okay because you go to church on a Sunday morning? What kind of gospel are you preaching when you do that? Do you talk poorly about other people behind their back, but put on a happy face around them? What kind of gospel are you preaching? Does your life match your words? Do your actions backup how you say that God has been working in your heart? Preach the gospel not just by what you say, but by how you live.

Second, be ready. In season and out of season, be ready. Be ready for what? Be ready for anything. God can call us when we least expect it. God can speak to us when we are least ready to hear what it is that He has to say. In 1 Peter 3:15, Peter tells us to always be “prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” Be ready at any and all times to be a representative of Christ; wherever you are.

When we decide to follow Christ, we aren’t dedicating a couple of hours of our week to him. We are dedicating our entire lives to him. That is a significant difference. When you commit to being the sports coach or music teacher, you are committing a portion of your time to accomplish particular tasks. It’s not like that when it comes to our faith. When we decide to follow Jesus, he isn’t asking for a few hours of our time every week. He is asking for our weeks.

Because of this, we must be ready at all times to be obedient to what it is that he is calling us to do. We can’t just be Christians when it is convenient for us. A partial disciple is no disciple. And if you’re thinking, “Preacher, that might be easy for you. You don’t have a real job. Your job is to do this kind of stuff.” Then maybe you’re missing the point.

When we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, he doesn’t just suddenly appear, sit down with a calendar and schedule a monthly meeting. It’s not easy to be a disciple. It’s not convenient to be a disciple. It doesn’t fit into our schedule to be a disciple. But the truth is, Jesus doesn’t want just a part of our lives; he doesn’t want us to fit him into our schedule. And for that reason, we must be ready at all times to follow his call for us.

Third, Paul tells Timothy to reprove, rebuke and exhort. What do these things mean? The word “reprove” has to do with bringing others into a conviction of the sin in their lives. It is the same word that is used in John 16:8, when Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. This doesn’t mean that we suddenly become judgmental and start pointing out all the flaws in other people. In Matthew 7, Jesus says that we are to remove the log from our eye before we tell our brothers and sisters to remove the specks from their eyes.

Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that we’ve got it all figured out, and the rest of the people around us need to straighten up. Convicting people of particular sins in their lives is not our place – that is the work of the Holy Spirit. But creating relationships and environments where people can allow the convicting work of the Spirit to be present in their lives is certainly something that we can do. People don’t want to be judged by other people, but they are open to self-reflection, even when it shines some light in the dark corners.

The word “rebuke” is a stern word very similar to “reprove’” however, in this instance, it doesn’t necessarily result in a deeply rooted conviction of the sin. Rebuking another person is something that has to come from a mutual relationship of love and respect. We don’t need to go up to just anybody and tell them that what they are doing is wrong. Again, it is the Holy Spirit’s job to do that.

However, when we are in relationship with fellow believers – a relationship with a foundation of mutual love in Christ Jesus – then we can allow one another that type of access into our lives. Another way of putting this would be “accountability.” We all need accountability in our lives, especially in our spiritual lives. We need to give others permission to let us know when we’ve gone off track, but this can only be done when each person loves and trusts the other.

The third word in this part of the charge is “exhort.” To exhort somebody means that one is encouraging, comforting, and strengthening another person. Paul is telling Timothy to encourage and motivate fellow believers. While the first two words in this charge – reprove and rebuke – may seem like Timothy is supposed to be sharing difficult words all the time, this lets us know that there is a lot of positive things that we can do with how we speak to another as well. Exhortation is a way to build up another and encourage that person to press on in spite of the difficulties that surround him/her at this present time.

As we look back over the charge that Paul gives Timothy in the opening verses of chapter 4, we notice that a lot of what he is talking about has to do with sharing the Word. Preach the gospel. Be ready in and out of season. Reprove, rebuke and exhort. These all have to do with how Timothy interacts with other people regarding the Word of God. Paul is very heavily pointing to the need to teach and preach with patience and sound doctrine.

When we get to verse 3, we start to see just why it is that Paul is giving Timothy this charge. He says, “The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but because they have itching ears, they will seek out teachers to suit their passions.” In other words, there will come a time when people no longer listen to what Timothy is saying because they will not like what it is that he has to say. Instead, they will seek after teachers who say things with which they agree.

One thing that we have to be careful about in our own lives is that we don’t often like to listen to teaching that challenges us. Often times, if somebody is teaching something that doesn’t agree with our preconceived notions, we tend to stop listening to them. We don’t like to be challenged, but we have to be from time to time. Sound doctrine is not always an easy thing to hear. If we listen to the media, we hear all sorts of messages that we may like to hear, messages with which may agree on some level, but to call them sound doctrine would be a stretch.

We have to be careful about blindly agreeing with everything that we read or hear. We have to be willing to question things from time to time. Above all, we have to be able to compare the teachings that we hear with what has been revealed to us in Scripture. If somebody is teaching something that is not consistent with what we read in Scripture, and we find ourselves agreeing with this teaching, then we need to take a step back and reevaluate our position on certain topics. Our task, as followers of Jesus Christ is to be familiar with Scripture, and to teach sound doctrine, even if the world around us would rather hear a different message.

Even though we may be surrounded by a world that teaches doctrines different than Scripture, we must maintain our commitment to teaching the Word of God. Paul reminds Timothy of this in verse 5, where he says, “As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

It will always be important for us to be of sound mind when it comes to sharing the gospel with others. We are to be focused and determined when it comes to sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we have to realize that often this comes at a price.

Paul tells Timothy to enduring suffering because suffering is an inevitable part of the Christian life. For Timothy and countless other believers, it is physical suffering. For us in this day and age, we may not be openly persecuted for the faith, but that doesn’t mean we are free from the suffering that follows those who follow Christ.

As followers of Christ, we are charged to remain focused on the mission at hand. We need to not be distracted by the peripherals, even the ones that whisper in our ears that we may face some unwelcome times because of our faith. We need to draw strength from what Paul is saying here. Remember, Paul was in his final days. We can read through Acts and see that he was well acquainted with suffering for the gospel. He is speaking from experience here. This is not idle advice that he is giving, but it comes in the midst of his own personal experience.

Paul’s advice to “do the work of an evangelist” does not mean that we are to stand on the street corner proclaiming that all are sinners and are in need of repentance. While there is a measure of truth to that message, evangelism is not about condemning sinners, but sharing the joy of a new life in Jesus Christ.

Above all, we are to fulfill our ministry. What that looks like when we get to the specifics is going to be different for every person, but as followers of Christ, we are charged to make disciples, and that involves sharing the word of God, and being intentional about our personal faith development and the faith development of those around us.

Final words are always difficult. We want to impart so much wisdom to those who will be left behind, but it’s hard to keep it to the point and memorable. Ultimately, we just have to hope that we have taught enough along to way that our final words are merely a culmination of what we have been teaching all along.

Paul’s final words are words of encouragement; words of hope; words of purpose; words of mission. If we hold these words in our hearts as we move forward as followers of Jesus Christ, I have no doubt that we will hear the same message that Paul heard as he met the Lord. “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Go from this place today, remembering Paul’s final words, and taking them to heart, so that all may come to know Jesus Christ.

Movie Tour: The Other Guys

2010-11-16T17:26:00.001-05:00

I know that it has been quite a while since I've had anything besides a sermon up on here. I was thinking about that today when I looked at my edit list, and realized that I had three... that's right THREE blog posts that I had started and hadn't finished. So, I'm going to get those up in the next couple of days! Yippee!!! I know, I know, you're both thrilled.

First off, let's get back to the Movie Tour! I haven't seen nearly as many movies this year as I would have liked. However, a while back, I did manage to pull a double feature, and the first of those movies was The Other Guys with Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell.

Plot Summary
The Other Guys is about two cops who people always looked past. You always see movies about the superstar cops. Well, this movie isn't about them. It's about the guys who are... well... the other guys. Officer Allen Gamble (played by Ferrell) and his partner Terry Hoitz (aka, the Yankee Clipper) follow a few seemingly innocuous leads and track down something much, much larger. What follows is a gem of chemistry that rivals Tango & Cash.

Review
I thought The Other Guys was pretty funny. Of course, as is always a risk with any Will Ferrell movie, there are some pretty inappropriate parts, and other parts that make you say, "What in the world just happened?!?" I thought Wahlberg played a fantastic straight guy, and Ferrell played his usual goofy self. Throw in Michael Keaton's finest performance since Multiplicity, and you have an idea of just how low my standards are when it comes to movies.

Recommendation
If you don't mind some of the lewdness, I would definitely recommend it. It made me laugh almost all the way through. Don't expect much, and you'll be pretty happy with it.

Best Part
In a flashback that helps explain why Terry got busted down to where he was with Allen as his partner, we find out that Terry was working security at Yankee Stadium when a person wouldn't heed his warning to stop walking down a dark tunnel. He pulled his gun and shot the person in the leg. The person turned out to be Derek Jeter. Now maybe it's not right that I enjoy seeing a Yankee get popped in the leg, but... that was funny.

Why Black Ops is Awesome

2010-11-16T12:48:00.000-05:00

So, last week the new installment of the Call of Duty series was released. It's called Black Ops, and it takes place during the Cold War Era. It begins with an assault in Cuba in an attempt to assassinate Castro, and follows the story of one of the soldiers who took part in that operation. The graphics are great, the gameplay is fun, the story is intriguing, and it even makes a connection to Treyarch's previous installment World at War in a pretty cool way.

However, the real reason anybody buys these games is for the multiplayer experience. Like the previous games, there are thousands of online matches going on at any given time. Inevitably videos of online gameplay are going to come out, but I don't think I've ever seen a video as funny as the one I'm about to show you. I believe this is on the map Havana, which, as you'll see, takes place on a Cuban street (duh, did you think it was Havana, Delaware?).

I did watch through it already just to make sure there isn't any undue violence or language. Watch this video, and it will be the best 2 minutes of your next five... I guarantee it.

Werewolf Bar Mitzvah

2010-10-31T07:44:00.000-04:00

So, back in March, I was trying to find a YouTube clip from 30 Rock to commemorate St. Patrick's day. It was the one where Jack Donaghy goes to confession. I thought it was rather appropriate, even though that scene took place on Valentine's Day, because Jack is an Irish-Catholic who never goes to church. However, in that process, I came across a clip that I thought would be great for Halloween. Unfortunately, I have a terrible memory when it comes to things like this, and so, on March 17, 2010, I pulled together a posting for today, October 31, 2010. How's that for advanced planning!!!

Bowlin'

2010-10-11T08:58:00.000-04:00

Tripp Crosby and Tyler Stanton are two funny dudes. That, first and foremost, is what you need to know in order to fully appreciate this breakout hit. You can check out their website at TrippandTyler.com for more funny videos, but here is one that they recently debuted at Catalyst '10. Oh, and by the way, that's Chris Tomlin...

Minors Into Majors

2010-10-10T19:37:00.000-04:00

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, October 10, 2010. The text for this week's message comes from 2 Timothy 2:8-15.

As we continue in 2 Timothy today, we come across a concept that is very important for us as followers of Jesus Christ. I think by this point in life, every person here has had some kind of disagreement. Disagreements aren’t always a bad thing, and we need to be able to handle them in a manner that reflects the love of Christ. What we see as we approach this passage today is that there were some disagreements going on in the church where Timothy was serving. What we also see is how Paul tells Timothy to handle these disagreements, and what we walk away with is a better idea of what needs to be done in such instances.

In verse 14, where Paul really addresses this issue head-on, he writes, “Remind them of these things.” If we want to be good students of Scripture, then something we need to learn to ask is, “Why?” Why does Paul say what he says here? Remind who of what things? What is he telling Timothy to do? To get an idea of what he is talking about, we actually have to go a little further back in the letter.

In 2 Timothy 1:15-18, Paul mentions three people. Two of them turned away from him, while a third sought him out while he was imprisoned in Rome. Apparently, some took issue with Paul being in prison, and they used as an opportunity to walk away from him. They deserted him. Certainly, they weren’t the only ones. These are people who could have supported Paul in this difficult time, but instead choose to go their own way.

This appears to have caused some dissention in the church. There were some who turned their backs on Paul, but there were also some who were there to help him in the midst of his suffering and imprisonment. Paul goes on to talk about how Timothy and other followers of Jesus should remember the example that was set by Jesus Christ.

He begins chapter 2 by telling Timothy to be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ, and to continue in his task to teach the message of the gospel to others. Instead of running away when things get tough, Paul encourages Timothy to share in the sufferings as a soldier in Christ Jesus. Don’t lose focus, don’t turn away when things get difficult, but press on. Move forward knowing that what he is doing is right. Then we get to today’s reading.

Paul tells Timothy to remember Jesus Christ who rose from the dead. What he is doing here is not only reminding Timothy of the sufferings of Christ, but also of the ultimate victory that is in Christ. We know the story of Easter. Even those who never attend worship know the claims of Christians that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. Unfortunately, we miss the rest of the story.

The way our calendar is set up, we have Palm Sunday, which is a celebration of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, and then the next Sunday, we have Easter, which is a celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. Monday through Saturday of that week, we often get caught up in our typical week, and we don’t get as many opportunities to look at the story of Jesus’ suffering and death.

When Paul tells Timothy to remember Jesus Christ who rose from the dead, Timothy would remember why it is that Jesus rose from the dead. There is no resurrection without death. To remind Timothy of the resurrection is to remind him of the need for resurrection. The same is true for us.

When we talk about the risen Christ, we need to remember that to be raised necessitates a burial. We cannot forget about the sufferings of Christ. And what Paul is doing is reminding Timothy and the congregation that suffering is not new to the Christian faith. In fact, that’s how it was founded. People were abandoning Paul because of his suffering and imprisonment, and he points to the example of Jesus to remind them that, at times, suffering is a part of the faith.

Notice what he says in verses 8-9. He says that his suffering comes from preaching the gospel. It is for the sake of the gospel that Paul is in chains as though he were some kind of criminal. But in spite of his chains, Paul recognizes that the word of God is not bound.

The word of God is too powerful to be bound up by chains. As you look through the history of the Christian faith, you’ll see that often when the church is persecuted, it thrives. In the first century, the Church grew exponentially, even though there were intense periods of persecution. Paul knew that fact very well. He knew it because he was one of the first to persecute the early church, and several Roman Emperors followed him in this.

Nero was getting blamed for the great fire in Rome in 64 A.D., and as a means of deflecting the blame, he started a persecution of the Christians, blaming them for the fire. Late in the first century, Domitian heavily persecuted Christians. Persecutions happened under Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Diocletian, and many other emperors until Constantine took control of the Empire. There have been numerous persecutions since the time of Constantine as well. In fact, I have heard it said that more people were killed for their faith in Christ in the 20th century than all the other centuries combined.

Suffering and persecution are a part of the Christian story. We shouldn’t expect it to be easy to be a follower of a person who was wrongfully deemed a criminal and crucified. But it should bring us a measure of strength knowing that this same person was raised from the dead and is active in this world through the work of the Holy Spirit. So when the difficult times come, it is important that we remember the sufferings of Jesus as a way to be encouraged and strengthened for the journey ahead. This is what Paul wants Timothy to remind the people.

In verse 14, Paul tells Timothy to charge the people not to “quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers.” The fact that they will have to deal with persecution is not the problem here. The problem is they are caught up in insignificant issues. We can reasonably assume that these are not significant issues because Paul does not shy away from addressing significant issues when it comes to writing his letters – just read his letters to the Corinthians. That was a church with major issues that Paul addresses very heavily. These must be insignificant issues because Paul doesn’t even take the time to address them specifically. All he says is, “Don’t quarrel over words.” They are issues that have no bearing on their faith, but can end up damaging those who are caught in the middle.

Unfortunately, churches get caught up in this type of arguing over insignificant matters even today. Issues like: what color are we going to paint the sanctuary; what type of carpet are we going to put in the education wing; what style of music are we going to use doing the worship service. Fill in the blank; there are always minors that turn into majors. So, what do we do when that time comes? What do we do when people start turning minors into majors?

We look back to Paul. We have to remember the words of Paul in this passage. And, again, what does he tell Timothy to do here? He tells him to remind them of Jesus. When we remember Jesus, we remember his teachings, his life, his death and his resurrection. We remember that there is a purpose for our call. We are reminded to come back to the important issues.

There always have been differences of opinion between individuals. That is just a simple fact of life. But as followers of Christ, we have to be willing to set the example of how to deal with those differences. By focusing on the larger, more important issues.

In his sermon “On a Catholic Spirit,” John Wesley reflects on the question that Jehu asks Jehonadab in 2 Kings 10:15, “Is your heart right, as my heart is with your heart?” Where are people’s hearts in the matter? What are the bigger issues of which we need to be mindful?

In John 13, we read these words. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Jesus is telling his disciples that the world will come to know them as his followers if they merely love one another.

When we have differences with our brothers and sisters in Christ, we need to intentionally decide to love that person. We do so not because we want to appear like we are above the petty things that people argue about in this world, but because the love of Christ reigns in our hearts. We can’t help but love one another when the love of Christ overflows from within us, and it is that love that helps us move past the minor things in this life that get us caught up and distracted from our more important tasks.

As a congregation, we have an important call that cannot be undermined by minor issues. We have a call to reach others with the good news of Jesus Christ. We have been entrusted to share the Word of God with a world that is in desperate need of salvation. We must do exactly what Paul says here. We must remember Jesus Christ who has been raised from the dead. In doing so, we refocus ourselves on the most important objectives that he has laid before us.

Is there someone with whom you have a disagreement concerning issues that are not central to the faith? Are there issues between you and another person that prevents the two of you from being focused on the goal of reaching others with the message of Jesus Christ? If so, are they majors or are they minors?

