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THE PARENT’S PSALM
Expository Sermon on Psalm 33
by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue SDA Church 2/4/2012 
©2012 by Maylan Schurch

(Click here to listen to the audio for this sermon.)

Please open your Bibles to Psalm 33.

We are in Psalm 33 because Jason and Charlie Meert chose some verses from that psalm which they find deeply meaningful, and which our elder read for the Scripture reading a few minutes ago. This morning, at the end of my sermon they will be dedicating their little daughter Maylee to the Lord.

For me, yesterday was something of a "children's day." In the morning I stood before well over 100 elementary kids in our Seventh-day Adventist school in Kirkland and sang songs with them and did a little talk.

And then, since we were in the area, Shelley and I drove up to the Family Christian Bookstore in the Totem Lake shopping center. The store has an entrance from the sidewalk outside, and another entrance into the mall area. This second entrance is a large sliding-glass door, which the store people keep open so shoppers can go in to the rest of the mall if they want. (But since there are only two other stores in the mall, and they have only entrances to the outside, the mall is empty, and is used by a few people who want to get their walking exercise in when it’s raining.)

While Shelley browsed through the store, I stood out in the mall area few feet from that sliding door, where there is a beautiful wooden counter which used to be the mall's information center. It was a perfect place to rest my sermon notebook and the sheet of paper on which I had printed off Psalm 33. I stood there reading the Psalm and making notes in the notebook.

And then, suddenly, I saw right in front of me a parent-child event. To me, it seemed to sum up not only what parents go through with their kids, but what our Heavenly Father goes through with His children.

A young mother had arrived at Family Christian Store by way of the store’s outside entrance, and through the sliding glass door I could see her pushing a stroller. However, her child – a cute little blond boy – was not in the stroller but was trotting along beside her. I am no good at telling the ages of children, but this boy seems to have just reached the age where his walk was no longer a stagger but was a fairly confident trot.

Well, mom wasn't exactly having an easy time with her little guy. She tried to interest him in playing with the blocks in a little children's play center the store had thoughtfully provided. But the boy would have nothing to do with the blocks. Instead he gazed out through the sliding glass door and into the mall. He decided he wanted to go out there, so he started trotting through the doorway. Mom followed him and hauled him back into the store, and they both disappeared around the corner of some DVD racks.

I turned my attention back to my sermon. Suddenly my eye caught a movement. I glanced up. The boy had reappeared, this time all by himself. He glanced thoughtfully out into the mall where I was, and then he took a couple of steps toward the doorway. Then he stopped, and glanced back over his shoulder. Then, since mom wasn't in view, he took another couple of steps, which brought him out into the mall itself. Again he stopped, and glanced back. No mom.

This time he trotted 10 or 15 feet further into the mall. And again he stopped and looked over his shoulder. Mom still wasn't visible, so he just trotted away without another backward glance. He showed absolutely no fear at being away from mommy’s side. His idea was to put as much distance between him and mommy as he could, in the shortest time possible.

Well, I knew what my responsibility was in this situation. The boy would have probably found it fairly traumatic if a tall, strange, gray-haired man began pursuing him. I would have done this, of course, if the mall had been full of people, but as I say, there were just a few mall-walkers.

So I was just about to dart into the store and get mom’s attention.  But along came a gray-haired lady mall-walker. She spoke to him in grandmotherly tones, got hold of him, and took him back inside the store to his mom. Mom thanked the rescuer, and promptly buckled her offspring firmly into his stroller, which he did not like one bit

I thought to myself, "Isn't that a perfect little parable of human parenting, and maybe even divine parenting? Hasn't human history been one long series of restless and sometimes runaway kids?”

The little boy in the mall was younger than Maylee’s big brother Rylan, and I would imagine that Jason and Charlie have had to deal with similar exploratory instincts on Rylan’s part. And I would imagine that, once in a while, they look ahead a bit apprehensively to when Rylan or Maylee have grown to the point where they won't always be close enough for Mom and Dad to run after them and buckle them back into a stroller.

As I was looking over Psalm 33, I decided to give it my own title – "The Parents’ Psalm." This psalm doesn't mention children. It gives no child-raising advice. None of its verses say "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."

Charlie and Jason could have chosen the "train up a child" kind of verse, but I have a feeling they don't need that right now. They are both sensible Christian parents, and they know their kids better than anybody else does.

No, what they must sense that they need – and the Scripture passage they chose proves it – is to be reminded that when human parenting reaches its limits, there is a powerful God who can protect and guide.

I'd like to spend the next few minutes mentioning some deeply encouraging facts about our Heavenly Parent which Psalm 33 tells us. And even if, like me, you don't have kids, these will encourage you. Because we are all God's children, and knowing we have a loving Heavenly Father – and knowing just how resourceful He is – will make all the difference. So get ready to be greatly encouraged.

The first thing we notice about this anonymous Psalm is that its writer considers God to have celebrity “rock star” status. Watch what happens.

Psalm 33:1 – 3 [NKJV]: Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous! For praise from the upright is beautiful. Praise the Lord with the harp; make melody to Him with an instrument of ten strings. Sing to Him a new song; play skillfully with a shout of joy.

Notice that this Psalm doesn’t start out by simply listing the reasons God is so good to know. That will come later. This psalm-writer starts with joyous musical ovation, sosrt of a “Hail to the Chief.”

So if we’re God’s children, and He is our Parent, what’s the first thing this Psalm tells us? If you’re taking sermon notes, here comes Point One.

I need to pay God attention.

Recently one of our church members forgot his Bible at church. When I found that Bible on the pew, I knew it was probably this person’s Bible, because I knew where he'd been sitting, but I opened the front cover just to make sure. And there, right inside the front cover was a little handmade card, hand-printed with childish letters, which said, "I love you, daddy."

Don't you imagine that all it takes to cheer Dad up when he's down is to take a peek at that little expression of adoration? Sometimes I think we make God too much of an impersonal Force, far too remote from emotions we humans recognize. But we have to constantly remember that we are made in His image. He is not an alien. He is our Father. In a way, we have His emotional genetic code.

And I have a feeling that the better we get to know Him, the more we will understand that He does appreciate appreciation. Have you ever considered that your fervent gratitude, expressed lovingly to Him, could give Him courage? Don't you remember how Jesus wept over Jerusalem, in agony because they would reject Him? Don't you remember those mournful phrases in John chapter 1, where it says that Jesus “came to His own, and His own received him not"? Have you read God's heart cries in Hosea 11:8, “How can I give you up, Ephraim?”

One of these days, and it's going to come breathtakingly quickly, little Maylee will sit down at a table, grip pencil in her fingers, and carefully scrawl out a staggery stick-figure picture of mommy and daddy. And that picture is going right up on the refrigerator, or in a place of honor at work.

How do you pay God attention? You're doing it right now. You are honoring His special gift to you, His Sabbath, the memorial of the creation He so lovingly crafted for you. And as you sit here, you may not be reading God’s e-mail, but you are reading His “ye-mail,” this Book He has written to all of us.

Every time you hum a heartfelt Christian song in a heartfelt way as you drive to work, or stride through the halls at school, you're paying Him attention. Every time you talk to Him as though you are addressing not an impersonal alien or a celestial vending machine but as somebody you can really open your heart to, every time you do that, you are paying Him attention. And He loves it.

And the Lord is worth every throb of love, every moment of attention you give Him. Here's why.

Verses 4 – 5: For the word of the Lord is right, and all His work is done in truth. He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.

What’s the next encouraging truth our Psalm tells us about God?

I need to pay God some attention, because He is good through and through.

No dark secrets, no incriminating e-mails, no under-the-table corruption. One of the reasons the Bible is sometimes R-rated and even X-rated reading is that God is open and transparent. In the pages of the Bible we read of jaw-dropping human failures as well as successes. God is good – so good that He refuses to airbrush out His children's flaws, but bravely prints them as examples and warnings to us.

Wouldn't it be nice if human leaders could be “good through and through”? If you pay any attention at all to world news, you long for this to be said about the leaders who benefited from the Arab spring uprisings. People surge into their public squares, crying for justice, shouting for change, hearts high with hope, and what do they get? A different group in power, with the return of some of the same old tactics.

What a refreshing change God is! Knowing that God does His work in truth, that He loves righteousness, that He loves justice, gives me great courage for a future in His great universe.

However, knowing that God is “good through and through” is not quite enough for a couple of parents named Jason and Charlie raising a couple of kids named Rylan and Maylee. After all, Abraham Lincoln was a good man. Mother Theresa was a good woman. But they have both died. You and I need a God who has more than just goodness.

And our psalmist doesn't disappoint us.

Verses 6 – 9: By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap; He lays up the deep in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.

Now we're getting somewhere. This is getting closer to what parents and everybody else concerned about the future need to hear. We can put it this way:

I need to pay God attention, because He is good through and through, and because He created everything I see.

And what's so amazing is that these verses remind us of how He created. Nowadays, if you want to create a tablet computer such as an iPad, you assemble a lot of very intelligent people, and you piece together bits of technology from lots of other intelligent people, and you farm out the work to factories all over the world, and finally you have your product.

But all God did was speak. No doubt, He had everything planned out in His head, so that when He spoke it was like pushing the "Enter" key. Evidently, the only parts of His creation which weren't formed by His voice were His first two children, Adam and Eve. Just like any proud parent, He wanted to cuddle them in His arms rather than keep them at a reserved distance. That's probably where the instinct to reach out and give a kid a parental hug comes from – from the very heart of God.

This might be a good time to remind ourselves of just Who we are talking about in these verses. There's a lot of Bible evidence that every time you read the word "LORD" in little capital letters in the Old Testament, this is talking about Jesus Christ. Verse 6 says that "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made," and John chapter 1:3, speaking of Jesus, says, “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.”

So whatever role Jesus had in creation, creation couldn't have happened without Him. Maybe it was He who spoke atoms and molecules into existence. And it most likely was He who formed Adam from dust of the ground. And when He came as a human being to this planet, Jesus' constant goal was to show us the Father, show us God by acting and speaking and loving the way God does. "I and My Father are one," He said in John 10:30.

 

But if you are a really thoughtful parent, gazing anxiously into the next decade or two and knowing that – unless the Lord returns first – your child is going to have to navigate those decades with less and less of your presence and influence, and more and more influence from other sources, knowing merely that God created everything is still not quite enough. What you need is a God who does something more.

And sure enough, our anonymous psalmist doesn’t let us down.

Verses 10 – 17: The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; He makes the plans of the peoples of no effect. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of His heart to all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people He has chosen as His own inheritance. The Lord looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men. From the place of His dwelling He looks on all the inhabitants of the earth; He fashions their hearts individually; He considers all their works. No king is saved by the multitude of an army; a mighty man is not delivered by great strength. A horse is a vain hope for safety; neither shall it deliver any by its great strength.

I need to pay God attention, because He is good through and through, and He created everything I see, and He’s keeping an eye on things down here.

And when God keeps an eye on things, He does so not as a neutral, disinterested observer. I still remember how my dad reacted when word got back to him that another kid was bullying me at my elementary school. I was Dad's firstborn, so he had not had to deal with this problem before, and he was frothing at the mouth. He wanted to go over to that kid's house and have a talk with him. Mom (who had been a schoolteacher) had to calm Dad down and tell him that doing that would cause more problems than it would solve.

And to some extent, God Himself is helpless. Or to be more accurate, He has tied His own hands. Almost daily in the news we hear about how this or that nation's leader operates a police state, or some other kind of system where those in power can pretty much do what they want when they want. And a lot of innocent people get hurt.

But God refuses to work that way. He does truly allow free human choice, and right now, He must generally allow the results of those choices to play themselves out.

But that, too, is faint comfort for parents like Jason and Charlie, and for any Christian who cares about the powerless. Just knowing that God is keeping an eye on things would be pretty discouraging, except that our psalmist now fills in the final blank as well.

 

Verses 18 – 19: Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, on those who hope in His mercy, to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine.

 Aha. Here is something tangible. Here are things God will do for those who fear Him and hope in His mercy. He will deliver their souls from death – either physical death down here or eternal death at the end of time. He will keep them alive in famine – either physically alive or with the promise of life in an eternity where the memories of famine's agony will quickly fade. The main thing is that God intervenes.

I need to pay God attention, because He is good through and through, and He created everything I see, and He keeps an eye on things down here, and will intervene for our eternal safety.

Now can you see how the eyes of our two loving parents, Jason and Charlie, moved unerringly to the final three verses of this Psalm? These verses not only summarize this entire encouraging Bible chapter, but they give Jason's and Charlie's own parental commitment. These verses show that they are not only dedicating Maylee to God, just as they dedicated Rylan-- these verses show that they are dedicating themselves anew to Him.

As I read their dedication verses again, why don’t we let this be an opportunity to dedicate or rededicate ourselves to the Heavenly Father who dotes on us so fondly?

Verses 20 – 22: Our soul waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield. For our heart shall rejoice in Him, because we have trusted in His holy name. Let Your mercy, O Lord, be upon us, just as we hope in You.

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JESUS’ THREE KEYS TO DISCIPLESHIP
Topical Sermon from the Gospel of John
by Maylan Schurch
©2012 by Maylan Schurch

 

(To hear the audio for this sermon, click here.)

 

Please open your Bibles to John chapter 8.

Not long ago, when I was in a used bookstore, I came upon a glass case with items on display. When this bookstore puts items behind glass, this means that they are especially rare, so I paused to look.

What I saw made me feel queasy and sad at the same time. The display featured first editions and reprints of some of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's lesser-known works. One of the items was a pamphlet called Pheneas Speaks: A Striking Message from the Hereafter, Reported by Arthur Conan Doyle, M.D., LL.D.

What made me feel sad was that when I was a boy, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was one of my top 2 or 3 favorite authors. His Sherlock Holmes adventures portrayed a lean, hawk-nosed, magnifying-glass-wielding detective who scorned all superstition and instead solved baffling crimes with pure reasoning. Sherlock Holmes has enchanted readers for several generations--and even within the last 2 or 3 years a couple of new Sherlock Holmes movies have come out.

And the sad part—and the queasy part as well—was that the “Pheneas” in Doyle’s book title was supposedly someone who had lived thousands of years ago, and whose spirit was being channeled by a medium whom Doyle knew. The medium would go into a trance and tell Doyle what Pheneas was communicating, and Doyle would write it down and print it up, and spread it around.

Years ago, when I first heard that Doyle had become a spiritualist in the last couple of decades of his life, I could hardly believe it. How could the creator of Sherlock Holmes let his mind go flabby enough to abandon the icy logic of the man who lived in Baker Street?

From what I've read, here's what happened. In a relatively short space of time, Doyle lost his wife in death, and then his son and some male relatives were killed in the First World War. He was in such an agony of loneliness that he allowed people to convince him that maybe he could speak with his departed loved ones by going to séances. The deeper into spiritualism Doyle sank, the more enthusiastic he became, and he would go across England and America and elsewhere, lecturing on the subject.

Now, you and I have just been through an Unlocking Revelation seminar, and we saw clear Bible evidence that when people die, they simply do not return as spirits. Instead, they sleep until the resurrection, which is by far the most humane way for God to handle this.

So what could have diverted Arthur Conan Doyle away from his sad search? I'm not sure whether he was acquainted with Christians who really knew their Bibles, or whether the believers he knew were content with some of the superstitions their ancestors had taught them. But maybe if he had been friends with someone who was an informed disciple of Jesus Christ, things may have turned out differently.

Because if there's one thing Jesus makes crystal clear in His teachings, it's that He calls you and me to be far more than “spectator Christians.” He calls us to be disciples--and not only that,  in the last couple of verses of Matthew He tells us that once we have become disciples, we should to go and make other  people into disciples.

Now, if this is so important, just what is a disciple? What does the word mean?

Well, the Greek word for “disciple” is mathetes. It means “learner,” and according to my Merriam-Webster 3rd New International dictionary, it's actually where we get the word “mathematics.”
 
Notice that the Greek word mathetes does NOT mean “teacher”--there's another Greek word for that. Mathetes means “learner.” Naturally, of course, when someone becomes a devoted “learner” or disciple of Jesus, he or she can guide someone else toward the Savior. A number of people who attended our Unlocking Revelation meetings were introduced to them by people in this church. But Jesus wanted to make sure that we understood that when it comes to our relationship to Him, we are all to be learners.

But what does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? How can I know whether I am His disciple?

This week I discovered that there are only 3 places in the Gospels--and those 3 places are all in the gospel of John--where Jesus specifically spells out some ways we can know if we are His disciples, using the very word “disciples.” I mean, if we really want to know how to be a disciple of Jesus, what better way to listen to Jesus' words on the subject, right?

And the first key to knowing whether we’re His disciple is found right here in John chapter 8.

John 8:28 -- 32 [NKJV]:  Then Jesus said to them, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things. And He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please Him.” As He spoke these words, many believed in Him. Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” 
 
What’s Jesus’ first key to knowing I’m a disciple of His?

The first key to becoming Jesus’ disciple is for us to abide in His Word.

Okay, that sounds good, but what does it mean?

Well, first of all, here's another Greek word, the word for “abide.” It's the word meno, and it means basically, “remain” or “dwell.” One thing I discovered this weeK was that John loves this word meno, “abide,” “remain,” “dwell.” Matthew uses that word only 3 times, Mark 2 times, Luke 7 times. John uses it 30 times.

But what does it mean to abide, remain, dwell in Jesus' word?

Think about the house or apartment you lived in when you were, say, in the 4th or 5th grade. When I was that age, I live in a two-story white farmhouse a mile southeast of my hometown.

As a kid, you “dwelled” or “abided” in your house or apartment, just as I dwelled in that little farmhouse. I lived there. No matter where I went during the day--to school, or play with my friends, I always came back to that house. What happened inside that house had far more influence on me than what happened anywhere else. From my parents--mainly subconsciously--I learned how to relate to life. I learned the voice tones my parents used when they faced the challenges they had to face.

I learned how when my dad hit his thumb with a hammer, he did not swear. He just gasped, sometimes with a shuddery gasp. And that's why even today if I hurt myself in some painful way like that, I do not swear. I wasn't brought up like that.

Maybe this is part of what Jesus meant when He said  “Abide—dwell—remain—live in My Word.” Maybe He wants His words and the rest of the Bible to be a house for us, so that no matter what happens to us throughout the day, we return to His words as a refuge, a balancer, a restorer of our courage and sanity, a healer of our wounds.
 
How well do you know the words Jesus spoke? How long has it been since you’ve read through some of His parables? You’d be surprised how much more there is to learn—because you yourself have learned more about life.

So why not consider the Bible your spiritual “house” this year? Why not live in it? A couple of years back, someone wrote a book called something like Living Biblically. The author tried to spend an entire year living only the way a Bible person would live. You and I need to do the same, in an internal, spiritual way—which will then work itself out to the outside.

Now let’s flip a few chapters forward to discover Jesus’ second key which I can use to know if I’m His disciple.

John 13:33 -- 35: Little children, I shall be with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come,’ so now I say to you. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

 

If Jesus’ first key to becoming a disciple is for us to abide in His Word, His second key is for us to love each other.

A year or so I saw a bumper sticker which you might have seen as well. It says, “I love mankind—it’s people I can’t stand!”

And why did Jesus call this a “new” commandment? Isn’t the command to love your neighbor as old as at least Deuteronomy? Maybe He called it a new commandment because He was speaking to a feisty group of prima donnas (or primo dons would be the more correct Italian) who had squelched their love and had put self-advancement in its place. The agape kind of love (that's the Greek word Jesus used here--the same word He used in the verse “For God so loved the world”), the agape kind of love probably was new to these men.

So if the second way we can know we are Jesus' disciples is if we love one another, what does that look like?
Well, these verses give a strong hint.

Verse 34: A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

So that is the standard of love we are supposed to use toward each other--the same kind of love Jesus loved us with. How did Jesus love His disciples? For one thing, He constantly showed them what God was like. From early morning until late at night, Jesus did this. Again and again, He said things like “I don't do My own will, but the will of the Father.” “The words that I speak are the words God wants Me to speak.”

I think I've mentioned before how some of the most frightening experiences of my childhood were when I discovered that my friends' parents sometimes behaved quite differently at home then they did at church. At church they would smile kindly, and speak graciously  to kids or adults. But when I visited their homes, and they didn't know I was close by, I would sometimes hear the snaps and the snarls, and my stomach would tighten.

But we need to get more specific. How can I put Jesus' agape love to work this coming week?

A good plan would be to read through Jesus' startlingly idealistic statements in the Sermon on the Mount. Remember that at the beginning of Matthew 5, it says that Jesus went up to the mountain, and His disciples came to Him, and He taught them, saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” and so on. It should definitely give us a heads-up to discover that Jesus spoke at least the first part of the Sermon on the Mount to His disciples. So if I want to learn to act out Jesus’ true love to other people, I need to internalize these ideas.

You might want to read through those Beatitudes this afternoon. Notice how they end with Jesus' insistence that “Blessed (happy) are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake.” A fully devoted disciple of Jesus doesn't quail or flinch when persecution arises. At these points we need to remember that Jesus considers these times as just as much “blessed” or “happy” as those experienced by the pure in heart a few verses earlier.

Speaking of the Sermon on the Mount, I asked myself this week, “How can I behave so that people realize that I am a disciple of Jesus and not a disciple of, for example, the Dalai Lama?”

It's something to think about. Because the Dalai Lama also teaches peace and kindness and many other virtues. So what sets Jesus' teachings apart from Buddhist principles or any other well-meaning earthly philosophy?

Well, the crucial difference is that in the Sermon on the Mount and in many other places, Jesus doesn't simply teach ethics. He constantly alludes to Someone Buddhism doesn't allude to and can’t allude to—“Your Father in Heaven.” A Buddhist might say, “Work toward perfection,” but Jesus says, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” People who believe what Jesus says know that we have a personal God, Someone who loves us and cares for us and gives us power to do His will. And that makes all the difference.

Once again, move forward in John as we find Jesus' final key, the final way we can know whether we are His disciples.

John 15:5 -- 8: “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.

At first glance, it seems like Jesus is laying on a bit of pressure here. It seems like he's saying, “To be My disciple, you have to bring forth a lot of fruit.”

But since we have read the verse in its context, we understand that fruit-bearing is not Jesus' third key. Instead, it's this:

If Jesus’ first key to becoming a disciple is for us to abide in His Word, and if His second key is for us to love one another, His third key is for us to remain connected to Him.

Every one of Jesus' disciples was very familiar with grape vines. In their travels through Palestine over the last 3 1/2 years, they had often walked through the vineyards and plucked grapes to eat. They knew how delightful it was to find huge, fat, purple grapes bursting forth from the branches of the sturdy vines.

And what Jesus is saying, of course, is that if the branch remains fastened to the vine, bearing fruit is the most natural thing in the world. It automatically happens.

So, what is the fruit that a non-grapevine human being bring forth by remaining close to Jesus? Well, the Greek word for “fruit” here is karpos, which is exactly the same word used in Galatians 5 for the “fruit” of the Spirit.

And as you read them, this Galatians bunch of fruit, this cluster of grapes, is what every disciple of Jesus Christ needs to allow to grow on his or her branch. These luscious, tasty, satisfying spiritual qualities will cause many other people to reach out for them, and taste them, and  become part of the Vine, and grow more of that fruit themselves. Listen to these qualities--wouldn't it be wonderful if we could offer this kind of fruit, day by day, in tough times as well as easy times, to the people around us?

Galatians 5:22 - 25: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

What about you? Would you like to allow Jesus to grow a prize-winning crop of this spiritual fruit in you this year?

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THE KEEPER
Expository Sermon on Psalm 121
on the occasion of Bill Thurmon’s baptism
by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue SDA Church 1/6/2012
©2012 by Maylan Schurch

(To hear the audio for this sermon, click here)

Please open your Bibles to Psalm 121.

This is the Psalm Bill Thurmon chose for his baptism Sabbath, and it's the one which begins "I will lift up my eyes to the hills." When I was growing up as a South Dakota farm boy, I would read that verse, and then I would lift up my eyes and discover that there were no hills! Maybe Bill was living in a part of Texas where this was true.

So that meant that when I read Psalm 121:1 I had to imagine hills. And since both Bill and I both grew up on the King James version, the verse said "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help." So I at first assumed that somehow, when I needed it, the Lord would send help down from the hills. Except that when it came to hills, we prairie folks were out of luck!

Well, since then, we've had some more accurate translations come along, such as the New King James, which we’re using this morning. It basically says, "I will lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from?” And since the hills were supposed to be where the heathen gods dwelt, which is why heathen people (or people who were playing with heathenism) kept going up to sacrifice at the "high places,” the psalmist firmly says, "My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth."

God isn’t roving around somewhere up in the hills and mountains. God is the Creator of the hills, and real help comes from Him and not some kind of impressive geographical elevation.

If you've ever had a chance to look at pictures of Biblical archaeological sites where they’ve dug up ancient cities, these are most often on tops of hills. That was because a hill was the safest place. If you built a city on top of a hill, and surrounded it with a wall, the enemy wouldn't be easily able to roll their battering rams right up against your wall and start banging away at it

If you were a farmer in the valley, and you saw the enemy army coming over the horizon, you headed right for your hilltop city and hoped they kept the gates open for you.

But here the Psalm-writer tells us that the Lord provides better help than any hilltop god or hilltop city. But what kind of help does the Lord give us?

I found out more of the answer than I ever had before by working my way slowly through this Psalm this week. I even printed it out in large print in the ancient Hebrew. And I discovered something really surprising. I discovered a Hebrew word which shows up six times in these eight verses.

And it’s not just a common word, like “the.” It's one of those ancient Bible words which requires a whole bunch of different English words to translate it. You can't just get the full meaning with one English word. It’s the Hebrew word shamar, and here are some of the ways the old King James Bible translates it: “observe” (as in “observe the commandments”), “preserve,” and “take heed.”

But most of the time shamar is translated “keep” or “keeper.” That’s the way it’s translated in Psalm 121.
Okay, why is this such a big deal?

It’s a big deal because this is a high-powered word. The English word “keep” can be a rather wimpy word. If I cull through my books before taking some of them to sell at a used book store, I might look at this or that one and say, “Well, I guess I’ll keep this.” Maybe you do the same thing when you get ready for a garage sale.

But that’s a pretty weak “keep.” That’s simply expressing a mild preference for that book or object. “Well, I guess I won’t get rid of it this time.” But the word shamar in this Psalm is so powerful that a couple of hundred years before Christ, when the Jews translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek and called it the Septuagint, they used the Greek word phulasso.

And phulasso is by no means a wimpy word. It’s the word which means “guard,” like you’d guard a city, or guard a prison. A phulake  is a prison. That’s from that same word. Phulasso and shamar are both “maximum security” words. If the Navy SEAL team who planned the capture of Osama bin Laden had spoken ancient Greek or Hebrew, those are the very words they would have spoken many times.

So that’s what’s the “big deal.” When the Psalmist says that the Lord is our “keeper,” he means that the Lord is our SWAT team captain, our SEAL team head, our pirate-captured-Iranian-fishermen-rescue coordinator. God’s motto is “maximum security.” That’s what “keeper” means here.

So now that we've discovered the high-caliber power of God's "keeping," and we know that He is the source of the help we need, what kind of help does He actually provide? Let's take a look.

Psalm 121:1 – 3 [NKJV]: I will lift up my eyes to the hills— From whence comes my help? My help comes from the Lord, Who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to be moved . . .

What’s Psalm 121’s first kind of help the Lord gives me? (Here comes Sermon Point One if you’re taking notes.)

The Lord helps me by keeping my feet steady.

(By the way, I did a spot-check of this Psalm, and every time it says “you,” it’s a singular you, not a plural one. In other words, this Psalm isn’t written as though it’s talking to a whole group at once. It is talking to every individual person—Bill, you, and me.)

Now. What does it mean that the Lord can keep my feet steady? Well, this is obviously poetic and metaphorical. To help clear this up, listen to some verses from Proverbs:

Proverbs 4:23 -27: Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life. Put away from you a deceitful mouth, and put perverse lips far from you. Let your eyes look straight ahead, and your eyelids look right before you. Ponder the path of your feet, And let all your ways be established. Do not turn to the right or the left; remove your foot from evil.

Proverbs 5:3 – 5: For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps lay hold of hell.

Proverbs 6:16 – 18: [Mentioning some of the things the Lord hates:] A proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift in running to evil,

So figuratively speaking, "feet" are symbol of where you choose to go spiritually and morally. And the Lord is interested in the paths we choose to take. Proverbs 5:21 says, “For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and He ponders all his paths.”

The good news is that Bill’s Psalm 121 says that the same God who pays attention to our paths is able to keep our feet from slipping off them. So what's my part in all this? I need to find the right path, as Bill has done, and stay on it. And to trust the Lord to give me strength to stay faithful to Him.

At this point, the Holy Spirit, who inspired this Psalm, evidently felt that we needed another reminder of the Lord's power. Let's pick it up at verse three.

Verses 3 – 4: He will not allow your foot to be moved; He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, He who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

What’s Psalm 121’s second kind of help the Lord gives me

Well, if the first way the Lord helps is to keep my feet steady, the second way He helps is by keeping awake.

I mentioned a few minutes ago that the state I grew up in is flat, at least in the eastern section. And not only that, but the roads are straight. And that means driving can get a little boring.

I think I was probably 17 or 18, and our entire family was in the car, and I was driving. We were coming back toward our hometown of Redfield from the west, traveling on the smooth blacktop of Highway 212. A mile ahead I could see the grain elevator of a tiny town. (And evidently my guardian angel has his driver’s license!)

The very next thing I knew, there was a rumbling sound. My right tire had hit the gravel on the highways shoulder. Mom was shouting at me. And the grain elevator was right beside me! I had been asleep, or at least in some kind of highway-hypnosis daze, for approximately one mile!

This little incident scared my mother badly. For several weeks afterward she questioned me about if I still got sleepy as I drove. If the road hadn't been straight as an arrow, I might have injured or killed my family.

Remember in 1 Kings 18 how Elijah taunted the prophets of Baal as they were dancing around the altar they’d built? They were going through all sorts of gyrations, cutting themselves and screaming with frenzy trying to attract their god's attention. Elijah said, "You'll have to do better than that! Baal is probably sleeping!"

But this Psalm insists several times that God doesn't sleep. God's attention doesn't waver. God is not listening to you and texting at the same time. If He were standing in the foyer with you after church talking to you, His eyes would not be flicking around seeing where His other friends were.

That means, according to this Psalm, you and I constantly have God's undivided attention. So now that I know this, what should I do?

Well, if God is always alert, I need to be alert as well. Jesus constantly told His disciples, "Watch and pray so that you don't enter into temptation." In the Garden of Gethsemane an hour or so before His capture, Jesus begged His disciples to watch with Him.

One of those disciples who was so drowsy in Gethsemane got the message. First Peter 5:8 says, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. . . .”

Kevin Wilfley is the pastor of one of the Spokane Adventist churches, and for a couple of days this past week he spent some time with a group of us Washington Conference pastors. me in a group of other pastors from this conference talking about prayer. Kevin understands what all the rest of us know – prayer isn't something that often comes naturally. So he gave a number of suggestions about how to make prayer more of an important part of your life. (By the way, the text of this sermon will be on our church website this afternoon or tomorrow, so you can check there to get this list.)

Here are some of Kevin's ideas. Use Scripture to pray – in other words, pray through one of the Psalms, or a parable of Jesus. He suggests also using an outline, such as the acronym ACTS-- Adoration, Confession, Thanks And finally Supplication.

