Haggai 1:12-15
Haggai 1:1-11
Sermon
If you saw a house like this, there is a lot wrong with this house, isn’t there? What’s wrong with this? (the list is almost too long)
What would you do if that was the house down the street?
Pull a weed when you walk by
Say something to the owners
Talk to the city or the township
Some of you would probably say, I’ll never even move there. What if it was there after you?
Might you move away?
There are a lot of houses that look like that or something like that.
What would you do if that was your house?
That’s a tougher one, isn’t it? Because it’s one thing to say, I’d get on that house, I’d fix it. But what if you don’t know anything about roofing? What if you don’t know anything about siding? What if don’t know anything about plumbing or electrical or any of the dozens of other skills that you need to keep a house going?
And what if your mom or dad is older, they need help getting to doctors’ appointments and groceries? And what if you are a police officer or you’re a chef at a local restaurant, you just don’t make that much money. What if the whole local economy is slow? People don’t get raises but prices keep going up.
If anything is going to change, there are a lot of issues that you have to deal with.
Adventure
Friends, that is what God gets to today. He wants us to get at rebuilding our homes, our community, and our congregation.
We are going to start looking at the book of Haggai today. I’m sure there are a few of you who have read Haggai a few times, but I suspect most of you know almost nothing about Haggai. Well, here is your chance. Here is the story.
After 70 years in Babylon, the people from Judah – the area around Jerusalem, were allowed to return home.
The country was in shambles. The land was burned. The homes were burned and destroyed. The city of Jerusalem was burned. The temple was burned and ripped down.
I wonder if any of us would have stayed. I wonder if any of us would have looked around and said, yup, this is where I’m going to rebuild my home and this is where I’m going to stay. This is my place.
Friends, there are times to walk away. There are times to say I’m done. There are also times to get up the gumption, the courage to stay and fix a place.
And today God wants you to stay and rebuild this place. He wants us to rebuild our homes, rebuild our church building. He wants to rebuild our congregation.
He wants us to start by consider the time and our ways.
Development
First, the time.
[“These people say, ‘The time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house.’ ” (verse 2) But God spoke back through the prophet, “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?” (verse 4)]
“These people say, ‘The time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house.’ ” (verse 2)
They've returned from exile.
They’re rebuilding their homes
They’ve planted crops.
They’re saying, it isn’t the right time to rebuild the temple.
God responds and says back to them, is it time to live in paneled houses?
I want to be fair to the people. The people don’t say, we don’t want to rebuild God’s house. They say its not the right time. God says, it’s not the right time for your houses. It’s the right time for my house. The debate is about time.
There are two ways to understand these paneled houses. One is that they were fancy, ornate houses. The other is just that they were houses with roofs or enclosed houses. Either way God says, now is the not the time for your houses. Now is the time for my house.
Friends, you might think this is the part where I say, we keep buying stuff. We keep running after stuff. We keep buying bigger and bigger houses. The materialism of this world is terrible.
Here is something you need to know. This whole thing is kind of a surprise. Here is a little history. King David was the best and most famous king of Israel. He got to establish the far boundaries of Israel. He built the palace. And ultimately, he made the nation into people. He did not get to build the temple.
What happened is, he started to build the temple. God came to him and said, wait a second, I didn’t ask you to do this. What do you think you are doing? It was not the right time.
Now to Haggai he says this is the time. This is the time to build my house. God is timeless, yet he pays attention to time. Let’s break this down.
God is eternal. He exists forever. He is also what we call immutable. What does that mean? He doesn’t change. He is always the same.
You and me, we are bound by time. Completely. Our lives are structured by it. We are born, we live, and we die. I know all kinds of things about you based on what age you are, the time of your life, that I don’t know based on events. We’ve got all these little sayings about time to help us think about it.
“It’s not about having time. It’s about making time.” “timing is everything”. “the time of our lives”. God is not like that at all.
We probably don’t want to say God is timeless. He is beyond time. Somehow for God everything is the eternal present. It all is. The shocker is, He is timeless yet he pays attention to time. Let me give us a comparison.
Take a clock. Pretend God is kind of like a clock. A nuclear fission clock. Forever ticking. Never runs out, never stops. Basically timeless.
On the other hand, you and I are a timer. You and I are not timeless. We start and we end. That’s us.
Here is the one other thing to think about with God. God’s not just a clock. He is an alarm.
What do I mean by that? Somehow God in his timelessness manages to pay attention to specific times. I can’t even begin to imagine it. How can you be timeless and yet pay attention to a specific time? Somehow, that’s God. Eternal, yet tied to time.