If they are indeed majors, then we need to approach those issues with the love of Christ and look for ways to settle them. If people are unable to experience Christ through your life because of these issues, then they need to be dealt with right away. If they are minors, then we need to address the issue, keeping in mind our call to reach others with the message of Jesus Christ.

We will never be able to agree on everything; that’s part of the human condition, but we do need to make sure we put things in the proper perspective. However, when we are focused on our purpose, when we are focused on the call that God has for us, we can do our best to avoid turning minors into majors.

The Value of Remembering

2010-10-06T21:28:00.000-04:00

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, October 3, 2010. The text for this week's message is 2 Timothy 1:3-7.

We are continuing our walk through 1 and 2 Timothy today with the opening of Paul’s second letter to Timothy. Some time has passed since Paul’s last letter to Timothy, and the circumstances in which he and Timothy find themselves is drastically different. Paul is in prison, as we see from verse 8 of the first chapter, and most likely, he is awaiting his trial and execution. 2 Timothy is the last of Paul’s letters. In some sense, it is his last piece of advice to his spiritual son Timothy, and it stands as an encouragement for today’s Church.

For a guy that’s awaiting his execution, we may think that Paul begins this letter in a very unusual manner. He says, “I thank God, with a clear conscience, as I remember you constantly in my prayers.” Even in the face of certain death, Paul is giving thanks to God. It is odd to us because when we look at the world around us, we tend to forget to give thanks. It seems like when even the slightest hint of trouble comes our way, we cry out to God and wonder why this is happening to us. We start to question whether or not God even loves us. But one thing that we learn over and over again as we read through Scripture is that there will be suffering; there will be pain in this life. The presence of pain and suffering in this life is not proof that God doesn’t care about us. It’s proof that we live in a fallen world.

Ever since Genesis 3, when sin entered into the world, we have been dealing with the results of a fallen creation. Bad stuff happens. It is a simple, yet unwelcome truth in a fallen world. But, if we are to learn from the example of Paul, then we need to step back and give thanks in the midst of the troubling times. We need to praise God for what He is doing all around us, even when the darkness is hiding it.

Notice what else he says here. He thanks God “with a clear conscience” as he remembers Timothy in his prayers. There is nothing between Paul and God as he prays. He comes to God with a clear conscience, knowing that he is free from sin in his life. Paul comprehends his standing before God, and it is one in which Paul has been faithful and obedient to who it is that God has called him to be – blameless because of the blood of Jesus Christ.

One question we must ask ourselves, when we come to God in prayer, is, “Do we have a clear conscience?” Can we say that there is no sin in our lives that we haven’t already confessed before the Lord? In Matthew 5, Jesus tells us that when we come to the altar, we are to be reconciled with our brothers and sisters before offering our gift. Because we can’t have hatred in our heart, we can’t be unreconciled people, when we come before the Lord. Remember the line in the Lord’s Prayer: forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. “As we forgive.” That’s a dangerous prayer. If we don’t forgive others, we are asking that we not be forgiven.

Paul prays with a clear conscience because he has forgiven others. There may be some who held grudges against Paul, but his conscience was clean. He had no animosity towards them. Forgiveness is not about making sure we tell somebody that they have been forgiven by us. Forgiveness is about letting go of the things that can make us bitter towards another. Forgiveness is about a clear conscience, and we can have that because of Jesus Christ.

In verses 4-7, Paul takes us on a little trip down memory lane. He has already told Timothy that he has been remembering him in prayer. And now, in verse 4, he says that he remembers Timothy’s tears. While there is no specific reference as to what he is talking about, one thing it shows us is the depth of the relationship between the two.

Paul spoke very highly of Timothy. He refers to Timothy as his son, which shows level of their relationship. It’s clear that this relationship was crucial for both of them. Paul was a mentor and a father in the faith for Timothy, whose own father is not really mentioned, outside of Luke telling us that his father was Greek in Acts 16.

It is important for each one of us to have mentors in the faith. It’s important that we have somebody we can look up to and learn from. It is equally important that we mentor those whose faith is younger than ours. I’ve talked before about faith being a journey, and that some are further along the road than others. It’s important for us to learn from those who are ahead of us on their journey, and to help those who may not be as far along in their journey. There is mutual joy in this type of relationship. Paul says that he longs to see Timothy so that he would be filled with joy, and I think it’s fair to say that Timothy would like to see his mentor one more time as well.

The next remembrance to which Paul points is Timothy’s sincere faith. Notice the adjective here, “sincere” faith. One of the things I get to do as somebody going through the process of ordination in the United Methodist Church is psychological exams. Let me tell you, they are a treat. There have been three different times that I have had to do them, most recently just a couple of months ago.

One particular test looks for psychological disorders that would require a special type of hospitalization. In my follow-up interview, one of the things the evaluator said was, “You are either perfectly fine, or you want us to think you are.” Apparently 85% of the people who take this particular exam answer in a similar fashion. Now, I can guarantee you that I was not faking my way through that test. I was sincere about my answers.

I think this is a good metaphor for our faith. It’s hard to tell on the surface if somebody is sincere about their faith. Are they putting on a front so people will think they are fine? Or are they really who they appear to be? Sometimes people seem sincere about their faith, but they really just want you to think that they are all right.

Paul knew that Timothy was sincere about his faith. He knew about Timothy’s sincerity because he knew about his mother’s and his grandmother’s sincerity. Faith is something that we can pass on from generation to generation. There are no guarantees that your children will follow in your footsteps when it comes to faith, but there certainly are things that can be done to increase their chances.

Parents must be active in faith development of their children. When I was in youth ministry, the most important message that I had to stress to parents was their role in their child’s faith development. Because it didn’t matter how many activities a youth attended during the week, they typically came from home and went back home. On a good week, I might see some youth for 4-5 hours. That still left another 163 hours in the week. Faith development begins in the home.

Timothy’s sincere faith began by listening to his mother and grandmother as they tell him about Jesus. It continued when he saw it modeled in their lives each and every day. We may buy into the popular sentiment that faith is personal and private, but the truth is, it’s not. Our faith is shown to the world each and every day by how we live it out.

Finally, after remembering the relationship he has with Timothy and remembering Timothy’s sincere faith, Paul flips the remembering around on Timothy. Paul takes the opportunity to remind Timothy of something else in his own life. Paul says, “For this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you.” When you start a fire, it’s important that the spark gets plenty of oxygen. It is only then that the fire really begins to catch. When you fan a flame, you bring a small spark into something significantly larger.

Timothy had a small spark in the gift of God within him. Paul was encouraging him to fan the flame; to bring it to full fire. We can’t give up when it comes to our faith and our gifts in ministry. We have to press on, and carefully fan the flames so that they can grow into something significant. How do we fan the flame of our faith in this life? By attending to our spiritual lives.

I truly hope that you have been working your way through the Bible this year. Reading Scripture is one of the best ways to fan the flame in your faith journey. Spending time in the Word allows you to hear from God in ways that are not possible if you aren’t reading Scripture. Fan the flame. Nobody can do it for you; you have to make the decision to do it yourself. When you do that, you will find that the Holy Spirit is working in some mighty ways in your life. You don’t do it alone, but you can’t do it at all if you don’t make the decision to do something.

Paul closes out this section of the letter by addressing an issue that was probably plaguing Timothy, as well as many other Christians at this time in history; and he does so by reminding Timothy of something else that is critical to his faith. Paul says that we haven’t been given a spirit of fear, but of power and love and self-control.

During this time in the Roman Empire, Nero was leading a persecution against Christians. It was the same persecution that claimed the life of Peter, and would soon claim the life of Paul. There was reason to be afraid for one’s life at this time, but Paul encourages Timothy to not have a spirit of fear.

The word that is used for “fear” was often used in reference to soldiers who fled from battle. Paul recognizes that this is a battle of sorts. It is not a battle against the Roman Empire. It is not a physical war against one’s enemies. It is a spiritual battle. It is a battle that centers around the soul. Perhaps the most important thing for us to realize in this instance is that it is a battle in a war that is already won. Through his resurrection, Jesus Christ has defeated death and the forces of evil. The battles rage on in our personal lives, but we need to realize that the war has already been decided, and it is not evil that gets the final say.

The power of the Holy Spirit dwells within us when we decide to give our lives to Christ. In 1 John 4, John tells us that the one who dwells within us is greater than the one who is in the world. There is no need to fear when we realize the power of God resides in us.

The love of God is another reason why we should not fear, even in difficult times. This same love is what caused Jesus to come and die for our sins on the cross. This same love is the reason why we have an opportunity to have a renewed relationship with God, even though we are dead in our sins without Jesus. God does not owe us anything, and yet, He has given us everything. It is because of His love for us.

Finally, self-control. In some translations, the word that is used here is translated “sound mind.” It has to do with discipline and self-control. It has to do with how we guard our minds against the things that have no worth to our spiritual life. We must mentally prepare ourselves in the midst of difficult times. We get worn down and beat up by the things of this world, and in doing so, we make ourselves vulnerable to spiritual attacks. We make ourselves vulnerable to weaknesses that can hurt our faith.

When we face things in this life that bring us fear, we need to remember exactly what Paul is reminding Timothy of in this passage. We need to remember the power of the Holy Spirit, the love of God and to lead a disciplined life. When these three things remain the focus as we fan the flame of our faith, we can live our lives confident that the grace of God will carry us through anything.

We get the sense in the opening portion of Paul’s second letter to Timothy that something is going to happen, and it is probably going to happen soon. Persecution is on the horizon for Timothy and the Church of the first century. Paul is writing so that they will be encouraged and prepared for what lies ahead. Today, as we look at this passage, it would do us some good as well to remember. Remember the story of Jesus. Remember how it is that you came to know him. Remember that your faith is not just about you. We are called to reach others with the good news of Jesus Christ. Remember that and live it out in your own life.

Goldliness or Godliness

2010-10-05T21:22:00.001-04:00

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, September 26, 2010. The text for this week's message was 1 Timothy 6:6-19.

We’ve spent the majority of this month working through Paul’s first letter to Timothy. There are several things that we can walk away knowing as we read this letter. In 1 Timothy 1 we saw Paul give thanks to Jesus for empowering him for ministry, counting him faithful to fulfill that ministry and appointing him to ministry. We saw that this call to ministry wasn’t reserved just for Paul, but it is for all people. All who follow Jesus Christ are called to ministry in one form or another. It is up to us to be faithful to that call in our own lives.

Last week, we continued on the theme of a call to ministry, and came to see, what I believe without a doubt, is our call as a congregation, and that is to reach others with the good news of Jesus Christ. I know a lot of what we talked about last week may have been hard to hear because it causes us to really examine what we are doing as a congregation. We have to take a step back and wonder out loud what it is that we are doing, and does that help us reach others with the message of Jesus Christ. If we are not focused on that goal, then we run the risk of creating a culture that is unwelcoming to those who aren’t already a part of the “in crowd.”

Today we move from a corporate focus to a more individual focus. What we are looking at is pretty much the end of Paul’s first letter to Timothy. In this section, we see a warning and a charge to Timothy as he continues to lead the people of the church at Ephesus. Before we dive right into what he is saying in chapter 6, let’s get a better idea as to why he says it.

As I mentioned last week, one of the issues that Paul faced as he was fulfilling his ministry across the Roman Empire, was the presence of false teachers who would come in after him and teach a different doctrine than what Paul was teaching. As we read today’s section, it seems as though Paul’s opponents are teaching that godliness is the best way to acquire wealth. In describing some of their teaching in verse 5, Paul says that they imagine “godliness is a means of gain.” Unfortunately, this teaching did not end with Paul’s opponents in the first century. This teaching still exists today, and it poses a significant problem for the church.

This teaching is called many things today, but the most popular term is prosperity gospel. The prosperity gospel teaches that God blesses his followers with material possessions. While it is prominent in some strands of Pentecostal churches, it is not fair to say that all Pentecostals teach this type of theology. It cuts across all denominations. The major suggestion that comes through in most prosperity gospel teaching is that if you follow God, God will bless you, and you will be wealthy. And it’s not spiritual wealth that they are talking about, but the bottom line in your bank account, material wealth.

I’m not going to go into detail about the different figures that represent this type of teaching. The reason I bring it up is because that’s what Paul is talking about. This type of theology is exactly what Paul is speaking against in the first place as he writes Timothy in today’s passage. In the opening paragraph of today’s reading, Paul tells us that there is great gain in godliness with contentment; notice the qualifier there. Being content with what you have is very different than saying that godliness leads to great gain.

Paul reminds us that we came into this world with nothing, and that there is nothing we can take out of it when we go. That’s a pretty simple concept, but it’s one that we lose sight of from time to time. I came across a story this week of a very wealthy man who had passed away. At his funeral, one of the people leaned over to a friend and said, “How much did he leave?” The friend looked at him and said, “How much did he leave? He left all of it.”

I know I haven’t done a whole lot of funerals in my three years as a pastor, so maybe Tom/Halsey can help me with this, but I’ve never seen a moving truck as part of a funeral procession. Have you? We say it all the time, “You can’t it with you,” but sometimes I think we forget. If we are never content with what we have, then that is the first sign that maybe we are being driven by something besides the will of God for our lives.

Paul says in verse 9, “But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.” First off, the word that is translated as “desire” refers to a deliberate determination. In other words, it is something that is plotted, planned out; something that becomes the focus. I want you to do something real quick: hold out your hand in front of your face. Focus on your palm. While you are focusing on your palm, what else can you see? You can’t really see anything else. You’ve got a vague idea of what is going on around you, but you don’t really know.

If your desire to be rich causes all of your focus to be put into the pursuit of worldly possessions, then you’re missing out on a whole lot. And that’s what Paul is saying here. Those who desire to be rich fall into a trap. You can’t see a trap if you aren’t paying attention to where you are going. Paul says that those who desire to be rich fall into senseless and harmful desires. What is really ironic about what Paul is saying here is that the word for “senseless” can also mean “foolish,” and it carries with it the idea of one who does not apply his/her mind to what is happening. So what he is saying here is that if you have a deliberate determination to pursue wealth in your life, you are not truly applying your mind to what is happening around you.

Paul warns Timothy that the love of money is the root of all evil. Hear that again: the love of money is the root of all evil. Too many times people will take this verse and chop it up to say that money is the root of all evil. But money itself is about as evil as the pew that you are sitting in right now. Money is an inanimate object. It neither has positive nor negative value apart from our motives. But our desire, our deliberate determination to acquire money, can cause us to do all sorts of evil things.

Think about all the financial scandals we have seen over the past several years: Lehman Brothers, Bernie Madoff, Enron, and the list goes on. These are individuals and companies whose pursuit and love of money lead them into traps. Unfortunately, there have been several churches that have been hit by these kinds of illegal pursuits of money as well. And here is Paul, warning Timothy of what will happen if the love of money gets in the way of more important things in life. So what is Paul’s advice to Timothy in this instance? Flee.

Paul tells Timothy to run away; to avoid these things. He gives Timothy the charge to flee from the dangers and snares of this world; to not be caught up in pursuing things that will not last. He tells Timothy to flee from these things, and to pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. He tells Timothy to flee from the things of this world, and pursue the eternal things of God.

We can’t just run away from things in this life. We are always chasing something. The key to chase something that is worthwhile. Paul tells Timothy to pursue six things. And these six things are not going to make you wealthy, in a financial sense. But in a much more important way, these things will bring you a spiritual wealth that can never be taken, not even by death. When you look at your life, are you rich in the things of this world, but poor in the things of God? Or are you content with what God has given you, and do you pursue the things of God?

Paul’s charge extends beyond Timothy in the final paragraph, and what he tells Timothy applies to us in our lives as well. He tells Timothy to instruct those who are rich in this present age to not be arrogant about it. Do not be filled with pride because of your material possessions. Don’t set your hopes on the things that you have been able to acquire in this world. You don’t hear people talking about the salvation they received from their bank accounts. Our material possessions have absolutely no bearing on our eternal life. So why have pride in them? Rather, place your hope in God.

God is the one who provides us with what we need. We don’t have to worry about our well being because God will give us what we need. We just have to remember that God’s view of what we need may not always match up with our view. And this is where contentment comes back into the picture. Contentment comes when we put all of our faith in God, knowing that He will provide. When we have that kind of faith, we are no longer concerned with what we have, but our focus becomes what can we do for the glory of God.

As we wrap up this morning, I do want to make something clear. I’m not standing up here today telling everybody that they need to give more to the church. That’s not the point, so don’t go away thinking that this morning. The point is: God provides. Our society teaches us to rely on our personal wealth and to pursue stuff in this life. Paul is teaching us to rely on the one who gives us everything we have in the first place.

Your giving to the church is a matter of personal discipleship. What I’m trying to do today, by reading what Paul is saying to Timothy, is challenge you to rethink what it means to be wealthy, and what it means to be content with what God has given you in this life. There are more important things than the bottom line. Pursue them. Pursue godliness in your life and flee from the temptation to believe the saying, “He who has the most toys wins.” Because there is no victory in that. Our only victory is in Jesus Christ.

That All May Know

2010-10-04T21:17:00.000-04:00

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, September 19, 2010. The text for this week's message is 1 Timothy 2:1-7.

Last week, we looked at Paul’s understanding of ministry. Ministry is for all people. All who have decided to follow Jesus are called to be in ministry. Ministry is not just for an elite few. Ministry is not just for those who have gone to school for it. Ministry is not just for the “professionals.” In the Scripture we looked at last week, Paul gives thanks for three things: that Jesus has empowered him for ministry, judged him faithful and appointed him to service. As people who are called to ministry, we should all be intentional about giving ourselves fully to the tasks that God has entrusted to us.