He suggests using a prayer journal if that helps you pray. He suggests that you vary the location of your prayers – and that especially you avoid stuffy rooms. He actually got down on his knees to demonstrate to us how a lot of people pray. They kneel beside a chair or couch, then they lean forward, and put their heads on their hands. He said, no wonder we go to sleep when we pray. He also suggested we speak our prayers out loud.

Now let's look at a third extremely encouraging way this Psalm tells us the Lord can help us.

Verse 5: The Lord is your keeper  . . . .

There’s shamar again, this time the noun form of it. It's a reminder to notice again just how powerful the Lord’s "keeping" can be.

Verses 5 – 6: The Lord is your keeper; The Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, Nor the moon by night.
 
When I was a kid on the farm, there were some summer days when mom insisted that I wear a hat, or at least a cap. "You don't want to get sunstroke," she would warn. I never did suffer sunstroke, and I don't remember seeing anybody else suffer it. But mom knew that one of the ways to keep sunstroke at bay was to give your head some shade.

But what does the Lord mean by talking about shade? It's obviously some sort of spiritual shade, just like the foot in verse 3 was a spiritual foot.

As often happens, we can find the answer to this question by continuing to read. What does the Lord mean when He  talks about shade?

Verses 5 – 7:The Lord is your keeper; The Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, Nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul.

Do you see that word “preserve”? That’s that same word shamar. Over the holidays Shelley and I enjoyed a jar of fruit “preserves” given to us by one of you. The person who had made it had very carefully sealed that jar in order to “keep” those “preserves” tasty for as long as possible. (Of course, once we opened that jar we made no effort to “preserve” the “preserves.” They tasted too good!

So God first helps us by keeping our feet steady, and second, He stays awake. The third way the He helps us is to shade our souls from sin.

That is what Bill Thurmon has decided he wants the Lord to do for him—preserve him from all evil, preserve his soul. That's why, one evening toward the end of our Unlocking Revelation series, Bill approached me and told me he would like to be baptized and join our church. His soul responded to that soul’s Creator. Bill wants the Lord to preserve him from all evil. He wants that muscular shamar help which comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.

That's why Bill has taken this step this morning. As I mentioned a few weeks back when I baptized Nora Martinez, a baptism isn't a graduation – it's a wedding. In a good marriage you grow closer together with the one you're married to.

As Bill was thinking about this service, he asked me if he and I could sing a song together. He chose the song, and it has deep meaning for him. What I would like you to do as you listen to this song is to be thinking about your own walk with the Lord.

Would you like the Lord to keep your moral feet steady year in 2012? Would you like to take advantage of His constant alertness? Would you like to have Him be your shade from sin?

(Back to the Top)


ON THE MOUNTAINTOP, GOD WILL PROVIDE
by Chuck Davis
Bellevue SDA Church, 12/31/11
(c)2011 by Chuck Davis

(To hear the audio for this sermon, click here)

A few months ago, Pastor Maylan asked me to prepare a sermon that would highlight my love of nature and how my faith in God is affected by it.  Some of you may have noticed that I am absent from church on a fairly regular basis.  On those Sabbaths, I am probably in the mountains reading from the Book of Nature.  Sabbath in the wilderness is where I often feel most near to God.  There is no piano or organ, but harmony abounds in the babbling brook and gentle whispers in the trees.  The solos sung by the birds and animals are always in perfect pitch.   God’s second book may be short on words, but the pages are immense and full of pictures and breathtaking vista . . . .

It was late that August night when we arrived, George Imthurn, Marvin Orio, Lavon Weighall and I.  It was late but in the distance we could see it superimposed upon the moon.  I suppose to some it was just another mountain, but for me it was the culmination of a long anticipated journey.  We had made reservations months before -- back in March.  The trail is so popular that it is the only major trail in the Sierras that has restricted access for camping permits. They allow 60 people to go into the trail each day, not including day-hikers. We had applied for one of these permits in March, along with everyone else, Lavon and I had our permits but George and Marvin were there hoping that they wouldn't get caught.  That was why we came in after midnight to camp at the trail head.  We planned to leave early in the morning and reach the cut-off long before the rangers were up for the day.

We left the portals and were on the trail just before daylight and yet I still caught myself checking frequently over my shoulder.  A mile and a half later we breathed a sigh of relief as we left the trail and reduced the chance of running into a ranger.  We headed up a small creek.  The scenery wasn't much to marvel over until we left the creek and crested a hill.  Suddenly, there she was -- jagged and bereft of snow she appeared to pierce the sky.  At 14,505 feet, Mount Whitney is the highest place in the continental U.S.

A lot of people visit the top of Whitney each year.  A lot of records have been set and broken.  The most times ascended -- the fastest ascent -- the oldest person, Hulda Crooks (a Seventh-Day-Adventist by the way) -- the shortest time on foot from the lowest point, Death Valley, to the Highest spot Mt. Whitney.  This last record in order to count must be done at the hottest time of the year, July to August.  The record of 33 hours 54 minutes to cover approximately 146 miles was set by Marshall Ulrich in 1991.

But the four of us were not here for the record nor were we going the same route as most of the people.  We were planning an ascent of the east face -- 2500 feet straight up from Iceberg Lake.  No trail for us, no crowded camp sites… no ranger to check our permits.

We made it to the lake about 3 or 4 hours before the sun dropped behind the mountain.  There was no one at the lake and so we took our time setting up camp.  At 12,000 feet of elevation you don't do much of anything very quickly.  As we set about cooking the evening meal, we surveyed the mountain behind us.  About 500 feet above us we could see two people climbing, and from time to time, when the wind cooperated, we could hear their voices.  They didn't seem to be making much progress and the snatches of conversation we heard indicated that they didn't know which way the route was supposed to go.  We got out our guidebook and checked the route and indeed they were lost – or so it seemed us. 

We plotted our own strategy for the morrow and discussed the various ways we might reach the top.  That is, three of us discussed it; George interrupted our dinner and conversation by becoming sick and by having the discourtesy to do it right in the middle of our camp. Even so, George had our full sympathy until he decided to cover up his lost meal with a large rock.  It didn't slow down my eating any, but the rest of us did discuss the fact that normal ethics and decency should have forbidden him from dropping the rock without careful consideration of the consequences of his act.   His poor attention to honor and duty did however give us an overwhelming reason to bathe in the frigid waters of the lake.

After taking care of our personal hygiene, we settled in for the night.  George assured us that he was feeling much better, so after careful scrutiny we finally gave in and told him where his pack was and allowed him back inside the camp enclosure.  We did make clear to him the swift and frosty consequences facing him if he repeated his performance.  George assured us that he had no desire to go swimming in the lake either in his sleeping bag or out of it, and so as twilight ebbed we settled in for what we hoped would be a good night's sleep.

It probably happened in the middle of the night --

I don't know if it was a vision or something else, but I do know that it happened, because we can read about it in Genesis the 22nd chapter.

 

     Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”
     “Here I am,” he replied.
     Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”
     Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about.On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”
     Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”
     “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.
     “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
     Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”  And the two of them went on together.
     When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 
     But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”
     “Here I am,” he replied.
     “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”
     Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”
     The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, “I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”  Genesis 22:1 - 18)

I am quite sure that you have all heard this story before and if you are like me, you have listened to more than one sermon on the subject.  There are a number of ways that this old story can enhance our spiritual growth.  We could, for example, explore the importance of obedience.  Abraham obeyed God and that is certainly an important aspect to this story.  Down though history, humans have brought misery and pain upon themselves for their lack of obedience to God and his precepts.  Abraham, because of his obedience, we are told, enabled all nations on earth to be blessed.  Obedience to God is vital to a full understanding of the importance of this story.  But, that is not what I want to focus on today.

We could look at the importance of a child honoring his parents.  The only one of the Ten Commandments with a promise in it emphasizes the importance of honoring and respecting our earthly parents.   “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.”

You have probably heard it said that Isaac was a strong young man, in the prime of his life.  Abraham was late in life and could have easily been overpowered by his son.  And yet Abraham bound up his son and laid him on the altar.  Clearly Abraham had a strength that outstripped that of Isaac.  His strength lay in the honor in which his son held him.  Over the years, Abraham earned the respect of his son and thus that honor was the only strength required to hold his son while he lifted the knife high.  Yes, honor, respect, and obedience to our parents are vital lessons that we can draw from this story.  But again, that is not why I stand here before you today.
 
We could look at the sacrifice itself and what it pointed forward to.  Probably the most important single act in all of earth's history is the substitutionary act that is portrayed in the ram that was slain that day.  God will provide.  We could all take our children, our most prized and loved possessions and sacrifice them to God and still the price would not be paid.  God will provide.  What is it in your life today that is more important to you than any other thing?  Give it up, offer it to God -- it won't pay the price.  Only God can provide what is needed, and we could look at this story from that point of view.  God did provide, God did substitute -- When Abraham looked over behind him and there was a ram caught in the bushes, God provided – but more importantly, the story shows us that we can not pay the price.  There is nothing that we can offer that will pay the price.  But, if we allow him, God will provide.  The sacrifice is important, and the fact that God provided it is another vital aspect to this story and yet that also is not what I want you to learn today.

Over the past few weeks, I have been reading John Muir’s account of his travels and adventures in Alaska.  I have been impressed with his belief and faith in God.  Much of the time he traveled with a Presbyterian missionary.  At night, they often stopped in an Indian village so that Mr. Young could preach and tell about God’s love and the gospel story.  In most cases the native people accepted the message and agreed to have a school and church built.  In one story, John Muir recounts the Indians’ concept of atonement.  Their unique understanding of Christ’s substitutionary act came from an event in their own history.   One year, the Stikeen and Sitka tribes entered into an extended period of war and the fighting was so bad that the women and children had to stay in camp for safety.  They were unable to gather food and the tribes faced a winter of starvation. 

Eventually, one of the Chiefs from the Stikeen shouted that he wanted to speak to the leader of the Sitka’s. When the Chief of the Sitka’s appeared, he said, “My people are hungry.  They dare not go to the salmon-streams or berry-fields for winter supplies, and if this war goes on much longer, most of my people will die of hunger.   We have fought long enough; let us make peace.  You brave Sitka warriors go home and we will go home, and we will all set out to dry salmon and berries before it is too late.”

The Sitka chief replied:  “You may well say let us stop fighting, when you have had the best of it.  You have killed ten more of my tribe than we have killed of yours.  Give us ten Stikeen men to balance our blood-account; then, and not till then, will we make peace and go home.” 

“Very well,” replied the Stikeen chief, “you know my rank.  You know that I am worth ten common men and more.  Take me and make peace.”

This noble offer was promptly accepted; the Stikeen chief stepped forward and was shot down in sight of the fighting bands.  Peace was thus established, and all made haste to their homes and ordinary work.  That chief literally gave himself a sacrifice for his people.  He died that they might live.  Therefore, when missionaries preached the doctrine of atonement, explaining that when all mankind had gone astray, had broken God’s laws and deserved to die, God’s son came forward, and, like the Stikeen chief, offered himself as a sacrifice…

“Yes, your words are good,” they said.  “The Son of God, the Chief of chiefs, the Maker of all the world, must be worth more than all mankind put together; therefore, when his blood was shed, the salvation of the world was made sure.

In the story of Abraham and Isaac, there is definitely the concept of atonement, and indeed, that is something that demands study.  But again, that is not what I want us to capture today.

When we got up the next morning, we gathered our gear and prepared to head up the mountain.  Deep into the night we had listened to the climbers on the wall above us and saw their headlamps flashing this way and that.  But that morning, we couldn't see them anywhere on the rock face above us and for that we were glad.  Even more so, we were glad that it hadn't been us, stuck up there, climbing throughout the night.

Lavon and I paired up and led the way because we were the stronger pair.  George appeared to have fully recovered from his altitude sickness, but Marvin had kept us all awake at times with his labored breathing throughout the night.  And so we led the way to make it easier for them.  We opted for the standard route and the climbing was easy, much easier than we were accustomed to on most of our trips, but there is something to be said for sheer altitude to make even the easiest climb interesting.

The panoramic view was spectacular and probably the most interesting section is called the "Fresh Air Traverse", where you can look down between your feet and there is nothing, absolutely nothing there for more than 1200 feet straight down.  We continued climbing with an occasional sighting of George and Marvin below us.  They stayed far enough behind us so that they didn't risk getting hit by a rock that might fall from our passing.  When it seemed as if we had been climbing forever, I finally looked up over a last big boulder and there it was -- the summit, my goal, what I had planned for – what I had looked forward to for months.  I had made it; we all made it and we all felt the glow of excitement that comes with accomplishing a long sought after achievement.  But, you know, today as I look back on that experience, it is not what happened on the summit that's important.  I can barely remember what it was like there on top.  Today, when I think back on that experience, it is what happened along the way that captures my memory.

As I contemplated the story of Abraham and Isaac in preparation for my talk today, I realized that in the past, I had always viewed the story from the summit.  And certainly what happened there that day truly is significant.  When I looked at that mountain top story, it reminded me of my own mountain top experience that I have shared with you today.

As I contemplated what it must have been like on Mount Moriah that day, I got to thinking that maybe, like for me, it was not what happened on top that is important.  Maybe we should contemplate all of the things that happened along the way to the summit.
 
Can you imagine what it must have been like for Abraham those three long days as he traveled to the mountain?  “My son, Isaac, the promise fulfilled, the fruit of God's covenant...”  Do you think that any other thought occupied his mind as he trudged footstep after weary footstep – always approaching that moment when his hand will grasp the knife.  The pain of travel at his age is buried in the pain of contemplating what will happen when he reaches the end of his journey.  For three long days it occupies his whole being.  Satan whispers in his ear, "God is a tyrant"  "What do you think of your God now?" 

The doubt must be there, “Is this really God's will?"  "Was it really God who spoke to me in the middle of the night?"  And then Isaac asks that all important question, "Father, where is the lamb?"

Three long days Abraham spent in contemplating the loss of his son.  Three long days he traveled toward Moriah, the mountain visible in the distance.  Three days Abraham spent in contemplating the death of his son and it must have been a horrible thing to contemplate.  I wonder if Abraham ever understood the significance of those three days.  Were they representative of the three days Christ lay in his tomb?  Did Abraham ever ask about God's journey?  As Abraham neared the top of the mountain that day did he know that he was standing on what I speculate was the very spot where one day God would stand watching his Son as he was nailed to a tree and crucified.  Did he realize that there would be no ram caught in the bushes just over there?

Have you ever considered what it must have been like for God -- traveling footstep after weary footstep, year after year for a people who most often, had no concept of what it was all about.  God knowing that there would be no substitute, no ram caught in a thicket to spare his Son.  Did Isaac realize the significance, did he realize the honor God bestowed upon him as he lay there on that altar.
 
The mountain top experience cannot be discounted.  The Gift that God laid upon Moriah should be of great importance to each of us and should not be discounted, but I submit to you today that what occurred along the journey to that place is just as important, because it gives us a clearer understanding of the pain that God and Jesus were willing to bear in order that we might experience the view that can only be seen from the peak. 

Today, I invite you to travel back down that road.  Form a mental picture of what it was like.  The trail is stretching there before you.  Look into the distance.  That mountain top on the horizon no longer calls for a sacrifice.  If you look closely, you'll see that God has provided a substitute.

Today, because of the journey that God, and Jesus made and because God did not withhold his only Son, and because Jesus honored his Father and became our substitute, all people of the world, even you and even I are blessed.  Surely the Chief of chiefs is worth more than all of humanity.  The price paid overwhelms the debt.  There can now be peace and the people can return to the salmon-streams and the berry fields of the universe.

If your Christian experience seems to be a series of mountain tops surrounded by valleys, be assured that you are not alone.  The journey may seem hard and filled with perils, but, we have a guide who is well acquainted with the route and his hand is on the other end of the rope.

The end is upon us – even at the door.  Today, let us thank God for the journey, and thank Jesus for the mountain top.

(Back to the top)


FROM FAR AWAY
Expository Sermon on Ephesians 2
by Maylan Schurch
Baptism of Nora Martinez
Bellevue SDA Church 12/10/2011
©2011 by Maylan Schurch

(To hear the audio for this sermon, click here.)

Please open your Bibles again to Ephesians chapter 2.

Two or three days ago, Nora Martinez was in Croatia. She tells me that every year, she and her mother travel to a foreign country. Last year it was Guatemala, and this year it was Croatia.

The title of today's sermon is "From Far Away," and just for the fun of it, I looked up the distance between Seattle and Croatia, and it is 5,532 miles. So just recently, Nora has been "far away," and now she's back.

Back when I was a farm kid in South Dakota, we didn't deal in distances like fifty-five hundred miles, mainly because – at least in the case of my family – we never went far from home. Dad never wanted to trouble anybody else to feed his livestock, so we just didn’t go on big vacations. In fact, the only vacation I remember us taking was one day when we headed across the state to the Black Hills, stayed one night in a motel, and came back the next day! (Mom, I think, was frustrated that we couldn’t stay longer.)

Therefore, I probably tend to define distances differently than Nora, or most of the rest of you, do. Back in our part of the Great Plains, the towns in the crop-farming part of the state were normally 10 miles apart. This distance had been established back in the days when you hauled your corn or wheat to the storage granary in horse-drawn wagons. 10 miles was about the right distance to go so that you could make it back home again the same day. And sure enough, my home town was surrounded with towns 10 miles away. Zell was 10 miles west, Ashton was 10 miles north, Frankfort was 10 miles east, and Tulare was 10 miles south.

So it’s when you got beyond 10 miles from home that I started thinking "far away." Aberdeen was 40 miles north, Huron was 50 miles south, and Watertown was a staggering 75 miles east. Watertown was “far away”--it might've almost been in Croatia, according to my way of thinking.

Once in a while we did venture down to Huron, and sometimes even over to Watertown. Those were fun trips, but I liked it best when we were heading back home in the dark. I'd be in the backseat, and the humming of the tires on the highway would get me sleepy. Then all of a sudden I would feel the familiar thump of the pothole in our driveway, and I'd wake up, and we were home!

I got to thinking this week that "distance" played more a part in Bible stories then I ever thought. It seems like most of the Bible's major characters were called upon to travel great distances. In Noah's case it was a boat trip – the distance from a beautiful Eden-like world to a barren, water-soaked flood-ravaged wilderness.

Abraham traveled 800 to 1000 miles from southern Iraq to Palestine. Jacob fled hundreds of miles north, then back to Palestine again years later. Joseph was sold into Egyptian slavery, and later the rest of his brothers traveled there. Moses led the whole nation through the Sinai Peninsula for 40 years. Daniel and other Jewish captives were marched all the way back over to Babylon, the land where Abraham had come from, and on and on.

And think of the distances of Christmas. Joseph and Mary traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem, then down to Egypt, and finally back to Nazareth. Wise men traveled to Palestine from beyond Iraq, to visit a Baby who had come the greatest distance of all, humbling Himself from God to humanity to servant to executed criminal. And later He would tell His disciples to “go into all the world,” to all nations.

So God is no stranger to distances. Some He has had to accept unwillingly because our iniquities have separated us from Him. But even then, He wanted to live among us, and at one point inhabited a fiery cloud hovering above the wilderness tabernacle, as well as the “mercy seat” atop the ark.

But just because He has had to endure distance, that doesn't mean God likes it. And the entire Bible story, from Genesis to Revelation, has largely focused on how Goid has tried to close the gap, bridge the gulf.

And here in Ephesians chapter 2, the apostle Paul talks about the two most important distances of all. And closing those gaps, both of them, is equally important. You can't close one gap and leave the other open, though a lot of people have tried. It's just not possible.

And as you saw a few minutes ago, Nora Martinez didn't resist when the Lord invited her to "go the distance" toward Him. She has traveled not only from Croatia within the past couple of days, but she has also been taking the journey Paul describes here in this chapter.

And no matter who you are – whether you have already been baptized, whether you have made the decision to be baptized, or whether you're not certain if this is the step to take, Ephesians 2 has something to say to each one of us about the two most important distances in our lives.

Let me show you what I mean. As usual, we’re breaking into the middle of one of Paul's long sentences.

Ephesians 2:1 [NKJV]: And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins,

If you're using the New King James version, you'll see that the words “He made alive" are in italics, which means that they have been added in. Other versions don’t have that phrase. Down in verse five, it does say that God made us alive, and the New King James translators didn't want us to have to wade all the way through Paul's complicated sentence in order to find out the good news. So it’s like they “copied and pasted” this idea, and used italics to let us know that’s what they were doing.

Ephesians 2:1 [NKJV]: And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins,

So here's the first of this chapter’s two “distances”—and if you're taking sermon notes, here comes Point One.

Ephesians 2’s first distance is the distance between spiritual death and spiritual life.

Paul is talking to the people in the Christian church in the town of Ephesus. He tells them that once they were dead in trespasses and sins, but that now they are alive. (However, thirty years later, John—in Revelation chapter 2—will record Jesus telling them that they have lost their “first love” for Him. So spiritual aliveness is not automatic. It needs to be renewed.)

What does it look like to be spiritually dead? Paul gives a graphic picture in the next few verses.

Verses 1 – 3: And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

That's how to tell if we have spiritual death within us. And if this verse disturbingly resembles your life, remember that Romans 3:23 says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. What the rest of this chapter is going to do is to tell us what Jesus has done so that nobody has to remain a spiritual zombie.

It's not always easy to spot the difference between the spiritually dead and the spiritually alive person. Both walk around with their eyes open, and eat, and talk. However, there is a difference. Back when I was a kid, I was fascinated with clockwork machines like those little music box mechanisms. I would take music boxes apart, and wind up the little metal cylinder with all the tiny pegs on it, and watch as the pegs would pluck the teeth of what looked like a little silver comb. Normally the music box was good for about five repetitions of the song, but then the spring-coil would get looser and looser, and the cylinder would turn more slowly, and finally after a couple of slow, draggy individual notes, everything would stop.

Isn't that kind of what will happen to a spiritually dead person? We all die – the righteous and the unrighteous. Unless Jesus comes first, that's what will happen.

But here's where you'll see the difference between someone who’s spiritually dead and someone who’s spiritually alive. The latter will rise to live forever, and the former will not.

So how do I make sure that I am spiritually alive, and not spiritually dead? Take a look at the next few verses for some good news.

Verses 4 – 9: But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

If you were looking for a list of to-do steps for becoming spiritually alive, you won’t find them. God does it all, through Jesus Christ. We just simply say yes, and cooperate. And notice that He didn't wait until we had improved up to a certain point. Verse 5 says that even when we were dead in trespasses and sins God took the first step. In fact, let's take another look at that verse.

Verse 5: even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ  . . .
 
Notice the “death to life” theme? Put some sort of marker here in Ephesians 2, because we will be back in a few seconds. Turn to Romans chapter 6. Even though there is no how-to step here in Ephesians 2, there is one in Romans 6. It's the step that Nora has taken this morning.

Romans 6:1 – 6: What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

And even this how-to step is not something we do, but something we allow to be done to us. There is no record of anyone in the Bible baptizing themselves. Nora did not baptize herself this morning. Christians in every part of the world, in every era of Earth's history since the cross, have always needed this reminder that we cannot save ourselves. We cannot make God love us more than He already does, and we can't achieve a greater salvation than that which He has already provided for us. All we have to do is to say yes, and allow His Holy Spirit—through the pages of Scripture—to change us.

It's kind of like flu shots at the drugstore. When flu season rolls around, you and I aren't expected to look up the recipe for the flu vaccine online, and mix up the ingredients in a kettle on the stove. We don't have to go out and buy a hypodermic needle, and sterilize it, and inject ourselves with our homemade flu vaccine. No, all we have to do is to stop at the drugstore, or the doctor's clinic, and somebody will give that shot to us.

If you carefully study the verses we've just looked at, and the Ephesians 2 verses, you'll see that this is really about relationship – our relationship to God. It's about coming to respect and love Him so much that we invite Him close. And He cleans us thoroughly from every one of those "distance" sins we've done, and gives us power to overcome.

Does that seem too good to be true? Then head back to that marker you kept in Ephesians 2, and look at verse 10.

Ephesians 2:10: For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

 So the deck is stacked in our favor. And it makes sense – when God created Adam and Eve in the beginning, He didn't wire them to be evil and selfish and lazy. He wired them to do good things and enjoy doing them. We need to trust that the Creator of our wonderful minds and bodies can re-focus our attitudes and actions, and make us glad to be His friends.

And again, the outward symbol that this is happening within us is baptism. I like to tell people (and I think I told Nora this) that their baptism isn't a graduation – their baptism is a wedding ceremony. Nora has already been married to her husband Josue Martinez in a civil wedding in Guatemala, and this coming weekend the two of them will celebrate their vows again in a religious ceremony in New York.

Their getting married doesn't mean that they have graduated from some university masters degree in matrimony. No, their wedding services are simply an outward testimony to what has already happened in their hearts. They love each other, and are delighted to inform those who come to their wedding that at last they have come from "far away" – which they literally did – to join their hearts together.

And that's what God so lovingly wants to do for us – close the distance between us. In Jesus' well-known prayer to His Father in John 17, He repeats His desire that His followers – not just His twelve disciples but those who would learn the gospel from them as we are doing this morning – Jesus wants His followers to be "one" with Him and his Father.

And that leads right into the second extremely important "distance" of Ephesians 2.

Verses 11 – 12: Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh—who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands— that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

If Ephesians 2’s first distance is the distance between spiritual death and spiritual life, its second distance is the distance between seeker and believer.

By the time Jesus arrived on this planet as a human being, the Jewish people had set up walls between themselves and anyone who wasn't Jewish. One of these – according to the footnotes in the Andrews Study Bible, was a literal wall – the wall which was erected in the temple area to keep the Gentiles from entering where they weren't allowed.

Another "wall" was the 600-plus civil and ceremonial and health laws of the Old Testament. The average Jewish person had been conditioned to believe that since Gentiles didn't know these laws, they certainly couldn't be keeping them, and therefore they must be abominably sinful.

However, when Jesus walked through Palestine, He was constantly finding Gentiles who expressed more faith in Him then God's chosen people did.

So, notice what Jesus Himself does:

Verses 13 – 18: But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.

So now, in that Ephesus Christian congregation, nobody could look at somebody else and say, "You're the scum, but I’m the cream.” If you're using the NIV Study Bible, you’ll see in the footnote to verse 15 that this evangelical Christian study Bible says that God’s moral law is still in effect. This verse isn’t cancelling out the ten commandments—it’s cancelling out any way in which God’s laws were twisted so as to give one group “holier than thou” rights over the other.

So what's the point of the verses we've just read? You find the point by continuing to read.

Verses 19 – 22: Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

So that pretty much closes up any distance between a seeker of God and a believer in God. One of the wonderful things about our congregation is that it is so willing to befriend new people. And this type of Christianity is contagious – not only from our Unlocking Revelation seminar, but from people already in this congregation, we have received a number of requests for baptism. In fact, Nora told me something which I gather impressed her, that one of our greeters took the trouble to immediately learn her name, and call her by it the next time she arrived.

The bottom line, of course, is that if we ourselves feel deeply secure and deeply loved by the God who has done so much for us, gone to such great lengths for us, if we feel deeply loved by Him, this loosens us up to be gentle with the people in our lives. If we understand that the Holy Spirit is far more powerful than we think He is, we will trust Him more with the people in our lives.

Because God, far more than anyone else, wants no distance. He wants to close the gap between our spiritual death and the life He offers through Jesus Christ. He wants to close the gap between those who are seeking truth and those who have found some of it.

In other words, He wants us close to Him, and close to each other. He wants us to be that wonderful, cherishing, support group which a church is supposed to be, especially in challenging times like those we are living through right now.

What about you? Would you like to give your heavenly Loved One permission to close any gap He needs to in your life? Would you like to raise your hand with me if that is your wish?

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ON PERMANENT LOAN
Expository Sermon on 1 Samuel 1
On the occasion of the dedication of Carson Taylor
by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue SDA Church 12/3/2011
©2011 by Maylan Schurch

(The audio for this message is still being edited. Thanks for your patience.)

Please open your Bibles to First Samuel chapter 1.

Today's Scripture reading was chosen by Angie and Brandon Taylor in honor of the dedication of their son Carson, which will happen at the end of the sermon this morning.

As I was reading the familiar story of Hannah and how she prayed for a son, and how the Lord answered her prayer, I suddenly saw something I hadn't really focused on before. And I think it's something tremendously, even life-changingly important, something we need right now. Let me show you what I mean. 

1 Samuel 1:1 – 7 [NKJV]: Now there was a certain man of Ramathaim Zophim, of the mountains of Ephraim, and his name was Elkanah the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephraimite. And he had two wives: the name of one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children. This man went up from his city yearly to worship and sacrifice to the Lord of hosts in Shiloh. Also the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, the priests of the Lord, were there. And whenever the time came for Elkanah to make an offering, he would give portions to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and daughters. But to Hannah he would give a double portion, for he loved Hannah, although the Lord had closed her womb. And her rival also provoked her severely, to make her miserable, because the Lord had closed her womb. So it was, year by year, when she went up to the house of the Lord, that she provoked her; therefore she wept and did not eat.

So here we have a double tragedy – a wife who wants children and can't have them, and a rival wife, who knows she comes in second-place for their husband's love, and who does what she can to make life miserable for the favored wife. Polygamy of course was not God's original plan. In the Garden of Eden, God didn't create Adam and Eve and Sally. "Man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife," singular. Not plural.

And now Elkanah, who seems to have been a kind husband, bumblingly puts his foot in his mouth.

Verse 8: Then Elkanah her husband said to her, “Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? And why is your heart grieved? Am I not better to you than ten sons?”

That's kind of a strange comment to make at this point. It sounds a bit egotistical. But maybe it's something she said to him in the first couple of years of their marriage when they were trying to have kids and couldn't. “Elkanah,” she may have whispered, "you mean more to me than 10 sons ever could." And, now—years later after the second wife arrives and starts having babies right and left--not realizing how much it would hurt Hannah, Elkanah innocently repeats what may have been her own words, to try to make her feel better. Doesn't work. Good try, Elkanah.

What's really interesting is that Hannah made no response to what he said, or at least none is recorded. She probably knows him well enough to realize he means well, but maybe she just doesn't trust herself to speak.

But notice what she does now. At this point they are on another of their faithful yearly visits to the tabernacle to worship, and she makes a decision.

Verses 9 – 10: So Hannah arose after they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh. Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat by the doorpost of the tabernacle of the Lord. And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed to the Lord and wept in anguish.

Notice that she doesn't go right up to Eli and give him her prayer request. A chapter or so later you can read more details about Eli's wicked and immoral sons Hophni and Phineas, and Hannah may not altogether trust their dad as a spiritual advisor. So she simply goes and sits near the tabernacle and prays. And in what she says in the next verse, we will meet Hannah the “giver.”

Verse 11: Then she made a vow and said, “O Lord of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me, and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a male child, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall come upon his head.”

So here's this woman, praying at the tabernacle of God, praying directly to God. She’s promising Him that if He will give her a son, she will not only "give" that son to Him, but also dedicate that son to Him. Because when she says she won't let a razor come near her son's hair, she is vowing that he will be a Nazirite, a holy and consecrated person set apart for service to God.

Hannah doesn't realize it, but old high priest Eli, whose habit is to sit beside the tabernacle door, has noticed her.

Verses 12 – 14: And it happened, as she continued praying before the Lord, that Eli watched her mouth. Now Hannah spoke in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard. Therefore Eli thought she was drunk. So Eli said to her, “How long will you be drunk? Put your wine away from you!”

It's really interesting that this man who is supposed to be a veteran pastor can't recognize someone agonizing in prayer. From the way his sons have been behaving, old Eli has probably seen more than his share of truly drunk women, the ones who come to the tabernacle to fraternize with his sons. But whatever the reason, Eli makes the wrong diagnosis.

But Hannah is patient. True, this man seems to have been as clueless as her well-meaning husband, but she speaks respectfully.

Verses 15 – 16: But Hannah answered and said, “No, my lord, I am a woman of sorrowful spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor intoxicating drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord. Do not consider your maidservant a wicked woman, for out of the abundance of my complaint and grief I have spoken until now.”

And finally Eli gets it.

Verses 17 – 18: Then Eli answered and said, “Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition which you have asked of Him.” And she said, “Let your maidservant find favor in your sight.” So the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad.

So Hannah has turned her deepest sorrow completely over to the God of heaven, and remarkably, she gets both her appetite and her cheerfulness back. After another time of worship early the next morning, she and Elkanah (and presumably Peninnah and Peninnah’s horde of kids) all go back home.

Well, first thing you know, Hannah is pregnant with the boy she has promised to the Lord. And we discover that this righteous woman is someone who doesn't turn to the Lord in crisis and then forgets Him when the sun is shining again. Once the boy is born, she promptly names him Shmo’el, “Samuel,” which probably means “heard by God,” or maybe “God’s name.” And you can imagine that every time someone asks what her little boy's name is, Hannah takes the opportunity to tell the whole story.

Well, a few years pass. Elkanah and the rest of the family make the yearly trip to the tabernacle, but Hannah stays home with Samuel. And when he is three or four, or maybe a bit older, she bundles him up and takes him – maybe on another of these yearly tabernacle trips – and hands him over to the elderly high priest. (By the way, before you grieve too hard for Hannah, she later gives birth to five more kids, three boys and two girls.)

But notice what she says as she offers her firstborn to the high priest.

Verses 26 - 28: And she said, “O my lord! As your soul lives, my lord, I am the woman who stood by you here, praying to the Lord. For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition which I asked of Him. Therefore I also have lent him to the Lord; as long as he lives he shall be lent to the Lord.” . . . .

Did you catch the word-switch? Back in verse 11, she tells the Lord, "If You will give me a man child, I will give him to You." Both of those "gives" are verbs which come from the same Hebrew word – nathan, which means “gift.” If you or somebody you know is named Nathanael, that name means "gift of God."

But here in verse 28, she switches to a different word—shaul. Unfortunately, there are a few casual modern Bible translations which totally ignore this change of words and simply translate this as "give.” But it's a different word than nathan– and the most literal translations say “lend.”
 
So. What is Hannah doing? Is she pulling back a little on her pledge? Is she fudging on her vow? How would you feel if someone gave you a Christmas present and then said, “By the way, this is just a loan"?

Actually, Hannah is not fudging in the least. In verse 28, she says that as long as her son lives he shall be lent to the Lord. In other words, there's no time limit on this loan. But she makes very clear that this is now a loan rather than a gift.

Is this good, or bad? I think it's good. I think that this kind of lending is actually an upgrade from a simple gift. And not only that, I think it's a marvelous insight into the way Heaven works, and the way Heaven wants things to work down here.

You see, if I give you something outright, what I have presented to you is now totally yours, and I have nothing more to do with it. But if I loan something to you – even if it's a loan for life – I still have a stake in it. I still care about it. If a person with an art collection gives that collection as a "permanent loan" to a museum, that museum understands that even though they have those works of art forever, they still need to be very careful with them. And that's because the original owners still care about them. So the museum can’t just start selling off those works of art to make money.

And I think that maybe during those few years she had Samuel to herself, Hannah began to realize that she could never, ever simply donate her son to Eli the way she might return her tithe or give an offering.

Several years ago Shelley and I owned a sky-blue 1991 Honda Civic. We bought it new, and we had put close to 350,000 miles on it. It was losing a bit of power, but it simply would not die. But it was getting to the place where it wasn't quite as dependable as it had been, and you never knew what might give out next.

So we donated that car to Volunteers of America, and there was a bit of nostalgic emotion connected to that car. Even today as I'm walking through a parking lot and see a 1991 Civic, especially a sky-blue one, I always want to go stare through the driver's side window and see how many miles they have on the odometer. I’ve tried this a couple of times, but odometers are hard to read from outside a car, and I always imagine people think I’m a car thief!

No, Hannah had decided that "permanent loan" was the best she could do for the Lord. She visited Samuel once a year with a little coat she had made for him. And as I was thinking about this during the past week, it struck me that this is the way Heaven has always worked with us. We always talk about the "gifts" of God, but aren't they, also, more like permanent loans?

God creates us a wonderful planet, but does He then wave goodbye and saunter into the next galaxy and start a new project there, leaving us to our own devices? No – this planet is a wonderful work of art, and the Lord still treasures it and sustains it.

And our bodies and minds are nothing more than permanent loans from God. Far from simply donating the human machinery to us outright, God wants our minds and bodies to be temples of His Holy Spirit. He wants to partner with us to help us get the most – and give the most – from all He has given us.

And of course the most wonderful "permanent loan" God gave us was His own Son, Jesus Christ. When Hannah changed her "gift" to "permanent loan," God may have smiled understandingly. Because this was exactly what He would do with Jesus. True, "For God so loved the world that He gave," but Jesus the Divine Son of God has become not only permanently heaven’s (which He was before) but permanently ours.

What He looked like before He became human, we don't really know, but once Jesus arose from the dead, He still had a physical body whose hands still showed spike-wounds, and a side which still showed the spear-thrust. In fact, there in the upper room that Sunday evening, Jesus asked for some food so that He could prove to His astonished friends that He was not a ghost, but was still one of them, on permanent loan from God.

 Later on, the apostle Paul describes this incredibly generous permanent loan this way – and along with it, he insists that we need to have Christ's same selfless attitude:

Philippians 2:5 – 8: Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.

Several weeks back, both Brandon and Angie were baptized. On that day they were presenting themselves to their Savior on "permanent loan." They understood that this was a full and complete commitment to, and partnership with, the One who created them and later redeemed them.

I got a chuckle out of what happened when I dictated that last sentence into my speech recognition software program. Let me do that sentence again and I'll tell you how the software changed it.

Brandon and Angie “understood that this was a full and complete commitment to the One who created them and later redeemed them.”

I've noticed that this speech-recognition software doesn't recognize theological words very well, so when it came to the phrase "redeemed them" it changed it to “re-teamed them.”

But you know, that's actually true. God intended Adam and Eve to be with each other, but alsovwith Him as partners. Back in the Garden, He did not unroll a long list of animal names and tell Adam to start memorizing them. No, He insisted that Adam himself name the animals. If humanity had not sinned, we and our Heavenly Father would have been a wonderfully close-knit team, taking care of the created things He gave us dominion over.

But when Adam and Eve sinned, God’s “dream team” was tragically separated. And our 750,000-word Bible tells us the long, agonizing story of God's attempt to not only redeem but re-team His human family with heaven.

 Can you imagine how much He longs to reunite with us? Turn to Revelation chapter 21 and you'll hear God Himself tell about how happy He will be when we are back together again.

Revelation 21:2, 3:  Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.”

Redeemed and re-teamed.

In a moment, I'm going to call Brandon and Angie and Carson to the front, along with any family member who wishes to join them up here. This happy mother and father will pray a prayer of dedication for their boy, and then I will pray.

And this might be a good opportunity for you, as you have your head bowed during that prayer, to put yourself – for the 10th time or the hundredth time or maybe the first time – on "permanent loan" to your Savior as well.

Would you like to do that? Would you like to tell Him silently during our audible prayers that you are His and His alone, and you want to cooperate with Him? If you'd like to do this, would you raise your hand?

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THANKSGIVING DAY, 1000 BC—BRINGING GOD HOME
Expository Sermon on 1 Chronicles 13 - 16
by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue SDA Church 11/25/2011
©2011 by Maylan Schurch

 Please open your Bibles to 1 Chronicles chapter 13.

When I was in elementary school, my dad worked long hours at Sunshine Dairy, a creamery in Redfield, South Dakota. As I learned later when I worked there too, a milk bottling plant doesn't guarantee you a regular work schedule. Dad would sometimes have to go to work at four in the morning, and might not get off until eight or nine that night.

And I remember the dark winter evenings when Dad would be late. The hours would creep by, and Mom would get a bit worried, especially if the roads were icy. We kids would be playing with our toys, or reading, but always nagging at the edges of our minds would be the thought, When’s Daddy going to be home? Is he hurt? Will he never come back?

But finally we would hear the genteel rumble of our black Rambler Classic coming up the driveway, and the soft thump of the driver’s door, and then we would hear the stamping of Dad's rubber overshoes in the entryway, and then a quick blast of cold air, and Dad would be with us there in the kitchen. His face would often be white with weariness, and he would struggle out of his jacket and collapse with a sigh into a kitchen chair, and would gratefully attack the food mom had kept warm for him.

He would be glad to see us, and we would be glad to see him. And somehow, now that Dad was safely home, everything seemed complete.

When I was deciding on this Sabbath's sermon topic, I used what you could call the "Unlocking Revelation Strong's Concordance” method. Since this is Thanksgiving Weekend, I looked up the word "thank" in the concordance, and in this particular part of First Chronicles I discovered a little cluster of  the word "thank." So I turned there, and discovered a truly powerful story about King David.

It's a story where David plans and carries out a day he very much wants people to think of as a "thanksgiving day." And as I studied through these chapters, what I found so powerful was David's attitude toward God. David, more than anything else, wanted God to “come home.”

I don't think I'm sharing any secrets when I tell you that, in my opinion, your and my "attitude of gratitude" depends a whole lot on our attitude toward God. How clear a picture do we have of Him? And can our attitude be changed by bad things which might happen to us?

These are important questions, and I think that David can answer them for us. Let's watch as the story unfolds. David has just been crowned king a couple of chapters back, and now he starts building consensus about a goal he thinks is vital.

1 Chronicles 13:1 – 4 [NKJV]: Then David consulted with the captains of thousands and hundreds, and with every leader. And David said to all the assembly of Israel, “If it seems good to you, and if it is of the Lord our God, let us send out to our brethren everywhere who are left in all the land of Israel, and with them to the priests and Levites who are in their cities and their common-lands, that they may gather together to us; and let us bring the ark of our God back to us, for we have not inquired at it since the days of Saul.” Then all the assembly said that they would do so, for the thing was right in the eyes of all the people.

As David moves toward what he hopes will be a memorable "thanksgiving day," what's his first step? If you're taking sermon notes, here comes Point One.

David set his heart on “bringing God home.”

I mentioned how Mom and we kids would feel dissatisfied until Dad finally showed up at the end of the workday. In a far more exalted sense, David must have felt dissatisfied until he could have the Ark of the Covenant (which symbolized the presence of God) close to him.

I think this is really key. Because from the Psalms he wrote, we know that David had a very close and interesting relationship with God. In some of his songs, David talks about God, and in others he talks to God. In still other Psalms he does both – he will first talk frankly to God about something that bothers him, and the when David's perspective – or maybe his attitude – has been adjusted, he will turn and talk to his readers, telling them what he has discovered about God, and why God should be praised.

And of course, any Bible reader who is at all familiar with David's psalms knows that David doesn't talk to God only when he (David) is in a good mood. It’s totally the opposite--no matter what mood he is in, David goes to God and hashes things over. Back in the days when King Saul was pursuing this former shepherd all over the countryside, David didn't crouch in a cave, whining, "Why doesn't God take care of me?" No, he got out his psalmwriting notebook and talked to God directly – "God, why aren't You taking care of me?"

David's predecessor King Saul never did that. I don't remember one single prayer ever recorded as coming from the lips of Saul. Every once in a while when he was in a tight spot, Saul would ask the prophet Samuel to pray for him, but it seemed as though Saul kept God at arm’s length.

But David didn't. It seems like David was always in God's face. And God loved it. God was not annoyed that David kept pestering Him, or singing praises about Him. God loved it. God didn't consider David a pest – He called him a man after His own heart (Acts 13:22). That’s another thing that Christians need to learn well—you and I cannot tire God out.

So – what do I do with this now that I know it? David didn't want to keep God at arm’s length like Saul had. He wanted God close – in fact, if you glance back at verse 3, you'll see a specific reason David wanted God close.

Verse 3: and let us bring the ark of our God back to us, for we have not inquired at it since the days of Saul.”

Did you see that? David doesn't want the ark nearby merely as a good luck charm. He wants to discover what God's will is. He really wants to know what God wants him to do. Time and time again in his future royal career, when David is planning a military campaign or even wants to build a temple for God, he will ask God about it. And God will say yes or no.

So that means that, if I want to become the “person after God's own heart” that David was, I need to desire God's closeness, not simply for protection but for direction. David didn’t simply want God to agree with him all the time. David truly did want to follow God's will. During his long and checkered reign he will make some ghastly slip-ups, and will have to repent in grief and shame, but David wants God close. And even after he commits those dreadful sins, he won't run from God, but will go and talk to God about them. And that’s another thing you and I as Christians need to remember.

Now we need to watch David very closely, because something tragic is about to happen.

Verses 5 – 8: So David gathered all Israel together, from Shihor in Egypt to as far as the entrance of Hamath, to bring the ark of God from Kirjath Jearim. And David and all Israel went up to Baalah, to Kirjath Jearim, which belonged to Judah, to bring up from there the ark of God the Lord, who dwells between the cherubim, where His name is proclaimed. So they carried the ark of God on a new cart from the house of Abinadab, and Uzza and Ahio drove the cart. Then David and all Israel played music before God with all their might, with singing, on harps, on stringed instruments, on tambourines, on cymbals, and with trumpets.

And now comes what is at first glance one of the Bible's most puzzling passages.

Verses 9 – 10: And when they came to Chidon’s threshing floor, Uzza put out his hand to hold the ark, for the oxen stumbled. Then the anger of the Lord was aroused against Uzza, and He struck him because he put his hand to the ark; and he died there before God.

In a moment, we are going to stare closely at David see how he reacts. But first let's clear up what happened here. Here comes the ark, jouncing and jiggling along on a cart pulled by oxen. The oxen stumble, the cart jerks, the ark starts to slide. And just as he would have done with a cartload of wheat-bundles, Uzzah braces a protecting hand. And just as if he’d touched a live powerline, Uzzah is instantly killed.

What's going on here? Is this how the God of heaven rewards those who try to help Him out? No, it's not that at all. It's evidently that God needed to make a desperately important point here.

You see, in that crowd there were close and careful students of the Bible, maybe leaders of tribes and groups, leaders who took their responsibilities seriously. In fact, as the ark approached on that cart, some of them were probably muttering to each other, "Wait a minute. Why are they hauling it on a cart? Four Levites are supposed to be carrying it with poles which have been inserted into the rings on the side of the ark. God said don’t touch the ark. They’d better be careful. They’d better keep hands off."

And then the ark starts to slide.

You see, God had a very important point to make. During the reign of Saul, God and His presence had been at least publicly forgotten. Saul seemed to want to have nothing to do with God – in fact, when Saul's final war was going badly, he consulted a witch rather than turning back to God in repentance as David so often would do later.

And when the King of Israel makes it very clear that he is ignoring God, this has an effect on the nation. Because in every generation there have been people who, at the drop of a hat, are ready to declare that God is no longer relevant. God is old-fashioned. If God had power in the past, He certainly doesn't have it now. He has forgotten about us – at least he has forgotten about me.

And those old laws of God? We don't need those anymore today. So what if He had prescribed a certain specific way the ark should be carried? So what if He said not to touch the ark? Well, that was for those superstitious people back then. Nowadays we know better.

So here God is presented with yet one more pair of ugly choices which we have forced upon Him. If He lets Uzzah touch the ark with no consequences, the high hopes of all of those Israelites who know their Bibles will sag with despair.

"Well," they would say, "it looks as though God's power has departed after all. If that’s the case, what we have here is just a pretty golden box with a couple of stone slabs inside it. Evidently that box means nothing anymore, so those stone slabs probably mean nothing too. So what's the use of worshipping God at all? Somehow we had gotten the idea that God is the Lord, and He changes not. But it looks as though all His power has left Him.

“Well, if He doesn't care anymore, neither do I. I'm going down to the market tomorrow and buy a statue of Baal the Rain God. If God’s power is gone, or if He doesn’t care any more, I’ve got to do something. My crops need a good return this fall."

I mean, God's people have always been prone to idolatry. If God had not acted in this situation, if He had allowed people to imagine that His Holy Presence meant really nothing after all, and that bringing the ark to Jerusalem was just so much superstitious silliness, then the lives of many people – including thousands little children who would eventually be offered in sacrifice to brutal heathens gods – would be in jeopardy.

So God averts His eyes, and does what He has to do.

This is a tough story. But we're looking at it through 21st century glasses. That's why it's so important to read enough Bible to see the true context of situations like this.

Now let's turn our gaze toward King David. How is this "man after God's own heart" going to react?

Well, he reacts like a human being. Notice the stages he goes through.

Verse 11: And David became angry because of the Lord’s outbreak against Uzza; therefore that place is called Perez Uzza to this day.

David's first reaction is anger. Have you ever been angry with God? Have you ever been scared to be angry with God? Have you ever read some of David's Psalms where he seems quite frankly angry with God in the first few verses?

This is so desperately important. God is not afraid of honest emotion. He cannot be offended by it. That's one of the biggest hurdles Christians need to get over. We sometimes think that, no matter what happens, we should duck our heads with a humble smile and say, "Your will be done, Lord.”

Don't get me wrong. "Your will be done, Lord," should indeed be our ultimate response. But remember that in Gethsemane even Jesus first wrestled with His Father in prayer before finally uttering those words. So don't hide your emotions from God – take them to Him and share them with Him. (Incidentally, this doesn't mean that you and I should allow ourselves to be hostile people. If we have emotions of anger, we should share them with God, not brutalize our family or coworkers with them.)

So first, David gets angry. But quickly his emotion changes. Notice the next stage in his feelings.

Verse 12: David was afraid of God that day, saying, “How can I bring the ark of God to me?”

It just struck me last night as I was going over this part of the sermon, that this may be one of the most amazing verses in the Bible. Here David has seen somebody touch the ark and be smitten dead, and David himself first feels anger toward God, and then begins to be afraid of Him. Yet David still wants to bring God home.

That's truly amazing. That must be one of the qualities God appreciated about this shepherd-king. Despite his temporary anger and fear and puzzlement, David still understands that to have God close is better than to keep Him far away.

David had been hoping that this would be a memorable "thanksgiving day." He had his heart set on “bringing God home,” but now his hopes are shattered, and he feels anger and fear. Yet he takes an additional step toward what will eventually be a true thanksgiving day. Here’s sermon point two:

David kept his heart free of bitterness toward God.

Rather than turn his back on God, David still yearns for His presence.

How did he do that, after all he had been through? And I'm not just talking about this most recent event. For years, David and his group of followers were harassed and hounded and hunted by King Saul. Several of David's Psalms were written while on the run. For the matter of that, how did Job, whose possessions and children were destroyed, remain faithful to God?

First, I think it's a sense of humility. David knows that he is human, and God is God. David assumes something that Paul would later put into words: “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28. David loved God, and knew God had called him according to Heaven’s purpose, so David assumed that, even in this traumatic moment, all things would work together for good.

So humility is part of the reason David kept his heart bitterness-free. David was more concerned with God's reputation than he was his own. No matter what natural emotions he feels as he reels in shock from what happened to Uzzah, David does not demand that God make sense to him. David understands that God is good and not bad. No matter how puzzling God sometimes seems, it is better that God come close than that He remains far away. It is better to inquire of the Lord than to ignore Him.

I think that besides humility, another way to keep your heart free of bitterness toward God is to practice gratitude. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:18,  “. . . in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

David was an expert at giving thanks in everything. Some of his most grateful Psalms were those he wrote huddled in a fugitive’s cave. The word “Hallelujah” means “Praise you the Lord,” and David used that word many times. It was often the very first word, and sometimes the first and last words, of his Psalms.

In his book The Law of Happiness, Christian psychologist Dr. Henry Cloud says that research agrees that "When we are thankful, and also when we express it to others, we are happier. People who express gratitude are not only happier but have more energy and better outlooks on the future; they're even physically healthier, having fewer physical ailments than those who don't express gratitude. They have less emotional and psychological maladies as well. Also, they show more relational capacities and are less envious and less materialistic."

Dr. Cloud goes on to say, "The good news is that you can learn to express gratitude and have it play a bigger role in your life with positive results. Experiments and clinical experience have shown that when people are given structured gratitude exercises – like writing down things in life that they are grateful for, keeping a gratitude journal, or calling and visiting people to express gratitude to them – they become happier as they practice these activities. . . . God has actually, literally, wired our brains and bodies to respond, come alive, and to do better when we are practicing certain activities. When we give thanks, our chemistry changes in a positive way from when we are envious or resentful." (p. 125, The Law of Happiness, Dr. Henry Cloud (Howard Books, 2011))

Besides the practices of humility and gratitude, another way to keep your heart bitterness-free is to look at who you are. It was David who wrote in Psalm 139:13 – 14: “For You [God] formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well.”

Evidently, David was in the habit of thinking about how amazing the human machinery truly is. As his hand finger-picked his harp, he probably admired its flexibility and quick response to what his brain wanted it to do. Maybe he even wondered how sound could enter the ear and become something beautiful in his mind. David probably never dwelt long on the question, "Why should God care about me?” David knew that God had taken too much trouble forming the eye, the ear, the nose, the mind, the sheep, the grass, the cloud, the water-brook. Of course God cares.

And of course this guides the thoughtful believer back toward humility again. And three months later, when David decides to try to bring the ark to Jerusalem from the house of Obed-Edom, where it was temporarily housed, he makes sure to get it right this time.

1 Chronicles 15:1 – 3:  David built houses for himself in the City of David; and he prepared a place for the ark of God, and pitched a tent for it. Then David said, “No one may carry the ark of God but the Levites, for the Lord has chosen them to carry the ark of God and to minister before Him forever.” And David gathered all Israel together at Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the Lord to its place, which he had prepared for it.

And here is David's humility at work again. This time he has humbly studied the Scriptures and found out the way God wanted things done. So he organizes the Levites into an ark-delivery team and gives them careful instructions.
Now notice what happens.

Verse 16: Then David spoke to the leaders of the Levites to appoint their brethren to be the singers accompanied by instruments of music, stringed instruments, harps, and cymbals, by raising the voice with resounding joy.
 
And then follows a long, long list of all the musicians.  And thanksgiving day arrives, and the ark is delivered reverently and safely to Jerusalem. And notice what else David does.

1 Chronicles 16:1 – 3: So they brought the ark of God, and set it in the midst of the tabernacle that David had erected for it. Then they offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before God. And when David had finished offering the burnt offerings and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord. Then he distributed to everyone of Israel, both man and woman, to everyone a loaf of bread, a piece of meat, and a cake of raisins.

And that’s the last touch which was needed to make this a true thanksgiving day. You have a family reunion – God is invited home to be with His people. You have music, and you have a meal, and everyone gets plenty to eat.

In fact you could consider this the third sermon point:

David did what he could to make God's presence a "thanksgiving day" for everyone in his life.

Do you see the messages David was trying to send about bringing God home? When God is brought home, there are sounds of joy rather than solemn silence. "I sing because I'm happy, I sing because I'm free, for His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me."

When God is brought home, this is not to be a time of fasting but of feasting. Remember how Jesus told His disciples that they could, and should, fast when the Bridegroom was gone? But when He returns, there is a heavenly banquet.

So, how do I put this to work, now that I know it? I think it's important that whether it's in my home, or my neighborhood, or at my workplace, I need to also send signals that I have brought God home, and this is cause for happiness and thanksgiving.

We need more loving and lovable Christians, and we need fewer haggard-faced, pinched-lipped, death-warmed-over, Pharisaic zombies. Otherwise we’re making David a liar when he said in Psalm 16:11, “ . . . In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

 So, what do you think? We’ve all heard of the idea that there shouldn’t be just one “thanksgiving day” a year—that every day, in some way, should be thanksgiving day.

Well, now we’ve seen how David got ready for his thanksgiving day.

David set his heart on “bringing God home.”

David kept his heart free of bitterness toward God.

David did what he could to make God's presence a "thanksgiving day" for everyone in his life.

What about you? In your own way, in your own situation, in your own home, would you like to follow these steps toward this kind of ongoing thanksgiving? Would you raise your hand if that’s what you’d like to do

(Back to the top)

MUTUAL ENCOURAGEMENT SOCIETY
Expository Sermon on Acts 16
by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue SDA Church 10/22/2011
©2011 by Maylan Schurch

 

(To hear the audio for this sermon, click here.)

Please open your Bibles again to Acts Chapter 16.

If you are one of those people who reads your bulletin very carefully before the sermon even starts, you might have discovered that today there's no closing song, or even a postlude. Instead there is an ordination, and then the consecration of the elder parish groups.

If you've been here at the Bellevue church for a while, you have discovered that elder parish groups are filled with church members and other people who attend. Each elder heads up one of the parish groups. Throughout each new church year, group members keep in touch with one another, and every once in a while get together for a meal or some other event.

This is a wonderful plan, and it has existed for a long time in our congregation. Its purpose is to not only help people get to know each other better, but to provide each person who attends here the feeling that they are not just lost in a sea of people. It's like each elder is something like an associate pastor, someone available to get in touch with if necessary, or ask for prayer, or to relay a suggestion, and so on.

This week as I worked on the sermon, I was thinking about the elder parish groups, and the phrase came to my mind: "Mutual Admiration Society." I don't know where I heard that phrase, and it wasn't until I looked it up on the Internet that I discovered that it's a song from a 1950s Broadway musical called “Happy Hunting.” Here are some of the lyrics:

We belong to a mutual admiration society, my baby and me,
We belong to a mutual admiration society
He says oh you're the sweetest one
I say no you're the sweetest one,
He claims that I'm a natural wit
I say it's just the opposite,
the only fightin' that we do
is just who loves who more than who . . .

I guess being a mutual admiration society is certainly a good goal for a marriage, and would be a good goal for our parish groups. But as I was glancing through the book of Acts to see if I could pick up any clues about how the early Christians did their parish groups, I changed that phrase in my mind to "mutual encouragement Society."

Because most of the gatherings in this book happened so people could gather courage from each other. It starts right out in the first chapter – Jesus has ascended to heaven, and rather than trudging morosely back to their individual homes, His friends gather in the Upper Room.

Acts 2:44 says that they become so close that they had everything in common. In  Acts 4, after some of them suffer persecution, everybody gathers and they pray. In Acts 6 they gather again and choose seven deacons. In Acts 9, after Saul's conversion, he doesn’t go become a hermit, but spends time with the disciples. And it goes on and on. In Acts 12, Peter is jailed, and his friends gather for an all-night prayer meeting. In Acts 15 there's a gathering at Jerusalem to discuss a theological issue.

But it was Acts 16 which caught my eye this week. This chapter is crawling with groups, some of them pretty amazing. Let's take a tour through this chapter and watch them in action. Let's start at verse six, when Paul gets the call to come over to Macedonia.

Acts 16:6 – 10 [NKJV]: Now when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia. After they had come to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit did not permit them. So passing by Mysia, they came down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” Now after he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them.

Now, we’ve got to be on the alert to watch how Paul chooses to preach. He's not simply going to go to the local synagogue once a week and give a sermon. Instead, watch what happens. First, let’s get him to his destination.

Verses 11 – 12: Therefore, sailing from Troas, we ran a straight course to Samothrace, and the next day came to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is the foremost city of that part of Macedonia, a colony. And we were staying in that city for some days.

One of the delightful features of our own congregation is the creativity our elders bring to their parish gatherings. And Paul is no different – in fact here in Acts 16, you could call him the "parish group creativity king." Watch what happens.

Verse 13: And on the Sabbath day we went out of the city to the riverside, where prayer was customarily made; and we sat down and spoke to the women who met there.

For years I've read that passage without any unusual interest. But this time I paused and took a look at it. There was almost certainly a Jewish synagogue in Philippi. As he traveled from city to city, a synagogue was where Paul would go first of all to convince as many Jews as possible to believe that Jesus was their promised Messiah. And there must've been a synagogue, because you had all these women who were believers.

But why does this chapter make no mention of a synagogue, but does mention a women's riverside prayer group? Was the synagogue a spiritually wimpy one? For some reason, these women weren't content with going to the synagogue and then going back home to spend the rest of Sabbath there. Instead, one day one of them probably said, "Let's start a prayer group. Let's go down by the river and let the kids play on the grass, and let’s pray.”

And Paul, who sometimes gets a bad reputation for a few comments he makes about women, Paul understood how important this women’s prayer group was, and so he and his team went out and talked with them.

Do you know what I learn from this women's prayer “parish group”? If you're taking sermon notes, here’s Sermon Point One. Here's what I learned from this riverside prayer group

Be the solution to the problem.

These woman could have simply complained to each other about how unspiritual their synagogue was (or whatever else the problem was). "Why can't the men be more spiritual?" they could have grumbled. Instead – whatever the issue – they felt the need for prayer, and they decided that rather than simply being the agonizers about the problem, they decided to become part of its solution. And rather than vowing to each other that they would spend individual time in prayer (which is also good, and necessary), they gathered in a “mutual encouragement society” and met regularly by the river to pray.

And whatever these women were praying about, what happens next certainly answers Paul’s prayers.

Verses 14 – 15: Now a certain woman named Lydia heard us. She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira, who worshiped God. The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul. And when she and her household were baptized, she begged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.” So she persuaded us.

What’s something else we can learn from Acts 16?

Make your home a center of ministry.

This doesn’t always mean that your home has to be where the elder parish group meets. If you do enjoy having people over, that’s wonderful. One of the things we tell the elders each year is that they don’t have to have a parish group gathering in their own homes. And quite a number of people with larger places have graciously provided space for these gatherings.
 
If you have kids, a hugely important way to make your home a center of ministry is to help kids develop their "duty gene.” You have the duty gene when you do something good, or attend church, not because you're in the mood to do it, because it is your Christian duty. The church we are sitting in right now was built by people with dominant duty genes. Otherwise, people would be still sitting back in other churches saying, "We ought to plant a church in Bellevue."

For 33 years I have been privileged to live in a home which is a center of ministry. Shelley loves people, and keeps an eye out for who needs encouragement, and she is fully as much a part of our pastoral ministry as I am. The Lord wisely did not impel me into the ministry until He first found me Shelley. And she has provided for us a truly ministry-centered home, an outpost, a replenishing station with supplies of strength and encouragement, because of her prayers.

Our home contains many books—and they aren’t all ones we’ve bought for ourselves. When Shelley discovers a book she likes, she might buy one or two extra, to save for when someone might appreciate the same encouragement she received by reading it. Shelley buys cards as well, and does many other creative-ministry things, and I thank God for her, and shudder to think of what life might have been like without her.

But now the Acts 16 story takes a new and sinister turn.

Verses 16 – 18: Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and us, and cried out, saying, “These men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation.” And this she did for many days. But Paul, greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.”

So why didn't Paul just relax and allow this girl to keep following them around? Wasn't she telling the truth? Wasn't she a powerful promoter of his mission?

Actually, not. First, Paul did not want Christianity to be associated with anything in the occult world. The devil always mixes truth with his lies, and if people discovered this young medium was telling the truth about Paul's message, they might believe other things she said.

Second, this girl was a slave, a captive, not only of her masters but of the devil. Her managers were exploiting her strange talents in order to make money. Paul wanted to set the girl free.
 