This week, we really get to the heart of what ministry is all about. Paul moves into it by beginning with what may be perceived as a controversial statement. He begins by saying that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving should be made for all people. He lists several different types of prayer here. These are very general categories of prayer focusing on our personal needs, on God’s ability to meet those needs, on others and on giving thanks. Paul says that we need to be praying for all people.

And just so we don’t think that Paul is telling us that we only have to pray for certain people, he writes that we need to pray for “kings and all who are in high positions.” Now, I don’t know what your political persuasion is, and really, it doesn’t matter to me, but are you praying for those in office? Are you praying for those who are in high positions?

So much of our political rhetoric today has to do with where this person is falling short, or where that person is messing things up. It’s very divisive. But do you pray for the Obama Administration? And I don’t mean that you pray they get voted out of office soon. On the flip side, did you pray for the Bush Administration? And I don’t mean that you thanked God when it was over. Paul tells us to pray for kings and all who are in high positions, not just the ones that we like, and not just the ones that we agree with. Let’s put this in perspective here.

Do you know who the people in high positions were when Paul was writing this letter? The Romans. Do you know who the Roman emperor was when Paul was writing this letter? Nero. Now, maybe you aren’t familiar with Roman history, and that’s all right, but for some reason you may think that you’ve heard that name before. And it is because Nero was one of the worst men to have ever been emperor of Rome.

In 64 A.D. a great fire destroyed much of Rome, and it was rumored that Nero set the first in order to make room for expansion of his palace. It was said that Nero played his fiddle while Rome burned. Not very many surviving sources have a lot of good things to say about Nero. He was known for persecuting the early church. It was during Nero’s reign as emperor that both Peter and Paul were killed for their faith.

And yet, Paul tells Timothy to pray for him. Pray for those for whom you have no desire to pray, and you’ll start to understand what Paul is talking about here. Because it doesn’t matter that they seem too far-gone. It doesn’t matter what they have done to you, or what you think they have done, pray for those who are in high positions. I know that is a lot easier said than done, but as you pray, you may find that God is working in your heart in ways that you didn’t know He needed to. Lift up all people to the Lord, and in doing so, your heart will be molded into one that chases after God’s will in your life.

Paul goes on to talk about why we should pray for them. We pray so that we may lead a “peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.” There’s really a twofold purpose here. First, a peaceful and quiet life. A peaceful and quiet life is a life that is unaffected by the turmoil that surrounds it. To have a peaceful and quiet life, means that we are not ruled by our circumstances. It means that we have peace within, and we are at peace with the world around us. Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of wholeness.

Second, we pray for others so that our lives may be godly and dignified in every way. What does that mean? I wish I could remember who said it, but someone much wiser than me once said, “For some people, you may be the only Bible they read.” When our outward lives are shaped by our inward prayer life, then we are setting an example worthy of the name we carry as Christ followers. We must always set an example of what it means to be godly and dignified. That doesn’t mean that we don’t let loose and have a good time. It means we live our lives in the joy of the Lord. We don’t seek out things that are contrary to God. We don’t seek out things that go against who God has made us to be. We live our lives to the fullest, and we do so for the glory of God.

In this section, Paul is building up to something huge. He tells us to pray for all people, even those who we would least like to pray for. He tells us to set an example in our lives, and example that would give people reason to look at our lives and see something significant within them. And then he tells us some of the most important information that we could ever hear: that God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. He gives us our call here. He gives us our purpose here. He lets us know who we are supposed to be.

We are called to ministry so that others may come into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. How that looks for every individual is different; however, we are called into ministry so that all may know the truth. The truth is very simple. It is the core message of Scripture. One place it is found is in verses 5-6 of today’s passage: there is one mediator, one go-between, one intermediary between God and humanity, and that one is Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all.

It’s said in different ways as we read through the New Testament. Acts 4:12 says it this way, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” Jesus says in John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” In a culture that says, “I’m okay, you’re okay,” this will be an unpopular message, but the simple truth of the gospel is that the only way that we are to enter into a saving relationship with the Almighty God is by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul saw that, and his ministry was to share that message with people who the Jews tried to avoid at all costs.

One of the problems that Paul constantly encountered on his missionary journeys, and it was one of the reasons why he wrote this letter to Timothy in the first place, was a group of people who taught that the Gentiles had to first convert to Judaism before they could follow Christ. Part of the reason why Paul is emphasizing the role of Jesus as the one mediator between God and humanity was because it wasn’t necessary to be Jewish to be saved. If that were the case, then the Jewish people would be the mediators, not Jesus. There is nothing about a single group of people that makes them the gatekeepers to God. Jesus is the sole go-between. Let’s bring this into our current surroundings now.

You may need to brace yourself for this, but hear me out. This is not your church. I know that I’ve just secretly made half of you angry, but let’s think about this for a minute. Paul’s ministry was about bringing the message of the gospel to the Gentiles. The Jewish people were not fond of Paul doing this, but they were not the ones who decided who was allowed to be saved by God’s grace. This is not your church because you are not the divinely appointed gatekeeper. This is not your church; this is not my church; this is God’s church. God is the one who decides who is saved by His grace, and if we listen to what Paul has to say here, then God desires that all be saved.

The more I thought about this passage, and the more I prayed about where it is that God is leading us as a congregation, the more I saw that this is it. We are not called to be an inwardly focused gathering of believers, but we are called to reach people with the message of Jesus Christ. It sounds a little too simple, doesn’t it? There’s nothing complicated about that call. There’s no grand mission statement, or core values, or catchphrase that we can put on a cool bumper sticker, when we look at that purpose. It’s a simple, matter-of-fact statement: we exist so that all may know the truth of Jesus Christ. We exist so that those who are far from him may hear the truth, the message of salvation; that they may draw close to him; and that they may enter into a saving relationship with him.

If we aren’t doing that as a congregation, if we aren’t bringing people to know Jesus Christ and we barely know him ourselves, then we might as well just close the doors and go out for pizza once a week. A church is not a social club. A church is not an outlet for community service. A church is a gathering of believers who come to praise God and who exist to bring others to Jesus Christ. Everything we do as a church should be done so that others may come to know Jesus.

Fellowship is great. But are we welcoming “outsiders” into our fellowship? Service to the community is fantastic. But are we reaching others with the good news of Jesus Christ in the midst of our service? Sunday school is crucial. But are we incorporating what we have learned into our daily lives? Worship helps us to hear from God. But are we really listening to what He is saying?

As a congregation, we have to make the conscious decision to share the gospel with those around us. Because, if we don’t, we will not continue to exist as a congregation. I’m sorry to say that but it’s true. It may not be for 20 years; it may not be for another 50 years, but if we don’t decide to reach out to others with the message of salvation through Jesus Christ, we are making the decision to close the doors… eventually.

I believe that churches go through cycles. At some point in that cycle, there comes a decision that is going to effect whether that church goes up for the next cycle, or spirals downward for the next cycle. A church that decides not to reach out to those who don’t know Jesus makes the decision to spiral downward. If that church makes the same decision long enough, then it has created a culture that continues to spiral downward until there’s nothing left.

I’m not a big numbers person. I know that there are always reasons behind the numbers, but those sitting here this morning know that these pews weren’t as roomy twenty-five years ago. There are always reasons. People pass away. People move out of the area. We can come up with all kinds of reasons, but the bottom line is that there are still a lot of people in this community that don’t go to church anywhere. I haven’t seen the statistics, but I’d be willing to say that easily half the people in this town don’t go to church at all, and don’t have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. We have to decide to reach these people, or we are deciding that there’s still not enough elbowroom in the pews.

Learning From Paul

2010-10-03T21:13:00.001-04:00

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, September 12, 2010. The text for this week's message is 1 Timothy 1:12-17.

Today we are beginning with the first of three weeks that we will be spending in Paul’s first letter to Timothy. During these messages, we are going to walk away with some advice from Paul. Paul was a mentor to Timothy, and what we are reading is a personal letter to Timothy. We get an idea of who Paul is, and we begin to see what ministry is all about. Today’s passage in particular is about Paul’s approach to ministry in the first place. We are going to get some of his thoughts on the subject and see how we can apply it to our lives right here, right now. To begin, though, let’s get an important question out of the way - who is Timothy?

Timothy is first introduced in Acts 16. Paul is traveling throughout the Mediterranean, and meets Timothy in Lystra. Timothy’s mother was Jewish and a believer in Jesus Christ, and his father was Greek. Immediately, we see Timothy traveling with Paul, strengthening the faith of the churches throughout Greece. As we continue through Acts, we see that Timothy is entrusted with a lot of responsibility. He is often left or sent places to continue Paul’s ministry in that place. He was a young man, but his faith was strong and Paul entrusted him with a great deal of spiritual leadership.

As we read through some of Paul’s other letters, Timothy is mentioned several times. He is referred to as Paul’s “fellow worker.” Paul calls him “my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord.” He spreads the gospel of Christ, strengthening and encouraging the churches that have been founded throughout modern-day Greece and Turkey. Timothy is not just some random person that just so happens to be mentioned one time in the New Testament. Timothy is a central figure in missionary endeavors throughout the Mediterranean.

Paul is writing to Timothy, his co-worker and successor in ministry, because he has left Timothy in charge of the church in Ephesus, where there were false teachers who were teaching doctrine contrary to the gospel. We can learn from Paul’s interaction with Timothy. While this is certainly a personal letter, there are some principles that apply in our lives as well.

At the beginning of today’s section, Paul gives thanks for three things. First, that Jesus has given him strength. Second, that Jesus has judged him faithful. Third, that Jesus has appointed him to service. Let’s take a look at those three things.

First, Paul gives thanks because Jesus has strengthened him. What does he mean by that? The word translated “to strengthen” can also mean “to enable.” So, what Paul is saying is that Jesus has enabled, or has empowered, him to be in ministry. We talked a couple weeks ago that God has called all people to ministry. If you have decided to follow Jesus, then you are responding to a call to ministry. And if you’re thinking, “Well, there’s no way that God has called me to ministry, look at the things that I’ve done in my life,” then you need to pay extra attention to today’s message. We’ll talk about that in more detail in a bit, but here’s the thing that we want to focus on for now: Paul is empowered for this ministry.

Paul was a very well educated man. He basically had his PhD in Judaism. However, that was all put aside when he encountered the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. The path that Paul’s life was on was dramatically altered. He was no longer a zealous Jew who persecuted the early Church. He was a follower of Jesus Christ, who was set apart for a particular ministry – a ministry to the Gentiles.

He didn’t go to school to learn how to fulfill this ministry. Realistically, nobody had done this before. Jewish people didn’t actively seek out Gentiles with whom to share the message of God’s grace. Jewish people tried as hard as they could to not associate with Gentiles at all. There was nobody to teach him how to do this type of ministry, and he didn’t need there to be. Paul was filled by the Holy Spirit, called to ministry by God, and empowered by God to do that ministry.

Do you know what you need to do in order to fulfill the ministry to which God is calling you? You need to draw close to Him. A relationship is worth nothing if we don’t do our part in it. We need to spend time reading the Word and praying. We need to listen to what it is that God is trying to say to us throughout the day. God never speaks to us in one way. God’s call comes in a variety of ways, just so we don’t miss it. Listen for that call in your life. Like Paul, we are empowered to do ministry. The ministry to which God calls us will not look like Paul’s. It will be tailored to who God has designed us to be. Like Paul, we need to remember to give thanks that God has empowered us for ministry.

Second, Paul gives thanks because Jesus judged him faithful. Again, the Greek carries a lot more weight than our translation. Jesus didn’t just look at Paul and say, “Okay, you’ll do.” The word implies a carefully considered course of action that takes into account all of the various issues that are at stake. In other words, when Paul was called to ministry, it wasn’t just a flippant, off-hand act. God intentionally called Paul into ministry.

In spite of Paul’s persecution of the church, one thing could never be called into question: his faithfulness. Now, I know that may sound like a strange thing to say about a man who was the equivalent of a bull in a china shop for the early Church. Paul refers to himself as a blasphemer, persecutor and insolent opponent, so how can he possibly say that Jesus has judged him faithful? Paul recognized that there was something at work within him, in spite of the evil deeds that he was doing. That something was God’s grace.

God’s grace and the love of Jesus Christ were so powerful in Paul’s life that he had a complete turn around. He is no longer a persecutor of the Christian faith, but he is its biggest evangelist and the most prolific writer in the New Testament, and it is only by God’s grace that this is the case. Paul was judged faithful because of his response to the mercy, grace and love that were injected into his life when he experienced the risen Christ.

For those who think that God can’t possibly use you in ministry, take a look at Paul’s story - from persecutor to proponent, from enemy to evangelist, from wretch to redeemed. That’s Paul’s story, and there might be something in it that resonates with your story. Do you feel like God can’t use you? You are wrong. God used Paul in some unbelievable ways – so much so that we are still talking about it, nearly two thousand years after Paul was martyred for his faith.

How do we respond to the grace of God at work in our lives? By giving thanks. By devoting our lives to draw closer and closer to Him. By going out of our way if we have to in order to share the good news of Jesus Christ. Above all, we are called to be faithful. That means not turning away after pursuits that do not fall in line with the kingdom of God. We read over and over again throughout Scripture of the need to turn away from the things that pull us away from God. Being judged faithful is about putting away the old self and embracing the new life that we have in Jesus Christ. Like Paul, we need to remember to give thanks that Jesus has judged us faithful.

Third, Paul gives thanks because Jesus has appointed him to service. How’s that for a different perspective? Typically, when we think about doing things for the church, I imagine that more than a handful of people start to get a little anxious. They are worried about what God is going to call them to which will force them out of their comfort zone. Being appointed to the service of Jesus Christ is not something that should make us anxious. We should be excited because we will finally have an opportunity to do what it is that we have been called to do. We finally have the opportunity to be who we are supposed to be. That’s not nerve-wracking. That’s exciting.

There’s an old saying, “Find what you love to do. Find somebody to pay you for it, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” If we love what we are doing, then there’s a good chance that God can use us in ministry in that area. If you aren’t good at something, then that’s probably not where God is calling you to ministry. I listen to a lot of podcasts on my iPod, and one of the podcasts I have to come back to from time to time talks about the myth of the well-rounded individual. There’s this idea in our society that we have to be balanced individuals; that we should work on our weaknesses in order to get stronger. But is this really true? Should we avoid honing our strengths in order to beef up our weaknesses?

Think about it this way: if Randy Johnson spent more time working on his hitting, do you think he would have been a 10-time All Star with over 300 career wins, nearly 5,000 strikeouts and 5 Cy Young Awards? Absolutely not. Hitting wasn’t his strength, and he didn’t need it to be because he was a phenomenal pitcher. I can guarantee you that Albert Pujols doesn’t practice his pitching. He works on his hitting and defense. As a result, he’s won 3 MVP’s and a Gold Glove. They hone their strengths so that they can become the best at what they do. The same should be said for those of us in the church.

If you get so worked up about public speaking that you can’t stand even the thought of doing it, then maybe God hasn’t called you to preach, and that’s all right. If you love to cook, then maybe God is calling you to use those talents to further His kingdom. Where are your strengths in ministry? What do you get excited about, and what are you good at when it comes to serving others? Instead of fretting over where God has called us to ministry, we should take a cue from Paul and rejoice in the fact that Jesus has appointed us to his service. God is going to call us to be who we are, where we are and to serve those He has placed in our lives. Like Paul, we should give thanks to God because He has appointed us to His service. So, how does this all come together?

Next week, we are going to take a few minutes during worship to fill out a leadership inquiry. We are coming up on a time when we are going to start taking a look at the leadership for this congregation for the upcoming year. This is going to be your opportunity to think about the areas where you have served in this congregation, and the areas where you might like to serve.

I won’t make any promises that just because you put down that you’d like to be on a particular committee that you will end up on that committee. We have a nominations committee that will be getting together to help make those decisions, and that’s why the spiritual gifts inventories were so important. We want to be able to match your gifts with an outlet for ministry that you will be excited about and that will see you thrive in what God is calling you to do.

Jesus counts us faithful to fulfill the ministries that he has entrusted to us. We discern this in the midst of community. If and when you are approached about taking part in the ministries of this church in a specific way, I hope that you will take the time to pray about it. I hope that you realize we don’t need to just fill slots in our leadership roster, we need people to step up and fulfill the call to ministry that God has in their lives. Nominations time is not a dreadful time; it’s a joyful time in which we can respond to God’s call right here, right now.

There is so much more that we can learn from today’s passage, but I think that is enough for this morning. If we learn nothing else from Paul, we should walk away this morning knowing that God has called us to serve in His kingdom. This isn’t a scary call. Responding to this call means that we are fulfilling our purpose in life. God is the one who created us. Who better for us to listen to when it comes to the great question in life – why am I here?

As we read again and again what Paul has to say to Timothy in this passage, we would do well to realize that this isn’t just a private conversation between two guys. It is a call to ministry. It is a call to respond to what God has in store for each one of us. It is full of lessons that are important for each one of us as we move forward in our journey of faith.

Fantasy Football 2010, Weeks 2 & 3

2010-10-02T21:49:00.000-04:00

As rosters are being set in anticipation of tomorrow's match-up with a fellow UM clergy member, I thought I'd go ahead and catch y'all up on the last two weeks of fantasy football.... because you care...

Week 2
Starting Lineup
QB: Brees
RB: Rice, Jackson, Brandon Jackson
WR: Hines Ward, Gaffney
TE: Finley
D/ST: Chiefs
K: empty

High scorer: Brees, 22 points
Low scorer: tie, Hines Ward, K spot, 0 points
Result: Steel Curtain Reborn 91, Hillsboro Rabid Monkeys 77

Three things really stand out to me in this game.