Verses 18 – 23: But Paul, greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.”And he came out that very hour. But when her masters saw that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to the authorities. And they brought them to the magistrates, and said, “These men, being Jews, exceedingly trouble our city; and they teach customs which are not lawful for us, being Romans, to receive or observe.” Then the multitude rose up together against them; and the magistrates tore off their clothes and commanded them to be beaten with rods. And when they had laid many stripes on them, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to keep them securely. Having received such a charge, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.. .

You see, whenever Christian believers resolve to become the solution to the problems they see, and make their homes centers of ministry, they become a bitter annoyance to someone. They learn that—

When the devil sees we are uniting, he tries to divide us.

This is nothing we need to obsess about, but just to be aware of. During last night's Unlocking Revelation meeting, I mentioned – and this was not original with me – that the final judgment will show that God will have done everything He can to make sure we are saved, and the devil will have done everything he can to make sure we are lost.
 
Again, we don't obsess about Satan, we don't morbidly worry about what he's up to, we just remember that he intensely dislikes our Savior. But he also knows very well that our Savior is stronger than he is – and that the Savior Himself used Scripture to resist the foe.

So all of a sudden, Paul and Silas are in the Philippi jail. Their feet are clamped into the stocks – they're not going anywhere. They don't know how long they'll be in this prison. They do know that they are very unpopular with the local city authorities, and they know that—if they can judge by other cities whose authorities they have annoyed—they might be put to death.

So what’s our next lesson from Acts 16?

Let’s let Paul show us.

Verse 25: But at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.
 
Some very important points there. For one thing, it was midnight. Their backs bleeding from their whipping, Paul and Silas could have brooded silently in the darkness, in a pit of depression, trying to get to sleep. But instead they prayed and sang aloud. And these weren’t weak, wimpy, weepy, cliché-ridden prayers, or doleful, watery, barely audible songs. These were projected prayers, belted songs—we know this because the other prisoners were listening.
So what do we learn here?

When your spiritual support is absent, don’t just sit there.  Start some yourself.

It wasn’t visiting hours at the prison. Those precious ladies in Lydia’s prayer group couldn’t be there to comfort the two evangelists. So Paul and Silas decided to become the encouragers.

This past April I heard an intriguing radio report about the Peruvian national anthem. The people of Peru, of course, love their country, and they have deep respect for the events that their national anthem talks about. The problem is that the song is too mournful. It truly expresses what they went through to gain their liberty back in the early 1800s, but it dwells too much on the gloomy details. Here's the first stanza, translated into English:

For a long time the oppressed Peruvian
the ominous chain he dragged
Condemned to a cruel servitude
for a long time, for a long time
for a long time he quietly whimpered
But then the sacred shout
Liberty! in its coasts has been heard
the slave's indolence beats
the humiliated, the humiliated,
the humiliated neck raised up,
the humiliated neck raised up, neck raised up...

I mean, can you imagine standing up at the start of a soccer game, putting your hand on your heart and singing those words before sitting down watching the game? I mean, the USA anthem has the rocket’s red glare and the bombs bursting in air, but they gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.

Evidently over the years there has been a lot of debate about those gloomy verses, and attempts to switch them out for another set. And the impression I got from the April interview was that so many people had such deep reverence for the national anthem that they didn't want to change the words at all.

That midnight in the Philippi jail, Paul and Silas were in no mood for Peruvian national anthems. And I'm sure they also shied away from "So send I you, to labor unrewarded . . .” No, those songs they sang must've been two-fisted, joyful hymns to their King of Glory, the Savior who had faced death and conquered it.

Notice -- Paul and Silas created their own spiritual support when necessary. They could have sat there in silence waiting for the Lord to intervene for them. But instead, they prayed, and they sang. And the other prisoners listened.

And the earthquake happened, and the jailer rushed in, ready to commit suicide because he thought the prisoners were all gone. And the story ends with “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” and another baptized household, another little mutual encouragement society parish group, living for the glory of God.

So once again, parish group members, what have we learned from Acts 16?

Be the solution to the problem

Make your home a center of ministry, in the way that best suits your situation and your time schedule.

When the devil sees we’re uniting, he tries to divide us.

 

When your spiritual support is absent, don’t just sit there. Start some yourself. Go directly to your Savior. Talk to Him, talk about Him. Sing encouraging songs. “Sing and smile and pray . . . that’s the only way . . . if you sing and smile and pray you’ll drive the clouds away.”

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THE LORD OF LEVEL-LAND
Expository Sermon on Mark 9
by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue SDA Church 10/15/2011
©2011 by Maylan Schurc

(To hear the audio for this sermon, click here.)

Please open your Bibles to Mark Chapter 9.

I wanted to say thank you to the Hilerio family for the privilege of dedicating their precious newly adopted little son Abel. From the very first day I saw that little guy, I said to myself, "There is a kid who knows how to smile."

Some infants, coming face to face with me, stare intently. Some stare with grave concern, some with shocked disbelief, others with alarm. Abel just took one look at me and burst into that sunny smile which he’s probably given everybody else he's met, thus winning my heart completely.

For this special dedication Sabbath, I asked Israel and Adriana to choose the Scripture, for me to prepare the sermon on, and the Hilerio family have done our Children's Corner, and they will sing our closing song as well.

This past Thursday morning, two days ago, at exactly 8:20 a.m. local time, the royal wedding ceremony began in which the handsome 31-year-old King of Bhutan was to marry his 21-year-old bride. Here's how yesterday’s Seattle Times reported it, in an article written by Associated Press reporter Ravi Nessman:

“The celebrations began at 8:20 a.m. — a time set by royal astrologers — when the king, wearing the royal yellow sash over a golden robe with red flowers and multicolored boots, walked into the courtyard of the 17th century monastery in the old capital of Punakha and proceeded up the high staircase inside.

“A few minutes later, his 21-year-old bride, the daughter of an airline pilot, arrived at the end of a procession of red-robed monks and flag bearers across a wooden footbridge over the wide, blue river beside the fort and followed him inside.

“Singers chanted songs of celebration amid the clanging of drums and the drone of long dhung trumpets. She wore a traditional wraparound skirt with a gold jacket with deep red cuffs.

“Inside, the nation's top cleric, who presided over the wedding, performed a purification ceremony for the couple in front of a massive 100-foot (30-meter) Thongdal tapestry of Bhutan's 17th century founder, the monk-king Zhabdrung.

“The pair then proceeded to the temple for a ceremony broadcast live on national television, save for a few minutes when the king, his father and the cleric, known as the Je Khenpo, entered the sacred tomb of Zhabdrung, where only they are allowed. . . .

 “The king, wearing his red crown, with an image of the protector raven rising from the top, came down from the throne in front of a giant golden Buddha statue and placed a smaller crown on her head. After she took her place as queen, the newly married couple was feted by monks playing deep tones on traditional trumpets and pounding drums.”

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2016497194_bhutanwedding14.html

That's quite the wedding, isn't it? It's really different than the kind of wedding Shelley and I had. We got married in the College View Adventist Church in Lincoln, Nebraska. She and I felt a bit of nostalgia when we got our "Week of Prayer" edition of the Adventist Review a few weeks back.

The whole issue contains photographs of the various parts of the stained-glass panorama which covers the front of the church. That long panel, over 100 feet long, tells the Bible story from Eden past to Eden restored, and in the exact center of the panorama is Jesus with His arms outstretched in welcome. He is positioned so that as you walk down the center aisle toward the foyer, that view of Jesus is what you see.

And it's the view which the Adventist Review chose to put on the cover of that issue – and it's what Shelley and I saw ahead of us as we walked down the aisle after our wedding.

Ours was only the second wedding in that beautiful new church, but beautiful as the sanctuary was, our wedding was still very different than that of the king of Bhutan. Ours was what you could call a "level" wedding – the platform on which we stood was only a couple of shallow steps above the main floor of the sanctuary. Neither Shelley nor I was royalty, and we knew that, and everybody else knew that. Ours was what you would call a horizontal or level wedding.

But the King of Bhutan’s wedding was a vertical one. The king walks into the ancient monastery, and trudges up the high staircase inside. The king later ascends the throne, and then steps down from that throne toward the new young queen, and places that silk crown on her head. There's a lot of hierarchy here – climbing up, coming down, king descending to a commoner, and the commoner ascending to be with the king.

What is so striking about Jesus is how carefully He avoided this royal hierarchy when He was on Earth. The King of Bhutan was given the throne by his father, who was king before him. That young man was born to privilege, and studied at the prestigious Oxford University.

Jesus, on the other hand, was born to a humble workingman. The way He was born opened Mary to the charge of being an unwed mother, an insult which His persecutors later flung at Him. But the interesting thing is that the young Jesus did not go to work and make a lot of money so that he could live in the better part of Nazareth, so that he could make the right connections with the most wealthy and influential people, so he could own an even bigger mansion. No, Jesus was all for staying on level land.

If you enjoy single panel cartoons like I do, you probably know that one of these cartoon themes is the guru on the mountaintop. Normally what happens is that an earnest seeker after wisdom laboriously climbs the mountain, and finally makes it to the top where the guru sits in serene meditation. The seeker asks his question, and the guru utters what is supposed to be a bit of wisdom, but is actually the joke. I recently saw cartoon where the climber gets to the top, and there's the guru sitting on top of the mountain. The climber asks why he's up there, and the guru says, “I realized it’s the only place where I can get away from Martha Stewart.”

But Jesus did not go live above the world on some mountain top, and wait for people to struggle up the slopes toward Him. Instead, He walked around among the people down below, and the only time He brought them up to hills or mountains was to get them away from the usual distractions so He could personally teach them to go back down amid the people and be humble and service-minded.

This morning I'd suggest we keep our eye closely on the Savior as we read some verses which climax in the wonderful verse the Hilerios have chosen. I believe that Israel and Adriana have closely watched their Savior, and have carefully tried to raise their children to reflect Jesus' attitudes.

Because Jesus was so insistent on erasing the trappings of hierarchy that when it came to choosing a sermon title, I called Him "The Lord of Level-land.” Just like His Father, who hated the "high places" the Old Testament Israelites used for sacrifices to heathen idols, and just like God Himself designed a wilderness sanctuary with no steps or platforms, but absolutely level with everyone else, Jesus wants us to be citizens of His level-land.

Let me show you how important Jesus thinks this is. I found four pieces of evidence that He considers this level-land humility of supreme importance.

In Mark 9, we find Jesus leading His disciples through Galilee. They’re down on level land, not off in some remote castle.

Mark 9:33 [NKJV]: Then He came to Capernaum. And when He was in the house He asked them, “What was it you disputed among yourselves on the road?”

If you already know the story, you already know what they were talking about—which of them was the greatest. And here comes the first clue that Jesus thinks this is important. (This is Sermon Point One in case you're taking notes.)

Jesus keeps His eyes open for hierarchiosis.

Don't bother trying to learn to spell that word – I made it up. The –“osis” ending often means a word is talking about a sickness, like cirrhosis, neurosis, psychosis and tuberculosis. So this fake word is one way to express the idea that Jesus knew that the desire to be high in the hierarchy was extremely unhealthy.

As I say, if this isn't the first time you've heard of the story, you already know what the next verse will tell us – the disciples were discussing amongst themselves who was to be the greatest in Jesus' kingdom. These men had severe cases of hierarchiosis, which in Jesus' nostrils is about as unpleasant as halitosis (bad breath).

You see, wanting to exalt yourself wounds Jesus in a very tender spot. That's exactly the virus the Savior’s former angel friend Lucifer allowed to grow within him. Rather than keep his eyes level, glancing about for opportunities to use his talents to make others' lives better, Lucifer lifted his eyes and begin to aspire higher.

The only problem was—according to his biographical information in Isaiah and Ezekiel—Lucifer was already on the highest ladder-rung where created beings could serve. He was the covering cherub, the angel closest to God Himself. The next step higher meant deity. (No wonder he tempted Eve with this very promise—“you shall be like God.” Satan knew from personal experience how addictive that idea could become.)

So, naturally, Jesus keeps His eyes open—stays very alert—for any evidence that His human brothers and sisters are being tempted this way.

So what do I do, now that I know that Jesus is alert for hierarchiosis? I do pretty much the same thing I’d do if I discovered that the highway patrol had set up a “special emphasis” speed trap in a particular area, and were alert for speeders. I would be very careful.

Because hierarchiosis is stupendously more deadly—not only to yourself but to those you have influence over—than going 45 miles an hour when the speed sign says 30. Hierarchiosis (elitism, class distinction) ruined the peace of heaven – and heaven is still not a totally happy place even now – and hierarchiosis has ruined this planet. And Jesus desperately wants to put a stop to it.
So you and I need to keep alert for signs of this snobbery, this elitism in our own lives.

Now let's look at another very interesting idea.

Verse 34: But they kept silent, for on the road they had disputed among themselves who would be the greatest.
Isn't that interesting? They were discussing a topic that they sensed Jesus would disapprove of, so they tried to do it out of His hearing. You know what this tells me? Here's our second point.

Not only does Jesus keeps His eyes open for hierarchiosis, but Jesus’ presence in my life will cause me to be uneasy about it.

You see, the disciples had grown up in something of a dog-eat-dog culture. When somebody gave a big dinner at his house, people jockeyed for the most important seats. When a Samaritan merchant came riding into town on his donkey, you Jewish people didn't speak to him unless you had to, and you certainly didn't touch anything he tried to sell you unless you had it ceremonially sanitized.
If you're the apostle Peter and you suddenly received an invitation to meet with a Gentile centurion named Cornelius, it requires an in-your-face vision from the Lord of heaven to induce you to accept that invitation. Hierarchiosis was alive and unwell in that whole culture.

But evidently, being in the presence of the Lord of Level-land causes a person to start recognizing how wrong elitism and hierarchical thinking is. And that's why the disciples let Jesus walk on ahead so that He hopefully wouldn't be able to hear their tense mutterings. Because they had often heard Him say things like, “He who humbles himself will be exalted—and he who exalts himself will be abased.”

So what do I do, now that I know that being in Jesus’ presence makes me more sensitive to Lucifer's fatal sin? I need to resolve to stay in His presence. If Lucifer had stayed in the presence of Christ rather than wandering off and asking the other angels incendiary questions, these hierarchy ideas would have subsided. But Lucifer did not wish to be changed by the presence of Christ, so he avoided Him. And the rest is hiss-tory—the hiss of the serpent.


Because watch what happens now.

Verse 35: And He sat down, called the twelve . . . .

Here is the very sobering third point.

Here in Mark 9, not only does Jesus keep His eyes open for hierarchiosis, and not only does Jesus’ presence in my life cause me to be uneasy about it, but Jesus is prepared to put everything else on hold in order to deal with my hierarchiosis pride.

When you think about it, the conversation could instead have gone like this. The disciples discuss their rank. Jesus catches wind of their discussion. He says, "What were you guys talking about?" Once He found out, He could have simply called over His shoulder, "Hey, guys. That's not productive. Talk about something else."

But instead, Jesus takes this issue extremely seriously. First He sits down. Then He specifically summons the disciples to Him. Do you remember when your parents sat you down and had a talk with you? You got the definite idea that they considered that topic important.

So what do I do, now that I know that Jesus will put everything else on hold to deal with my desire for self exaltation? Well, I need to accept this as even more overwhelming evidence that Jesus does not like me to want to exalt myself? I need to show some common sense and listen and take to heart what He says about this subject. Somebody once suggested that we pray, "Lord, please change my heart now, so You won't have to severely discipline me later!"

 

Now, here's the really mind blowing part.

Verse 35:  And He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.”

Here in Mark 9, not only does Jesus keep His eyes open for hierarchiosis, and not only does Jesus’ presence in my life cause me to be uneasy about it, and not only is Jesus prepared to put everything else on hold in order to deal with my status-seeking, but Jesus reminds me that in most cases, Heaven’s kingdom turns earth’s kingdom upside down.

This is classic celestial paradox – the more rank you have, the more of a servant you are. Have you ever thought about how much God waits on us hand and foot? Need another breath? There it is. Need to focus your eyes on your Bible page? There are those two wonderful lenses, at your service. Did you drop your bulletin on the carpet? There’s your wonderful robotic arm with its superbly-designed robotic fingers to pick it up. What wonderful divine customer service! And of course I could go on and on.

Heaven’s kingdom turns earth's kingdom upside down. That's a whole sermon series in itself, right? “We have heard a joyful sound, Jesus serves, Jesus serves!” Jesus gives, Jesus gives. Last night at our Unlocking Revelation seminar, we spoke about salvation. Jesus went to the cross so that we wouldn't have to die for our sins.

Heaven’s kingdom turns earth's kingdom upside down. I need to watch for that. I need to accustom myself more and more to the idea that Jesus' ways will often be extremely puzzling and sometimes annoying to people who do not know Him. I just need to be ready for that. It's what has happened to true Christians down through the centuries. It’s what happened to Jesus.

And then, in classic upside-down fashion, Jesus beckons a little child over to Him. Who knows, maybe as the child approached, a couple of disciples rolled their eyes. "Oh, no. Just when we start talking about serious things, He wants to stop and talk to a kid. We've tried again and again to keep those little rug-rats away from Him so we won't be distracted from what's important – and now what is He doing?"

Verses 36 -37:  Then He took a little child and set him in the midst of them. And when He had taken him in His arms, He said to them, “Whoever receives one of these little children in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me, receives not Me but Him who sent Me.”

Well, what else would you expect the Lord of Level-land to say? Yes, we love children very deeply. Yes, children are a heritage of the Lord. Yes, happy is the man who has his quiver full of them. But really, is a little child truly on the same level ground as that child's Creator?

God wants it that way. Jesus wants it that way. True, there is a Creator and there are those He has created. No human being can become God. But God wants to be close. God wants to be down here. God wants to get near enough to hug us. Can you believe that? Satan wants you to disbelieve it. But Israel and Adriana believe it's true. They believe that God wants to hug them as close as they want to hug little Abel.

They can believe it. Can you? Can I?

Just a little postscript about the King of Bhutan. I withheld part of the story from you. What I told you was true – but it seemed to cast him in the light of someone who suffers from hierarchiosis too.

But that's not true. I don't know him personally, but I do know that ever since 2005, his father – the previous King – begin moving their country toward democracy. They now have a parliament, with elected leaders, and the nation is rejoicing to have this enlightened young man as their king.

From the news report I read, he is a very accessible monarch. He likes to take bicycle rides through the streets of the cities. People love him – and he loves them. He's working for the good of his country. He is working to make Bhutan something of an earthly “Level-land.”

 

 
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THE LOVE JACKET—HOW TO PUT YOUR BAPTISM TO WORK
Expository Baptismal Sermon on Colossians 3:12 - 15
by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue SDA Church 10/8/2011]
©2011 by Maylan Schurch

(To hear the audio for this sermon, click here.)

 

Please open your Bibles again to Colossians Chapter 3.

I just can't resist putting in a little commercial here. Last night, this lovely couple whose baptism you have witnessed this morning were sitting right over there, along with little Carson, in that area of pews during last night's first "Unlocking Revelation" prophecy lecture. A good number of the rest of you were among the hundred people in this sanctuary, plus the children in the three children’s meetings.

Just a reminder that there'll be another lecture this evening, and tomorrow night, and Monday night. If you arrive at 6:45 and get settled into your pew, you'll be able to watch the next 10 minute installment of the Bruce Marchiano "Matthew" video, a dramatized story of Jesus’ life. At seven sharp I will deliver the next PowerPoint presentation, called “Revelation’s Biggest Surprise.” Its topic will be the great image of Daniel 2, and what with recent events happening in Europe, I found it fascinating in a way I never did before.

So please plan to be back here at 6:45 this evening. And thanks to our dedicated children's teachers, you and your kids ages 10 and above can enjoy the sanctuary presentations while the younger kids will be in one of three separate programs for children ages birth through nine.

As always when we baptize someone, I asked Angie and Brandon to choose the Scripture which I then prepare a sermon on. They gave me several excellent ones, and you have already heard the one I chose read as our Scripture passage this morning.

There's no sermon title in the bulletin, because I wasn't able to come up with one in time, but I now have a title for this sermon. It's called "The Love Jacket – or How to Put Your Baptism to Work."

How many of you in this room have already been baptized by immersion? Let me see your hands. These Bible verses the Taylors chose will be useful to those of us who've been baptized. They will show us how to behave like baptized people. And if you haven’t been baptized but are thinking about doing so, this will give help you understand more about what baptism is all about.

As I studied these verses this week, I focused in on three ways God wants us to put our baptism to work. Let's find out, from Angie's and Brandon's verses, what the first one is.

Colossians 3:12 [NKJV]:“Therefore . . . .”

Let's stop right there. Because that's step one in putting your baptism to work.

Because in these verses, Paul’s first step to putting your baptism to work is to remember the "therefore."

What do I mean by "remember the ‘therefore’?” What I mean is that Paul is not starting a new subject here. Something has come before these verses, some idea he has laid down which is so important that, once we know that idea, therefore we need to follow through on it.

So what is the "therefore" that Paul is talking about? What important concept has he already laid down which is a foundation for the verses we will be looking at?

Well, I glanced back through the verses that led up to this, and I think I discovered some clues to the answer, back at the start of the chapter.

Colossians 3:1: If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above . . . .

But what does it mean, "if then you were raised with Christ"? When would that have happened? Well, we need to go still further back, to Colossians 2.

Colossians 2:20: Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world . . . .

So here Paul says that not only were some of his hearers raised with Christ, but they also died with Christ. When did that happen? Go still further back. Let's pick up his thought with verse 12.

Verse 12: . . buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God ...

So that's the answer to the "therefore." It's baptism Paul is talking about. He says, "Through baptism, you symbolically died with Christ, and were raised with Christ. Therefore . . . .” And then he writes the verses which Brandon and Angie chose, the verses which tell us how to put our baptism to work.

So let's go back to them. Since Brandon and Angie have just been baptized, since many of you in this room have been baptized, therefore here's what we need to do. You remember that the first step was to remember the "therefore." Now watch what happens.

Colossians 3:12: Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, . . .

Let's pause here for a moment and stare the words we've just read. Through their baptism, Brandon and Angie have died with Christ, and have been raised with Christ. God considers them His "elect" – which means chosen – and not only that, He considers them "holy" and "beloved."

As a pastor, I sometimes meet people who don't feel holy. They sometimes worry deeply about their unholiness. They also do not feel especially beloved by God. They worry about that too. And this is tragic, because the gospel tells us quite differently. "For God so loved the world." "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." God does love us, and because of what Jesus has done for us, God can legitimately call us "holy."

But that, of course, is not the end of the story. That may be one of the reasons Angie and Brandon chose these verses. They understand that, now that they have let Jesus wash away their sins symbolically, through baptism, therefore they need to go forward in some specific ways.

And this leads us to the second step to putting your baptism to work.

Verse 12:  Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering;

 Do you see that word "put on"? If you're following along in the New International Version, the NIV, you will see that it uses the word "clothe.” “Clothe yourselves.” And that is the correct translation. Because the Greek word behind “put on” or “clothed” is enduo, and that's what that word means. Back in Matthew 6:25, when Jesus said don't worry about what you shall eat or drink or “wear,” that's the Greek word He used: enduo. In Mark 1:6, John the Baptist was "clothed" with camel's hair. That's that same Greek word. In Mark 15:17, when Jesus' persecutors "clothed” Him with a purple robe, that's that same word.

So what's the second step to putting your baptism to work?

Well, if Paul’s first step to putting your baptism to work is to remember the "therefore" (remember what baptism really means), his second step is to get dressed!

And we need to get dressed in non-toxic clothes. Because there is such a thing as toxic spiritual clothing.

Back in my teens I attended my sophomore year at the high school in Redfield, South Dakota. Back then, if you wanted to be a really cool teen guy at Redfield High School, you wore a mohair sweater.

Normally I didn't worry much about being cool, or looking cool, because I knew that there was no way I could be cool, because I wasn't cool. But for some reason, I decided I had to give coolness a try by getting a mohair sweater. So Mom took me down to the JCPenney store and I picked out as cool a mohair sweater as JCPenney had in stock that day. And the next day I clothed myself in that mohair sweater and wore it to school.

Two weeks later, a dreadful crusty sore appeared on my upper lip. And as long as I wore that mohair sweater that sore would not go away. The coolness factor of the mohair sweater was no match for the uncoolness factor of the dreadful sore on my upper lip. So I sadly said goodbye to that beautiful but very toxic garment, and the sore cleared up within a couple of days.

No, after I have been baptized, God wants me to put on non-toxic spiritual clothing – mercy and compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering or patience. And this only makes sense, because if we have been raised from spiritual death with Christ, we are naturally going to share His qualities. These are qualities that God and His Son have has shown to us.

God has shown mercy and compassion to us. He has shown kindness to us. Jesus demonstrated the utmost humility when He washed His disciples’ feet at the Last Supper, and when less than 12 hours later, He allowed Himself to be crucified for their sins. Jesus was meek and gentle and endlessly patient when He walked on this earth.

Wouldn't it be a wonderful world if nations and tribes and families and individuals clothed themselves in these qualities? Most major religions, even non-Christian ones, call kindness and mercy and humility and patience and forgiveness “virtues.” But so few practitioners of any of those religions actually practice these qualities.

But this morning in their chosen Bible passage, Brandon and Angie are placing these garments before us, inviting us to clothe ourselves in them, as Jesus was clothed in them. And notice what should happen as the follow-through from this.

Verses 12 – 13: Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.

These are wonderful garments, aren't they? But there’s still one garment missing. Because haven't you known people who wanted to be thought of as kind, but they were just going through the motions? They could speak kindly, but you knew they were just putting on a front. I remember as a boy visiting a friend’s house and sometimes discovering that that friend’s parents, who seemed so kind at church, were actually snappish and snarly at home when they didn’t realize a non-family member could overhear them.

Have you ever known someone who was proud of his humility? Have you ever known someone who seemed to be meek and long-suffering, but who knew how to use those qualities as subtle psychological weapons?

Paul understood hypocrisy first-hand. As a hardhearted Pharisee, he probably knew very well how to fake the qualities he has just written about. That's why he insists on us taking one more step to putting our baptism to work.

Verse 14: But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection.

If Paul’s first step to putting your baptism to work is to remember the "therefore" (remember what baptism really means) and his second step is to get dressed—his third step is to put on the jacket of love. 

Verse 14: But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection.

The NIV puts it this way: “And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”
In other words, if you cover all those other good qualities with true love for the people around you, then you will truly be putting your baptism – your commitment to Jesus – to work in the fullest possible way. Put on the jacket of love.

Have you ever had a favorite jacket? How many of you have had a favorite jacket? Maybe this jacket was warm, and kept you comfortable. And that jacket probably said something about you, made some kind of statement about the kind of person you are.

I've had two or three jackets I've appreciated. The most recent one, I even have a name for. Let me show it to you.
Several years ago, when Norm and Judy Van Tassel left our church to move to Arizona, Norm suddenly realized that he wouldn’t need to take along his winter clothing. So one day before they left he presented me with this jacket. It's a nice one, probably one he used while hiking in the wintertime.

I call it my "Norm jacket." I even took it to Rosario last week, but since I stayed in the cafeteria playing music with people most of the afternoon, I never actually put it on.

But if I had gone hiking in the occasionally misty weather up there, I could have put on my Norm jacket and it would have kept me warm, just like true Christlike love for the people in my life can warm the qualities of compassion and kindness I show them.

That's what Brandon and Angie want to have happen in their post-baptism life. That's what they want for you. That's what so many of you are already doing in this congregation. But we need to remember to put on all these garments, including the jacket of love, not just at church but everyday, wherever we are and wherever we go. Our homes need to be happy, humble, gentle, merciful and compassionate places.

Look at the first part of verse 15.

Verse 15: Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts . . . .

Do you see that word "rule"? That's a very interesting Greek word. It's not the word which talks about "ruling" as a king would rule. Instead, it's a sports word. (They had sports back in those days—like the Olympic games and so on.) The noun form of that Greek word means "umpire.” In other words, this verse is saying, "Let the peace of Christ umpire in your hearts," or "referee" in your heart. It's like you're giving Jesus permission, whenever He thinks necessary, to blow the whistle, stop the play, call a time-out, and set things right.

Can we give Jesus that kind of permission in our lives? Can we allow the Holy Spirit to make our consciences so sensitive that any sinful coarseness or heedlessness we show will actually hurt our hearts, and we will repent of it?

When I asked Brandon and Angie to choose the closing song, Angie found one which, unfortunately, I didn't know, and I don't know that many of you knew it. She gave me permission to choose one of my own if that was the case, and that's what I've done.

But I would like to read to you the words of the song which – if we’d known it – we would've sung in conclusion this morning. It's called "Baptize Me, Jesus."

Baptize me
Baptize me Jesus with the Holy Ghost
I shall have power, your word says so
Satan is busy trying to turn me around
But I’m determined, to stand my ground
But I can’t do it
But I can’t do it
Till you baptize me with the Holy Ghost

On the Day of Pentecost
They were all in one accord
They were filled with expectation waiting on the promise of the lord
Well all of the sudden the Holy Ghost came
Like a rushing mighty wind, and they were filled with the Holy Ghost
So was the room they were sitting in

The people were standing on the outside
Surprised by what they saw, they called to one another listen
To them speaking in other tongues
Peter got up and started preaching, he said repent and be baptized
He called to everybody, you must believe on the name (of Jesus) Christ

Baptize me Jesus with the Holy Ghost
I shall have power
Hang in there
Hang in there don’t you dare give up

“Hang in there,” Paul the apostle says to his friends in the town of Colossae, and to us. “Don’t you dare give up. Put your baptism to work by clothing yourselves in the qualities of Jesus, and wrapping it all in the jacket of love.”

What about you—would you like to put your baptism, or your future baptism, to work starting right now?

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MEMORY MEAL
Topical Communion Sermonette
by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue SDA Church 9/24/2011
©2011 by Maylan Schurch

 

(To hear the audio for this sermon, click here.)

 

Please open your Bibles to Luke chapter 22.

Luke 22:19 [NKJV] And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”

A couple of months ago, Shelley and I drove back to my South Dakota home town and spent some time with my sisters and their families. At one point Shelley and I drove out of town a mile west of the airport, and drove slowly past the old farmhouse I spent most of my childhood.

The house has belonged to someone else for the 13 years since Mom died, and the trees on the property’s borders, which she and Dad spent so much time planting, have grown so huge that we could barely even see the house itself.

But those thick rows of trees, and that strange brown paint on the house’s formerly white siding have no power to dim my memories of the suppers we shared in that kitchen.

Even though our little farmhouse had two stories, it was so small that on the first floor it had no dining room – just a kitchen, a living room, a bedroom, and a tiny bathroom. Therefore, all communal eating was done in our smallish kitchen. Mom loved a bright kitchen, so she had arranged its walls to be painted with a brilliant yellow enamel.

Against the south wall of the kitchen was one of those tables which could be pulled apart so that an additional piece or two could be inserted. This table had some sort of Formica top, and four shiny chrome legs. Most of the chairs matched the table, but a couple of their padded plastic cushions were tastefully augmented with duct tape.

When it came time to eat, especially when the eaters included us four kids plus spouses plus grandkids, out would come the table into the center of the kitchen floor, the extra piece would be added, and a card table would be shoved up against the east end, for the grandkids. Nobody ever relegated the kids to a separate table in the living room – because aside from the "mess-on-the-living-room-carpet” factor, Mom wanted us all together.

The table would be set informally. Back in the late 40s when my parents were married, they had received a set of good quality silverware, which mom kept in its original box in the bedroom drawer. But I never remember us using that silverware. Once in a while I would go rummage in that drawer and open that box and look inside it, and the forks and knives and spoons were quite tarnished.

No, our “working” table silverware was the cheaper, bendable kind. (Remember Uri Gellar, the guy who could supposedly bend spoons with his mind? He would have had no problem with our spoons!) Our silverware did not all match, but nobody cared.

Dad said grace in a meditative voice – he always led us in the little poem, "Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest – may this food to us be blessed. Amen." At our places were unbreakable plastic Melmac plates, and we passed around Tupperware bowls of various sizes, containing potato salad, or spaghetti, or mashed potatoes, or coleslaw.

There would always be a bowl of iceberg lettuce salad, onto which you glugged as much Dorothy Lynch salad dressing as you thought you needed. There were large platters, one containing hamburgers or chicken for the meat eaters, and the other containing my sister’s great-tasting vegetarian patties. And afterward would come ice cream, vanilla or strawberry or maple nut.

Rarely did Mom or my sisters experiment with this meal. They knew enough not to prepare foods we had never tried. They knew what we liked, and they knew the quantity in which we liked it, and they knew we liked some of it with ketchup, and some of it with Dorothy Lynch or Thousand Island. They knew that no matter what flavor of ice cream we scooped into our bowls, we always liked the choice of Hershey’s chocolate or butterscotch syrup to squeeze onto it.

Those were good times, good memories. The food probably wasn't the best for our health, nor served in a setting of which Martha Stewart would have approved, but those were good meals. We would tease each other, and listen to each other’s stories. We would say things to get a rise out of each other, so we could see them grin. We did not know how lucky we were, nor how much we would miss those meals in later years.

As I was thinking about the Lord’s Supper this week, I remembered those farmhouse meals. Because Jesus Himself was very clear about what the Lord’s Supper is—it’s a “memory meal.” “This do in remembrance of Me,” He said. The communion service isn’t some sort of magic ceremony. There’s no secret formula in the bread. The grape juice is no bewitching potion. No, the power of this meal is in the remembering.

Jesus' Lord’s Supper was a family meal too. At one point in the past 3 1/2 years He had commented that His disciples and anyone else who loved and followed Him were like His mother, and brothers, and sisters.

And before that, every Passover meal for the past 1500 years had been a family meal – and a memory meal. Every Passover, every Jewish family remembered the slavery, remembered the plagues, remembered the lamb, remembered the splash of blood on the door frame, remembered the hastily-baked simple bread.

They remembered the midnight flight, the towering walls of water on each side, the song of victory, the bruised and lacerated shoulder blades which could now begin to heal. And they could look up and see the tower of fire in the sky, leading them onward.

But when Jesus reshaped the Passover into the Lord's Supper, He refocused the memories in His direction. "Do this in remembrance of Me." Because He had been the one occupying that fiery pillar in the sky. He had been the one who parted the Red Sea waves like the pages of a book. He was the Bread consumed on the night of deliverance. And He was the Lamb, who with His blood would bring to an end all those temporary place-holder sacrifices for sin.

And here we are today, at another family meal. No surprises on the menu – Jesus knows what we really need. We need the bread--not only to look at it, or to think about it. We need to take it within us, just as we need to take Jesus within us through His Holy Spirit. We need His simple spiritual nourishment, with no frosting, no added salt, which goes directly to our soul’s center and heals and restores.

And we need the pure juice of the vine, which looks so beautiful and tastes so satisfying. We need to remember that it represents His blood which He so readily and willingly spilled for us. But this pure wine is not to stay within an expensive goblet, brought out once in awhile to look at, and then hidden away again. Jesus said, “Take and eat, take and drink. I want no space between us. I do not want to be Someone you admire from a safe, respectful distance. I want to be one with you. I want to be closer to you than you can ever imagine.”

I know that when He was on this earth, Jesus knew what it was like to enjoy happy family meals. Apparently the Bethany home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus was where He shared many a warm, delightful meal. Who knows—maybe the silverware didn’t always match, maybe the chairs were a bit shabby. But nobody ate in another room; I’m sure they all gathered as close to Jesus as they could.

That’s what Jesus longs for us to do this morning. To hear Mark tell it, in Mark 14, He’s planning a family meal in heaven one day.

Mark 14:23 – 25: Then He took the cup, and when He had given thanks He gave it to them, and they all drank from it. And He said to them, “This is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many. Assuredly, I say to you, I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

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THE INCLUDER
Expository Sermon on John 17
by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue SDA 9/17/2011
©2011 by Maylan Schurch

 

(Sorry, the audio for this week's sermon is not available.)

 

Please open your Bibles to John chapter 17.

When I was 11 years old I lived on a small farm a mile west of Redfield, South Dakota. During that year, a great and joyous thing happened – the Minnesota Twins baseball club was born. (South Dakota is just one state to the left of Minnesota.)

The team had actually existed since 1894, but they were in the Washington DC area and were called at various times the Washington Senators or the Washington Nationals. Then their owner renamed them “the Minnesota Twins” and moved them to Minneapolis, where they played at Metropolitan Stadium.

I don't remember exactly how I discovered their existence, but it was probably because one of the stations on their broadcasting network broadcast was one of the Midwest's most powerful stations, the 50,000-watt WNAX. This meant that a lot of farmers missed out on their evening farm news and weather reports, but it also meant that thousands of farm boys just like me suddenly acquired a new set of heroes – slugger Harmon Killebrew, pitcher Camilo Pascual, catcher Earl Battey, shortstop Zoilo Versalles.

Until I did some checking online this week, I had the idea that the Twins were a pretty miserable team back in those days. But they really weren't. Today's Seattle Mariners would fight for a record like they had. For example, in 1962 the Twins won 91 games and lost 71. In 1963 they were again 91 and 70 (I'm not sure what happened to the extra game). In 1965 they were 102 and 60, and won the American League championship that year.

I guess the reason I thought they were so bad back then was that they didn't win the World Series. I had assumed that with American League home run king Harmon Killebrew, and all-star fastball pitcher Camilo Pascual, how could we lose?

And of course what made it all so warm and friendly and cozy were the announcers – Ray Scott, Halsey Hall, and Herb Carneal. Ray Scott was sort of the Dave Niehaus figure. Herb Carneal was like Rick Riszz, and Halsey Hall was a folksy color commentator who could tell you fascinating stories about players from the 1930s and 40s.

Sometimes I fantasized about being in the broadcast booth with those friendly radio guys. I pictured them generously turning the microphone over to me and letting me do play-by-play for an entire inning. Sometimes I would actually take my little Sears battery-operated reel-to-reel tape recorder to the Redfield American Legion games in town, and sit by myself in a corner of the bleachers and pretend like I was broadcasting those games.

However, it was at that point that I realized that there's a whole lot more to broadcasting a baseball game than I thought. Ray and Herb and Halsey made it sound so smooth and easy, but when I had my little Sears microphone in my fist, with a real local baseball game happening before me, I became tongue-tied. Things happened too fast for me to keep up with.

So even if I'd been lucky enough to be included on the Twins' broadcast team for an inning or two, I would have been a miserable flop.

I thought about those amateur baseball broadcasts of mine this week as I was working on this sermon.  Because John 17, in which Jesus prays a chapter-length prayer, shows that the Savior Himself is definitely an "includer.” This is a deeply earnest and heart-emptying prayer. Jesus has less than 24 hours to live. And throughout the coming night He will get absolutely no sleep before—at about noon the following day—He is nailed to a cross.

In this prayer, Jesus first prays for His 12 disciples, and then finally He widens the prayer to include everyone who will ever believe in Him when the disciples spread the word.

But even though Jesus is an “includer,” even though He longs to welcome you and me into His happy eternity, His prayer makes it very clear that His followers have some choices they have to make. In order for me to have been a tolerable baseball broadcaster there in the booth with the professionals, I needed to have made some choices – maybe take radio-broadcasting lessons as those men no doubt had, maybe study the work of other famous broadcasters, maybe get a good handle on the history of the game, and so on.

Since the John 17 choices are far more important than a baseball-broadcasting gig, we’re going to look at them this morning. I've chosen to focus on what I consider three of the main choices you and I need to make in response to Jesus' invitation, so we can be included in the answers to His prayer. Let's take a look at them.

John 17:1 – 3 [NKJV]: Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

Did you pick up the first choice you and I need to make to respond to our heavenly "Includer’s” offer? (Here comes Sermon Point One in case you're taking notes.)

The first choice I need to make in response to Jesus' invitation is that I must choose to bond with God.

Somebody says, "Hey, wait a minute. The verse simply says that eternal life comes from ‘knowing’ God. What's this about ‘bonding’ with Him?"

When we read Jesus’ entire prayer, we see that this ‘knowing’ is far more than simply agreeing that God exists and being able to list a few facts about Him. Glance down at verse 9:

Verses 9 – 11: [Jesus prays] “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours. And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them. Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are."

That's almost marriage terminology, isn't it? “That they may be one.” That's bonding. And it’s an even closer bond than the marriage bond—it’s the bond between the members of the Trinity. That’s what Jesus wants for us and Heaven.

In any family relationship, bonding is crucial. This week while I was driving, I happened to catch (I think it was) a BBC radio interview with some London researchers who had studied several young men who had been “radicalized” by terrorists. The researchers were trying to find out what turned those boys and young men into people who would willingly strap on a suicide bomb-vest and set it off in a crowd.

What they found was really interesting. I wasn't able to join the broadcast at the very start, but I picked up the fact that the broadcast’s host was not only talking to the researchers but also to someone who had at one point been one of these radicalized young men.

This former wanna-be terrorist—who now was involved in trying to reclaim young people like he had been—said that in the overwhelming number of cases, these boys were raised not in their native countries, but perhaps their parents had moved to a foreign country such as Germany or England or America. And at this point, the parents played a very important role.

You see, if a young man's parents were loving and supportive, and spent the normal amount of time with him the way other parents would spend time with their kids, things would turn out okay. However, if the parents were cold and aloof, and if they neglected the boy and spent all their time focusing on their work or their own interests, this could become very dangerous.

The reason was that, back in the old country, a boy would be raised not just by his parents but by up to eight members of his extended family who might be living in the house or living close by—grandma, grandpa, uncles, aunts, cousins. In other words this boy would have an opportunity to bond with a variety of relatives, and thus get a more balanced perspective on life.

However, in the new country, alone with his seemingly uncaring parents, the boy would naturally start looking elsewhere for a "family" experience – probably in much the same way that kids get attracted to gangs. And the terrorists who were trying to recruit him would do their best to fill the void and build these friendship bonds.

And another thing the researchers discovered was that if a boy had been taught the Muslim faith by loving parents and an extended family, he would grow up a normal Muslim kid, who would be horrified at the thought of being a suicide bomber. But if his first real exposure to the Muslim faith was the twisted, radical kind, that's what he would adopt as his belief system.

Remember, everything that heaven has done for us has shown that God and His Son and His Spirit want to be near. They want to be close, they want to bond with us, and they want us to bond with them. We can see this all through the Bible.

God could have shouted down to the cowering Adam and Eve from heaven’s heights – but instead, He walked through the garden to talk with them one-on-one.

God could have written out a series of theological lectures for Moses to read to the Israelites – but instead, He said, "Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them." God and His Son and His Holy Spirit want to bond with us.
Okay, what should I do in response to this? What is my part in the choice to bond with God?

Obviously, the way you bond with someone is to get to know that person really well. And obviously, the most dependable way to get to know God really well is to read His Biography. Blessed are those Christians who read the Bible for themselves, rather than depending on someone else to tell them what the Bible says.

Starting October 7, during our "Unlocking Revelation" seminar, the people who come to listen to these presentations will soon see a very clear pattern develop. I and other elders who narrate the slide program will show Bible verses along with the pictures, and from those Bible verses we will draw clear Bible conclusions.

Every person who enters the sanctuary will be given a free Bible, and they will be urged to study that Bible to make sure that what we are telling them is true. On the way out each evening, we are going to offer a list of all the texts used in that night’s presentation.

What's so wonderful is that the closer you and I bond with God and His plans, the more thrilling our lives become. I hope nobody in this room has the idea that real Christianity is boring. I think Sabbath school teachers and teachers in our Adventist schools are doing a much better job in the last few decades of teaching how truly fun it is to serve God by serving other people. Wasn't it last week we heard about the Haiti trip?

At this point Jesus is going to tell us about a second choice you and I need to make in order to be included in His plans for us. And this is a rather challenging choice. Let’s start with verse 11.

Verses 11- 14: Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

If the first choice I need to make in response to Jesus' invitation is to choose to bond with God, then the second choice I need to make is to learn to live with the world’s hatred.

When I say "live with the world's hatred" I don't mean that we have to agree with it, or like it. But Jesus says that it is inevitable. Of course, not everybody will hate us – there are many who will love us and appreciate us for our Christian ways and for how clearly we show a loving, kindly view of God. But a certain amount of annoyance – from people who want to have nothing to do with God or His Son – is inevitable, and it shouldn’t rattle us.

It can be a really challenging choice to be ready to live with the world's hatred. That's because you and I weren't originally wired for constant conflict. Maybe some of us, before our conversion, were fighters because our souls were restless, but the closer we come to the Prince of Peace, and the more we allow His Holy Spirit to change us, the less we enjoy conflict. We want to get along with people.

But again and again, the Bible predicts that true believers in God will find their faith challenged by the faithless. Jesus' final Beatitude (Matthew 5:10 - 12) urges us to remember that we are to consider ourselves “blessed” or “happy” or “fortunate” when we are persecuted for Jesus' sake. In fact, He tells us to “rejoice and be exceedingly glad.”

Wednesday night as Shelley and I were returning from prayer meeting, we were listening to a radio interview with a veteran traffic officer. For 22 years this man's job has been to aim a radar gun at approaching cars, and pursue and ticket the drivers that are going too fast. For 22 years he has never known exactly what might happen after he pulls someone over and approaches their car on foot.

For 22 years this officer has had to be prepared to step up to a car window and face anything from an angry tirade to tears to tight-voiced grumpiness. In fact, this radio program was a call-in show, and listeners were invited to call in with their questions on traffic regulations. Several people did call, but I noticed that as they spoke with the officer, they all seemed really nervous, and they never got “chatty,” but instead kept the conversation as short as possible. It's like they were intimidated by even talking to a policeman on the radio.

For 22 years, as this officer has stepped up beside a driver's window, probably nobody has greeted him with a smile of genuine joy, saying "Thank you! Thank you, officer! It’s so good to see you! How much is my ticket? How much do I owe?" (If somebody did say that to him, he would probably courteously suggest that they step outside and take a breathalyzer test!)

No, this officer has learned to accept a certain amount of discontent amongst the people he regularly meets with – and even hatred. I once knew a man several years ago who could not even speak about policeman without getting red in the face.

But what keeps this officer doing what he's doing is the knowledge that – even though he may not be popular with most of his customers, he is doing his part to keep the streets safe. He has seen horrible accidents. He has seen what drunken driving does, what careless driving does. He knows he is doing important work, and he accepts the public dislike as part of the job.

It might help to realize that every Bible person with a name familiar enough that we sometimes give those names to our kids felt the displeasure of the devil and those who were in captivity to him

Think of Abel facing the blows of his brother Cain. Think of Noah, preaching for 12 centuries into the sneers and jeers of his neighbors. Think of Joseph, slandered by Mrs. Potiphar and jailed potentially for life. Think of Moses, the great liberator, who many times had to face rebellious snarls from those he had helped rescue from slavery.

Think of David, harassed constantly by Saul. Think of Daniel, his enemies engineering his attempted execution because of his faith. Think of Jeremiah and the other Old Testament prophets who spoke God's words into the ears of those in power, and who suffered for it.

 Think of John the Baptist. Think of Jesus Himself, who was put to death to redeem us. All of His original 12 disciples suffered persecution. Paul was persecuted. Faithful Christians through the ages have felt the devil’s displeasure. So if, once in a while, we get the feeling that people are annoyed with our Christianity, we are in the excellent company of those in the Hebrews 11 “Faith Hall of Fame.”

 

Let's talk about just one more choice you and I need to make in order to be included in Jesus' plans. Let’s pick it up at verse 15:

 Verses 15 – 18: I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.

 If the first choice I need to make in response to Jesus' invitation is to choose to bond with God, and the second choice I need to make is to learn to live with the world’s hatred for doing this, then the third choice I need to make is to go where God sends me.

 Have you made a prayer list of those you’d like to invite to the “Unlocking Revelation” seminar?

 Amid all the gloomy news we have been hearing lately was one bright spot. Thursday, a 23-year-old Marine named Dakota Meyer was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Obama. On September 8, 2009, a patrol made up of Afghan forces and their American trainers were traveling along a narrow valley, and were suddenly ambushed from three sides by Taliban fighters.

 Dakota Meyer was a mile away when he heard the fight on the two-way radio. He and a fellow soldier asked four times for permission to go and help, but each time they were told it was too dangerous. Both soldiers finally jumped into a Humvee and sped off toward the battle, with Meyer manning a machine gun in the turret, his head and body exposed to bullets. The two soldiers made five trips into the hail of gunfire, saving the lives of 13 US Marines and 23 Afghan soldiers in the process.

 To me one of the most impressive parts of the story was how humble Dakota Meyer seemed. He firmly asserts that he only did what any other Marine would have done, and he feels like a failure because four of his team members who had been pinned down in the fight died. But the president and the military didn't agree with him – and awarded him the Medal of Honor.

 Nearly 2000 years ago, another Hero waded into the thick of a battle. No mere hail of Taliban bullets sung by him. Instead, every possible demonic legion focused its attention on His every word and action, doing whatever they could to make sure that He failed in His mission.

 But though He was finally wounded and killed, His mission succeeded. He came to life again, and sent His closest friends back into the battle, urging them to go to all nations and baptize still others into that great regiment of those who would daily put on the armor of God.

 And our weapons destroy not people but the lies which destroy people. We are not fighting against flesh and blood but against higher powers – yet still higher powers than those are on our side, and as long as we keep our Ephesians 6 armor on, we’ll be successful.

What about you? Would you like to be included in Jesus’ John 17 prayer? Would you like to bond more closely than ever with the Heavenly Father? Are you willing to endure the occasional displeasure of a selfish world, to bring joy to the heart of our inclusive Savior?

And are you willing to go wherever God sends you in His service

 

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FORTY DAYS—FOUR CRUCIAL QUESTIONS
Topical Sermon by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue SDA Church  8/26/11
©2011 by Maylan Schurch

(To hear the audio for this sermon, click here.)

Please open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 7.

Have you ever said to yourself, “I’m going to do (whatever)  for forty days”?

One Sabbath two or three years ago at camp meeting, just outside the Auburn Academy administration building room where our Bellevue congregation was gathering for our camp meeting potluck, I met a young man whom I had never seen before, nor have I seen him since.

Somebody introduced me to this guy, and I invited him to potluck. He shook his head gently. “No,” he said in a soft voice, “I’m fasting.” A dim memory flits through my head that I also heard that he was trying to do this for forty days, which of course is very medically dangerous. (Don’t try this at home. Jesus never commanded anyone to fast for forty days.)

As I say, I never saw him again, so I don’t know how long that fast lasted. I also don’t know why on earth he was meandering down a hallway at the exact time when several churches had organized several huge Sabbath noon potlucks! Was he hoping someone would talk him out of his fast?

I bring up “forty days” because of something we’re going to be doing to prepare for our “Unlocking Revelation” prophecy lecture series which starts Friday evening, October 7. If you back off forty days from October 7, you arrive at this coming Monday, August 29. And this coming Monday is when we’re going to start a forty-day program of praying for that series and everyone who attends it.

At the end of this sermon we’ll tell you more about what will happen during these forty days. But I spent some time this week taking a look at several of the Bible’s forty-day periods. And it struck me that, during each of those periods, it’s like God is asking His human family a crucial question. This morning w’re going to look at four of these questions.

Because these four questions are ones which people living down here in the toenails of history need to hear God asking. Because Revelation 12:12 tells us that during the times just ahead of us, “the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time.”

And  I think you’ll agree with me that if you and I can answer “yes” to these four crucial questions, we’ll be as prepared as anybody in the Bible could have been. Let’s take a look at these questions one by one, and I think you’ll see how important they are. You yourself may have to stand ready to answer one or more of these questions this coming week.
Genesis 7 talks about the Bible’s first forty-day period.

Genesis 7:1 – 5 [NKJV]: Then the Lord said to Noah, “Come into the ark, you and all your household, because I have seen that you are righteous before Me in this generation. You shall take with you seven each of every clean animal, a male and his female; two each of animals that are unclean, a male and his female;  also seven each of birds of the air, male and female, to keep the species alive on the face of all the earth. For after seven more days I will cause it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and I will destroy from the face of the earth all living things that I have made.” And Noah did according to all that the Lord commanded him.

If the Lord’s decision sounds brutal, keep in mind that those were brutal times. Occasionally on the radio I will hear an interviewer talking to people from Germany about the Nazis and the Holocaust. In the voices of the younger Germans, especially, there is the sound of shock and bewilderment and embarrassment.

It’s like they’re staying, “How could Deutschlanders from my grandparents’ generation have ever done such abominable things?”

But from what Genesis says, the people of Noah’s time had sunk to a level far lower than that of the most vicious concentration-camp commander. Back in Genesis 6 the Lord looked down and saw how terrible they were.

Genesis 6:5 Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

I mean, from what we understand, even some of the concentration-camp commanders, even Hitler’s SS staff, could come home at the end of the day, leave their work at their work, and be at least outwardly kind fathers to their kids, good providers for their families.

But if every intent of the thoughts of those pre-flood people’s hearts was only evil continually, and since people back then  were more physically and mentally vigorous—and lived a lot longer—at that time, the Creator of these human beings (these people who had so grotesquely twisted His image into a sadistic, demonic leer) did the only thing He could. He put a stop to the pain.

The issue, of course, was trust. Satan had convinced Eve to distrust God – and her (and Adam's) descendents went beyond distrust of God to despising Him and finally dispensing with Him.

But Noah was different. Noah trusted God. Because in order to step onto that boat, Noah had to answer a crucial, implied question from God. It's the same question God asks you and me, at this point in the world's history. (Here comes Sermon Point One if you are taking notes.) Here's God's first crucial question:

God asks, "Can you trust Me beyond the end of the world?"

Noah’s “end of the world” must've been at least as disturbing as ours. Noah had to trust that God was a dependable boatbuilding consultant. Noah had to trust that the world on the other side of "world’s end" would be habitable, even though nature wouldn’t be nearly as beautiful and hospitable.

How did Noah get this trust? The same way you and I can get it. Noah knew the truth about God. He must've made it his highest priority to understand God's thinking process. Remember, Noah had no Bible. He did, however, have something no later Bible person had – Noah knew people who had known Adam and Eve personally, and he could talk to them about what they remembered. Noah was born right about the time Enoch was taken by God to heaven – and maybe Noah as a young boy considered Enoch his hero. In any event, Noah had made getting to know God his highest priority.

Therefore, the Lord could say of Noah, "I have seen that you are righteous before Me in this generation." In other words, “Noah, even in this horrendously wicked time, you have chosen to stand apart from the crowd devote yourself to understanding and following Me. And that has prepared you to be able to trust Me beyond the end of your world.”

Our next "40 days" period takes us to Deuteronomy chapter 9. Moses is reminiscing about the forty days he spent on Mount Sinai in the presence of God.

Deuteronomy 9:9 – 11: When I went up into the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant which the Lord made with you, then I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water. Then the Lord delivered to me two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words which the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly. And it came to pass, at the end of forty days and forty nights, that the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant.

What a powerful and meaningful time this should have been for the entire Israelite nation! However, down there on the desert floor, the people whom God had led triumphantly out of Egyptian slavery were giving the wrong answer to God's second "forty days” question. Glance down at verse 15.

Verses 15 – 16: “So I turned and came down from the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire; and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. And I looked, and behold, you had sinned against the Lord your God—had made for yourselves a molded calf! You had turned aside quickly from the way which the Lord had commanded you.

So what question were the Israelites answering wrong? What's is God's second crucial "forty days” question?

God asks not only "Can you trust Me beyond the end of the world?" but “Can you trust Me without having to depend on a human leader?”

Several years ago I got a phone call from a woman who at that point was attending our church. After her greeting, she listed the names of several models of cars. Then she asked me, "Pastor, what kind of car should I buy?"

That question startled me. For one thing, I had skipped the theological seminary class on Comparative Automotive (chuckle). For another thing, I do not keep up with which cars are good and which cars aren't. Back in 1983 I started driving Hondas, and have  driven Hondas ever since. But that doesn’t mean they’re the best car—there are other good brands as well.

So I told this lady, "I don't know which kind of car you should buy." I was startled she asked me the question, and she was startled and a bit disgruntled that I didn't have a ready opinion on the tip of my tongue. After all, I was her pastor – her leader – and maybe for her this was a cultural thing, but this woman was cautious about taking any sort of forward step without consulting her minister and regarding that minister’s advice as the Voice of God.

One of the things that makes a Bible-believing pastor toss and turn on his bed at night is how attached some people can become to this or that authority figure. I am frankly very frightened about how ideas enter people's minds. Where do we get our ideas, our philosophies, the presuppositions we use to reason with?

A couple of years ago I heard a radio interview where a psychologist or somebody from that field was suggesting that people who listen to a lot of music that has lyrics actually end up forming a lot of their basic ideas from that music. And I know for certain that this can happen to people who listen a lot to the same kind of talk show, whether it's on the left or on the right. The more we allow ideas to be fed into our head without going through the laborious work of evaluating them, the more we allow not just our ideas but our methods of thinking to be created by others.

If you just think back on conversations you may have overheard, you know how minds can be bent by a ceaseless stream of ideas which try to convince you that the people of my political party pretty much always wear halos, while the people of the opposite political party are close cousins to the Antichrist. To me, it’s appalling how politicians are immediately and dismissively judged by whether the little letter after their name is a “D” or an “R.” Discussion over. No further need for thinking. Are you as frustrated about this as I am?

God asks, “Can you trust Me without having to depend on a human leader who will do your thinking for you?” Those Israelites down there on the desert floor had heard the very voice of God speaking to them from the top of the mountain. But as soon as Moses vanishes up the side of the hill, they let their attention wander.
 
So how do I come to the place where I can trust God without always needing a human leader to guide me? You know the answer as well as I do – we need to really read our Bibles for ourselves rather than let other people tell us what the Bible says.

We need to come to the place (we will have to come to the place) where we can stand on our own if necessary. Man shall not live by bread alone, nor by beloved Christian devotional writer alone, nor by articulate politician alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth God. That’s one of the messages our “Unlocking Revelation” prophecy series will be teaching, starting October 7.

Our next “forty day” period takes us to Numbers 13. I don't know how much time has passed since the Mount Sinai experience we just read about. But it doesn't seem as though it was too long. Maybe a year? Maybe less?

Anyway, it's time for the Israelites (at least in God’s original plan) to move right over into the promised land of Canaan, which is the main reason God brought them out of Egypt. So Moses chooses one person from each of the 12 tribes, and sends them into the land to check it out. Let's pick up the story as the spies return.

Numbers 13:25 – 29: And they returned from spying out the land after forty days. Now they departed and came back to Moses and Aaron and all the congregation of the children of Israel in the Wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; they brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. Then they told him, and said: “We went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. Nevertheless the people who dwell in the land are strong; the cities are fortified and very large; moreover we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the South; the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the mountains; and the Canaanites dwell by the sea and along the banks of the Jordan.”

I find the next verse really interesting. Notice how it starts.

Verse 30: Then Caleb quieted the people . . . .

Did you see that? Caleb had to quiet the people – because they were starting to make noise. Those spies start listing the names of the warlike nations who lived in and around Canaan, and each name is like a bullet in the heart of any courage the people may have built up. So everybody starts to wail in fear.

Caleb does his best.

Verse 30: Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.”

But it's no use. Those eight cowardly spies probably thought they were presenting a balanced, realistic assessment of the situation. And humanly speaking, of course, the Israelites would not have had a chance against Canaan’s disciplined warriors. But with the God of the Egyptian plagues, the God of the manna, the God of the pillar of cloud and fire—no problem.

So when God presents his third crucial question, Caleb answers yes, and Joshua answers yes, but frighteningly, the majority answer no. You and I have got to be in the minority on this issue. Let's find out how.

First of all, what is God's third crucial question?

God asks not only "Can you trust Me beyond the end of the world?" and “Can you trust Me without having to depend on a human leader?” but also, “Can you ignore your fears and trust Me to lead you where I’ve called you?”

Again, it boils down to how much you trust the words of God. The main point about the miraculous deliverance from Egyptian slavery had been to move right on over into the promised land. But only Caleb and his fellow-reconnaissance man Joshua knew enough heart-knowledge about God to decide to ignore their fears and follow His leading.

Where has God called us? Well, He calls us to the foot of the cross on which His Son died. His Son called to us in Matthew 11:28, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Later, He called you and me and the rest of His disciples to do what our congregation is going to do October 7: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:19 – 20.

That right there is an awesomely intimidating challenge. Because it’s so easy to forget what Jesus said in the verse immediately before this “Great Commission,” something that the ten  cowardly, “realistic” spies needed to remember: with God, the impossible that He has commanded becomes possible. In Matthew 28: 18 Jesus said, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.”

Ellen White—a modern “Caleb” if there ever was one—puts it this way: “In reviewing our past history, having traveled over every step of advance to our present standing, I can say, Praise God! As I see what the Lord has wrought, I am filled with astonishment, and with confidence in Christ as leader. We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.”--Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, p. 196 (1902).

 So again, the secret to ignoring my fears and trusting God to lead me where He has called me is to think back on what the Lord has done for me, and to immerse myself in my Bible, where I will find God's resume. There I will find how qualified God is to earn my trust as He leads me forward.

Now let's go to Matthew 4 and briefly look at one more “forty day” period, a very familiar one. His hair still wet from His baptism, Jesus goes directly from that ceremony out into a nearby wilderness.

Matthew 4:1 – 2: Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry.

And then the devil arrives, and one by one dangles before his Creator some truly tempting proposals. First he demands that Jesus prove He is divine by readjusting the molecular structure of a rock in order to make a loaf of bread. Jesus answers Satan with a verse from Deuteronomy.

Then  Satan suggests that Jesus give a dramatic, public demonstration about how God is able to protect Him—jump off a temple tower. What more decisive the way could there be to prove that Jesus was indeed the Messiah? Jesus answers him with another Deuteronomy verse.

Finally, Satan pretends to cut to the chase. "Look," he says matter-of-factly. "You and I can save ourselves a whole lot of trouble right here. I'm going to set it up so that You won’t have to win the hearts of the people one at a time. Just bow the knee to me and You can have Your whole planet back." Jesus answers him with a third Deuteronomy verse, and commands him to leave.

You see, Jesus knew how to give the correct answer to God's fourth crucial “forty days” question, which is this:

God asks not only "Can you trust Me beyond the end of the world?" and “Can you trust Me without having to depend on a human leader?” and “Can you ignore your fears and trust Me to lead you where I’ve called you?” but God also asks, “Can you trust My Word instead of the devil’s delicious deceits?”

A couple of days ago I heard a radio feature from a program called Planet Money. Here's how the feature started. "The US has the dollar. Japan has the yen. Now some people are trying to invent a new currency that's not tied to any country or government. It's called bitcoin. Bitcoin is a lot like cash – for the online universe. It doesn't actually exist in the physical world. You can't hold bitcoins in your hand; they exist only on computers.”

What makes bitcoin different from one of those cards which you can load dollars onto is that bitcoins aren't dollars. They’re bitcoins. They aren't tied to the currency of any particular country.

What you do is to buy a certain number of bitcoins. One bitcoin usually costs about five dollars, but the price can fluctuate wildly, so sometimes they’re 23 dollars apiece.