1) I forgot that Hines Ward is bi-polar when it comes to fantasy football scoring. He either has a 10+ point week, or a 1 point week. He played well in Week 1 while he was on the bench, and then threw up a stinker in Week 2 when he was in my lineup. I have nobody to blame but myself, after all, I know that he's worthless after a good week.

2) Making a last minute move to get a new kicker is only beneficial if I remember to install that new kicker into the lineup.

3) I needed to make some changes at WR. Gaffney is no longer on the team after putting up a 1 point performance. Ward is sitting until further notice. My WR position combined for 1 point this week, while the three I had sitting on the bench averaged 9 points... each. Another loss chalked up to poor managerial choices.

Week 3
Starting Lineup
QB: Brees
RB: Rice, Matt Forte, Jackson
WR: Knox, Mike Williams (TB)
TE: Finley
D/ST: Chiefs
K: Ryan Succop

High scorer: Brees, 28 points
Low scorer: tie, Forte, Williams, 3 points
Result: Team Kermeen 94, Hillsboro Rabid Monkeys 91

This one came down to the Monday night game, where I had Forte, Knox and Finley going. When it was all said and done, a holding penalty is what killed me. Finley scored a TD that was negated by a holding call, and there went 7 points that I wasn't going to get back. In spite of great night from Knox & Finley, I still came up short. Ironically, because of two guys that I had sitting on the bench in Weeks 1 & 2, who would have won my games if I played them in those weeks. Forte had an off night, and Williams had a so-so game. Meanwhile, Hines Ward (who was on the bench in favor of Williams)... you guessed it... managed 9 points.

Starting off 0-3 isn't promising, but I do remembering being 3-3 last season, then running the table and winning the championship. Perhaps the most damaging part of this week was the fact that both Ray Rice and Steven Jackson went down to injury, and are still listed as questionable for Week 4. Chances are, both are going to be sitting... then they are going to go off and post huge numbers.

A Broken Exchange

2010-10-02T21:04:00.000-04:00

Let me begin by saying that I am aware how far behind I have fallen in posting my sermons. For that reason, you're about to be hit with a binge of sermon posts over the next few days. I have really let this blog fall to the wayside for a while, but with the baseball season winding down, I won't be working on BLB as much, so I'll be able to focus a little more attention here over the next several months. That being said, let the blogging binge begin (how's that for alliteration!).

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, August 29, 2010. The text for this week's message is Jeremiah 2:4-13.

As an avid baseball fan, I tend to pay close attention to what is going on in the baseball world right around July 31st each year. July 31st is the last day that a team can trade a player without having to go through a difficult-to-understand waiver process. There is usually a lot of rumors and action in the weeks leading up to that date. But one thing that is never guaranteed in a trade is success. There is rarely just one reason why a trade takes place, but typically, one team is looking to improve its roster and does so by giving up something in order to improve as a team. However, this doesn’t always work out in the sports world. I looked up some of the worst trades of all time this week. So stay with me for a few minutes, and you’ll start to see how this applies to today’s reading.

Perhaps the first one that you would expect me to bring up came in 1964 when the Chicago Cubs traded a young outfielder by the name of Lou Brock and two others to the St. Louis Cardinals for Ernie Broglio and two other players. Broglio ended up winning just 10 games in his 2.5 seasons with the Cubs while the trade kick-started Lou Brock’s Hall of Fame Career.
Now, to be fair to the Cub fans (see, I’m not completely unreasonable), how about 1992? The White Sox traded Sammy Sosa and Ken Patterson to the Cubs for George Bell. Bell, acquired for his power, only hit 38 home runs in two seasons for the White Sox, while Sosa went on to hit 545 of his career home runs with the Cubs.

Or, how about 1971? The New York Mets traded pitcher Nolan Ryan and three other players to the California Angels for shortstop Jim Fregosi. Nolan Ryan only had 5 of his 22 seasons under his belt at the time, and would go on to win 138 games for the Angels and become the all time strikeout leader. Fregosi, a six-time All Star when the trade happened, never did anything worth noting for the rest of his career and only played 146 games for the Mets.

Finally, in what is widely considered to be the worse trade of all time, in 1920, a year after he set the single season home run mark at 29, the Boston Red Sox didn’t want to pay a man by the name of George Herman Ruth $20,000 for the 1921 season, so they traded him to the New York Yankees for $125,000. George Ruth, better known as Babe, simply went on to establish himself as one of the greatest players in the history of the game. Now, to the question that you’ve been pondering in your mind for the last couple of minutes – what in the world does this have to do with Jeremiah 2?

What we read today is one of the first messages that the Lord has for the people of Israel through the prophet Jeremiah. The language that is used in this passage suggests that God is putting the people of Israel on trial. It begins by recounting how the Lord has been faithful to the people of Israel, but then turns into an accusation with the heavens serving as a witness against the Israelites.

The oracle begins by the Lord speaking to the ancestors of the people. He says, “What fault did your ancestors find with me that caused them to go far from me and seek after worthless things?” The problem for the Israelites really began long before the current audience was ever even born. The people of Israel sought after the idols of foreign nations. These idols, or “worthless things,” drew their attention away from the Lord, who brought them out of centuries of slavery in Egypt and kept them safe during their 40-year journey in the wilderness. The Lord reminds the people that their ancestors would have died in the wilderness without His provision, and that He was the one who brought them into a land of plenty.

And, yet, in spite of the safety and provision that they received from the Lord, the people of Israel defiled the land that was given to them. How did they do that? By chasing after these “worthless things.” The Hebrew word translated as “worthless” here can also be used to signify a breath or vapor. In other words, it is something with no substance whatsoever. What is worse in all of this is that their desire to chase after these things that had no substance caused them to become worthless as well.

There are things in our lives that we chase after, but if we stop and really look at them, they are of no value whatsoever. You hear about people who are so obsessed with consumption, but they are never satisfied. They are always looking for the next best thing. They are never happy with what they have. We are those people at times in our lives. We chase after things that don’t have any meaning, and wonder why we are not satisfied with our lives. If we allow our lives to become an endless pursuit of worthless things, then our lives have indeed become worthless in comparison to the greater purposes that God has for us.

Do you ever stop to reflect on what it is that God has done in your life? Do you ever stop to give thanks for what it is that He is doing? Perhaps the best deterrent to leading a worthless life is to remember what it is that the Lord has done. The people of Israel were supposed to celebrate the Passover on an annual basis. The Passover was a festival to remind the people what God had done in bringing them up out of slavery in Egypt.

It is entirely possible that the people of Israel failed to remember the Passover annually, as there is no real mention of it as we go through the historical books in the Old Testament. We do know that during the reign of Josiah, the Book of the Law was found in the Temple, which can only mean that at some point it was lost. The people simply forgot their purpose. They forgot what it was that God had done for them, and as a result, they chased after things that had absolutely no chance to fulfill their spiritual needs.

The blame for this falling away from the Lord certainly falls on the leadership because they were the ones who were charged to lead the people in the ways of the Lord. We certainly see that in verse 8. The priests, the rulers, and even some of the self-proclaimed prophets failed in their task to lead the people in the worship of the one true God. In fact, they led the people in the opposite direction, and here is where we come back to the worst trades of all time.

As a part of the accusation against the people of Israel, in verse 11, the Lords says, “Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods?” The very notion that the people of this time would exchange their gods for the gods of another country was simply ridiculous. The Babylonians never decided to abandon their gods in favor of the gods of the Assyrians. No nation would ever trade their gods for the gods of their neighbors.

Now, in a polytheistic society, a society that worships multiple gods, adding to the gods that you already prayed to would not be unheard of, but to totally abandon your gods in favor of the gods of a neighboring nation would have been ridiculous. But that is exactly what the people of Israel did.

I wish I could remember where I heard this, but a while back, I heard a report that claimed the Israelites were not really monotheists – that is, people who only worshipped one God. And I couldn’t help but think about how ridiculous this report was. Because isn’t that what the entire Old Testament is about? The struggle of the people to remain faithful to the Lord? Every time we read the prophets, we see the same message – put away your false idols and return to the Lord. Stop worshipping the worthless images of your neighbors and turn your focus to Yahweh.

Anybody that has taken the time to read the Old Testament knows that the people of Israel struggled in their attempts to focus all of their worship on the Lord, and not worship the idols of their neighbors. The question is not “Were they polytheists?” but “How long will they continue to worship false idols?” How long will they continue to chase after things that have no real purpose in this life?

In verse 11, God says that the people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. The word for “glory” is the Hebrew word kabod. In the Bible, kabod refers to the glory of God, an aura associated with God’s appearance that reveals His majesty to humanity. The kabod of God is described as a “consuming fire.” It is something that man cannot bear see and still live; it is too overwhelming for humanity. It can be compared to a high-voltage electrical line. When we come into contact with it, it is too much for our bodies to handle.

Yet, the people of Israel have exchanged the kabod of the Lord for something that does not profit. In keeping with the electrical analogy, it would be like us exchanging a power grid for a dead battery. It is inconceivable that we would give up something so incredible, and yet, we do it all the time. In response to this, God speaks to the heavens and tells them to be appalled, be shocked by the actions of the people.

Why would the people of Israel give up something so magnificent for something so fleeting and empty? Why do we? Why do we enter into this journey of faith that we call the Christian life, only to turn our backs on it when we fail to open our eyes to what God is doing?

When we stop reflecting on what God has done in our lives, we run the risk of doing exactly what the Israelites are accused of doing here in Jeremiah 2 – giving up on glory of God for the passing interests of this world. It’s a bad trade, and here’s the difference between this trade and the baseball trades that I mentioned at the beginning of this morning’s message: in baseball, you don’t always know when something is a bad trade. You don’t know what players have yet to peak in their careers. You don’t know what players are past their prime and have nothing left to give. But when it comes to the glory of God versus the vapors that this world has to offer, you know that it’s a bad trade.

At the end of the passage, God says that the people have committed two evils. One, they’ve forsaken the living water, and two, they dug cisterns for themselves. Now, that imagery may not mean as much to many of us in this day and age, but when you look at it in its original context, it is very significant.

In agricultural society of the day, water came from three sources. First, it came from stream or some other source where the water was moving. This was the best source of water. The second option was a well where you could get ground water. The final source would have been a cistern, which was a pit cut into rock and plastered to prevent seepage. A cistern is the worst of all possible options. You had to continually patch up the cracks, or the water would seep out and all you would have left is sludge and mosquito larvae that looked like dancing rice.

What God is saying is that the people have turned their backs on the living water, on the Lord, and have opted for sludge-filled cisterns. It is a horrible trade. The Red Sox losing Babe Ruth has nothing on this type of trade. So, how do we live the Christian life? One day at a time. Always pushing forward towards the best that God has to offer. Never turning away for the vapors, for the things that don’t last, for the things that will never satisfy.

There are pursuits in today’s world that pull us away from the Lord. Pursuits of wealth, power, fame, pleasure. These are cracked cisterns compared to what we have in Jesus Christ. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” Jesus is the living water. To follow him means that we will never thirst again. We give him our faults, our failures and our emptiness and in return, we receive life eternal in the presence of the Almighty God. Now, that is a good trade.

What Happened in St. Louis?

2010-09-15T08:06:00.000-04:00

I've been pretty quiet about all things Cardinals on this blog so far this year. In part because I've been spending so much time on BLB, but also because it's been a crazy summer, and I just haven't had the time that I've had in the past.

However, as we are wrapping up the last 20 or so games of the year, it's becoming abundantly clear to me that the Cardinals, while not officially out of the playoffs, are pretty much done for the year. Since August 11th, when they swept the Reds to move into first place, the Cardinals have gone 10-20. What's worse is that during this stretch, they only played two teams that are in playoff contention (Braves and Giants), and have gone 4-3 in those games. In other words, the Cardinals have managed to go 6-17 against sub-.500 teams. It got me thinking that if by some miracle the Cardinals were to make the playoffs, believe it or not, they would actually do well against the top competition in the league. I know it sounds crazy, but check this out.

Against teams above .500
The Cardinals are 26-20. They still have a series left against both the Rockies and Padres, and those are the only two winning teams that they have losing records against, so they could turn that around.

Against teams hovering around .500
The Cardinals are 10-7. They still have a make-up game against the Marlins, against whom they are 2-2 so far this season.

Against teams below .500
The Cardinals are 38-42. Let that sink in for a minute. Against lesser competition, the Cardinals actually play worse, especially when it comes to their divisional opponents. The Cardinals have more losses against the Astros and Brewers than any other 3 teams on their schedule. In fact, the only below .500 teams that the Cardinals have a winning record against: Pirates, 6-3; Diamondbacks, 5-4; and Angels/Mariners, 2-1 each. Do some quick math there, and they are only 6 games above .500 themselves in those match-ups.

So, where is the silver lining in all of this? Well, of the games that the Cardinals have left, they only have 4 against sub-.500 clubs that play outside of Pittsburgh. Those four are with the Cubs. They have 6 with the Pirates, one with the Marlins and four against both the Padres and Rockies.

But, here's the thing, if you don't beat the teams that you're "supposed" to beat, you aren't going to make it to the next level. The Cardinals have clearly failed to do that this year.

Baseball-Reference.com tracks "blow-out" win-loss record. This is a team's record in games decided by 5+ runs. Believe it or not, the Cardinals are 28-16 in these types of games. Of their 69 losses (as of September 14th), they were only really out of 16 of them.

It's been a frustrating month as a Cardinal fan. Of course, I'm going to stick with them until they are officially eliminated, but I gotta tell ya... that fantasy football team is looking to take over my attention right about now.

Fantasy Football 2010, Week 1

2010-09-14T09:06:00.001-04:00

Well, that was a rough way to start the season. Let me just say, I pondered replacing Guy A with Guy B all week long, really felt like I should do it, but stuck with the "experts" who had Guy A ranked above Guy B for the week. Guy B - San Diego rookie Ryan Mathews, not a bad game for a rookie - 75 rushing yards, but he did lose one fumble; total - 5 points. Eh. Guy A - Matt Forte, who only had 50 rushing yards and also lost a fumble... and then he had 151 receiving yards with 2 TD's. Yup, I didn't go with my gut, and ended up with an extra 25 points sitting on my bench, which, as you'll see, I could have used.

Starting Lineup for the Hillsboro Rabid Monkeys:
QB - Drew Brees
RB - Ray Rice, Steven Jackson, Ryan Mathews
WR - Johnny Knox, Jabbar Gaffney
TE - Jermichael Finley
K - Sebastian Janikowski
DEF - 49ers

High scorer: Brees, 15
Low scorer: 49ers, -1
Result: Rabid Monkeys 56, Hokie Pokies 72

You guessed it, that 25 point turn-around cost me an 81-72 victory. That's all right, though. I'm still shooting for 12-2 this season.

And if you've stuck with me this far, here's an update on the other fantasy football leagues I'm doing:

Pigskin Pick 'em - Picked 9 games correctly. All my incorrect picks were visiting teams - that should say something. I'm not sure what, but something.

Gridiron Challenge - 104 points w/ Matt Forte (go figure) leading the way

Eliminator Challenge - Miami Dolphins won, so I continue to next week.

MW2 Fun

2010-08-31T14:19:00.000-04:00

I came across this picture this afternoon as I was putting off mowing the lawn for another 10.... okay 15... minutes. It makes me want to play a little MW2. I still don't understand the purpose of the riot shield, but whatever....

Movie Tour: Dinner with Schmucks

2010-08-24T07:30:00.025-04:00

We had our annual Tayla Day to celebrate our oldest niece's 14th (yikes!) birthday. We had a great lunch at Logan's Roadhouse, and went to see Dinner with Schmucks with Steve Carell and Paul Rudd.

Plot Summary
Dinner with Schmucks is about a guy who is working to get a promotion, and to play the corporate game (so to speak), he has to find a total moron to take to a dinner that is hosted by his boss. Initially, he was going to have no part of it, but, as fate would have it, he happens to run into a guy who fits the description perfectly. What I found most interesting is that while the movie is entitled "Dinner with Schmucks" and most of what you see in the trailers is the dinner, the dinner itself is not really a focal point of the movie. It is all the events in the 24 hours leading up to the dinner that take center stage.

Review
This movie was a lot like Year One for me. I found myself laughing through a lot of the movie, even though several parts of it were horribly inappropriate. It was slightly more recognizable to me because my 14 year old niece was sitting right next to me. There are parts of the movie that are so outrageously uncomfortable that I wanted to get up and go to the bathroom just so I would get a break.

Recommendation
Ehhh.... I'm not sure. If you aren't easily offended, you may like this movie. The uncomfortable parts are really, really uncomfortable. The sexual humor is laid on pretty thick as well. I would not highly recommend it, but if you like movies like American Pie, Year One, etc., you'll probably like this one as well.

Best Part
Steve Carell plays his role perfectly. He plays a total moron, but you don't get the sense that he's going "full retard" as Tropic Thunder puts it. Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords is also in this movie, and he is absolutely hilarious.

Called to Ministry

2010-08-22T23:04:00.000-04:00

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, August 22, 2010. The passage for this week's sermon is Jeremiah 4:1-10.

Over the last few weeks, we have been looking at several passages that help us focus on the topic of living the Christian life. What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus Christ? What should our lives look like in light of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus? How are our lives different because of what God is doing? These are the types of questions that we need to be asking so that we can grow closer to God in this journey of faith.

This week and next week, we are going to be looking at the prophet Jeremiah. Today, we are going to be in the opening chapter of Jeremiah, and, more specifically, looking at his call into prophetic ministry. Whether we want to be or not, and whether we think we are or not, when we decide to follow Jesus, we are responding to a call to ministry. We are all called to ministry. In Ephesians 4, the apostle Paul tells us that leaders in the church are called to “equip the saints for the work of ministry.” When he is talking about “the saints,” he is talking about those who follow Christ.