The interviewers in this radio program actually bought $40 worth of bitcoins and went and bought lunch with them. They finished their lunch just in time—because afterward they learned that the online bank they get used to buy the bitcoins was robbed, and had to shut down! And the person who’d helped them buy their bitcoins lost several thousand of real dollars’ worth!

I don't know what the future holds for bitcoins, but for now they are a pretty shaky investment.

And down through the years, the devil has tried to get people to put their faith in any number of substitute "gods.” Jesus knew that money – which in His native language of Aramaic was called “mammon” – was one of those false gods, and He told us that nobody can serve both the true God and “mammon” at the same time.

So this week it might be a good idea to just run through in your mind some of the delicious deceits which the devil might be trying to tempt you with. Maybe it's an illicit affection for somebody who is not your spouse. Maybe it's a business or other career opportunity which, if you accept it, will mean you will have to ignore one or more of God's 10 Commandments.

And when you become aware of these devilish deceits, , remember that this luscious-looking bait always contains a hook, which will bury itself within you and do a lot of damage. And deflect those deceits the way Jesus did – by well-chosen, well-aimed verses from the Word of God.

And, of course, by prayer. Noah communicated with God, as did his boyhood hero Enoch. Moses’ Israelite follower should have been deepening their own direct connection with God rather than signing over their thinking-responsibilities to their human leader. Caleb and Joshua knew God and His ways so intimately that they could go valiantly forward to where He had called them no matter what giants stood in the way.

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WHAT WE HAVE TO OFFER
Expository Sermon on Titus 2
by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue SDA Church 8/20/2011
©2011 by Maylan Schurch

(To hear the audio for this sermon, click here.)

Please open your Bible to Titus chapter 2.

Back in mid July Shelley and I took a quick road trip to the South Dakota town where I grew up. (It's very simple to get to my hometown from here. Get on I-90, go 1600 miles east, take a left, go 80 miles, and there you are!)

Naturally, once we got to Redfield, we drove around to a lot of places to see how they’ve changed over the years. One of those places was the old campus of the Plainview Adventist boarding academy. I attended eight elementary grades at the little church school connected to that academy, and I had just finished my freshman year when the academy closed.

The massive, three-story academy building had been built in 1910, and it contained the boys dorm, the girls dorm, and pretty much all of the classrooms. Shelley and I drove southeast of town to that old abandoned campus, parked the car, and wandered around. I actually found one of the doors open, so I cautiously went inside and climbed up the stairs to the middle floor.

A few years after the academy closed, this main building had been used to store old magazines. Back in those days, if any Midwest library was lacking a magazine to make up its collection, they could get in touch with the man who operated this business, and he would hunt through his stacks and most likely discover the issue they wanted.

As I was cautiously tiptoeing through those rooms, I saw that they were still filled with massive amounts of magazines, even though I don't think that business is operating anymore. I wasn't sure how strong the floors were, especially with all that weight on them for so many years, so I didn't ascend to the next floor up. I wish I had, because I'm sure Sabbath morning memories would have flooded over me.

You see, back when I was in elementary school, I didn't get much chance to go into the academy building, except on Sabbath mornings. That's when I was one of the five or six kids in the junior class. And we didn't have our own "Junior room," the way we have in this church. Instead, we met in the boys’ dorm chapel, which was a small room.

In a couple of minutes I'm going to tell you more about our junior class in that chapel, but for the moment I'm going to switch to a new subject. At the end of my sermon this morning I'm going to be giving you more information about an evangelistic series called “Unlocking Revelation,” which starts October 7, right here in this sanctuary.

As you know, we haven’t done series like this very frequently. Our last one was Gayle Lasher's series, I think it was three years ago. But this fall, at least 80 of the 100 Adventist churches in western Washington will be doing evangelism. And I think it's a good idea to stop and think, and ask ourselves the question, "What do we have to offer?"

After all, within a couple of square miles of our church are several churches of other faiths. Why should we be the ones to mail out 40,000 handbills, and supply our members with extra handbills to give them to friends and family and other people you know?

What do we have to offer? Why does our community need what we know? What would they miss out on if this series were not offered? What "blanks" does the Adventist view of the Bible fill in?

Back in February, I preached a sermon on the last part of Titus chapter 2, as part of our "memory verses" sermon series. This morning I'd like us to revisit those Titus 2 verses, because I believe that they remind us about some of what we have to offer. Because this is really important.

Why is this important? If we could lay a high-speed train track back through time, all the way to the gates of Eden, and then if we could ride that train back and forth through the centuries and look out the windows and watch what was happening, we would see a familiar and very dangerous pattern show up again and again.

The pattern goes something like this. God tells His human family something He considers very important. It could be something He wants them to understand, or something He wants them to do. But immediately, Satan tries to block that message, or muffle it, or twist it, and while he is doing that, he tries to make God look bad.

This has happened again and again. God told Eve, "You're going to die if you eat the fruit of that particular tree." Satan catches Eve's attention and directly contradicts God. "You will certainly not die," he tells her. And while telling her that, he insinuates into her mind the idea that God is trying to deliberately deny her something that would be good for her. In other words, Satan was distorting the truth about God – instead of a loving Creator, a heavenly Father who enjoys giving good gifts to His children, Satan portrayed God as a tight-fisted old killjoy. Satan, you see, re-created God in his own image, after his own likeness.

But God was right – Adam and Eve did die late that fateful afternoon, through a substitute, in the form of two animals, maybe lambs, whose coats provided them covering, and who death pointed toward Jesus' final sacrifice for sins, which would cover repentant sinners with His righteousness.

I could go on and on. God gave 10 Commandments – spoke them out loud and wrote them with His own finger on stone. Satan got immediately to work, systematically tempting men, women, and even children to break them one by one.

So people started making carved images and worshiping them; they used God's name disrespectfully; they ignored the day which reminded them that He created them and gave them everything that sustained them, they disrespected their parents, they murdered if they thought they had to; they slept with anyone they wanted to; they looted anything they desired; they lied when they thought it was unavoidable; and they coveted what wasn't theirs. And while they did this, they ignored and despised the God who gave them life. Satan led them again and again to discard God’s stated truth as trash.

However, if we really were able to ride along a train track from the gates of Eden toward our time, we would see how, every once in awhile, God's truth was rescued from the garbage dump, scrubbed up, and fully revealed. And as soon as this happened, human beings would promptly begin to live better lives.

This was one of the things Jesus did. He rescued God's truths, and the truth about God Himself, from the appalling legalistic traditions which had obscured it. Paul stood on Mars Hill in Athens and told his hearers what they could handle about the obscure "unknown God."

Great Christians throughout the Middle Ages and beyond turned hearts away from tradition and toward pure, simple Bible statements. They called this idea sola scriptura, which means "Bible only."

It's been a long process, and it hasn't always been a rapid or complete one. The process could only happen so fast, as people were able to accept it. For example, Martin Luther held high the torch of righteousness by faith, but he hated the Baptists and considered them heretics. But Luther restored what truth he could, and the Baptists restored the truths they could, and John Wesley restored the truths he could, and so on down the line.

Each of these heroes reached beneath the muck of human tradition, rediscovered clearly-stated, encouraging Bible truths, and presented them to a spiritually-hungry humanity. And I believe that, for 150 years, this is what Seventh-day Adventists have done as well. Those early Adventist pioneers shook off the traditions of the churches from which they came, and turned their eyes back toward real Bible print, and discovered some surprising good news.

And again, it wasn't new truth, new good news. Instead, it was Bible truth which anyone could open their Bibles and see, once their tradition-filters had been removed. I don't know if you know who Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff is, but she is 87 years old, and people my age will remember her as Doris Day. Doris Day was a popular singer and movie star, but I remember hearing – I think it was when I was in my late 20s – that whenever Doris Day (who by then would have been in her 50s) was photographed, it was through a gauze filter. (Those were the days before Photoshop, of course.) This filter helped hide her wrinkles, and gave the impression that she was still as freshfaced and youthful as always.

Down through the centuries, too many people, for reasons they thought were appropriate, have placed too many filters in front of certain Bible verses. This has changed our view of God, and not for the better. Because many of the filters people have set up have tended to add wrinkles to God's face – anger-lines at the edges of His mouth, frown-furrows on his forehead, pulsing apoplectic veins at His temples.

That’s why it should be the work of every Christian who believes that the Bible is truly inspired to put away his or her own filters, and just simply read the print on the page. Not only for ourselves but because we are ambassadors for God.
You might have heard this week about the very favorable impression former Washington governor Gary Locke has made in China. Locke is now the United States' ambassador to China, and a Chinese businessman photographed him in an airport. The photo shows Gary Locke carrying his own backpack, and ordering something for himself at a deli counter. That photo was spread all over the internet in China.

What astounded and impressed the Chinese was that, evidently, this is not how even minor Chinese officials behave. Over there, if you are a person of any importance at all, you have a staff member to carry your luggage, and another staff member to order you something at a deli counter. You don't do these things yourself.

What was fascinating, of course, was that Gary Locke was not doing these things to make an impression. No “image consultant” suggested this to him. This is how he normally behaved. And maybe it was because this humility was so unconscious that it was so tremendously powerful. People in China begin calling on their own leaders to adopt that humility.

Anyway, we as God’s ambassadors must be so transparently aware of what God is really like, that we can – and in most cases this will be unconsciously – show the truth about Him to other people.

Well, let's get back to our question. On Friday evening, October 7, at 7 p.m., what will our “Unlocking Revelation” seminar have to offer those who come to hear what we have to say? A couple of verses in Titus 2 will help answer that question.

Titus 2:11 [NKJV]: For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men,

God is a “gracious God,” isn’t He? Psalm 86:15 says so: “But You, O Lord, are a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in mercy and truth.” The word "grace" in the original language also means "gift." God's "grace" is His free-of-charge gift of saving mercy to even the worst sinners who have allowed Him to draw them to repentance.

In fact, here's Sermon Point One if you're taking notes.

What will we be able to offer those who come to our prophecy lecture series starting October 7?

We will be able to offer a God who is truly gracious.

Here's where we go back to the little junior class I attended in the boys’ dorm chapel at Plainview Academy. A husband-and-wife team taught that class, Merlin and Lois Anderson, and I do not think I have ever met a more gracious lady than Lois Anderson.

Lois was so refined and polite that it was as though she were the queen of a fairly large country, and we were honored guests in her palace. I mean, in our Junior class we were five or six boys who frankly wished they were somewhere else, but I don't remember Lois ever raising her voice, or losing her temper.

And even though I do not remember anything specific Merlin or Lois taught us – though I'm sure it's all buried somewhere in my subconscious if I was paying attention – I do remember the graciousness in that room. Lois and her husband always treated us as though we were their honored guests, and I have a feeling some of that gracious refinement finally rubbed off on us.

So. Lois was a gracious woman. And God is a gracious God. However, a whole lot of Christians feel that God is a different kind of “gracious” than Lois was. And the reason is that, once again, Satan has done his work to distort God's reputation.

Somehow, many of today's Christians are expected to believe that God is totally love, and also totally able to burn sinners for eternity in an ever-burning hell. Lois Anderson would never do that. She would turn pale at the very thought.
But Satan wants us to believe that the Bible teaches that. However, when you study everything the Bible says about the subject, you discover that it teaches exactly the opposite.

Because the idea of an ever burning hell grows right out of another satanic deception – the idea that we have immortal souls. If you are not acquainted with this subject, and have always assumed that we have an immortal soul, it might be a bit of a jolt to realize that no, God did not saddle us with an immortal soul. First Timothy 6:16 says that God (and of course the rest of the Trinity) “alone has immortality.” So that means that we don’t have it naturally. First Corinthians 15:53 says that there will come a time—at the resurrection of the righteous—when “this mortal must put on immortality,” but not until then. But right now, we are all mortal.

So, an incomplete reading of the Bible, enhanced by a lot of myths invented over the centuries, have caused generation after generation of Christians to look up toward God in puzzlement. How can He be good and gracious, yet continue to stoke the fires of an ever burning hell?

That's one of the issues we’ll be discussing this fall in our series. And Adventists are not alone in coming to this clearer Bible understanding. Beloved Anglican cleric John Stott, who just passed away July 27 at the age of 90, was one of the most influential Christians in the world. If you go to his Wikipedia entry, and look under the heading "controversy," you will see that he too believed that there is no such thing as an ever burning hell, and he took a lot of flak for that.

The recent book by Rob Bell, called Love Wins, expresses something like the same idea, and Rob Bell is getting flak for his position as well.

But the bottom line is that no matter who believes it, and no matter who’s getting flak for believing it, it’s Bible truth.

We only have time to look at one more thing we have to offer in our series this fall. Let’s start with verse 11 again.

Verses 11 – 12: For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age,

What will we be able to offer this fall? Here’s Sermon Point Two:

We will be able to offer not only a God who is truly gracious, but a God who wants to both save and restore us.

This past Thursday I took a quick peek into a bookstore which was in a shopping center, and then I went to another part of the center to sit at a little table and outline this sermon.

When I glanced up, I discovered that I had parked myself just outside the entrance to a fitness center. Through the doorway I could see that there were a lot of empty machines, but there were three people exercising. One of them was a woman who was in a more distant part of the facility walking on a treadmill. Closer to me were a man and a woman, both using stairclimbing machines.

Every once in a while I glanced up to see how they were doing. Those two stair climbers must have walked "upstairs" for 20 or 30 min. straight. I noticed that the woman tried walking sideways a bit, to maybe use different muscles than she had been using. But those two stair climbers were dedicated – they were putting in the time, toning the muscles, working up a sweat.

You see, these folks cared about their health so much that they were willing to take the time to work on it. Maybe one or both of them had been told by a doctor to change their lifestyle, get some exercise. Whatever it was that motivated them, they recognized that they themselves had a part to play in their physical well-being. They knew that good health was far more than taking pills their doctor had prescribed.

This fall we will be offering not only to the public but to those of you who will be attending as well, a God who wants to both save and restore us. This is another area where tradition has obscured the full Bible truth. Scripture tells us that "by grace are ye saved through faith, not of works," and some people have been led to assume that since works or deeds don't save us, we don’t need to be all that concerned about following God’s stated Bible guidelines.

This, of course, is exactly the way Satan wants it. Because if he can arrange it so that we focus only on salvation, and not on the follow-through which this text and many other texts talk about, then all the devil has to do is to sit back and wait, and many half-educated Christians will provide the world with overwhelming evidence that Christianity isn't really that important.

For example, if Christians don't really think that it's important to deny worldly lusts – in other words, if they're not vigilantly, constantly asking God for the Holy Spirit's power to keep them morally pure – next thing you know, they'll be the latest adulterous Exhibit A in Satan's court case in which he's been trying to convince us that being a faithful follower of God isn’t really possible. But Titus 2 assures us that it’s not only possible but crucial.

And take a look at that word "soberly." A more recent way to translate that word is "self control." Again, it's a word which talks about disciplining yourself, being temperate in what’s good, and abstaining from what’s bad. I would imagine that those stair climbers in the fitness center are also fairly careful about what they eat.

If you've been an Adventist for very long, you have seen how the secular world has actually overtaken the supposedly health-conscious Adventist church, and they are now giving us pointers on how to be healthy. We're not exactly leading the charge on this anymore. Some of us probably let ourselves start believing that those health guidelines were pretty legalistic, so we slacked off. But the rest of the world us rushing past us, like faster marathoners overtaking the sludgier ones.

Yesterday I discovered startling truth that Bill Clinton is now a vegan, or very close to it. If you remember back in the days when he was campaigning, he would jog into a MacDonald's very frequently, and order up a hamburger or cheeseburger or something. But according to the Huffington Post online article,

“Bill Clinton is a vegan -- or is, at least, very close to being one. The former U.S. president told CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta this week that he doesn't eat any dairy, eggs or meat, and consumes very little oil. He first opened up about his new plant-based diet last year to CNN's Wolf Blitzer. Clinton has turned to eating solely plants in order to keep weight off and his heart healthy.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/18/bill-clinton-vegan_n_930816.html

I don't know if Bill Clinton becoming vegan counts as one of the signs of the end or not(!), but it’s pretty amazing. It’s at least a sign that he understands on a physical level what this verse is trying to tell us on a spiritual level--that follow-through is important.
 
The article also says that Clinton underwent a quadruple bypass surgery in 2004, and that last year he had to have two stents put so blood could get around some artery blockage. Bill Clinton knows—and every Bible-reading Christian knows—that you don’t simply get a physical or spiritual heart operation, and that’s it. There’s follow-through that needs to happen.

What does the Adventist way of looking at the Bible have to offer? We are able to offer not only a God who is truly gracious, and not only a God who wants to both save and restore us, but a lot of other Bible truths I don’t have time to talk about this morning.

And what’s key to remember is that as we share our faith with our friends, whether in public as will happen this fall, or in one-on-one conversations as the Lord gives the opportunity, we must always signal that it is God’s power which causes real change.

And it is God’s Holy Spirit which can use calamitous world events to reprioritize minds and soften hearts. Let’s keep praying that He will do this among those we know.

(Back to the top)

PEACEWALKING YOUR BIBLE
Topical Sermon on How to Find Peace
by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue SDA Church 8/13/2011
©2011 by Maylan Schurch

(Click here to listen to the audio for this sermon.)

Please open your Bibles to Psalm 4.

I don't know about you, but a lot of what I've been hearing in the news the last couple of weeks has been pretty disturbing.

I think that what's been even more rattling than the Dow’s up-and-down swoops – and the even-graver European debt-crisis news – have been the cautious, uncertain voice-tones of the people who are supposed to be the experts in financial analysis. Every one of these consultants I’ve listened to has abandoned any of the "Oh, this is just a normal cycle, things will get better soon" kind of talk, and now they keep saying, "Nobody really knows how to predict what's going to happen next."

And then there's all of the other news, which is often further away and therefore less able to affect us personally, like the Syrian troops suppressing the protesters, and the Somalia famine, and the tragic, premeditated murder of the Adventist teacher in Tennessee by a 17-year-old student.

A lot of people are crying for an end to all the problems. Why can't we have peace?

The Sabbath is a help, of course. Long ago, on Creation's Day Seven, long before there was war (or even sin), God gave us a prescription for sanity. For centuries and centuries, He has been urging us to fill that prescription, and take a delightful dose every seven days.

When I was a kid, if you got a stomach-ache, your mom gave you Pepto-Bismol. It was the best-tasting medicine I’ve ever taken. Just the sight of that thick, glorious pink liquid on the spoon made me feel better.

The Sabbath is what you could call a “natural remedy.” By entering the portals of that “temple in time” at twilight Friday evening, we allow the peace of God's eternity to flow around us. By celebrating God’s Sabbath on God’s day, I’m saying, “Lord, I know You are the Creator. ‘For in six days the Lord did make the heavens and the earth.’ I know I’m not just the latest evolutionary spasm in some ascending life-form.”

Isn't it nice that God didn't create the Sabbath as a literal temple we had to travel to? Instead, He brings the temple to us every week. As Friday evening begins in every sector of the globe, the Sabbath wraps itself around the planet, pole to pole.

And it’s interesting how He’s set it up. First, God’s Sabbath is dark, so we can get some rest. Then it becomes light, so we can enjoy His company without having to worry about the hassles of the other six days. Blessed are the people who have learned that the Sabbath isn't some dusty relic of Old Testament Jewish legalism, but instead was a birthday gift to Adam and Eve and their children—not to mention a formidable weapon against end-time insanity.

But the Bible has more to say about how to find peace. Because if we don't find peace God's way, we are left with two other, far-less-perfect ways to try to do this. Shelley and I saw one of these ways in action two days ago, early Thursday afternoon.

We needed to make an appointment up north by a certain time, so we drove west past the Valley Medical Center in South Renton. As we emerged onto northbound 167, the East Valley Highway, the traffic had come to a stop. Suddenly, we saw something that made us very concerned. Beside us was a large truck, which had stopped. In front of the truck there was an empty space of about three car lengths, and beyond that space were some cars.

Then we saw a large, well muscled man walking back across that open space toward the truck. He was gesturing with anger and annoyance, and in one hand he held what looked like a short baseball bat. I don’t know if this bat was actually a piece of sports equipment, or a weapon. It was probably 2 feet long, with a thick barrel which suddenly narrowed to a handle. This man was striding along, swinging that bat angrily, and then he got back into his truck.

Naturally, Shelley and I were very concerned with what he might have done with that bat to whoever was in one of those cars up ahead. But as we slowly moved forward, we could see that even though the line of cars stopped, no one seemed to be injured. In what looked like the car he had come from, I saw a small woman with large sunglasses who seemed to be dialing a number on her cell phone. And then we moved on ahead, and lost touch with what was going on.

That's one way to try to make peace – keep an ugly shortened bat in your truck and threaten people with it. Some people try this “threat-of-force” method, sometimes at home, sometimes with nobody on the outside suspecting that they do this. But as oppressive militaries here are there across the world are learning, a peace achieved by force isn't real peace at all, and won’t last forever.

Another way to find peace is to pretend nothing is wrong, to ignore the news, ignore anything negative, maybe even escape into a fantasy world to try to postpone unpleasantness. I remember visiting the home of a family who had lost a beloved grandmother. The granddaughter, who was about 10 years old at the time, simply buried herself in the latest Harry Potter book for hours at a time.

So those are two ways, humanly speaking, to find peace in a crisis – try to force peace, or try to escape from reality. But when I did some Bible study early this week, I discovered that there are at least five Bible verses which specifically give us God's ways to find true peace. None of these verses promises that challenges and difficulties and dangers will vanish, but these verses show us ways we can enjoy the true peace of heaven.

And as we move through Scripture finding these keys to peace, you might almost say that we are "peace-walking" through our Bibles. (I was driving through Kirkland a few days ago, and I see that they still have their weekly “art walk.”) Walking is good for you as a physical exercise, and I think that peace-walking through the Bible is good for our spiritual health and even our sanity.

Let me show you what I mean.

Psalm 4:8 [NKJV]:  I will both lie down in peace, and sleep; For You alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.

If you're taking sermon notes, here comes Sermon Point One.

What's the first discovery on our "Bible peace walk"? What is one of God’s ways to true peace?

I need to remember that real peace comes only from God.

Remember what Jesus said when He talked about delivering that peace? In John 14:27 He said, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

In other words, this is not ordinary peace – this is Jesus' peace. It's totally different from the peace the world tries to talk you into adopting – forcing peace or escaping from reality. Let's take a closer look at Psalm 4:8:

Psalm 4:8 [NKJV]:  I will both lie down in peace, and sleep; For You alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.

Do you ever have problems getting to sleep at night because of something you worry about? Well, this verse gives you permission to give whatever is troubling you to the Lord. I’ve had to do this a number of times in my years as a pastor. I like there in bed praying over and over, “Lored, I give this to You.”

Even though Peter's early record as a disciple was quite spotty, and even though he showed himself a coward just hours before Jesus was crucified, Peter finally learned how to claim Psalm 4:8.

Here’s how we know this. Acts 12 tells how King Herod had Peter’s close friend, the disciple James the brother of John, executed, and then had Peter arrested. I don't know about you, but if the authorities had had one of my fellow Christians executed, and if those same authorities then arrested me, I would be up all night, praying, “Lord, I give this to you.”

But Acts 12:6 says that Peter was sleeping, right there on death row. He had evidently learned the truth of Psalm 4:8, that no matter how terrible things were around him, he was truly, eternally safe in the arms of Jesus.

Okay, how do you and I come to this point? Well, that's what our Bible "peace walk" is about. As we move from verse to verse, we'll find out.

And our next stop is Psalm 119.

Psalm 119:165: Great peace have those who love Your law, And nothing causes them to stumble.

If the first thing I need to do to find peace is to remember that real peace comes only from God, the second thing I need to do is to learn to love God’s law.

Because “great” peace—not just ordinary peace, but "great” peace—comes to those who have learned to love God's law. And notice something tremendously, crucially, vitally important – this verse does not say  "Great peace have those who keep Your law.” It says, "Great peace have those who love Your law.”

Every once in a while, as I drive through the streets of Renton and Bellevue and other towns, I get a grin on my face when I see huge, football-player-size men walking tiny dogs. Sometimes it seems that the larger the man, the tinier the dog he has. And I would guess that in most of these cases, not only is that little dog devoted to that large man, but that large man is devoted to that little dog.

I know that if these dog-devoted men went to the Internet and searched for "How to take care of a dog," they could find lots of advice. And most of it would probably be helpful and informative – but many of these rules probably wouldn't be very necessary. Because if you truly love your little dog, you will be very careful with it, and you will keep a close eye on how it's doing. You'll feed it, you'll take it to the vet if you think that's necessary.

Do you see the point? Psalm 4:8 urges us to learn to love God's law. And if we first of all learn to love God Himself, then we will of course keep His law. People in our congregation who have new little babies love those babies, and following all the good baby-care rules is therefore a “duh” no-brainer.

How can loving God's law give me great peace? Maybe one reason is that the better acquainted I become with God's law, the more I see that it is really a revelation of His own character. I take great comfort in knowing that God is not an "anything goes" God. When London teens smash shop windows and steal other people's property, the Bible tells me that God gets riled riled up about that. And that's good, just like the fact that thousands of policemen are gathering in London to protect property, and that makes the average citizen feel good.

God may not send immediate thunderbolts down on the heads of the looting rascals, but it makes me feel good that He doesn't just chuckle dismissively like some sentimental celestial Santa Claus. When Revelation 22:15 tells me that people who are unrepentant “sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and whoever loves and practices a lie” won't be allowed into heaven, that makes me feel good, and safe. Knowing that the universe is not governed by chaos but by a Lawgiver who will hold people to account gives me a peaceful feeling.

How do I learn to love God's law? Again, it's probably a little like learning to love guidelines for puppy care, or baby care – if you love the puppy or the baby first, the guidelines will pretty much take care of themselves. Sure, you will definitely want to study the guidelines for fine-tunings and nuances you may not have thought about on your own, but you will study those guidelines with the deepest devotion because you have first learned to love the One they talk about, and you will long to make Him happy.

And, assuming you have truly fallen in love with God, if as you study those guidelines you discover that you aren't following through on one or more of them, you will change your ways. You will say, right along with 1 John 5:3, “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.”

Of course they're not burdensome. If, for your puppy's best health, you discover you need to feed it a certain kind of food, and if for your baby’s best health you discover you need to change to a new way of taking care of it, you gladly and naturally do this.

And if the very One who showed His love for you by forming the sinews and blood vessels and synapses and retinas of your body, and then gives you guidelines for taking care of yourself and your soul, you naturally follow through, right? Of course. It's a no-brainer.

And our next “Bible peacewalk” stop follows naturally from this one.

Proverbs 16:7: When a man’s ways please the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.

How do I find peace? First I need to remember that real peace comes only from God. Second, I need to learn to love God’s law by loving the God behind the law. And third, I need to live so that my ways please the Lord.

I mean, it’s right there in black and white: “When a man’s ways please the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.”

Take a look at that word “way.” It’s the Hebrew word derek, and it literally means “a trodden path.” Back in Exodus 32:1 it says that "Jacob went on his way," and that's that same word. Numbers 14:25 talks about the "way of the Red Sea,”  that's that same word. The word derek is used over 1600 times in the Old Testament. It's not only a rubber-meets-the-road word, it's also a road word. It's the word for road or path, both literally and figuratively.

So when the author of this inspired proverb talks about our "ways" pleasing the Lord, he's not talking about misty-wisty philosophy. He's talking about the specific paths you and I choose to travel as we go through our days. Where do we drive our cars? What stores do we go to? At the grocery store, which aisles do our feet take us down? What products do we reach for?

Some of you probably remember Bil Keane’s cartoon feature “Family Circus.” During the week, this would normally be an actual ink circle, and within it would be Jeffy or Dolly or one of the other kids making a comic comment. But the “Family Circus” Sunday features would take up more space, and people especially enjoyed it when one of the kids was shown running all through the house, upstairs and downstairs, and out into the yard, and wherever he or she had gone there would be a black dotted line. People loved this, because it perfectly expressed the energetic little trails which curious kids follow.

Our Heavenly Father follows our "ways" with the deepest interest. And if where we go, and what we do when we get there, are pleasing to Him, He can make it possible for us to be at peace. Obviously, if you go to peaceful places and do peace-inducing things (after all, Jesus said, "Blessed are the peacemakers"), and you avoid places which can disrupt your finances or your family life, then it's much easier for God to give you His peace.

I'm sure that, in our half-hour Bible peace walk this morning, we are missing several good peace verses, but an important one is found over in Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8:6: For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

How do I find peace? First I need to remember that real peace comes only from God. Second, I need to learn to love God’s law by loving the God behind the law. Third, I need to live so that my ways please the Lord. Fourth, I need to be spiritually minded.

So what does it mean to be spiritually minded? Well, notice that the verse says that to be spiritually minded is opposite to being carnally minded. Carnal means "fleshly," and a good way to find out what this means is to think about the difference between the "works of the flesh and the "fruit of the Spirit" in Galatians 5.

Let me just list the "works of the flesh," from Galatians 5:19 – 21: "Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication (fornication is having sex without being married), uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like . . .”

So if anybody is doing any of these things, or the "and the like" things, because this isn't a complete list, that person is carnally minded rather than spiritually minded. We often read the list of the "fruit of the Spirit," and these are pleasant and lofty things to think about, but we need to remember that you and I cannot have "love, joy, peace" and so on, and still be doing any of the "works of the flesh" we've just read. They are polar opposites Jesus said more than once that we cannot serve two masters. We can't have our feet in both camps. At one point He said "He who is not for me is against me."

So how do I experience the "fruit of the Spirit" and not the "works of the flesh"? I need to pray for the Holy Spirit in my life, and make decisions against the works of the flesh and for the fruit of the Spirit.

Our final "Bible peace walk" destination may be the most encouraging promise we've read so far. It certainly confronts, head on, the worries we sometimes have.

Philippians 4:6 – 7: Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Isn't that practical advice?

How do I find peace? First I need to remember that real peace comes only from God. Second, I need to learn to love God’s law by loving the God behind the law. Third, I need to live so that my ways please the Lord. Fourth, I need to be spiritually minded. And finally, fifth, I need to cover my worries with detailed, thanksgiving-soaked prayer.

This is really an amazing passage. Let’s break it down for a moment.

First of all, Paul tells us not to be anxious about anything. He doesn't say "Be only anxious about the 15% of your worries which are really serious." No, he says be anxious about nothing. No matter what looms on your horizon, don't be anxious about it.

Second, Paul tells us to pray in detail, weaving our requests together with our thank-you’s. A good rule of thumb to follow is that when you pray, start with the thank-you's. And remember, Paul wants us to pray in detail. So we shouldn't just say vaguely "Thank You for all Your blessings" and then hurry on to the "help me's." Let's dwell on the specific things we have to be thankful for. When we pray about a crisis, let’s express our gratitude for what’s going well, because things could always be much worse. In my own prayers, I have often noticed that the longer I dwell on the thank-you's, the more confident and less worried I feel about the requests.

So, we're not supposed to be anxious about anything, and we are supposed to pray in detail, with gratitude. And third, we need to remember that the peace God promises is a supernatural one which we can't explain logically. And notice what else Paul says, in Verse 7: “ . . . and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

Do you see that word “guard”? That’s a very powerful military word. Over in 2 Corinthians 11:32 Paul was telling the story about how a king had had a whole garrison of soldiers guarding the city of Damascus so Paul couldn’t escape, and that’s that same Greek word for “guard.” It means “to keep under guard, or protect.”

That’s at least how powerfully God’s supernatural, understanding-surpassing peace will guard not only our hearts but our minds through Christ Jesus if we will follow His instructions.