Those who follow Christ are considered to be saints and are called to ministry. Now, you may be thinking, “Well, I’m no saint.” Maybe not in the way you’ve defined saint, but the Greek word for “saint” that is used in the New Testament is the same word that is used to describe something as “holy.” Something is holy when it is consecrated, or set apart for a purpose. Those who follow Christ are indeed saints because they have been set apart for a greater purpose. In reality, the response that we have to our call to ministry may not be all that different from Jeremiah’s response.

Today’s passage begins with the word of the Lord coming to Jeremiah. The word of the Lord is powerful. If you read through the beginning of the Bible, the first book you come to is Genesis. And in the opening chapters, God creates all the universe, and He does so using merely the spoken word. The word of God has the power to create. When God speaks, we should listen because His word is formative. And He speaks to Jeremiah.

He says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Before Jeremiah was ever even born, he was set apart for a particular ministry. He had a purpose, a reason for being. Jeremiah had a calling.

In his popular book, The Purpose Driven Life, Pastor Rick Warren begins with a completely counter-cultural statement. His very first sentence is, “It’s not about you.” He puts it in bold print just to make sure that we don’t miss what he is saying here. He goes on in the opening paragraph to say that the purpose of our lives is not about personal fulfillment, our own peace of mind, or even our happiness. If we want to know why we have been placed on this planet, then we have to start with God. Warren says, “You were born by His purpose and for His purpose.”

What he is saying here is not all that different from what we see in Jeremiah 1, is it? Before our birth, God knows us. We may not come to know Him for a very long time, but we are not unknown to God, the one who created us. We spend so much time in this life trying to figure out what it is that we are supposed to be doing, but all too often we forget that there is One who knows our purpose.

When God talks about knowing Jeremiah before he was formed in the womb, the language again points to God’s ability to create in the Genesis story. There are two words that are important in this phrase, “form” and “know.” The Hebrew word that is used for “to form” is the same word that is used in Genesis 2:7 when God forms man out of the dust. In the creation story, humanity is the only thing that is created where we get the image of God getting down on his hands and knees to form it. Then He breathes life into the form. God’s creation of humanity reveals a level of care and concern that we don’t necessarily see with the rest of creation.

The second word, translated as “to know,” is the Hebrew word yada. This word suggests an intimate type of knowledge. It is the kind of knowledge that only those who are close to the individual are going to have. It suggests knowing somebody down to the very core of their being. God knows us better than any individual could ever know us. Again, this deep knowledge comes from the fact that God created us, and this isn’t just a one time instance. God’s knowledge of Jeremiah is the same kind of knowledge that He has for every person.

You can never come to God with more hidden in your life than you would like Him to know. We cannot hide who we are from God. A couple weeks ago, we talked a lot about what is going on in our hearts. God knows what is going on in our hearts because He formed us and knows us down to the very core of our being. What we see in this language of forming and knowing is that humanity has a special place, a special purpose in God’s plan. For Jeremiah, that purpose is to be a prophet to the nations.

God tells Jeremiah that he has been consecrated, or set apart, to be a prophet to the nations. This call that Jeremiah is getting from God is a very special type of calling. Not everybody is called to be a prophet to the nations. It is a difficult ministry that awaits Jeremiah. He is going to speak out not just against his own people, but against the other nations as well. He is not going to be a popular person.

Typically when we hear about the role of a prophet, we think of a person who tells the future. But as we read about the prophets in the Old Testament, we see that speaking to the future is only a portion of their task. The primary task of the prophet is to serve as the spokesman of God. This does involve speaking of things to come, but it also involves a call to return to the Lord. What we see in the prophets more than anything is a call to repent and return to the Lord.

We see messages that are designed specifically to warn the people of what will happen if they continue on their current path. We see messages that are not given out of arrogance or a sense of superiority, but out of a sense of love. I think there is a mistaken perception that in the Bible we get two different pictures of God. In the Old Testament, there is a God of wrath and judgment. In the New Testament, there is a God of love. However, God doesn’t change as we read Scripture. It’s not like He is hot-tempered in the beginning and, by the time the New Testament rolls around, He has chilled out a bit. No, God’s judgment in the Old Testament comes as a result of the love that we see in the New Testament. It was necessary correction for His people.

The people of Israel are called to be God’s people. They are a chosen nation that is to be an example to the entire world, but they continually fail in that task. As a result, because God’s name is soiled by their actions, judgment is brought upon them in order to get them back on the right track. It was Jeremiah’s task, as a prophet, to let the people know what was going to happen if they didn’t return to the Lord. This was not going to make him very popular amongst the people, but sometime following God’s call in life is not about popularity; it’s about doing what is right. Doing what needs to be done can sometimes be difficult, and as a result, the first thing that we see from Jeremiah is an excuse.

In verse 6, Jeremiah says, “I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.” It is an excuse that is very similar to what Moses had to say at the burning bush. To be sure, Moses was much more persistent in his objections, but both of them talked about their inability to speak for the Lord. In Jeremiah’s case, his objection had a lot to do with his age. Jeremiah was a young man at this point. We don’t know exactly how young, but the Hebrew word for “youth” gives us the impression that he is still dependent on parental support.

In his culture, Jeremiah has yet to reach an age where the elders would take him seriously. He would have been seen as just some kid who was speaking out of turn. Yet, God still calls him, and doesn’t listen to his excuse. Because, the simple fact of the matter is, when God calls us, God doesn’t make mistakes. God calls us at just the right time.

When Jeremiah objected, God didn’t pause to double check His calendar. He knew how old Jeremiah was. He wasn’t surprised by that information. We may feel unprepared for the task at hand, but that doesn’t mean we are unqualified for it. God prepares those whom He sends, and He does just that for Jeremiah.

God overturns Jeremiah’s objection, and verse 9 tells us that the Lord put his hand on Jeremiah’s mouth and said, “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.” Jeremiah is not called to come up with clever messages that will change the hearts of the people. He is simply called to relay the messages that God tells him to relay.

There seems to be a certain amount of fear involved when it comes to answering our call to ministry, and I think that fear just comes from the unknown. We don’t know what God is going to ask us to do, and so we are afraid that He might ask us to move to Guam and live with the tribal people. (Are there tribal people in Guam? I don’t know; that’s not the point.) Or, worse yet, He might ask us to completely change our lives and what it is that we have been doing with them up to this point. And, some times, in some instances, God might ask you to move to Guam and be a missionary. But more often than not, it’s going to be that second scenario.

God is going to call us to be faithful right where we are. He is going to call us to be a witness right where we have been placed. Jeremiah wasn’t sent to Jerusalem from some far off place. That’s where he lived. That’s where he grew up. His father was a priest, and Jeremiah probably grew up around that aspect of his culture, and that was where he was called to do his ministry. Sometimes that is a little scarier, though, isn’t it?

It’s hard to minister in a place where people remember you as the kid who used to play kickball in the sanctuary. That’s why I hope I’m never appointed to my home church! I wasn’t an awful child, but there are a few people there who knew me prior to my more mature days. Think about the people that knew you as you were growing up. If you told them the difference that God has made in your life, would they say, “Yeah, that makes sense,” or would they just laugh at the thought of you going to church? But when God calls you to ministry, and remember, all people who follow Christ are called to ministry in one way or another, you can’t worry about what other people are going to say. God can and will transform our lives in such powerful ways that we can’t help but be a witness for Him wherever we are.

Jeremiah’s call to ministry was not going to be an easy one. He had a rough life, but in the end, he was faithful to the call to ministry that God had for him. And that’s what is really important. He trusted in the Lord just enough to get him through to the next day. God never said that Jeremiah was going to have it easy. In fact, He says, in verse 8, “Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you.”

Now, I have to be honest with you, if I was in Jeremiah’s shoes here, my first thought would have been, “Deliver me from what? What are you getting me into, Lord?” Jeremiah’s message wasn’t a popular one, and people lashed out against him because of it. But he was assured from the very beginning that God was going to be with him and was going to deliver him. That makes it a little easier to swallow, doesn’t it? Because God is the same yesterday, today and forever, we can take a measure of comfort in the fact that God will be with us, even when He calls us to share His word in difficult circumstances.

In looking at Jeremiah’s call, we’ve been able to see a handful of things that are very important for us to remember as we try to live the Christian life. First off, and this really comes from Paul, whether we think we are or not, we are saints who have been set apart for a special ministry. Each person’s ministry is going to look a little different, but at its core is our trust and obedience to the one who calls us.

Secondly, when God calls us – when not if - He knows that we aren’t ready to fulfill that calling completely. God knows us from before we were born, and God is not surprised by our inadequacies. In fact, God thrives in our inadequacies. God equips those whom He sends, and we are all sent to be His representatives – sometimes we may be called to go to distant places, but more often than not, we are called to be a witness right where we are.

Above all, it is important for us to remember that God doesn’t call us and leave us. God is with us through even the most difficult parts of our ministries. We are never alone. God calls, equips and delivers. It is up to us to stop making excuses and be faithful to that call.

2010 Fantasy Football Roster

2010-08-21T14:57:00.000-04:00

It's almost that time again! The Swish's Pals league had its draft this morning, and I have to admit, I'm pretty happy with the team I was able to assemble. You'll be getting the weekly updates once the league rolls around, but I'm just going to throw out that I'm shooting for an 11-2 season with a successful defense of my 2009 title. We'll see how it goes.

QB - Drew Brees, Alex Smith
RB - Ray Rice, Steven Jackson, Ryan Mathews, Matt Forte, Clinton Portis
WR - Hines Ward, Johnny Knox, T.J. Houshmanzadeh, Donald Driver, Derrick Mason
TE - Jermichael Finley, Heath Miller
D/ST - 49ers
K - Neil Rackers

I've got a lot of guys with some significant upside, but overall production is going to be uncertain. I'm not too heavily dependent on any one team this season; I've got two from 4 different teams, but in each grouping, only 1 is going to be a regular starter unless something major happens. I am pretty happy about having 3 of the Top 10 overall players (Brees, Rice & Jackson). We'll see how it goes!

Movie Tour: Toy Story 3

2010-08-21T07:22:00.001-04:00

What better way to follow up a movie like Predators than with Toy Story 3? I can't think of a more perfect follow-up.

Plot Summary
The final (?) installment of the Toy Story series picks up just as Andy is about to head off to college. The toys desperately want to be played with again, but Andy has outgrown them for the most part. Through a series of events, they end up at a day care, and before long, it turns into an animated version of The Great Escape.

Review
It appears as though this is going to be the final installment for the Toy Story series, and I can't imagine a better way to close it out. It is funny, interesting, engaging, and even a little heart-warming. I have heard where a lot of people have teared up near the end... wimps. The story is great, and, as always when it comes to Pixar, the animation is spectacular.

Recommendation
Go see it. If you liked the first two Toy Story movies, you'll definitely want to see this one. In fact, if you're a fan of the series at all, you've probably already seen it. Go see it again. Yup, it's that good.

Best Part
I think the ending of the movie was perfect. I won't give anything away, but it was a great way to end the movie, as well as the series.

Movie Tour: Predators

2010-08-20T07:07:00.001-04:00

I know I've been on a bit of a blogging break on this particular blog lately. Part of it has been because I've been spending a lot of time working on a different project (Bases Loaded Balk, check it out when you have the time), but part of it has been that I just haven't felt like writing a whole lot this summer. Here to make my point is the Movie Tour review of Predators... a movie I saw nearly a month ago.

Plot Summary
When it comes to movies involving the Predators, the plot summary is easy. Here are all these people who are getting hunted by a warrior-alien race. They will try to survive, but most of them are probably going to die a gruesome death. This movie wasn't all that different. It starts off with one of the main characters in a free fall, he wakes up and discovers that he is falling, and then a parachute automatically opens as he gets closer to the ground. He then finds other people who had a similar experience, and they start their journey. It's not long before they realize that they are no longer on Earth, but have been abducted and are now part of a game preserve... as the game.

Review
I've seen Predator, Predator 2, Alien v. Predator, and Aliens v. Predator: Requiem. That's right, I'm a fan of the movies. In all honesty, this is the best one since the original. It gets closer to the roots of the series, which is bad-a** aliens hunting bad-a** people, and seeing who wins out.

Recommendation
Obviously, there are violence and language issues, but that is to be expected. If that kind of stuff bothers you, don't see it. If you are a fan of the original Predator (which gets a bit of a wink in this one), you'll enjoy this movie. Don't go in expecting to see an Oscar-worthy film or award-winning performances because you'll be disappointed. Go in expecting to have a good, mindless time and you will be well-rewarded.

Best Part
Laurence Fishburne makes a brief appearance in this movie. He is a guy who has managed to survive on the planet for a while, but he is also starting to lose it. He's pretty entertaining, but he's not in it for very long... and I bet you can imagine why.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

2010-08-19T07:00:00.002-04:00

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, August 15, 2010. The text for this week's message is Hebrews 11:29-12:2.

The last couple of weeks, we have looked at passages that help us to understand what it means to live the Christian life. Two weeks ago we looked at some of the practical application portion of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, and we saw the importance of keeping our minds occupied with heavenly things. Last week we looked at the opening chapter of the book of Isaiah. It was a difficult message for us to hear, but I think that just makes it all the more important.

The people of Israel had gotten to the point where their sacrificial system became a way for them to sin, and not have to worry about it. If they sinned against God or their neighbor, they knew that their sacrifice would atone for it. It was no big deal. They were just shrugging off their sin. In speaking through the prophet Isaiah, God lets the people know, in no uncertain terms, that this is unacceptable. They cannot simply go through the motions of their faith and assume that everything will be all right. Living a life of faith is about what is going on in your heart. It doesn’t matter what you do or what you say if your heart is not in the right place.

Today, we are going to go in a little different direction. Today’s Scripture is not so much about what to do or what not to do when it comes to our life of faith, but, rather, it’s a way for us to stop and take a look around. We are not in this alone. Nobody becomes a Christian without somebody else coming alongside, and nobody can mature in their faith by doing everything alone. We need to have people to help us grow. Now, keep that in mind because we are going to come back to it in a minute, but to begin with this morning, I want to take just a couple of minutes to introduce Hebrews, the letter where we find ourselves this morning.

First off, while tradition tells us that the apostle Paul is the author of this letter, the truth is, we don’t really know. Nowhere in the letter is the author identified, and some of the grammar doesn’t match-up with Paul’s other writing, so say people who study such things. It appears as though the recipient of the letter is a group of Jewish believers, and we can see that through some of the content, but also in the first verse, the author talks about how God spoke to “our fathers” through the prophets.
Just as we are not exactly sure who the author or audience for this letter is, we do not know exactly when it was written. It is a pretty safe bet to say that it was written prior to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D, but that only narrows it down to a 30-40 year window.

This letter is really more about encouraging believers to hold on to their faith in Jesus Christ. The author spends quite a bit of time talking about how Jesus is greater than the angels, priests and the old covenantal system. In Jesus, we see the fulfillment of all that God has been doing in history. Instead of calling the people out of the old covenant, however, this letter encourages us to take the next step in faith and find true rest and peace in Jesus Christ. In some sense, it is really about persevering in the faith no matter what obstacles may arise.

Hebrews 11 begins by giving us a definition of faith. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” When we come to today’s reading, we are coming to a part in the letter that points to the history of the people of Israel. This is a section that would have brought to mind a ton of different stories of people that we can find in the Old Testament; stories that really meant something to the Jewish people.

Throughout the portion of the chapter that we didn’t read this morning, the writer talks about the stories of Cain & Abel, of Abraham and of Moses; stories that are rich and deep in significance. We opened today’s reading with more great stories and figures for the people of Israel – the exodus from Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea and the fall of Jericho. Stories of great people of faith in their history – Rahab, a woman who wasn’t even an Israelite, but still displayed an amazing amount of faith; the judges, the kings, the prophets – all people who were far from perfect, but still were examples of faith for the Jewish people.

I find this passage to be really inspiring because it is a call to remember those who have gone before us in the faith. And at the end of the section, the writer says that all of these people, these giants of the faith that had gone before us, though they were certainly commended for their faith, they never saw the fulfillment of God’s promises. Their stories are stories that should inspire us to greatness in our faith, and yet, even they could not see what has been revealed to us through Jesus Christ. As great as they were, there was still something more.

The writer then goes on to give us this great image. He says that we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. One of the highlights of my life, apart from the obvious things, has to be taking a trip to Cooperstown to see the National Baseball Hall of Fame. I know that sounds like a weird statement to make, but stick with me for a minute on this one.

Cooperstown is just an unassuming town. I think it’s fair to say that it’s not all that much bigger than Covington. It is a small town tucked away in middle-of-nowhere New York state. And yet, in this town, there is a place that is inspiring. You walk into the Hall of Fame, and you are greeted by those who have gone before. You see the exhibits; you remember the stories of the past; maybe you even learn a few more stories along the way. Being a Cardinal fan, obviously some things were going to stick out more – Musial’s locker, Brock’s cleats, the World Series rings. But I also remember seeing a tribute to Jackie Robinson, and other greats of the game.

After you go through all the exhibits, and you remember those stories, you go downstairs to the hallway where all the plaques are located. And it is awesome. It is pretty quiet, and you are surrounded by the likeness and stories of the greatest players of the game of baseball. As a baseball fan, there is no place quite like it. And when I read this passage of Hebrews, I get that same feeling.

I get the feeling that the author is taking us on a tour. We are going through the museum of our faith, and we are seeing and hearing and experiencing these stories as if for the first time. We should be in awe of what is happening all around us. We should be inspired to a greater faith, and that is what we see in this passage. We see a call to live our lives in a way that is consistent with the greatness that has been laid down before us.

And here’s the thing, we aren’t just walking through a museum where we can see the great feats that others have done. We have to realize that we are a part of something greater than just ourselves. We are a part of a community of faith. Take a look around you. You are not on this faith journey alone. Not only are there people who have gone before us, but there are people all around us who are on that same journey.

I don’t know of a single person that has ever gone through their entire life of faith all by themselves. You are here this morning because somebody influenced you life in a powerful way, and you decided to check out what God was doing. Maybe this happened recently; maybe this happened decades ago. Nobody does it alone. The community of faith is just that - a community. It is a gathering of people seeking after God. Nobody has got it all so right that they don’t need others to take the journey with them.
As a response to this reality, because we are surrounded by so great a community of faith, we are called to press onward. We are called to put away the things in our lives that hold us back from our relationship with God. I like the language that the author uses here. He tells us to “lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely.”

Have you ever thought of your sin as something that weighs you down? Have you ever thought of your sin as something that clings closely to you? Those are great analogies for the things in our lives that do us no good. It is difficult enough to go through this life, but when we try to do it with things weighing us down, it is even more difficult.

I remember going camping once with a friend and a handful of middle school boys. We went on a hike, and it was a pretty hot day. So, we brought a backpack full of granola bars and bottles of water to give us the energy to do this hike. And guess who got to carry the backpack. This hike was going to be hard enough as it was, but to add an additional 20-30 pounds in the backpack made it even more difficult. And while I was tired and worn out by the end of the hike, do you know what made it a little easier? The fact that the backpack weighed significantly less as we drank the water and ate the snacks.

Life is a lot like that. As we continue in our journey, and we begin to release more and more of the sin that is weighing us down, it becomes a little easier. I’m not saying that giving your life to Christ means that you are suddenly going to have smooth sailing, but it does become less of a burden when we hand over our sins to the Lord. Our sins weigh us down, and over time, they wear us down. They cling to us. They make life difficult. But because of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, it is possible for us to be rid of our sins once and for all.

The call in this passage is for us to look at the example of Jesus Christ and be encouraged by it. We are called to press on. Let go of the sins that are clinging to you and follow the example set forth by Jesus. Living the Christian life has a lot to do with perseverance and endurance. It is not always going to be easy. We are going to need to stick to it, even when it is difficult, and the reason why we can is by faith, by looking at those who have gone before us, and even by turning to those who are walking alongside us right now.

Heart Check

2010-08-18T06:46:00.000-04:00

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, August 8, 2010. The text for this week's sermon is Isaiah 1:1, 10-20.

Over the next few weeks, we are going to be looking at several passages that explore what it means to live a Christian life. Last week, in Colossians, we hit the practical application portion of the letter, and saw that we need to focus our minds on things that are worthy of the kingdom of God. If we fill our lives with junk, then we are going to have a very empty spiritual life, but if we focus on the heavenly things, we can have a more fulfilling spiritual life.

This week, we are jumping to the Old Testament and the opening chapter of Isaiah. Isaiah was a prophet who lived in the 8th century B.C. The book opens up by letting us know that Isaiah’s ministry took place during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah. Tradition tells us that Isaiah’s ministry extended into the time of Hezekiah’s son Manasseh. Many believe that the writer of Hebrews is referencing Isaiah’s death at the hands of Manasseh in Hebrews 11:37.

Besides being told the timeframe of his ministry, we are also told that Isaiah is the son of Amoz. We don’t really know who Amoz is; he is not mentioned in Scripture. I think this is an important point for us to reflect on for just a minute. Isaiah, one of the most well known Old Testament prophets comes from an obscure background. Isaiah is quoted numerous times in the New Testament, and the writings found in this book of Scripture cover a lot of very important topics, and yet, we know relatively little about his personal life.

So, what’s the lesson here? God doesn’t need us to be famous, or to come from an influential background, in order to accomplish His will through us. We don’t know where Isaiah came from, but that’s not important when it comes to being faithful to God’s call. God equips those whom he sends. We have to be willing to answer God’s call, and God will take care of the rest. This is definitely the case when it comes to the difficult things that we have to do, and when we come to the opening chapter of Isaiah, we see that Isaiah’s ministry was going to be one that would be filled with difficult times.

The opening speech of Isaiah’s book is scathing towards the people of Israel. In verses 2-9, Isaiah refers to the people of Israel as a people who have rebelled against the Lord. He calls them a “sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly.” Can you imagine hearing this for the first time? Being the target audience? The people of Israel were probably pretty happy with the way that things were going at the time, and along comes this hot-shot prophet, calling them out for the sins that had become so normal in their lives. And he continues this scathing word in today’s reading.

He refers to them as rulers of Sodom and people of Gomorrah. If you don’t know the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, I want to invite to you take a look at Genesis 19 when you get home. To give you the quick summary of what happens there, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were filled with wicked people. In fact, the people there were so bad, that God decided to bring judgment upon them, and both towns were laid to waste.

Here, in the opening chapter of his book, Isaiah is basically saying that the people of Judah and Jerusalem are just like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah – far from being the best of the best, as the chosen people of God should be, they were being compared to the worst of the worst. It was only by God’s grace that these people did not suffer the same fate as the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.

But here’s the sad thing: the people of Judah and Jerusalem thought that they were doing all right. They brought their sacrifices to the Temple. They performed the rituals that they were supposed to perform. By the external measures, they were doing all right. And yet, their sacrifices were meaningless. Their rituals were empty. Why? Because they didn’t back it up with their hearts. It’s pretty easy to say all the things that we are supposed to say. We can go through the motions and say and do the right things; however, in the end, it all comes down to the question: where is your heart?

In verse 11, God speaks through the prophet, “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?” Did God really need the sacrificial system? When we read through the Old Testament, and get to the part that starts talking about the sacrificial system, we tend to gloss over it. We don’t think it matters. We think it is outrageously boring. The truth is, we just don’t understand it. We’ve never seen the sacrificial system that is described in the Old Testament in practice. It is weird to us, and so, we don’t pay attention to it, but the sacrificial system was put in place so that the people would know the severity of their sins.

If you sin against your neighbor, or if you sin against God, it’s costly. It’s costly not just because of the expense of purchasing or losing an animal for the sacrifice. It’s costly because something had to shed its blood to cover that sin. But eventually, the people lost sight of that. Sacrifices became ways to make up for the wrongdoing in one’s life. That is a significantly different perspective, isn’t it?

It reminds me of what happened in the Christian Church prior to the Reformation. The Reformation was a time when people were tired of a corrupt leadership in the Church. At this point in history, if you were a Christian, you were either Catholic or Eastern Orthodox; those two had split ways hundreds of years before over a political and theological dispute. There was no such thing as a Protestant Church at the time.

In the early 16th century, a man named Tetzel was very aggressive in selling what was known as indulgences. Without getting into too much detail, an indulgence in Catholic theology is a pardon for sin. People were purchasing indulgences for family members who had passed away and were spending time in Purgatory, another aspect of Catholic theology in which one “works off” the sins they committed during their lifetime. Others purchased indulgences for themselves, so that they could be forgiven of the sins that they had committed. And you can see the downward spiral.

Some people began purchasing indulgences for sins that they would commit in the future. In one of my classes in college, we were talking about indulgences, and the professor told us a story of a guy who approached a priest selling indulgences, and he asked, “If I purchase an indulgence, will my sin be absolved?” To which the priest replied, “Yes. This will absolve your sins.” “Well, what about sins, I’ve yet to commit?” “Yes, it will do that as well.” So the man purchased an indulgence from the priest, and then robbed the priest knowing that his sin would be absolved.

Originally, this is not at all what indulgences were supposed to be, but it became a system by which a person could do whatever they wanted, as long as they sought forgiveness for their sins. The same happened in the sacrificial system. Eventually, the sacrificial system became a way to work around certain sins in one’s life. It no longer was seen as a teaching tool to let us know about the serious nature of sin. It became a Get Out of Jail Free card – not at all what it was supposed to be.

What God is saying here is, “Look, I don’t need your sacrifices. I don’t need your empty rituals. I need your hearts to be in the right place.” God didn’t depend on the sacrifices of the people in order to live. Earlier this year, a remake of the 1981 movie Clash of the Titans was released in theaters. I enjoyed it, but let’s be honest, it doesn’t take a whole lot for me to enjoy a movie; put in a lot of action, and I’m in good shape. Near the beginning of the movie, the Greek gods are getting weaker because humanity is no longer praying to them. Their strength came from the adoration and prayers of humanity, which is fine for a movie, which is fine for Greek mythology. But, as we read Scripture, we are not reading mythology. We are reading about God, Yahweh, the Creator of the universe, the Almighty Lord, and God is not dependent on humanity. God is self-sustaining and eternal. God is not in need or want of anything.

Empty, worthless sacrifices don’t do anything for God. In fact, they don’t do anything at all but reveal what is truly in our hearts. Let’s put it in today’s context. Coming to church on Sunday morning doesn’t mean anything unless you are coming with a heart that is open to God. If you aren’t here to take in the Word of God, if you aren’t here to worship God, then why are you here? Empty actions do nothing for our spiritual lives. We can fake it all we want, but we will never fool God, who knows what is in our hearts.

Now, does this mean that non-Christians have no place in the Church? Absolutely not! A non-Christian has the potential to be more open to what God is doing than somebody who has been attending church for decades. A non-Christian may not be in a right relationship with God, but that doesn’t mean that their heart isn’t moving in the right direction. Look again at what God is saying through the prophet Isaiah.

In verses 16-17, He says, “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.” He’s saying that it’s important for us to not just go through the motions. In Leviticus 11, God doesn’t say, “Act holy for I am holy.” He says, “Be holy, for I am holy.” The actions are nice, but if the heart is not behind it, then they are empty and pointless.

In the closing verses, God says, “If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword.” God doesn’t want our empty and pointless actions. God wants us to be obedient. If we think that we can do whatever we want in this life and get away with it because all we have to do is ask for forgiveness, then we are going to find out that we are sorely mistaken.

God will not grant us forgiveness if we are not serious about it. God will not just shrug off our sin. Again, the point of the sacrificial system was to show the people that sin costs dearly. In the end, sin can cost our lives. On the flip side, even though our sins are as red as blood, they will whiter than snow because of God’s forgiveness. When we come to God with our hearts in the right place, our sins are wiped away.

Do you ever wonder why there is no sacrificial system any more? There is no sacrificial system because the ultimate sacrifice was made in Jesus Christ. Sin is still costly. In fact, it is so costly, that it takes the blood of God’s only Son to atone for it. When we come asking for forgiveness, we are able to do it because of the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross.

If we think that we can just take that forgiveness for granted, then we are no better than the people of Judah and Jerusalem to whom Isaiah is addressing in this passage. They were no better than the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, and their sacrificial system was built around doves, sheep and bulls. How much worse off are we who take advantage of a sacrificial system built around the only Son of God?

The call that we hear from the opening chapter of Isaiah this morning is difficult. It is a call for us to examine our hearts in light of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness that is made available because of it. The Christian life is not about going through the motions. It is about living with your heart in the right place.

The New Self

2010-08-17T06:39:00.002-04:00

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, August 1, 2010. The Scripture for this week's message is Colossians 3:1-11.

We are jumping out of Luke’s gospel this week, and turning to one of the letters of the Apostle Paul. Paul’s letter to the Colossians is considered to be one of his Prison Epistles because it was most likely written from prison, around the same time that he also wrote Ephesians and Philemon. This particular letter is split pretty evenly between theological exposition and practical application. Where we find ourselves today is at the beginning of the second half of the letter where the practical application really begins to take over. So, let’s dig into it and see what it is that we can walk away with this morning.

Paul begins by saying, “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.” When it comes to the Greek text, there are four different ways to approach an “if” clause. In the construction that is used in this phrase, Paul assumes the statement found in the “if” part of the statement to be true. In other words, we could translate this verse as, “Since you have been raised with Christ, and I assume that you have been, consequently, seek the things that are above.”

Paul is writing to a group of believers in this letter. His instructions here are not for those who do not believe in Christ. Earlier in the letter, in Colossians 2:12, Paul says that those who have been buried with Christ will be raised with Christ. Those who have put their faith in Jesus, through their baptism, have been buried and raised with Christ. They have died to their old self and have been given new life because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And now, in this section of the letter, Paul begins to describe what such a life should look like.

If you sit here this morning and can say that Jesus Christ is the Lord of your life and that by his blood you have been redeemed from all that separates you from God, then, guess what, Paul is talking to you this morning. If that doesn’t describe you, then you can take the morning off if you’d like, but I’d suggest listening in anyway.

The first thing that Paul tells us is to “seek the things that are above,” and he follows it up in the next verse by saying, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” This instruction really has to do with where our minds are going. At the end of his letter to the Philippians, Paul writes, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” The focus here is to keep our minds occupied with things that are worthy of occupying our minds.

Let’s face it, there are a lot of things in this world that are not worth our time. Movies, television shows, music on the radio – do they add to our spiritual life, or do they detract from it? Now, I want to make sure I’m very clear here. I’m not suggesting that we totally close ourselves off from the world and be oblivious to what is going on around us. But we also want to make sure that we don’t totally close off ourselves to the spiritual world and become oblivious to the things with which we surround ourselves. We have to be intentional about what we let into our lives.

I want to give you an example that may be a little odd at first, but I think it makes sense. When I was in seminary, I worked at the Sears in Fayette Mall in Lexington, Kentucky. I tried to work it out so that I would have classes on two days a week and I would work four days. I usually worked a full day, and sometimes, okay, most of the time, I wouldn’t bring anything for lunch, so I’d have to go down to the Food Court to get my lunch.

Like most food courts, there isn’t much in terms of healthy selections at the Fayette Mall. I would usually end up at Arby’s, and I began to notice that every time I would eat at Arby’s, I would just feel “bleh” all afternoon. I wasn’t sick. I didn’t have an upset stomach; I just felt sluggish, tired and “bleh” for the rest of the day. I realized something else. Whenever I ate their curly fries, I felt like this.

Now, before you get offended that I’m talking about your favorite fries in the world, I love Arby’s curly fries. I think they are fantastic. But I also know that if I ever eat them, I’m just going to feel like “bleh” for the rest of the day. What we put into our bodies has a profound effect in how we feel and how we carry ourselves for the rest of the day. A balanced diet is important for us physically because it can affect how well our bodies work. The same is true for our spiritual lives.

If we just allow the junk into our spiritual lives, we can end up feeling like “bleh” for quite some time. We may dabble in spiritual junk from time to time because a part of us really likes it still, but if we allow ourselves to continually be taken in by the things that this world produces which are of no value to the kingdom of God, then our spiritual lives will suffer for it – just like how our physical lives suffer when we take in bad food all the time. But if we have a more holistic approach to our spiritual lives, if we start to have a balanced spiritual diet, then we will find ourselves in a much better spiritual position, and having a more balanced spiritual diet begins with where we set our minds.

Making a lifestyle change is one of the hardest things that we can do, especially if we have been doing things a certain way for such a long time. It helps to have a reason to make the change. You have probably heard stories about people having a heart attack and it gives them a new perspective on life, so they start eating better and taking better care of themselves. You may be one of those people. Something like a heart attack gives one a compelling reason to make a change. Likewise, when it comes time to make a change in our spiritual life, we don’t just change to make a change. We change because there is a reason to change. Paul gives us such a reason.

He says in verse 3, “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” What is our compelling reason to make such a significant spiritual change in our lives? Because our lives aren’t about us any more. Again, if you can sit here this morning and say that Jesus Christ is the Lord of your life and that by his life, death and resurrection you have been redeemed into a new relationship with God, then, you’re life is no longer about you. Our lives are no longer about what we want and what we desire, but our lives are about what is best for the kingdom of God.

When our lives our hidden with Christ in God, we have an obligation to look at our lives in a different way. As we talked about last week, praying that God’s will be done is one of the most radical things that we can pray. It’s radical because it means that we are praying for God’s will even when it goes in direct conflict with our will. We have a tendency to lean towards comfort and the status quo in our lives when we make decisions, but sometimes, the will of God causes us to go outside of our comfort zone.

When God calls us to do something that is uncomfortable or different, do we hold back in hesitation, or do we go forward, knowing that God is in control? Again, our natural inclination is to hold back because we like the comfortable nature of the world that we have constructed around us. But we can’t do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. Einstein says that is the very definition of insanity.

If I keep going to Arby’s and I keep getting the curly fries, I need to realize that I’m going to have a lot of bad afternoons unless I make the conscious decision to change that habit. In the same way, if we keep filling our spiritual lives with things that are comfortable, but not productive, then we need to know that we are going to have a lot of bad days spiritually. But when we realize that our lives are not our own, then we can start making some significant changes.

In verses 5-10, Paul gives us a pretty sizable list of things in our lives that need to be changed if we really consider ourselves to be followers of Jesus Christ. I’m not going to ask you to raise you hand as we go through the list, but think about how your life is affected by these things: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, idolatry, anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk and lying. That’s a big list, and the truth is, some of the things on that list are things that we have been taught are acceptable by society.

Watch television for an evening. Take a look at the movie listings when you get home. Carefully listen to the radio on the way home. Many of the things on Paul’s list are not only featured on movies, television and music, but in many cases, they are glorified. We have to be able to draw the boundaries. Again, I’m definitely not saying that we should cut ourselves off from the non-Christian world, but we need to be discerning about what we let into our lives. If we can’t relate to the world around us, we are going to have a hard time winning people to Christ. But if we get so caught up in buying what culture is selling, and people can’t see the light of Christ in us, then what difference has Christ made in our lives?

We need to be able to show that there has been a change in our lives. Paul uses the language of taking off the old self and putting on the new self. The language that he is using is a lot like changing clothes. The old self, the “us” before we have new life in Christ, is a lot like a dirty shirt. Not just the shirt that I’ve been wearing all day, but the shirt that I’ve been wearing while mowing the grass, running the trimmer, working in the garden and then mucking out the stalls. It’s nasty, filthy, sweaty, and you may just have to grab a pair of scissors in order to get it off. That’s the old self. That is the “us” without Christ.