So now we’ve come to the end of our Bible “peace walk.” Doesn’t that make you feel better about facing this coming week? By the way, I always put both the audio and the manuscript versions of my sermons on our website, so if you didn’t take notes today, you can still review these wonderful promises.

Do you want God’s peace this week? Are you willing to follow this “peacewalk” trail?

THREE INTRODUCTIONS
Expository Sermon on John 1
by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue SDA Church 8/6/2011
©2011 by Maylan Schurch

(To hear the audio for this sermon, click here.)

Please open your Bibles to John chapter 1.

Earlier this week on a radio program called "KUOW Presents” I heard a fascinating true story. The man who told that story was a retired medical doctor, and the story had happened to him in his very first year of medical practice.

One night this young doctor was working in the emergency room at a hospital. Suddenly, the medics brought in a 70-year-old man who was obviously very near death. This young doctor checked him over, and couldn't really find any cause of this problem. Yet the man was very thin, and seemed to be hanging onto life by a thread.

Well, this young doctor went to work and put this patient through every test the hospital could possibly do. He checked the man for cancer and for all sorts of other things, but there were still no clues as to why he was so sick.

Finally, in desperation, the young doctor consulted an older doctor who was working the same shift. The older doctor talked to the sick man, and within five minutes he had discovered the problem.

What had happened was that this patient had gone to a fortuneteller to have his fortune told. Once the fortuneteller had finished, the man decided that he didn't like what she had said, so he refused to pay her fee.

The doctor who was telling the story thinks maybe that this man must've had marriage problems, because of how readily his wife cooperated with the fortuneteller. Because the fortuneteller immediately called this man's wife and asked her to wait until the man was asleep, and to snip off some of his hair, and the wife agreed to do this. She snipped the hair, and took it to the fortuneteller, and the fortuneteller put a hex (a curse) on the man. And she made sure the man knew what she was doing.

Well, once the man realized that a hex had been put on him, he simply gave up. He decided there was no use fighting the hex, so his body simply started shutting down. He refused to eat.

At this point in the doctor's story, he paused and told the interviewer with a chuckle, "Be careful what you believe!"
Well, once these two doctors heard the news about the hex, they began to wonder if there was something they could do about this. Finally they decided on a plan. That night, at about two in the morning, they came to the man's room. They wheeled his hospital bed into an unused single room. They made sure they had their white coats on, so that they would look very professional and medical and authoritative.

Once they got him in the room, they told him, "We are going to perform a hex reversal on you. But it will only work if you never tell anybody about this ceremony. If you do tell anybody, the hex will return, and it will be five times worse than the original one!" (They didn’t want word about this to get around to the rest of the medical staff.)

They had brought an ashtray into the room with them, and they placed it on a table. They went to the man and snipped off a lock of his hair, and then turned off all the lights and lit the piece of hair on fire. (The doctor didn’t say whether or not they muttered incantations.) When the ceremony was over, they wheeled the man back to his own room.

The next morning they checked on their patient. They learned that when the breakfast tray had come around, he had gobbled up everything on it, and had ordered a second breakfast tray! A few days later he was discharged from the hospital, perfectly well.

Be careful what you believe. And also, be careful whom you believe. Because when you earnestly believe in something, you are most likely to also earnestly believing in the someone who taught you that something – whether it's a talkshow host you have come to agree with and therefore trust, or whether it's a religious leader, or whether it's a newspaper horoscope author. What you really believe , as we've seen, can even be a life or death matter.

The book of John – and all of the other Gospels – was written to introduce its readers to Jesus, and to urge them to believe in Him. Probably most of you in this room have discovered from personal experience that believing in Jesus can deliver you from captivities into which other beliefs which don't take Jesus into account have taken you prisoner.

Over the last few weeks our elders and I have been making plans for a Bible prophecy lecture series which will begin Friday evening, October 7, right here in the sanctuary. I and a number of our elders will be doing the speaking, and on the screen you will see a wonderful series of PowerPoint slides put together by veteran Adventist evangelist Mark Finley.
We'll be telling you more about this as the weeks go along, so that you can understand what will happen in case you might like to invite neighbors or friends, or even family members and coworkers, to hear a full presentation of the Bible beliefs which can answer the deepest and most worrisome questions people are asking today. Because it does matter—eternally—what you believe and whom you believe in.

And that's why I thought John chapter 1 might be helpful this morning. Because in John 1, we see three people who are introducing other people to Jesus. And the more I read this chapter, the more I think we can learn some very helpful facts about introducing the people in our lives to our Savior.

Let me show you what I mean.

John 1:1 – 4 [NKJV]: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

If you're taking sermon notes, here comes Sermon Point 1.

Introducing Jesus to someone who doesn't know Him is not optional – it's essential.

You see, Jesus isn't simply one more positive person to know. He's not an upgraded model of Doctor Phil or Doctor Oz or Doctor Laura or Doctor Robert Schuller. If somebody introduced you to any of these well-known advice-givers, and gave you an hour together, these people could probably give you good advice, and straight talk, and you might come from their presence inspired to live more sensibly.

But the Son of God did not allow himself to be compressed into a miracle child in Mary's womb simply to be the latest in a line of wisdom-givers. Here is the One who was God, who was in the beginning with God, whom God used to create everything. This is the One who contains life, who gives life. This is the One who holds the keys to death and the grave, and who, if He wants to, will click open those locks and give you eternal life.

And of course He does want to. But as we'll see as this chapter goes along, He needs to be introduced to people by other people who already know him.

But suddenly, in verse five, we discovered a second fact about introducing Jesus.

Verse 5: And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

Introducing Jesus to someone may be essential –but He is not always welcome.

Back on June 13 I was listening to a radio program which focuses on news that's happening all over the world, and I heard about the water supply in the country of Yemen. Yemen's water supply is shrinking alarmingly, but it’s not because of any natural disaster like a drought.

Instead, what’s happening is that huge amounts of water are being used to help grow a plant whose Latin name is Catha edulis, but which the local people call khat. Khat contains the alkaloid called cathinone, which is an amphetamine-like stimulant which is said to cause excitement, loss of appetite, and euphora. In 1980, the World Health Organization classified it as a “drug of abuse.”

The problem is that khat is such a popular stimulant all over the country that groups of people, mostly men, get in little groups and take it together. And according to the radio program, which interviewed several Yemenis, the people like khat so much that they don't care that it's using up their precious water. Evidently things have not yet come to a real crisis point, so there's not a concern about this among the people, at least not enough of a concern to cause them to stop their khat habit and save the water for themselves and their children to drink.

When we hear this kind of thing, we roll our eyes and say, "Why don't they do something about this? Isn't this a no-brainer?"

But anybody who comes along suggests that they do something about this is not welcome. People who indulge in this drug evidently do not wish to think long-term, but only about their immediate pleasure.

That’s something like the way it is when Jesus is introduced to people who may not be ready for Him. If they feel at all that He will in any way disturb their present way of living, they back away, even though the consequences will be eternal.

And it’s always been this way. The Pharisees ignored Christ's jaw-dropping miracles and worked desperately to have Him murdered – because He was threatening the power they held over the people. A wealthy young man turned away because Jesus suggested that he give up his money – that khat-like drug he was holding onto even though it was eating away at his soul.
However, there were people who responded to Jesus, and followed Him – most often because they were introduced to Him by other people who'd already become acquainted with Him. And as I studied these introducers in John 1, I discovered some of the reasons why they were so effective.

Take John the Baptist, for example. Let's watch what he does.

Verses 6 – 8: There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.

Glance down at verse 15.

Verse 15: John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.’ ”

Jesus and John were cousins. Jesus was actually born several months after John, but John recognized that Jesus had existed before John was born.

And down to verse 19.

Verses 19 – 27: Now this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.” Then they said to him, “Who are you, that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?” He said: “I am ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Make straight the way of the Lord,” ’ as the prophet Isaiah said.” Now those who were sent were from the Pharisees. And they asked him, saying, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” John answered them, saying, “I baptize with water, but there stands One among you whom you do not know. It is He who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose.”

Introducing Jesus to someone may be essential. But since He is not always welcome, His introducers must be absolutely humble.

John, of course, was the major prophetic voice at that time. Jesus would later call him the greatest of the prophets, greater than Daniel, greater than Samuel or Isaiah or Jeremiah or Ezekiel. Yet when John introduced people to Jesus, he lowered himself to the level of someone who didn't even consider himself worthy enough to loosen Jesus' sandal-strap.

I have probably mentioned before that there is a meditation temple up in Bothell, and one day a couple of years ago I went on to its website where  you could take a photo tour of the facility. In their main sanctuary, on the front wall, are probably nine or 10 pictures of great gurus. Those pictures are arranged in a sort of wide upside down V, and at the highest point is a portrait of Jesus. Sloping down on either side of Him are the gurus.

I'm sure these meditation-temple people mean well, and I'm sure they must consider Jesus very important, but if John the Baptist saw that wall display, he would have to immediately take some high-powered blood pressure medication. Because John knew that Jesus isn't just another philosophy-salad-bar option. He is the Creator and Life giver and Redeemer. He holds the keys to eternal life. If John the Baptist were to stride into that meditation temple, he would remove each of those guru photos from the wall, and lay them in a line on the floor, face down, before Christ's portrait.

So when John the Baptist was being humble when comparing himself to Jesus, and introducing people to Jesus, it wasn't just because John was a humble guy. It was that John knew who Jesus really was.

And there's an especially poignant moment starting in verse 35. If John has any sort of an ego at all, he allows the approach of Jesus to utterly vaporize it—even though it will cost John some disciples.

Verses 35 – 37: Again, the next day, John stood with two of his disciples. And looking at Jesus as He walked, he said, “Behold the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.
 
Just these three verses speak volumes about the kind of teacher John must have been. Not only is he himself humble enough to consider himself nothing when compared to Jesus, but he must have instructed his disciples so well that when they finally got a glimpse of the true Messiah, there was no question as to where their loyalty should be. They immediately follow Jesus, and probably followed Him with greater confidence because it was John who introduced them to Him.

You might not realize it, but we have already been introduced to the second introducer in this chapter. John's two former disciples follow Jesus, and Jesus invites them to come and see where He's staying. Watch what happens next.

Verses 40 – 41: One of the two who heard John speak, and followed Him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his own brother Simon, and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated, the Christ).
 
Let's say Peter was your brother, and you were Andrew. There are probably not two more opposite personalities then the two of you. If you're Andrew, the five words you speak to your brother – "We have found the Messiah" – are your only recorded words in the Bible. Your brother Peter will do many things – most of them impulsively – and will say many things. Your brother Peter will attempt to slice someone's carotid artery in the garden of Gethsemane. Your brother Peter is also a coward.

Yet you, meek, timid Andrew, know you should introduce him to Jesus. And you know your brother well enough to select those five words and use them. And those words get his attention.

What seems very clear is that even though Andrew and Peter must've been polar opposites when it came to personality, they evidently had such a good relationship that Andrew could credibly introduce Peter to the Messiah. And Peter didn't scoff, didn't ask questions, but just went to see Jesus.

Family, as you probably well know, are the most difficult people to share your faith with. We all have siblings and relatives who believe differently than we do, or don't believe at all. And we've discovered that the wisest course is to remain humble, and often silent, while praying earnestly.

But some of you tell me stories about how the Lord once in a while provides perfect opportunities to gently reveal truth that you may not have been able to mention before. So keep praying for your family members, praying for those opportunities, praying for the wisdom to say the right words at the right time, in the right and most complete attitude of humility.

One thing, I think, that can give us a great deal of courage when it comes to our family members (or others)is what happens when Jesus finally meets Andrew's brother.

Verses 40 – 42: One of the two who heard John speak, and followed Him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his own brother Simon, and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated, the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus. Now when Jesus looked at him, He said, “You are Simon the son of Jonah. You shall be called Cephas” (which is translated, A Stone).

Introducing Jesus to someone may be essential. But since He is not always welcome, His introducers must be absolutely humble. But it can give us courage to remember that Jesus already knows our friends and loved ones intimately.

Jesus looks the astonished Simon in the eye and not only tells him who he is, but gives him absolutely the perfect nickname.

We need to remember, as we pray for our families and relatives and others, that Jesus' Holy Spirit is already working for them, and our prayers can give heaven greater permission to do miraculous things. So let's keep praying.

Now let's take a look at the third introducer-of-people-to-Jesus in this chapter.

Verses 43 – 49: The following day Jesus wanted to go to Galilee, and He found Philip and said to him, “Follow Me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” And Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward Him, and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!” Nathanael said to Him, “How do You know me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Nathanael answered and said to Him, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

Once again, we see that Jesus knows Nathanael very well. He knows him well enough to proclaim him a true Israelite, who is lacking in deceit.

And notice that Nathanael is someone who speaks his mind. When he hears Jesus' birth city of Nazareth, he frankly expresses disbelief that anything good can come from there. But his heart is so attuned to the truth – and so repulsed by lies – that when he meets the Nazarene who is the way, the truth, and the life, he immediately proclaims him the Son of God.

So let's keep praying. There are many honest-in-heart people who, when introduced to Jesus, will accept Him fully.
During last month's Vacation Bible School here at the church, I experienced a tender little moment with one of the kids. It was at the end of one of the evening sessions, and after circulating among the various activities, little groups of kids were gathering back in the sanctuary for the closing program.

I was standing at the back of the sanctuary watching everybody come in. A tiny girl who must've been just five or six walked past me and glanced up into my face. Her eyes lighted up with recognition. "I remember you!” she said. "You came to our school!"

Over in one of the pews, this girl’s “crew leader,” who’d been in charge of the little group of which this girl was a member, was beckoning her to come join the rest of the kids. So this little girl trotted obediently away, but suddenly turned around and came back to me, and looked anxiously up. She said, “Do you remember us?”

That really touched my heart. And maybe the most wonderful news of all in John chapter 1, and in the rest of the Bible, is it even though we may have forgotten Jesus, He remembers us. I didn't remember that little girl's name. But Jesus remembers her. He knows her name. He knew Peter's name, and Nathanael's name, and He knows the names of every person in our life who needs to be introduced to Him.

Would you like to start—or continue—praying for people who need to come to know Jesus more completely? How many of you would like to do that?

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Broken Lights
Topical Sermon by Gayle Woodruff
July 30, 2011
Bellevue Seventh-day Adventist Church

(On the audio version, Maureen Caldwell tells a delightful story about baby Canada geese, then Gayle speaks, and concludes with a song she wrote. To hear the audio, click here.)

I pulled into a convenience store to get something to drink.  But really I just wanted to clear my head – and maybe -- just breathe.  My heart was pounding and I could feel panic start to grip me.  How could this be happening?  Should I keep going or just go home.  I hadn’t expected to unravel like this.  It was unnerving.

I was en route to a community church in Monroe where there was to be a no-media gathering for volunteer and staff who had known Jayme Biendl, the prison guard, who had been killed just days earlier by an inmate at the Washington State Reformatory.

That such horrible deed had even happened at all was terrible.  That this happened at the Washington State Reformatory, where, for 7 years I had served in Prison Ministry, made this very personal.  That this happened in the chapel, our chapel, to the guard who was our chapel guard, made this chilling. 

We had baptisms in that chapel. We had a picture taken at one of the baptisms that even ended up in the Gleaner.  Now other pictures haunted me.  Faces of both victim and accused were familiar to me – and I could erase neither from my mind.

For a while I had been considering my future role for prison ministry.  Now with this -- I cannot adequately describe the complex mixture of grief, confusion and shock that I felt.  I felt rocked to the core of my being.

From the safety of my car I sat and watched other cars go by. I wondered where they were all going.  Were they too going to the community church, or someplace else?  Again, I thought about going home.  After all, I really didn’t know where this Community Church was – except my Garmin was giving clear indication to the contrary.

I looked at my watch – no I couldn’t use that excuse either.  I wasn’t late.  I had to go – I needed to go.

Sometimes life doesn’t make sense.  Life hurts.  Things can get really pretty tough.  The answers aren’t easy to find.   This morning I’d like to talk a bit about how God used my brokenness as a light for someone else. And how that person was a light also for me.  But first I’d like to look at one of my favorite stories in the Bible about someone who faced grief beyond anything I can imagine, yet stayed faithful to God.  The story of Joseph.

He had to deal with a whole lot of things that didn’t make sense.  Let’s read a bit of the story, beginning with Genesis 37:2-4.

Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brothers. And the lad was with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives; and Joseph brought a bad report of them to his father.  Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children because he was the son of his old age.  And he also made him a tunic of many colors.  But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure that I would have particularly enjoyed growing up with Joseph.  Have you ever thought about it?  He got the clothes, the attention, the affection – and if you did anything wrong, he’d tell on you!

Then there were the dreams.  Let’s read them in Genesis 37: 5-11

Now Joseph had a dream, and he told it to his brothers; and they hated him more. So he said to them, ‘Please hear this dream which I have dreamed:  There we were, binding sheaves in the field.  Then behold, my sheaf arose and also stood upright; and indeed your sheaves stood all around and bowed down to my sheaf.  And his brothers said to him, ‘Shall you reign over us? Or shall you indeed have dominion over us? So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words.  Then he dreamed still another dream and told it to his brothers, and said, ‘Look, I have dreamed another dream.  And this time the sun, moon and the eleven stars bowed down to me.’ 

So he told it to his father and his brothers and his father rebuked him and said to him, ‘What is this dream you have dreamed?  Shall your mother and I and your brothers indeed come to bow down to the earth before you?’  And his brothers envied him, but his father kept the matter in mind.

Now really – I don’t think we can hardly blame the brothers for feeling slighted.  Who hasn’t wondered why someone else was favored with this or that.  Who hasn’t wondered if they themselves even mattered at all?

The story continues with Jacob sending Joseph off to check on his brothers.  They, of course, are not happy to see the “dreamer” coming and plot to kill him – thinking this will end their woes with him and any possible fulfillment of those displeasing dreams.  Rueben, the eldest, suggests they put him in a pit where he can later come back and rescue him. 

This doesn’t happen of course because while Rueben is off doing who knows what, the other brothers, at the suggestion of Judah, sell him to the Ishmaelites.

In an instant life had changed for Joseph. Never mind the coat now. He would not get to watch Benjamin grow up. He would not be returning home to see his father. His familiar security was gone.  He had always been taken care of. Who would take care of him now?  He was going to be a … slave…??  Really?  Did his brothers hate him that much?  God??  Are you out there?  Are you listening?  Have you left me too?  It seems really dark right now.

Joseph was on his way to Egypt with  no idea what lay ahead.  He only knew intense grief and sorrow.   Yet, n Egypt, God was with him and he served in the home of Potiphar – who placed Joseph in charge of everything because he saw that the Lord was with him.  Things went so well until Potiphar’s wife falsely accused Joseph and  Joseph went from being highly regarded to being a prisoner.

For me, the Joseph story is a perfect example of trusting God when absolutely nothing makes sense.  He had evidences of God’s blessings and comfort, yet so much grief and misfortune. Being falsely accused and put in prison must have really perplexed and discouraged him.  Have you ever wondered what possible good God could have in mind by allowing you to be here or there or in this situation or that situation?  I’m sure that Joseph must have wondered this again and again.

Yes, things turned out well for Joseph, even though it took a really long time!  Joseph suffered and endured much hardship, yet he was a light for God in whatever circumstance he was placed in.  If you haven’t read the story of Joseph in a while, I’d encourage you to do so.  It’s a wonderful story of not only the faithfulness of Joseph, but also God’s faithfulness and how He never runs out of options for solving whatever kind of problems we may find ourselves in.  The story is found in the book of Genesis Chapter 37 through the end of the book.

I mentioned that I was going to share how God used a very painful time I was going through in a way I couldn’t have imagined.  The death of the prison guard, along with a series of several simultaneous personal explosions had me in such a dark valley and I felt impressed to contact my longtime mentor and friend – to see if he had time to talk to me.  I’ll call him Pete.

Let me tell you a bit about Pete.  I first met him at some Trade Show when we were competitors in the building industry.  He was packing up his things as I arrived for my shift.  He had set up a drawing with a Product Prize valued at a grand sum of $300 for the lucky winner.  I thought this was incredibly dumb – though I didn’t tell him that.

As he was leaving he said cheerfully, – “Well; now it’s your turn to pass out your business cards.”    I looked at him in disbelief.  “Are you kidding?”  I said.  “I’m not handing out my cards to these people.  They might call me, and I already have too many people calling me.”  (Truthfully, I hated trade shows)

He looked at me as though I’d fallen off some unknown planet.  “What’s the matter with you?  This is a great place to pick up business.” 

“Fine,” I said – Give me some of your cards and I’ll pass them out for you and I’ll be doing both of us a favor.”    And so he did – and that was our first impression meeting.

Fast forward a few months to a call that I placed to him.   Later, he told me he almost didn’t take my call.  My message was short.  “My California based company doesn’t see a future in the Seattle market. They’re finished here. I am 3 months pregnant.  I am not signing your contract.  Am I going to work for you or Brand X?”

Pete said, “Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right over.”  I’ve never been hired more quickly in my life.
He postponed a knee surgery and bought more trucks.

I found out later that he didn’t necessarily like me, he just didn’t like selling against me.  It seems he also wanted to have words about some big project that I “took” from him while a competitor. This project had been in his own back yard! 

My response about that was both honest and short.  I had no idea where his backyard was –and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.  Moral of the story – do not hire pregnant competitors!  Gradually things mellowed and we acted less like competitors and more like we were on the same team.

And so began a 20 year adventure that included tremendous successes mixed with lots of ups and downs in the building industry and really lasted until the world of corporate mergers messed up the company Pete had built and took everyone different directions and actually allowed me to find a new industry that I really love.

Now all these years later, I’m in this really dark valley.  There are several simultaneous storms exploding around me, and with the death of the prison guard was – well, it all just seemed like too much.  I remembered that Pete could often provide perspective and calm and I knew if I called, he’d call me back.

Even so, I was surprised to hear from him within a half hour and to have something set up to see him within a day or so.    This time there are no wise cracks – and nothing is funny.  I catch him up on my chaos, the sadness.  I can’t stop the tears.  He listens – concerned.

He’s one of those encourager sorts of people that is just nice to be able to talk to because they will listen and let you finish. Things weren’t great for him either.  Life is complicated.  He mentioned a lot of concerns and things he’d been thinking about lately.

He’s a devote Catholic and he began to tell me how he’s been reading his Bible every day.  But something was troubling with him.  He was trying to explain it.  There was this question in his eyes.  My eyes were still dressed in tears – and I started to get this knot in my stomach -- like you get when you show up for class without your homework done.

Finally he just asked point blank “Have you noticed what’s going on in the world?  I mean, have you noticed the direction things are going?  Is your church talking about it, because mine isn’t?”

Wow – if there was ever a time I was not ready to have a religious discussion of any sort this was it. I was in the middle of a train wreck. He’d had 20 years to ask me those kinds of questions, why was he asking me these questions NOW? 

Maybe because I’d been “impressed” to contact him?  Maybe because God’s plan is in action whether I am or not?

I’d like to turn to our scripture reading for today:
 
Matthew 5: 14-16:

You are the light of the world.   A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.  Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.  Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

There is nothing in this text that says that we are the light of the world when our life is smooth sailing or peaceful.  It certainly wasn’t that way for Joseph and it won’t be for us either.

For me, it’s really difficult to be any sort of light when my own world is crashing in all around me.  It’s easy to say – ‘What use am I when I’m all broken up?  What good is a broken light anyway?’

Yet, here Pete sat in front of me – wanting answers to his questions.  It’s almost now as though he’d been waiting for MY call. He’d been reading, studying and praying.  Now he wanted to talk and ask questions, learn, discuss, understand.

And so we talked about the world – and the times we are living in.  I was amazed that he was so in tune with what was happening and how it seemed to tie in with what he was reading in the Bible.  And he asked the honest question: “why wasn’t his church talking about it?”  And I had to wonder, “Am I talking about it?”  Or am I only worried about my pile of woes?

We didn’t get into a discussion about the Mark of the Beast. I did try to answer the questions he asked me.  I explained that I believed the Bible is the basis and authority for truth.  I encouraged him to keep reading the Bible and pray for the Holy Spirit to keep leading him – and that I needed to do the same.  I suggested that neither of us should let how we were raised let us lose out on eternity.  He agreed.

My friend told me he was blessed by our meeting – but in fact I feel I was blessed by his witness to me.  He brought me back to what’s really important.   God, Heaven, Eternal Life, the Bible.

This world IS crazy; life is uncertain, and unfair. Like Joseph, sometimes we may not know where we are going or who we can trust.  We may feel God has forgotten us – but the Joseph story assures us otherwise!   His plan is actually unfolding before our eyes – we have to just keep holding on, and our broken lights may actually shine in spite of ourselves.  I believe that’s part of God’s amazing grace.

During an especially tough time for me some words and melody began running through my head.  It was as if God was reminding me that nothing takes Him by surprise.  Nothing is beyond His pay grade.  He doesn’t run out of options. Sometimes I get all worked up – but He’s got it covered.  Sometimes I need to just – Be Still. 

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A Bird’s-Eye View of Heaven
Topical Sermon by Robert Howson
Sabbath, July 23, 2011

(To hear the audio for this sermon, click here. First you'll hear Carolyn Howson tell a children's story, then Robert will speak.)

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them. Hebrews 11:13-16, NKJV

When Maylan asked me to take this worship service he suggested I might enlarge on the photoblogs which several of our members produce each week for the church’s website.

This seemed like a reasonable approach to me so I found myself doing something I should have done a long time ago – organizing my blogs into categories.  I did so and it’s from one of these topics I selected this morning’s talk.  One of the disadvantages of following this approach is that these blog entries are intended to be a self-contained unit of thought, expressing the concept in two or three paragraphs. 

Because of this, the result this morning may be somewhat disjointed, but hopefully with your indulgence, we’ll be able to blend them into a unified whole.  I selected a topic that each of us here, has at least an interest, the topic of heaven.  Yet while we profess an interest, I fear sometimes it doesn’t carry the import that perhaps it should.   We’ll look at several reasons why this might be and see if we can address those challenges.  

As Seventh-day Adventists we appear to have bought into Martin Luther’s idea that “God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers, clouds and stars.” With that in mind, let’s see what God’s second book has to say to us about heaven.

Now I know, some have objected to using objects of nature for the purpose of teaching moral lessons applicable to mankind. Their reasons generally follow two lines of thought. The first of these suggests that since nature is in and of itself amoral, it would be inappropriate to subject it to our concept of ethical reasoning. However, if we elect to use this tactic, we find ourselves in good company with biblical writers who also employed this approach including David, Solomon, numerous Old Testament prophets, and Christ Himself. Even ancient secular writers believed this was an appropriate way to convey "spiritual" truths.

The second objection takes a different line of attack. Instead of approaching the subject from the side of nature, they do so from the temperament of man himself. They suggest that since nature is without moral equivalency, when we try to speak of such, we simply bring to it our own value system, subjecting the defenseless subject to our self-imposed quality traits. This objection has at least some plausibility

But consider if you will the Timber Wolf seen above, photographed at a local zoo, a setting less than ideal for conveying truths about this magnificent animal and its behavior. In truth, I have only observed this creature once in the wild, and then only briefly before it silently slipped into the forest. While captivity limits my understanding, no one can deny the growth of appreciation and perception such an encounter, even though it is artificial, brings. We come with a discernment that has been marred by sin, just as nature itself has been disfigured. Rather than denying this, let us acknowledge it and be grateful for another vehicle which can help us broaden our understanding. Is nature a perfect way to see the face of God? No. That will have to wait until the lion lies down with the lamb and our own eyesight will have been perfected as well.

With that in mind, I’d like us to consider one of the reasons we may not be more excited about heaven.  The reality is, we don’t really know a lot about it.  I know Isaiah has addressed the subject, and John even more, but it seems so other worldly, so abstract.  Let’s take another try at this.

If you've ever driven highway 395 through Central Oregon, you've probably seen it. Its name, Wagontire, speaks volumes about its Wild West setting. The desert stretches into the distance as far as the eye can see in all directions. But still, it holds possibilities. Just think, if you moved there, and you could get your spouse to vote for you, the chances of being elected mayor, or at least chief of police would be pretty good. Don't know exactly what your job description would be, but seems like there should be plenty of time to find out with on-the-job training. And obviously, there's plenty of room for growth.

If you're considering relocating, there's at least one other place you might consider. It's mentioned in Revelation 21. The population there is at least 72,000 times larger than Wagontire's and it appears they already have a mayor, or at least someone on the throne. From a description of the place, it looks like you might have a difficult time getting a job as chief of police, but it seems that musicians might be in big demand. On the other hand, one of the benefits is it appears to have plenty of water available because early press releases speak of abundant springs of living water available. I would recommend looking into that a bit further for clarification.

One last thing to consider before deciding which place to select as your future residence; there is some indication that some relative of yours must have lived there before or at least invested in property in that region, because the small print indicates you already own a piece of land there as an inheritance. Perhaps it would be wise to see what provisions have already been made for you. In all fairness though, it should be mentioned that Wagontire does have full hookups and a café, although last time we passed through, they were closed.

Could it be that another reason we don’t long more for heaven is we recognize it takes work to get there.  Not work to earn admission, but even more basic than that, work to just get off the couch. After all, aren’t most of us already reasonably comfortable here in 21st century North America?  We’ll use the Sooty Grouse to add commentary on that idea.

Wildlife photography, like life, is composed of several critical elements: familiarity with the species, familiarity with your equipment, and luck.  Luck really isn’t a very appropriate word to use here.  Some Christians would assert there is no such thing as luck.  They may be right, but whatever you call it, circumstances have to work out right for the moment to happen.   By putting yourself in the right place, at the right time, you can increase your luck, but that moment of serendipity must happen to get the picture you’re after.
 
The Christian walk and getting the picture also share at least one other common denominator, one which, out of necessity, we must put into practice.  It’s not enough to read deeply about the topic.  While that may prove to be beneficial, it’s not enough.  Augustine, writing in Confession, VII, put it this way, “For it is one thing to see the land of peace from a wooded ridge…and another to tread the road that leads to it.”  Our 34th president, Dwight D. Eisenhower expressed the same idea in even more earthy terms:  “Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you’re a thousand miles from the cornfield.”  You get the idea. Prime habitat for the Sooty Grouse may be found on the pathways above Paradise on Mount Rainier, but sitting comfortably in the lodge probably won’t get you the shot.  Sitting in the pew at church may be beneficial, but that in and of itself probably won’t get you to Paradise either, pun intended.

The walk itself, while sometimes arduous, has its own rewards.  What the above picture doesn’t show was the family of recently hatched chicks which were following their mother through the alpine color.  Heaven holds limitless promise, but isn’t it kind of the Father to enrich our lives on the journey getting there.

Another detractor; is it possible some of us are not too distantly related to Lot’s wife, you remember, the lady who was afraid she would miss all she left behind, really nice stuff.  Let’s look again.

We are as familiar with the cycle as life itself, for it’s become part of our very existence.  Birth, youth, maturity, death.  But that’s not the way it was intended to be from the beginning.  That last step wasn’t part of the original equation.  Sin entered the picture with all the ugliness it incorporates, all the hurt, all the separation, all the death.  Those two, sin and death, were brought together in the words of Isaiah as he described our fate:  “We are all infected and impure with sin.  When we put on our prized robes of righteousness we find they are but filthy rags.  Like autumn leaves we fade, wither and fall.  All our sins, like the wind, sweep us away.” (Isaiah 64:6   Living Bible)  He paints a pretty dismal picture, doesn’t he? But one of the amazing things about our God is that He is never caught by surprise.  He finds a way to transform even the ugliest blight into something beautiful. 