Paul tells us to put on the new self. The new self is that clean shirt that just came out of the dryer. It is in pristine condition. Paul says that the new self is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. In other words, the new self is the “us” that is continually being conformed to the image of Christ. It is the “us” that follows God’s call. It is the “us” that we have been created to be.

Paul gives us some very practical things to think about here as we strive to live our lives as followers of Jesus Christ. We are certainly challenged by what our culture has told, but we have to remember that we no longer live for ourselves, but we live for Christ. Our old self has died. We are to seek the heavenly things, and we are to do so in the midst of a world that tries to distract us from those things. It is not easy, being a follower of Jesus Christ, but when we remember that our life is no longer our own, then we put ourselves in a much better position to be faithful to the call that God has for each one of us.

The Oregon Trail

2010-08-05T14:23:00.000-04:00

All I can say is.... it's about time!

The Oregon Trail - Official Trailer - watch more funny videos

Oh... and in case you didn't know, this is a fake.

Essentials, Part 3

2010-07-25T19:35:00.000-04:00

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, July 25, 2010. The text for this week's message is Luke 11:1-4.

We are in our third and final week of the Essentials series. During this series, we have been looking at a few things that are essential for us as followers of Jesus Christ. Without these things in our life, we have to seriously examine ourselves and determine if we are truly living out our call as Christians. If we aren’t doing these things, it is entirely possible that we are living a good life, but that doesn’t mean that we are following Christ.

I think it is also important to point out that this series is not about developing a list of “do’s and do not’s.” Like the lawyer in the story of the Good Samaritan, we often want to know what it is that we can get away with and still consider ourselves followers of Christ. He knew that to inherit the kingdom of heaven, one must love God and love neighbor, but he wanted to further define neighbor so that he could know, by extension, not only who he was to love, but who he didn’t have to love. That desire to create a list of “do’s and do not’s” is better known as legalism.

There is a difference between knowing what we should do in response to the work of Christ in our lives and wanting to know where the boundaries are. In some sense, legalism isn’t a bad thing because it helps us respond appropriately to the grace of God in our lives. We have some guidelines to follow because being a follower Christ is not something that comes naturally in our fallen state. But when those guidelines control us and we use them to set up limitations in our life of faith, then we have crossed a line.

It boils down to a matter of the heart. Are our hearts in the right place? Do we want to know these essentials so that we know the boundaries, so that we know what outward actions we should take? Or do we want to know these essentials so that we can response to the grace of God in appropriate ways?

Do we love our neighbor because it is what we “should” do, or do we love our neighbor as a response to the love that God has shown us? Do we prioritize Jesus because that’s what we are “supposed” to do, or do we prioritize Jesus because of the difference that he has made in our lives? The truth is, we can fake our love of neighbor. We can act like Jesus is our priority in life. But, eventually, we cannot hold up the ruse any longer. We may be able to fool every single person in our lives, but in the end, we cannot fool God.

I think one of the dangers that we face is that so much of our faith becomes routine. Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If you make it part of your routine to come to worship, or if you make it part of your routine to spend time in Scripture every day, or if you make it part of your routine to pray, that’s not necessarily bad. In fact, I would encourage it, but I would also encourage you to examine your heart from time to time so that you know it’s not just something you do, but it is something that shapes your life.

It’s easy to go through the motions; it’s not easy to have a meaningful routine that helps you in your walk with Christ. Perhaps this is seen most in the Scripture that we are talking about today – the Lord’s Prayer. When we come to familiar passages, I always want to warn you to avoid going on autopilot because when something is familiar, we don’t pay attention to it as much. And, perhaps, there is nothing quite as familiar for people who attend worship regularly than the Lord’s Prayer.

We sing different songs each week. Our Psalm reading is different each week. The Scripture and the sermon are different each week, but the Lord’s Prayer is the same week after week after week. If you’ve come to worship every week this year, you’ve said the Lord’s Prayer thirty times already this year. If that’s not routine, I’m not sure what is. But do we think about the prayer as we are praying it, or do we just go through the motions? I think if we are being perfectly honest, it’s a little bit of both throughout the year.

Our third and final essential in this series is prayer, and to approach the subject of prayer, I want to do it through the lens of the Lord’s Prayer. To do this, I want to use what we read in Luke, but I’m also going to be referring to Matthew quite a bit, for reasons that will become clear as we go through it. The Lord’s Prayer will serve as a framework for how we can pray. Prayer is essential for our lives as followers of Jesus Christ. Prayer serves not only as a way for us to communicate with God, but also as a way to invite God into our lives so that we may be forever changed.

The passage starts off simply enough. Jesus is praying in a certain place. Not only are we taught prayer, but we see it in action before we even begin learning about it. Let this be our first lesson. If we want to pass on the importance of prayer in our lives, then we need to set an example for those who may be watching us. Your first step to learning how to pray – do it. As Nike used to say, “Just do it.” We see Jesus praying throughout the Gospels. The disciples saw it too. They probably saw it a whole lot more than we read about. Through Jesus’ example of continually praying, the disciples become more and more interested in prayer.

The disciples come to Jesus with a very simple request, “Lord, teach us to pray.” The disciples, waiting until Jesus was done praying, want to know how they should pray. It’s not like they’ve never prayed before. Prayer was certainly part of their worship in the synagogue and at the Temple. But there was something different about the way that Jesus prayed that piqued their interest, and they asked him to teach them how to pray.

Matthew and Luke are a little different in how they approach the Lord’s Prayer. Luke begins simply with address, “Father,” and goes from there. Matthew is more specific and begins the Lord’s Prayer by saying, “Our Father.” By saying, “Our Father” Matthew is reminding us of the communal nature of our faith. God is the Father of all. God is not “My Father”; God is not “Your Father”; God is not “His or Her Father.” God is “Our Father”. We think of our faith as a personal thing, and on some level, it is, but on a much broader level, faith is not just about the individual. We must love God and love our neighbor. It’s not just about me. When we pray to “Our Father,” we remember that.

By referring to God as Father, we aren’t making some kind of statement about the gender of God. A lot of people get caught up in the gender issue. God is neither male nor female. When we refer to God as Father, we are emphasizing the personal relationship. While our faith is not just about the individual, it is personal. Just as we can’t overemphasize our personal relationship, we can overemphasize our communal one as well. You don’t have eternal life through Jesus Christ by riding on the coattails of somebody else.

Husbands, you can’t say, “Well, my wife goes to church, so I’m covered.” Wives, you can’t say, “Well, my husband is a pretty strong man of God, so I’m covered.” No one can say, “Well, I grew up in the church, so I’m covered.” The only thing that covers you as far as eternal life is concerned is the blood of Jesus, and that certainly is a personal decision. It’s personal because you are entering into a relationship with the Father through the Son by the Holy Spirit. Nobody can do it for you. “Our Father.” It’s both communal and personal.

“In heaven” is another phrase that we see in Matthew, but not in Luke. It reminds us that while our relationship with God is personal, it is unlike any relationship that we have here on earth. God is in heaven. We have to remember that. God transcends anything that we can possibly imagine. God is above and beyond the things of this world. We have to remember that when we approach God in prayer, we are not asking our buddy for a favor. We are speaking to the transcendent Creator of the universe. That should give us some perspective.

The next phrase is “hallowed be your name.” What in the world does “hallowed” mean? Does anybody here use that word in their daily life? Does anybody have a clue as to what that means in the first place? Personally, when I first studied the Lord’s Prayer, I had no idea what “hallowed” meant. So, I did what any reasonable person would do. I looked it up in the original Greek, which is so much easier than opening a dictionary.

The Greek word is hagiazo, which means “hallowed.” Okay, I’m just kidding. It means “to sanctify,” or “to be holy.” In other words, when we pray, “hallowed be your name,” we are saying that we want God’s name to be holy. Old Testament law prohibited the wrongful use of the name of God. Because there is something so special about the name of God that it is holy. It is separate from the things of this world. And it’s important for us to remember that as children of the Father, it is possible for us to detract from the holiness of God.

We aren’t praying that God’s name be holy because it is not. We are praying that God’s name be holy because we are not. If we remember that God is holy, we should also remember that we need to be holy in how we conduct our lives. Because for some people, we are the only representation of God that they will ever see. When we pray that God’s name be holy, it should serve as a reminder to us about the type of life we should be living. As we learn from Leviticus 11, we are to be holy because God is holy.

Perhaps the next phrase is one of the most radical things that we could pray, and we don’t even realize it. Luke stops simply with “your kingdom come,” but Matthew continues, “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” God’s kingdom is the place where God has total reign. What we are praying for here is that God’s will be done. Do we really want that? Do we really want God to reign fully in our lives? We say we do because we have some kind of romantic idea that God’s will fully lines up with our will, but the truth is that our will does not always line up with God’s will. Do you see the difference?

When we line up our lives with God’s will, there may be some things that we need to change about our lives. I’m not going to go into the details on that. You know what areas of your life don’t match up with God’s will, and you know that some of those areas you don’t really want God to touch. Because God doesn’t leave us in our sins. And we like some of our sin. God changes us from within, and the things in our lives that separate us from God need to be removed, even if we don’t really want them to be.

If we want God’s will to line up with our lives, we are going to be sorely mistaken about what is going to happen when God’s kingdom comes and His will is done. And for those who think I’ve gone from preaching to meddling at this point, you know that there’s something in your life that needs to be changed. We all need to stop and examine our lives to make sure that we are in the center of God’s will. This petition in the prayer should remind us to do some self-reflection from time to time.

At this point in the prayer, we recognize our need to rely on God each and every day. “Give us this day our daily bread” is not just about making sure we have enough to eat. For the people of Jesus’ day bread was a staple food. It wasn’t just something else on the dinner table. For some people, it was all they had. This phrase would have brought to mind the reliance that the people of Israel had to have on God’s provision while they were in the wilderness after the exodus from Egypt.

Every morning, the Israelites would wake up and there would be enough manna on the ground to feed the entire nation, but they only got it one day at a time. The only exception to that rule was the day before the Sabbath when they would get a two-day supply. Anything beyond what they could eat for the allotted time would be ruined the next morning. They had to rely on God’s provision to get them from one day to the next.

When we pray, “give us this day our daily bread,” we are praying that God would provide for us for another day. Additionally, we need to realize that this petition is not a way of convincing God to give us what we need. It’s a way to remind us that all we have is from God. Our society teaches us to have a sense of entitlement. We have certain rights; we have things that we deserve. But that’s not how it works with God. We are not entitled to anything that God would give us. All that we have from God is from His grace. When we pray for our daily bread, we need to remember our position before God.

The next phrase is somewhat challenging if we stop to think about it. “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who are indebted against us.” There are a few different ways to say this petition. Some use debts; some use trespasses; essentially, we are praying that God would forgive us of our sins. But it doesn’t stop there. We are praying that our sins would be forgiven in the same way that we forgive those who have sinned against us.

How forgiving are we? Do we hold grudges over time? Are we willing to forgive those who have sinned against us? If we take the Lord’s Prayer at its word, we need to be willing to forgive others because if we are not willing to forgive others, we will find that there is no forgiveness for us. We cannot learn and embody God’s forgiveness in our own lives, if we aren’t willing to forgive others. That falls under the category of “easier said than done,” doesn’t it? Yet when we do forgive those who have sinned against us, we are modeling God’s forgiveness for them. That is a powerful example to set.

The final petition of the Lord’s prayer is a plea to not lead us into temptation, or to not bring us to a time of trial. When you consider the life of Jesus, this is a very interesting plea. Jesus’ ministry began with his temptation in the wilderness. Jesus faced many trials and persecutions throughout his ministry. Trials and temptation will be a part of the Christian life, so why would we bother praying that they not?

By praying against trials and temptations in our lives, we become more aware of them. We begin to see situations and discern that maybe those aren’t the right places for us to be. This is a petition that increases our awareness of the things that we should avoid in life. We aren’t going to be able to avoid all temptations, but there are certainly a lot that we could miss out on if we simply make good decisions. Good decisions come from good information, and good information comes from awareness.

There really is a whole lot more that we can learn from the Lord’s Prayer, but we simply don’t have time this morning to go into it all. It’s amazing how something so simple that we take for granted on a weekly basis can speak to us in so many ways that we never could have imagined. The next time we say the Lord’s Prayer together, remember that it is not just a ritual that we do every Sunday, but it is a meaningful, even radical, commentary on what our faith should look like. Pray it with the expectation that you will be changed, and it won’t take long for God to work in your life in some pretty powerful ways.

Essentials, Part 2

2010-07-25T06:54:00.002-04:00

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, July 18, 2010. The text for this week's message is Luke 10:38-42.

We are in our second week of the Essentials series. During this series our goal is to look at a few things that are extremely important in our Christian faith. Without these things in our lives, we have to stop and seriously examine if we truly following Christ or if we are simply living life as a good person, and those are two very different things. Being a follower of Christ is about more than being a good person and getting into heaven. Being a follower of Christ is about proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord and recognizing that by his life, death and resurrection, we can have a restored relationship with our Creator. And as a result of this new life, there are things that should flow from us so that we may be light to a world surrounded by darkness.

Last week, we looked at the story of the Good Samaritan and saw that one essential of the Christian faith is the need to help others. The lawyer who is talking with Jesus in the passage correctly understands the need to love God and neighbor, but what he doesn’t understand is that our neighbor is not just those who we like, those who are deserving of our help, and those who are just like us.

According to what Jesus says, our neighbor is anybody who is in need. If we start to differentiate between those who are deserving of our help and those who are not, then we are missing the point of the parable. We need to stop focusing on the false fences that we have built and starting looking at everyone we come across as our neighbor.

This week we move into a second essential. Our passage comes right after the parable of the Good Samaritan. There is some kind of flow between these two passages. There is a connection between the two that provides us with an important contrast in the Christian faith. In fact, if we aren’t careful, we are going to think that these two contradict each other instead of work together in harmony. While the passage is very short, the message is one that we can’t miss.

It’s a very simple story. Jesus is traveling and stops at a village to see Mary and Martha. Now Luke doesn’t tell us this, but Mary and Martha are the sisters of Jesus’ friend Lazarus. They live in the village of Bethany, which is a couple miles outside of Jerusalem. Martha welcomes Jesus into the house and then sets off taking care of things around the house. It likely that the disciples were going to come back and they were all going to have supper together, watch the game on TV, play a little Yahtzee. You know, just a relaxing evening at home.

Martha is worried because her house isn’t all that presentable, and now she has to make dinner for this party. So she is rushing around trying to vacuum, do the dishes and prepare supper. Mary, meanwhile, is just sitting listening to Jesus. Surely, she’s picking up her feet when Martha comes around with the vacuum cleaner, but other than that, she’s just sitting around, doing nothing to help get the house ready. And Martha is not happy about her lack of help.

So, Martha does what any mature adult would do. She tells on Mary. She goes up to Jesus and says, “Don’t you care that I’m doing all the work around here? Tell Mary to get up and help me with this.” So, Jesus looks at Mary and tells her to stop loafing and get to work. Wait a minute, no, that’s not what happened. Jesus tells Martha to calm down, and maybe take a little lesson from Mary. You see, what’s going on here is that Martha is so concerned with the doing that she’s neglecting the being. What we see in this passage is the need to prioritize and to balance the being and the doing in our Christian faith.

That may sound contradictory coming on the heels of a story all about, you guessed it, doing because the Good Samaritan is about doing good for those in need who are all around us. At the end of the story, Jesus even says, “Go and do likewise.” Aren’t we supposed to assume, then, that our faith is about doing things for others? No, we shouldn’t assume that because in order for our faith to be more holistic, we can’t be so caught up in the doing that we forget to just be in the presence of Christ.

Luke tells us that Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening to his teaching. This would be a very odd, counter-cultural thing for Mary to be doing. Essentially, she has taken the posture of a disciple in this story, a role traditionally reserved for men. It would have been unheard of for a rabbi to have a female disciple, but that is exactly what Mary is in this passage.

Being a disciple of Jesus Christ goes against our cultural norms. When I think about some of the values that are taught by our society, I can’t help but think that individualism is highly regarded. We like to say that we are able to do things on our own. We are proud of our accomplishments. We celebrate the individual.

I remember a few years back when the Pistons and the Spurs were playing in the NBA Finals, people complained because both teams were really all about team play. Tim Duncan was probably the biggest star in that series, but he is a very unassuming star, especially in a league where we have a one hour special centered around where one guy is going to play next season. People said that the series between the Pistons and the Spurs was boring; that there was no interest in these two teams precisely because there were no flashy stars on the court. This is the type of society that we live in. This is not the type of society that values discipleship.

Discipleship is about being a part of something far greater than ourselves. Discipleship is about laying aside our wants and preferences. Discipleship is about submission to another. We are called to be and to make disciples of Jesus Christ. We become disciples by learning from Jesus through the reading of the Word, through time in prayer, through fellowship with other believers. There’s no MVD award – Most Valuable Disciple – because we are all on equal ground at the foot of the cross.

For Mary to take the position of a disciple was a huge deal in the culture of the time. For us to take the position of a disciple is also a huge step. When we submit ourselves to following Christ, we begin to realize that it is no longer about us. We do not fall into the trap of individualism in our lives. We begin to focus on others. We see things differently in this life because we aren’t looking through the same lens as the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, Martha was, to use Luke’s words, “distracted by many tasks,” playing up the traditional female role. Martha was playing into what society said she should be doing at the time. People were coming over. She had to get the house ready and prepare to entertain them. And she was missing out on what was really important. Look again at what Luke says here. Martha was “distracted.” What is a distraction, but something that prevents us from doing what we should be doing in the first place? A distraction is a diversion of one’s attention.

Do you ever feel distracted? Do you ever feel like you can’t focus on one particular thing at a time? Are there always 43 things running through your mind, and you can’t even just sit down and take a breather? In our society, that’s called, “being productive” or “multitasking.” I’m not saying that people can’t do a couple of things at the same time, and do them well. But when we are multitasking, are we really giving anything our full attention, or are we going through life distracted and making excuses for it?

I think we are all distracted from time to time. Our distractions come both from within and from without. We have things going through our minds that distract us, and we have things going on around us that distract us. In the end, it all comes down to priorities. What are the things that have priority in your life? Because those are the things that ultimately need your undivided attention.

If we were to sit down right now and talk about all the different things going on in your life, could I see what your priorities were in life, and could you articulate what they are? If you say that one of your priorities in life is family, but you work 80 hours every week and ignore the kids when they are around, is your family really a priority? If you say that one of your priorities is your faith, but you never spend time in the Word of God and you rarely come to worship, is your faith really a priority? Or are you just distracted? Are you making excuses, or are you making priorities?

When Jesus comes into the house, we automatically see the tension between being and doing. Martha starts running all over the place. Mary sits at the feet of Jesus. Martha busies herself with all sorts of work. Mary listens to Jesus’ teaching. Martha gets upset with Mary, but Mary is doing the right thing, according to Jesus. Does this mean that the work didn’t need to be done? Not necessarily. It means that sometimes there is something more important than work that needs to be done.

When we set our priorities, we know when we need to do and when we need to be. Martha is working like crazy, trying to get everything done. And there’s nothing wrong with the work that Martha is doing. It was a matter of hospitality. She was playing the host and she was doing her responsibilities well. But at that time, the priority should have been to stop and listen to Jesus, which is exactly what Mary was doing.

And here’s the kicker in all of this. Did you notice what Martha said and who she said it to? She says to Jesus, “Don’t you care that my sister is making me do all the work? Tell her to help me.” That’s kind of demanding isn’t it? Kind of presumptuous? Martha assumes that Jesus would be on her side, and then takes the next step and tells Jesus what to do! Now, before we get all in a dither about what Martha did, let’s stop to examine our own lives for a second.

Don’t we tell God how we think things should be going sometimes? Don’t we presume that God is on our side and that He will do whatever we ask? Those who attended the Bible study last fall may remember this, but too often our prayer life boils down to “Give me, give me, give me, bless me, bless me, bless me. If you do this, I promise I won’t do that anymore. Amen.” That’s no different than what Martha is doing here. We presume that God is around to do our bidding. That is a totally pagan approach to our relationship with God.

The pagans believed that there were specific gods for every aspect of life, and that if you did things a certain way and prayed a certain way, then they were bound to do whatever it was that you asked them to do. Some would call on as many gods as possible just hoping that they’d get the right one to do their bidding. We would acknowledge that as a ridiculous approach to faith, and yet, we are guilty of it more often than we would like to admit. We share a lot in common with Martha in this passage, when we should look a lot like Mary instead.

And now the question that y’all have been dreading all morning: Where do you find yourself? On your normal, average, run of the mill day, are you more like Martha, or are you more like Mary? Do you make sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to his teaching a priority, or do you busy yourself with work that, legitimately, needs to be done, but at the expense of your time with God?

You may be thinking, “Preacher, that’s easy for you to say. It’s your job.” Let me tell you, it’s not my job. My job is to lead this congregation, share the word of God, and perform the duties of a pastor within this community. My job is not to cultivate my personal spiritual life; that’s something else entirely. Of course, the ironic thing is, if I don’t cultivate my spiritual life, I will not only fail in my relationship with God, I will fail in my job. But the same is true for you. If you don’t cultivate your spiritual life, if you don’t make it a priority, and nobody else can do it for you, you will fail at your relationship with God. And in light of that failure, any other success in your life is for worthless.

When we look at the story of Mary and Martha, we are looking at a story that helps us shape our priorities. Yes, there are things that need to be done in this life, but to do them at the expense of listening to Jesus is detrimental to our spiritual health. If we don’t prioritize Jesus over everything else, then we are setting ourselves up for failure.

Essentials, Part 1

2010-07-15T10:28:00.001-04:00

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, July 11, 2010. The text for this week's message is Luke 10:25-37.

We are starting a new series this week, entitled “Essentials.” We are going to be in the Gospel of Luke for the next three weeks. During this series, we are going to look at a few basics that we need to nail down as followers of Christ. If we can’t get these three things right, we are going to have a hard time being faithful and obedient followers of Christ. To do that, we are going to look at three stories that are relatively familiar. This week, we are going to look at the story of the Good Samaritan. Next week, we’ll be exploring Jesus’ visit to Mary and Martha. And in our final week, we’ll look at Luke’s passage on the Lord’s Prayer.

The story of the Good Samaritan is one that people hear all the time, and because of that, we have to be careful that we don’t tune it out when we come to the story again. No matter how many times we hear or read a story from Scripture, we have to remember that it is the living Word of God. What we hear from one reading may be totally different from what we hear from another reading. God speaks to us in different ways at different times in our lives.

There’s an old saying that you can never step into the same river twice. You can step in the same spot of the same river, but the waters are different each time. In the same way, we never approach Scripture the same way twice. Time and our experience change us, the words may be the same, but how it speaks to us at this particular time in our lives will be different because we are different. And so it is with today’s passage. It doesn’t matter how many times we’ve heard the story of the Good Samaritan, we are different people now than we were then, and God may have something new to teach us.

The story of the Good Samaritan begins with a simple question. That question is, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” We are told that the source of this question is a lawyer, who is testing Jesus. A little bit gets lost in translation here, so let’s clarify a couple of things. When Luke says that a lawyer asked the question, we need to get out of our minds the image of a lawyer, as we understand them. This was not a prosecutor, or a criminal defense lawyer, or anybody of that sort. A lawyer in the first century was somebody who was an expert in the Torah, or the Law, the first five books of the Old Testament. Lawyers spent their lives asking and answering questions about the Torah. They would pass the time by debating certain points of the law. This guy is probably pretty happy that there’s a new rabbi in town, so he can test his knowledge of the Torah.

The question itself is also an unusual one. An inheritance is in the control of the giver, not the recipient. An inheritance is a gift. It is entirely possible for a person to lose an inheritance by offending the benefactor. Likewise, it is possible for a person to gain an inheritance by making an impression on the benefactor. Essentially, what is going on here is that the lawyer is asking what it is that he needs to do to impress God and gain eternal life.

It sounds kind of crazy to look at the question that way, but in reality, we do it all the time. We want to know all the “do’s and do not’s” to the Christian faith so that we know what it is we need to do in order to get into heaven. But let me ask you something that may shake your foundations. What if being a follower of Christ isn’t about getting into heaven?

Being a follower of Christ isn’t about the final destination; it’s about what we do along the way. It’s about what we do in the here and now. It’s about living our lives in relationship with the Father through Jesus Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Heaven is real. Our eternity spent in the presence of God is definitely something we can look forward to, but if we do it at the expense of fulfilling the call God has for us right now, I have a feeling that we are going to be pretty disappointed. We read in Scripture about Jesus saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” We don’t read about him saying, “You’re finally done with that mess; welcome to your real life.” “How do we live out our faith?” is the real question that we need to be asking.

There are a couple of other times in the New Testament when someone asks what must they do to inherit eternal life, and the answer is always, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.” But that’s not the answer that Jesus gives. His answer is actually much more involved, and it goes right to the heart of what was behind the lawyer’s question.

Jesus flips the question on the lawyer. The lawyer was an expert on the Torah, he knew what it was that the Torah said, so why was he asking Jesus? The only explanation that really hold ups is that the lawyer wasn’t looking for an answer; he was looking for a debate, and we see that on display when the discussion continues after Jesus responds to his answer.

Often, when we are sharing our faith with people who don’t believe, we get put on the spot with a handful of questions. Questions like: “If God is good, why is there suffering in the world? Where did the Bible come from? Why aren’t dinosaurs mentioned in the Bible? What about the Da Vinci Code?” Sometimes, these questions are legitimate. People honestly want to know the answers. But, sometimes, they are just a smokescreen to get out of the conversation. Their experience has been that if they can frustrate us with peripheral questions, then we get thrown off of the main topic, and the conversation goes nowhere. Both parties end up leaving no better off from the conversation.

Eventually, after this happens so many times, we start to buy into the lie that we have to know the answers to all the potential questions that people could come up with. But, brace yourselves, we don’t have to know all the answers. What we have to know is that Jesus Christ is Lord, and through his life, death and resurrection we have the opportunity to restore our relationship with God. The other questions don’t matter as much. When we put our faith in Jesus, the peripheral questions suddenly become less important. I’m not saying that we don’t have them, but they become less of a priority and less of a barrier to faith.

Our faith is not about intellectual debate. I have never heard of anybody ever being “reasoned” into the kingdom of God. Our faith is about how we live it out in the real world, and that’s why the parable of the Good Samaritan is so important in the broader scope to what Jesus is saying to the lawyer here.

The lawyer correctly answers that in order to inherit eternal life, you must “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind and your neighbor as yourself.” Both of these are commands that are found in the Torah, so it is no surprise that the lawyer got the answer right, but notice Jesus’ response to him. “Do this, and you will live.” You see, it’s not just enough to know what it takes to inherit eternal life. One must be willing to live it out in practical ways as well. Just like how we aren’t going to reason people into the kingdom, we can’t get in ourselves if we are simply concerned about “cramming for the final,” if you will. It’s not about knowing the right answers. It’s about living a right life, a life dependent on the grace of God.

You would think at this point that the conversation would be over. The man asked the question, and Jesus confirmed that he was on the right track. It should be a done deal, right? Wrong. It’s not over because the lawyer wasn’t satisfied with the answer. It was too broad. He wanted to narrow it down so he could know exactly what it was that he was supposed to do. So, he asks Jesus another question: “Who is my neighbor?” Once again, there is more to this question that just what is on the surface.

In asking, “who is my neighbor?” the lawyer is not just asking so that he’ll know who it is that he is supposed to love, but he is also asking so that he knows who he doesn’t have to love. By knowing who is his neighbor, he will also know who is not his neighbor. Throughout the Old Testament, there is a clear separation between the people of Israel and the people of the other nations, at least there was supposed to be. But, in the middle of all this separation, there were also commands to love those who lived among the people, even if they were foreigners.

Instead of simply answering, “Everyone,” Jesus uses the occasion to dig deeper into the concept of what it means to be a neighbor in the first place. He tells a parable that gets us to stop focusing on the fences that divide us from our neighbors and causes us to focus on the person that is our neighbor instead.

The story begins with a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. It is a seemingly harmless statement until we start looking at the geography. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho winds through mostly rocky terrain, and there is approximately an elevation drop of 3,000 feet on the 17-mile trip. This area gave thieves plenty of opportunities for ambush and easy escape routes. Most travelers would not make this journey alone because it was pretty dangerous.

The man ends up getting beaten, stripped and left for dead. Notice another important detail. Jesus doesn’t tell us where this man is from. Is he an Israelite? Is he a Samaritan? Is he a foreigner traveling from distant lands? We don’t know. And, once he is beaten and stripped, his appearance would not give any indication as to where he was from either. He wouldn’t be wearing the clothes of his homeland because he wasn’t wearing anything at this point.

While this man is laying on the road, three people pass by. The first is a priest, a member of the clergy, a member of the tribe of Levi and a descendant of Moses’ brother Aaron. Priests served as the mediators between humans and God. They performed the sacrifices in the Temple, among other rituals for the people. But the priest doesn’t do anything. He sees the man laying there, crosses the road and walks away.

The next person that comes along is a Levite. Like priests, Levites were from the tribe of Levi, but they were not direct descendants of Aaron. They assisted the priests in carrying out their duties at the Temple. This Levite, like the priest before him, crosses the road and walks away.

In the storytelling progression of the day, the third person that should have come along would have broken the pattern established by the first two. The expectation is that the third person would help the man on the road. It was also expected that the third person would have been an Israelite. As you know, that was not the case. The third person did stop to help the man, just like the people would have expected, but what they didn’t expect is that he was a Samaritan. This would have shocked the people listen to Jesus teach.

Jews and Samaritans did not get along at all. In 722 B.C. when the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, they had a policy of exiling people from the lands and intermingling them with people from all over the empire. Samaritans were descendants of this policy. They were Jews who intermarried with other cultures that were brought into the region by the Assyrians. Centuries later, Jews considered Samaritans to be half-breeds; people of the promise who failed to maintain a pure bloodline. The Jews avoided contact with the Samaritans as much as they possibly could. But here, in Jesus’ story, the most hated of social outcasts is the good guy; the one in the story that does the right thing.

The Samaritan, unlike the priest and Levite before him, sees the man on the side of the road and has pity on him. He then dresses the man’s wounds and takes him to an inn to care for him. He then leaves the man there with the money to take care of him, and promises to come back in a couple of days. He saw a man in need and helped him. We don’t see any kind of debate within the Samaritan, just a desire to care for somebody in need.

In some sense, the man in this story was not doing a very smart thing in making the journey by himself in the first place. Some people would even say that he brought it upon himself by making the journey alone. The Samaritan, however, doesn’t ask him why he needed help. He doesn’t say anything about the victim bringing the trouble upon himself. He simply helps the man.

We have a tendency to have two categories when it comes to people in need. We have the people that deserve our help, and those who don’t deserve our help. There are people who are just in a bad spot, and there are people that put themselves in a bad spot. The problem is, and we see it here, it doesn’t really matter whether they deserve it or not. The man who was beaten put himself in a bad position, but he still needed help, and that is what is most important. There’s a definite analogy to our faith here.

Christianity is not about just helping those who deserve our help. It’s about helping those who don’t deserve anything. Who among us gathered here this morning deserves, or has earned, the grace of God in our lives? We don’t want what we deserve from God, so why would we separate those around us into categories of deserving and undeserving? The story of the Good Samaritan shows us that everyone is deserving of our love.

Our faith is shown by the love that we have for those who are least deserving of it. Our neighbors include the very people that we would place in the “undeserving” category. When Jesus is done with the story, he asks the lawyer a simple question, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” And notice the lawyer’s response. “The one who showed him mercy.” He can’t even bring himself to say that the Samaritan was the man’s neighbor. He didn’t want to admit that even a Samaritan was his neighbor. He simply says, “the one who showed him mercy.”

In some sense, it is kind of a sad story. Not the parable itself, but the reaction of the lawyer. It is clear from his response that he is faced with a reality that he is not ready to embrace. A world with divisions is a lot easier for us to handle because we can put people into boxes. We try to compartmentalize our lives, and in the same way, we try to compartmentalize the people we come across each day. The truth is, we can’t do either. To love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength is to love God with every part of our selves. And to love our neighbor as ourselves crosses all the boundaries that we put up.

The lawyer is still trying to look at the fence, but Jesus is saying that there are no fences. Look around you this week; the people that you see, the ones who are in need, those are your neighbors. We may not think they deserve our help. We may think that they brought it on themselves, but regardless, they are still our neighbors. Jesus’ command to “go and do likewise” applies to us today just as much as it applied to that lawyer so long ago.

My Thoughts on Lebron... Because You Care

2010-07-13T08:39:00.000-04:00

Last week, LeBron James took part in one of the most self-aggrandizing, egotistical television "specials" of all time. I think it was absolutely ridiculous the way things went down last week. I can't necessarily blame ESPN because they did it for the ratings, and they were approached by LeBron's people to do the show. I'm fairly certain the people involved felt used... I know I did, and I only watched 15 minutes of it. However, after saying all of that, there are a few things that have been on my mind, and I just want to throw them out there.

This is the first time in his career that LeBron has really been able to decide where he wanted to play. Yes, he did sign an extension with the Cavs that kept him there a couple more years, but this is really the first time he was courted by other teams and able to really take in what his options were.
LeBron played seven season in Cleveland. He didn't bail at the first opportunity. He was the best player on the best regular season team for the last two years, and each year, the team failed miserably in the postseason. Did he fail the team? I don't think so, he just came up against better teams. An individual doesn't make a team.
LeBron didn't owe Cleveland anything. Cleveland was not entitled to have LeBron for his entire career. Cleveland was entitled to have him from the time he was drafted until now, but beyond that, there was no obligation on either side of the relationship.
People are saying that LeBron will hurt his legacy by playing with Wade and Bosh. What will hurt his legacy more - winning 4 championships in Miami, or not winning any championships in Cleveland? If it is about winning championships, then LeBron made the move that gives him the best chance to win multiple championships, and you can't fault him for that decision.
The first thing people talk about when discussing the best of the best is the number of championships they've won; fair or not. How many championships did Jordan win without Pippen? None. How many championships has Kobe won without either Shaq or Gasol? None. You don't win championships without a top-tier #2 guy. One guy alone cannot win a championship in the NBA. LeBron's decision was about winning a championship.
He simply took good advice. Kevin Garnett, who played for the Timberwolves for a number of years, picked Minnesota over free agency and spent his best seasons in frustration. Then he was traded to Boston and won a championship with Ray Allen and Paul Pierce. After Boston beat Cleveland in the playoffs, Garnett basically said that there's a lot to be said for loyalty, but if it holds you back from winning the championship, then maybe you need to rethink what you are doing.

All right. That's all I have to say about that.

The Future of Lego Video Games

2010-07-09T07:00:00.001-04:00

Lego Star Wars, Lego Batman, Lego Indiana Jones, Lego Harry Potter, Lego Rock Band.... what will they think of next. If only it was Lego Modern Warfare....