As the days shorten, the growing season for plants comes to a close and the chlorophyll responsible for photosynthesis and the green of the leaves stops being produced.  In part, this is because of an abscission layer which is formed between the leaf and the stem.  It is then that the fall colors which have always been there become apparent, when the chlorophyll is no longer present to hide them.  When death is finally conquered and its stain removed, do you think we’ll miss those fall colors that used to brighten our lives?  Something tells me the One who devised such an intricate design in the first place may have an even better plan just waiting for us to discover and enjoy.

There’s another group of us who probably are’t terribly excited about Heaven because, we’re afraid we’re just not ready; we’re fearful we haven’t changed enough.  And that’s very possibly true; but consider with me, if you would, the other side of that same coin. 



Isn’t it interesting though that God sees us far differently than we see ourselves.  We see all the warts and wrinkles, the should-a-oughtas and the might-have-beens. He sees us as perfect, covered with His own Son’s perfection.  Christians have grown up with the thought that someday, in heaven, we will be given crowns of gold to wear.  That may be based upon the idea that God Himself will wear a crown of gold (Rev 14:14) as will the twenty-four elders around the throne. (Rev. 4:4)  Perhaps our crowns of life will be symbolized in gold as well.  But in the everyday here-and-now, you don’t see too many of the saints that look like such attire would fit them.  



Then again, take a look at the Golden-crowned Sparrow pictured above.  It’s the way most first year birds of this species appear during winter.  With maturity and spring will come the bright golden crown bordered in black that gives this species its name.  It would be foolish for this bird to deny its rightful title simply because it temporarily doesn’t look the part.  We understand with time, this common bird of the American West will develop into a sparrow wearing a crown of gold.  The good news is that our Maker and Redeemer sees us as we might become, not only fit to wear our crowns, but actually wearing those crowns of gold.  So, let’s hear it for the Golden-crowned Sparrows out there, reminders of what we might become and of the reward promised to each of us.

We’ve mentioned several changes that might cause us concern, but think of the changes you really look forward to.  One of those is mentioned in the second chapter of Revelation and can be illustrated by this fellow.

 

It’s adorable, irresistible, and not at all shy, but it’s stuck with an awful name.  The Northern Saw-whet Owl is found across much of the United States but tends to favor evergreens.  Because they are largely nocturnal and tend to stay well hidden during the day, they are probably much more common than sightings seem to dictate.  Many books on birds will state that it got its name from its call, which according to some, sounds like an old lumber saw being filed.  Traditions are hard to break, even when the facts don’t agree with the conclusions.  None of its calls even come close to resembling a saw being filed.  A more plausible explanation comes from the fact that in French Canada where it’s found, any small owl is referred to as La Chouette (shoo-ET).  The transition to Saw-whet can be easily imagined. 

None other than John James Audubon himself is probably responsible for perpetuating the confusion surrounding the Saw-whet’s name. In 1811 he purchased a mill in Kentucky, from which he heard issuing a loud, rasping sound.  Recalling stories he had heard, he proclaimed it to be a Saw-whet even though he never saw the bird.  The name stuck, even though his foreman who saw it stated it was a Screech Owl, even though Saw-whets aren’t in that part of the country in summer, and even though they never call during the day, his identification stuck. 

None of us like to be labeled by people who don’t really know us, especially when that name is less than complementary.  The good news is we will be getting a new name, and it will be given by One who knows us intimately.  It is God is speaking in Revelation 2:17: “I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it.”  (NIV)  Knowing how much He loves us, I think we’ll like our new name.

Do you find you’re one of those who enjoys thinking outside the box?  I suspect there will be plenty of opportunity for that too. Just how that will be packaged and given to us waits to be seen.

There will undoubtedly be some of the old, the familiar.  But with eternity stretching out before us, don’t you imagine God will provide opportunity for that as well?  

Many words, like perishable items in a grocery store, have a shelf life. They become obsolete, or their meaning changes over a period of time. For example, few of us today commonly use the word hermit to refer to antisocial members of society. Today it seems, that term is reserved for telling mythical stories of the long ago. In that setting these individuals often possessed deep insights into life which they kept hidden away from the rest of society. Occasionally, they do enter into the mainstream of history, and play a significant role therein. Peter the Hermit, who popularized participation in the First Crusade, is a good example of this. While they were sometimes associated with mystical powers, more frequently they are simply viewed as social misfits, unable to adjust to the changes brought about by the social order.

While change can be good, and even necessary, it is often associated with breakdown and decay. It's used that way in I Peter 1:4 where God gives us the assurance of eternal life. "And God has reserved for his children the priceless gift of eternal life; it is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change or decay." (Living Bible) Today though, a realistic view of heaven is almost impossible for us. How will we be able to recognize those we have loved here on earth without the ravages caused by sin placed upon them? What about my Grandmother.  I only knew her as an old, old woman, not the beautiful young lady I’d seen in sepia-colored pictures taken in the 1800s.  How will I recognize her?  Will Hermit Warblers be there, as beautiful as ever, yet without the stigma their name carries? Found high in the mountains of the western United States, these warblers spend much of their time out of our sight in the upper limbs of tall conifers. If they are in heaven, will they be more accessible to us? I'd like to think maybe they will be, but of course don't know. What we can be assured of is, not only will the scars of sin be removed from the physical world, but even more importantly, from our thinking as well.

As we leaf through the pages of nature, the richness of the tapestry God has provided us is an almost endless volume.   

Birds are often considered the most colorful of all the vertebrates, although fans of the coral reef might argue with that.  But their colors are derived from several sources.  The first and most common of these is pigmentation, composed of chemical compounds which are part of the feather itself.  It’s from this source it gets reds and yellows, browns and black, and at least some greens. 

The second type is produced by the structure of the feather or schemochromes.  The third type is formed by a blend of the first two methods.  The greens seen in many parrots are an example of this combination.  The blues, such as those seen in this Mountain Bluebird, are derived from the second source.  This blue is created from interaction with sunlight spectra.  Thus, the intensity of the light shining on the bird largely determines how blue it looks.  I’ve taken pictures of bluebirds which appear to almost be made out of plastic due to this optical illusion.  Iridescent colors such as seen in hummingbirds are created in much the same way.

Apparently some birds can see colors which are not available to the human eye.  They are simply beyond our perception.  This makes me wonder what Paul really had in mind when he wrote the familiar words of 1 Cor. 2:9,  “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” ( KJV)  God hasn’t been exactly parsimonious with the colors He used to paint the world, but still more awaits us.  I can only imagine. But then again, like the text says, even the imagining is beyond us for now.

Jerome Kern wrote the original score for a popular song that skyrocketed to the top of the charts in the 1950s called “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”.  In a falsetto voice the singer reminded young love that romance and circumstance can often get in the way of clear vision, especially when relating to matters of the heart.  With all deference to the song writer, such moments are not the only time when our vision is clouded.  A walk down the rocky coast of Maine supplied another example.

These cold offshore marine waters serve as the home for Common Eider, a bird renowned for the insulating quality of its down; a fact not lost on the makers of sleeping bags and down jackets.  A group of females with their young were hauled up on the rocks, providing an ideal photographic opportunity, except for one fact.  A thick blanket of fog enshrouded the entire setting, limiting the visibility and in turn any chance of obtaining a decent picture.  With less than high hopes, the shutter was pushed repeatedly, following the adage of “Shoot now and ask questions later”. Enter the age of digital manipulation.  Upon returning home, the photographs were submitted to the indignities of Photoshop, and wonder of wonders, with minimal effort on my part, the fog vanished, leaving me with the image originally envisioned (below)

Revelation 21 contains the promise that Christ will perform an even more miraculous transformation, one far beyond our understanding.  “He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (vs. 4 NIV)  Not only that, but those sins and imperfections which are only too obvious to our own eyes will be erased as well.  I confess, I have no idea how the technology behind the  magic of Photoshop works to help me arrive at desired ends.  Even less do I understand the astonishing transformation that has been promised by our Lord.  But that will be some image, to see ourselves and others as only He can, with all that distorts and destroys eternally removed.

Maybe you’re one of those who truly longs for the Lord’s return, but it seems you’ve waited so long.  If so, this illustration might fit you. 

It would be pushing the credibility of science to suggest certain species possess innate personality characteristics. On the other hand it is equally as obvious why we as humans seem to have a penchant for doing so. Charlie, the Basset Hound, is sadness personified. Even when his master returns home to greet him with a can of his favorite evening snack, Charlie still has gloom inscribed on his face. He can't help it, he's a Basset Hound. Having acknowledged the inaccuracy of this practice, let's look at the opposite end of the spectrum of human emotions and a species that embodies those qualities.

We all are aware of the benefits of being positive, of seeing the glass half full instead of bemoaning that which is missing. While we may recognize this, we are also adept at coming up with reasons why it just doesn't fit our particular set of circumstances. Our suggestion for the poster child of optimism is the Common Redpoll. So your old furnace finally broke down? The Redpoll spends most of its life not far from where the igloo got its name. Your employer opted to transfer you to some unearthly spot just after you paid closing costs for a new house? The Redpoll periodically abandons its northerly abode in what are known as eruptive migrations and heads south, usually to where it's raining instead of snowing. You had dreams of being an offensive lineman for the NFL, but you were given the physique that at best qualified you as a backup candidate for water boy of the JV squad? In spite of its diminutive size, the Redpoll always seems full of life and determined to show that to the world.

If birds could choose a favorite text, Redpolls might select II Corinthians 4:17, 18. Paul, too, had to face some icy conditions, but notice his reaction. "These troubles and sufferings of ours are, after all, quite small and won't last very long. Yet this short time of distress will result in God's richest blessing upon us forever and ever! So we do not look at that we can see right now, the troubles all around us, but we look forward to the joys in heaven which we have not yet seen. The troubles will soon be over, but the joys to come will last forever." (Living Bible) Too bad Paul didn't have Redpolls in his area. I think he would have liked them.

Which brings us to our last example.

One of the most common and widespread sparrows in North America is the Song Sparrow.  It is enjoyed by many, not just because it is so ubiquitous but also because it is true to its name.  It can be heard throughout the year vocalizing its song which has many local variations but always starts with a clear three note introduction.  “There are at least three different types or kinds of songs produced by birds; those that are innate, those which are partially learned, and those which are entirely learned, not being inscribed in the DNA.  It’s this third type we’d like to focus on for an application to our own lives.

Revelation 15 speaks of a song which only the Redeemed will be able to sing, because they are the only ones who have gone through the experience enabling them to render the Song of Moses and the Lamb with meaning and understanding.  It is a song of praise and worship as well as a song of deliverance.  Its name comes from a similar incident of deliverance experienced by the Children of Israel after they passed through the Red Sea and were rescued from impending destruction.  It’s the same kind of song, or maybe an extension of the same song found in Revelation 5:9 where it is spoken of being a “new” song.  If this truly is a new song, one which must be experienced in order to be sung, then it stands to reason that this must be one of those “learned” songs.  While it’s very clear that our salvation is a gift, the reality that we must personally encounter this gift tells us something about the learning process and how much God values that experience.  Unlike the world down here where many of us are pretty good at faking it, there will be no lip-syncing on the Sea of Glass. 

Only those who have been delivered by His hand will be able to sing, “Great and marvelous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty.  Just and true are your ways, King of the ages”…  And that will truly be a song  worth singing.

I hope our brief look some of God’s creations has reminded us how much He wants us to be there with Him.  May each one of us, you, and me, and the person sitting next to you, look forward to and hasten that day. 

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WALL OF MEMORY
Expository Sermon on Luke 23
by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue SDA Church 7/9/2011
©2011 by Maylan Schurch

(To hear the audio for this sermon, click here.)

Please open your Bibles to Luke chapter 23.

Last Sabbath, just after potluck was over, Shelley and I drove a mile south from the church and stopped in at the Sunset Hills Cemetery, because Shelley had heard that the Dignity Memorial Vietnam Wall would be there over the Fourth of July weekend.

I don't know how many of you took the opportunity to go see it, but if you did, I'm sure you sensed its power. It's a three-quarter size replica of the real Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC, and it contains the names of 58,267 military personnel, including eight women, who died as a result of the Vietnam War.

Early in 1981, 1,421 designs were submitted, and the winner was Maya Ying Lin, a 21-year-old architecture student from Athens, Ohio. At first, her idea of a simple two-part wall with nothing but names on it outraged a lot of people, because many wanted a more traditional statue or group of statues.

But since the war itself generated such controversy, and since its returning soldiers often didn't receive the same honor-filled welcomes the soldiers from previous wars received, I can't imagine (and a whole lot of other people can’t imagine) any more powerful monument than one which displays the names of those who couldn't return alive, on mirror-finished granite in which any visitor can see his or her own face. We may wish we could forget that war, but it would be the gravest insult to forget the names of those who gave their lives fighting it.

Last Sabbath afternoon, while visitors were walking along the length of the wall, first one and then another volunteer stood behind a lectern and read aloud the list of names. And as I stood facing that wall, and saw those tens of thousands of carefully-engraved names, and heard them crackle from the loudspeaker behind me, I felt—in a way I never had before—what it truly meant to die for your country, even die for people who didn’t believe in what you were fighting for.

As I started putting together these communion remarks, the Wall still fresh in my mind, I thought about Jesus on the cross. At first I imagined a wall with Jesus' name on it – because, after all, He was the one who died for us.

But then I pictured Jesus on the cross, facing a wall, a wall on which was written the name of every person who has ever lived. Because as Jesus suffered the agonies of crucifixion, He knew that if His Father had not so loved the world, had not given His only begotten Son so that whoever believed in Him would not perish, then each of those billions of people would have died eternally.

And gathered around Jesus in His final moments that Friday afternoon were living representatives of those people.
 
Luke 23:32 – 39 [NKJV]: There were also two others, criminals, led with Him to be put to death. And when they had come to the place called Calvary, there they crucified Him, and the criminals, one on the right hand and the other on the left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” And they divided His garments and cast lots. And the people stood looking on. But even the rulers with them sneered, saying, “He saved others; let Him save Himself if He is the Christ, the chosen of God.” The soldiers also mocked Him, coming and offering Him sour wine, and saying, “If You are the King of the Jews, save Yourself.” And an inscription also was written over Him in letters of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS. Then one of the criminals who were hanged blasphemed Him, saying, “If You are the Christ, save Yourself and us.”

I don't know about you, but if I had been hanging there, if I had poured out my heart for 3 1/2 exhausting years of teaching and healing Messiah-ministry, and if it had ended like this, with the few who claimed to be my friends cowering silently in the distance, and with those standing closest giving me nothing but jeers and catcalls, nothing but "ifs”—“If You are the Christ,” “If You are the Son of God,” “If You are the King of the Jews,”-- if I had been hanging there, I most likely would not have seen much use in what I was doing. And I might have called for the legions of angels to rescue me.

But it wasn't me hanging there. It was Someone who, as He hung there staring at that wall of humanity--not only present but past and future humanity--just like last Sabbath afternoon facing the Vietnam Memorial Wall, He could look into those names and see His own reflection. He could see people whom He had made in His own image, after His likeness. And He loved them all.

And in each of those faces He could see someone who could very well become one of His happy eternal companions. And that’s why He hung there, and that’s why He begged His Father to forgive them.

Thus far He has heard only jeering, but gradually the power of the moment has its effect on the honest ones among those who stand close by. One of the robbers has shouted scorn at him. But suddenly the other takes a trembling breath.

Verses 40 – 42: But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying, “Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.”

And Jesus promises him paradise. And when the Savior finally breathes His last, the centurion – the leader of the execution squad – shows that at least one of the soldiers can see beyond the wounds and the blood to something heart-stoppingly supernatural.
Verse 47: So when the centurion saw what had happened, he glorified God, saying, “Certainly this was a righteous Man!”
And Matthew and Mark add something else he said: "Truly, this was the Son of God!”

And not all the rulers of the people were scoffers. Joseph of Arimathea volunteers his tomb, and the Pharisee Nicodemus brings burial spices. And a few months later, Acts 6:7 will say that “a great number of the priests” will become “obedient to the faith.”

And this is what has always happened, down through the many centuries since then. Christ has been presented on the cross, and the selfish and shortsighted have scoffed, while those whose hearts are true and tender have accepted His sacrifice for themselves, and have followed Him, and have carried His humble servant’s heart out again among the proud and careless. 

Are you among the humble and tender of heart? Then let us take part in these emblems of Jesus' humility – the basin, the towel, the bread, and pure juice of the vine. And let us be the next to carry the Savior’s servant heart from this room out to the wall of people, the people Jesus loves so much.

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THE LIBERTY LEXICON
Expository Sermon on Romans 6
by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue SDA Church 7/2/2011
©2011 by Maylan Schurch

(To hear the audio for this sermon, click here. Our apologies for the slight distortion of sound.)

Please open your Bibles to Romans chapter 6.

I'm sure that many of you are thinking the same thing I am this holiday weekend. Over the last few months we've been hearing news reports from the Middle East about the "Arab Spring" uprisings. Again and again we've seen how, once human beings who feel themselves oppressed begin to dream about freedom, and especially when they see other examples of how freedom can be achieved, the human spirit rises, and people make incredible sacrifices in the hopes that they will gain the liberty they so fondly hope for.

And important tools in these attempted revolutions are words and phrases. In the years leading up to July 4, 1776, people inspired each other with statements like "Give me liberty or give me death," or "United we stand, divided we fall," or "Don't tread on me."

And this past spring, as we watched and listened to those Middle East demonstrations, we again saw posters, and heard people shouting phrases in unison. We couldn't understand the words they were saying – unless these groups happened to have been coached to protest in English for the sake of the American media – but the same spirit was there.

And each of these earnest, desperate crowds had their own "liberty lexicon," their own set of words and phrases which expressed their hopes. (A lexicon is another word for dictionary.) Using these words, they tried to encourage themselves and inspire other people to take steps to overthrow oppressive and corrupt governments, to cast off the chains.

Christians understand, of course, that the most dreadful slavery is the slavery of sin. The Bible tells us that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, and that the wages of sin is death. And even people who have started moving in God's direction find themselves in a constant struggle to live the way God wants them to live.

The apostle Paul knew this very well, and in Romans 6 he provides us with the Christian’s "liberty lexicon." Like other revolutionary slogans, these are action words and phrases. But instead of shouting them in the streets, we need to thoughtfully and prayerfully put them into practice in our own lives. And in this way we will be giving the Holy Spirit more permission—and more opportunity—to change us.

Let's find out what this powerful "liberty lexicon" contains. Each of us in this room is in some way a struggling sinner, and these words and phrases can give us hope. Let me show you what I mean.

As usual, when we join Paul, he's deep in the middle of a closely reasoned argument. In the last couple of verses in Romans 5, he has just made the point that when there was a lot of sin happening, there was that much more grace available – grace which would allow that sin to be forgiven if the sinner wanted to be.

And at this point, Paul can picture some wise guy in the Roman raising his eyebrows. "Hey," he might be saying. "Grace is good, right? So that means that more grace is even better, right? So does that mean we need to commit more sin so that more grace will show up?"

And as chapter 6 starts, Paul immediately squashes this silly idea.

Romans 6:1 – 2 [NKJV] What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?

But that's the problem, and Paul knows it. A lot of people who have died to sin – or hope they have – continue to slip into the old sinful patterns. Is there anything that can be done?

Paul – under the guidance of the Holy Spirit – thinks there can.

Verses 3 – 5: Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection,

So we're starting to see a first clue about how we might be able to not let sin rule over us. In fact, here comes Sermon Point One, if you're taking notes.

So, how can I begin to experience liberty from sin? What’s the first entry in our “liberty lexicon”?

First, I need to unite myself with Jesus.

Do you see that word "united," there in verse 5? That's the Greek word sumphutoi, and this is the only time this word appears in the Greek New Testament. Most modern Bible versions translate it "united," but the old King James version is the closest to what it really means. Literally, in the Greek, it means “with-planted,” and the old King James says "planted together."

Now this is really interesting. Paul could have expressed this idea any number of ways in the flexible Greek language. But he reached into his mind and brought out an agricultural term which he never used anywhere else in his writings—“planted together.”

I have a book at home which tells how a lot of the Bible’s Greek words were used in ordinary correspondence around that same time, and sure enough, sumphutoi shows up quite a bit, when people wrote to each other about farming. Sumphotoi always happened when you planted seeds and they got watered. They grew together. The most natural thing in the world.

So Paul's first bit of advice to throw off sin’s tyranny is for me to unite myself with Jesus. However, this can be an unusual idea for people who aren't acquainted with Christianity. That’s because a lot of science fiction – maybe most of it – is based on the idea that whoever is Out There Beyond Us is alien. And this can be a very disturbing idea.

My dad was 16 years old on October 30, 1938. On that evening he and the rest of the family sat in the living room of a tiny South Dakota farm house and listened as 22-year-old Orson Welles narrated a very realistic-sounding radio play called "The War of the Worlds." The first two thirds of the play was presented as a breaking newscast, and described how aliens from Mars were landing in huge ships. What was so horrifying was that not only did these aliens not look like human beings, but they had no human-style compassion whatsoever.

Years later, when I read about the panic the “War of the Worlds” broadcast caused in some areas, I remember asking Dad whether he was frightened by the broadcast, and he said it made him uneasy. But what settled him down – even before the program was proved to be a play and not a news broadcast – was that Dad figured that aliens from another planet would probably not find anything useful or worthwhile on the flat South Dakota prairies!

Even though you and I have never seen the face of God, He is not an alien. He created us in His image. To think of God as totally different from us would be like calling your mother or father an alien. (Maybe some kids, at certain stages of their life, consider their parents aliens, but they quickly grow out of that, and most often end up raising their own kids the way their parents raised them!)

When you think of it, uniting with Jesus through baptism and through daily connection with Him is probably the most natural thing in the world. After all, it's what we were designed to do. We were designed to have the capacity for a natural affection for our Creator, just as we have with our parents. And He has an everlasting love for us, which is thoroughly natural to Him.

So, how do we unite ourselves with Jesus? Well, if a seed is "planted together" with other seeds, it stays in the soil, soaks up the rain, and allows the sun to mature it through its various stages.

Paul talks about being "united" or "planted together" with Jesus in baptism. Jesus was baptized to set an example for us, and when you and I are baptized, that is a powerful symbol that we want to totally identify with Jesus. We want our old human nature to die. We want to rise to a new life.

Of course neither Paul nor any other Bible writer claims that anybody is perfect the moment they are baptized. What Paul is doing here is showing us how we can position ourselves to take advantage of the Holy Spirit's power to change us to be more like Jesus.

So what do I do, now that I know this? How do I take that first step in becoming more and more united with Jesus? Well, if the Holy Spirit is moving on my heart to make me want to do this, I need to follow Jesus' example and be baptized. Keep in mind that baptism is not a graduation service. Instead, it's a wedding ceremony. When two people get married, that doesn't mean that they have become a perfect husband and a flawless wife. No, it means that they have committed themselves utterly and completely to each other, and that they are going to grow together.

And once I have committed myself to Christ, like any other seed which wants to grow, I need to stay where the nourishment is. Jesus grew up as a young man, one of the ways He stayed close to His Heavenly Father was to become very familiar with His Bible. Even though He had never been to any rabbinic seminary, He knew the Old Testament on far deeper levels than the most learned rabbi knew it, and He proved this on several occasions.

So it's obvious, then, that an important way to unite myself with Christ is to read what He read. To Jesus, God's Word was not something He kept in His Bible case all week until Sabbath morning. He immersed Himself in it. Here are some of the Old Testament verses Jesus read and understood. All of these are from Psalm 119, and all talk about how soul-deep Bible study can fortify us against sin:

Psalm 119:9 -- How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word.

Verse 11 -- Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sin against You.

Verse 32 -- I will run the course of Your commandments, For You shall enlarge my heart.

And here’s one specifically tailored for this holiday weekend!

Verse 45 -- And I will walk at liberty, For I seek Your precepts.

Verse 59 -- I thought about my ways, And turned my feet to Your testimonies.

Are you going through a tough time right now? Here’s a verse which might encourage you:

Verse 71 -- It is good for me that I have been afflicted, That I may learn Your statutes.

Verse 93 -- I will never forget Your precepts, For by them You have given me life.

And those are just a few verses, from just one Bible chapter. All of them say that in order to unite ourselves with God and resist the temptations to sin, you and I need to read our Bibles.

But now let's take a look at the second phrase in Paul's Romans 6 "liberty lexicon." Glance down at verse 11.

Romans 6:11: Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
 
 Do you see that word "reckon"? That's not Western-movie talk: “Wal, Ah reckon Ah’ll go buy me a horse.” No, this is a word which has to do with calculation (reckoning), with thinking, with coming to mental grips with something. It's the Greek word logizesthe. The English word "logic" comes from the same root word this comes from.

But while the sumphotoi word, the "planted together" word, was used just once in the New Testament, this word is used many times. It means to think, to reason, to take into account.

So here comes Sermon Point Two. What’s another step in experiencing liberty from sin? What’s the second entry in Paul’s “liberty lexicon”?

I need to not only unite myself with Jesus, but I also need to reckon – or consider – myself dead to sin and alive to God.

What does that mean? The way I see it, this means that even though I might have a particularly bad day once in a while, if I feel tempted to sin, I must say to myself, "No, I am dead to sin and alive to Christ."

Back when I pastored the Shoreline church, a lot of people in that area desperately wanted to quit smoking. We held three stop smoking classes each year, and we averaged about 30 people per class.

I had never smoked, but night after night I and the other presenters simply followed the program in the big thick “Breathe Free Plan to Stop Smoking” notebook. We gave the people little red-and-white tin buttons which said" I (heart) being free from smoking!" "I love being free from smoking!"

We would have them say that phrase several different ways, emphasizing first this word and then that word. "I love being free from smoking." "I LOVE being free from smoking!"  “I love being FREE from smoking!”

In my first couple of programs, I privately wondered whether this would work. How could a little tin button with a positive affirmation really do any good?

But what these dear people who were trying to quit smoking did was to make it work. During the day, they carried that button in their pocket, or wore it on their chest, and when they felt the urge to smoke, they would follow one of our techniques we had taught them, like drinking a glass of water or taking a short walk outside. Yet often, they simply reached into their pocket or purse, grabbed hold of this button, gripped it tight, and muttered "I love being free from smoking!"

Now probably, in those crisis moments, what they really would have loved more than anything else was a good strong puff on a Marlboro. But these folks had also drawn a line in the sand. They had come to the stop smoking class, and they knew in their hearts – in spite of any current emotion or desire or craving – that they truly would love being free from smoking. So they gritted their teeth and said, “I LOVE being FREE from smoking!”, and said it again. And they would come back to the next stop-smoking session that evening and tell us how that powerful little sentence had worked.

I think that’s something like what Paul is talking about here. First he tells us to take steps to unite ourselves more closely with Christ, and then he tells us to "reckon" or "consider" ourselves dead to sin. We may not feel dead to sin at that moment, but Paul reminds us that we are uniting ourselves with Jesus in His death, burial, and resurrection, so therefore we are dead to sin even though we might not feel like it. Maybe somebody should make a little tin button that says "I love being dead to sin."

It's so important to use our minds in matters like this, rather than just allow our wants or desires or emotions to carry us along. I haven't seen them out here as much, at least I don't remember seeing them, but back in the Midwest you will sometimes see white signs on little signposts beside the highway. At the top of the sign it will say in capital letters, “THINK!”, and the rest of the sign will give the name of someone who died on that spot, either from drinking and driving or from recklessly speeding.

I don't know who it is who puts those signs up, but it's obviously an organization who believes that if we use our minds to consider or "reckon" what we ought to do, this might help prevent such accidents in the future.

So I need to reckon myself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. This is an act of faith. We believe it, even though we may feel exactly the opposite. Paul reinforces this in 2 Corinthians 5:7, where he says, “For we walk by faith, not by sight.”

A splendid example of this is Robin, the blind woman who once in a while attends church here and sings for us. Can you imagine being blind from birth, and every day walking forth from your university-area apartment trusting that no one will steal your purse, that no one will run you down as you cross the street, that no one will assault you?

Robin has been to many countries of the world, often to attend religious events like Billy Graham Evangelistic Association gatherings. Every day, she walks by faith and not by sight. She is also a wonderful example of someone who has put her life and her talent in God's hands. She just assumes that He will take care of her, and she is such a friend of His that she's willing to cut Him a lot of slack if at a particular moment His agenda doesn't quite agree with hers. She’s been through a lot, but I have never heard one breath of complaint from her.

Let's look at just one more truth we need to add to our "liberty lexicon."

Verses 12 -13: Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

What’s Paul’s third step in experiencing liberty from sin?

Paul says that I need to not only unite myself with Jesus, and to reckon – or consider – myself dead to sin and alive to God, I need to present myself to God.

Do you see what's been happening here? First, we devote our soul to God – we unite ourselves with Christ. Second, we devote our minds to God – in an act of faith, we consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to Him, because it is true. And now, Paul has just told us that the third step is to present our bodies, ourselves, to God. Soul, mind, body. We need to devote them all to God.

The word "present" is the Greek word parastesate. It's a combination of two words, "beside" and "stand." In other words, to stand beside someone. It can be translated "yield yourself," or "put yourself that someone's disposal." In other words, stand close, so you can be useful.

In Luke 1:19, Gabriel tells Mary that he "stands" in the presence of God, and that's that same word. In Acts 1:10, two angels "stand by" the disciples, ready to encourage them after Jesus was taken into heaven, and that's that same word. In Acts 9:39 Dorcas' widowed friends "stand by" weeping over her body. In Romans 12:1, Paul tells us to "present" our bodies a living sacrifice, and that's that same word.

So this afternoon, in the way home in the car, or the next time I go to work, how am I going to take this third step and present myself to God?

Well, I need to keep in mind that the root meaning of parastesate is to "stand beside." If God is trying to do something in my life, or in my vicinity, rather than backing away, I need to go over and stand beside Him. If someone in my workplace is suggesting I do something which is far from God's plan, I need to go over and stand beside God.

You'll be hearing more about this later, but this fall, we are planning to join with the rest of the conference and have our own evangelistic series right here. I'll be doing some of the speaking, and a few of our elders will speak as well.
Lots of brochures will be mailed to this area, and we will have a number of visitors. And during those evenings as people watch slides on the screen and hear the Bible preached, God will be right here doing His work. And I would urge you to commit to coming here each of those evenings and standing beside Him.

Because the only way our new friends may ever see the face of God is to look into yours. Not somebody else’s—yours. And if, as they get to know you, they see someone who has united yourself with Christ, and in faith considered yourself dead to sin and alive to God, and have made a habit of presenting yourself to Him, standing beside Him, every day, then think of the wonderful witness this can be to someone who is searching for a God to love.

Just across the street from where Shelley and I live is a young lady who is devoting her mind and her body – if not her soul – to becoming an expert skateboarder. She's probably seven or eight years old, and every once in a while we'll see her in her driveway teetering along on her skateboard.

I mean, she is serious. Many times after school was over I have seen her working with that board. It's like she has united herself with it. It's like she has considered herself dead to anything else and alive to that skateboard. It's like she has presented herself to the skateboarding skill, standing close to it, spending time perfecting her moves.

And I have no way of knowing how much she's improved over the weeks she's been doing this, because I have other things to do besides charting her progress, but I'm pretty sure all of this single-minded devotion is paying off. It's not technically a sin to fall off a skateboard, but it hurts, and I'll bet this little gal is not falling off that skateboard now is much as she used to.

"Unite." "Reckon, or consider." "Present yourself." Three important ideas to add to your "liberty lexicon." Will you join me in putting these into practice during the week ahead?

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