Think about that. What is that saying for life? There is this one time in the life of Jesus where Jesus says, you and I know how to pay attention to the weather. We get up in the morning and look at the sky and see that it is overcast, so we say, it will probably storm. Then he says, you can interpret those signs, why can’t you read the signs of God’s time?
I think that is just fascinating, because I’m sure you, like me, hear all kinds of people saying, this is what the world is like. You have to get with the times. Don’t you see what is going? These are the times.
And all of that is probably fine. But do you and I know God’s time? At certain points, at certain times, God’s alarm will go off and you would be wise to be tied into it.
I hate that feeling when the alarm goes off beep beep beep and I get jarred awake. I ruin that amazing dream and I’m all groggy from deep sleep. Wouldn’t it be better to wake up a few minutes before the alarm goes off and calmly, quietly turn it off?
I think this kind of gets at that point. Everyone has to pay attention to their own timer. We’ve all got that timer of our lives, telling us to work and to get married and retire and everything else. But you and I can live our lives by God’s clock and alarm, or by our own timer.
Haggai even says how we can tell the difference. He tells us “consider your ways”.
“Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. 6 You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.” (Verses 5-6)
Notice what God says. He doesn’t say, consider the outcome of your life. He doesn’t say, think about how things are going. Are you succeeding or failing. He says, consider your ways.
In Hebrew, paths. Literally, think about where you are walking.
If you and I are saying, I feel like I don’t have enough money. I feel like I’m not eating good enough food. I feel like my house isn’t nice enough. I feel like my kids don’t have enough fun. I feel like I’m not getting far enough ahead in life.
If that is what is driving our life, that’s not God’s ways.
The Lord God is the God who says, I love sinners. I forgive sinners. I’m good and generous and I bless and I take care of not good people, not holy people, but people who ask for help, people who repent, and people who confess their sins.
God doesn’t bless people they are good people. God blesses people because he is gracious and merciful and compassionate because of Jesus.
Haggai is telling them what Jesus would one day say, “Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be given to you as well.”
Think about the time they lived in. They just got back from 70 years in captivity. I know that the land they returned to was devastated. It was war torn. It was a mess.
But what was that time for? That was a time to praise God. That was a time to be God’s people. That was a time to forgive and love. That was a time to proclaim God’s grace. It was a time to confess their sin. It was a time to sacrifice.
That was a time for them to believe the gospel.
Think about a man who had come many years before from almost the exact same place. Almost 1500 years before the Jews returned home, Abraham walked the same path. He went to a new land and a new place. And at each place along the way when he stopped, he built an altar and made a sacrifice. He called those places Shechem and Bethel and
Because he knew the time he watched his ways.
Friends, its okay to look at our lives and say, here is how its going. We know what time it is based on what God has done. But the gospel never says to you and I, if I’m a good person, if I work hard, then God will love me and take care of me and be good to me.
The gospel says God loves sinners. God loves sinners who have lived through a pandemic and say, I will not live forever, my timer is going to go off. God loves sinners
God loves you.
Friends, consider your ways at this time.
Action
Haggai is writing all this so the people build his house.
One of my favorite ways to illustrate what we’re building… I like to use Legos, maybe because I like to build with my sons. I didn’t come up with this idea though. I borrowed it.
So consider this, if I take one Lego brick and I say you are one brick, that’s good. That’s good. You should be the best brick you can be.
And many of you care about your families. So you’re building multiple bricks together. Maybe 3 or 4 or 10, or if you’ve got a large extended family you’ve got 20 or 30.
But you can’t really build anything good with only 5 or 20 Legos. You can make something good with 70 or 80 or 90 Legos.
So here is what I’d like to ask you to do today. On the table in the
Let’s be bold builders. It’s time to consider our ways. Let’s build.
Luke 12:22-34
Sermon
2 Kings 17:7-37
1 Kings 21
Sermon
Listening guide
1 Kings 19
Summary
Everyone deals with sadness, failure and struggles in life. We should reflect on those failures and how we feel. When we do that, we've got to learn to separate how we feel about ourselves (despairing of ourselves) from how we feel about life in general. Elijah teaches us.
2 Samuel 11-12
Read the story of David and Bathsheba
Discussion questions
Sermon
He had only ever made one very small mistake in his life. (picture of King David)
He had been anointed king of Israel at the age of 10. He killed Goliath around 16. He got married. And then he made his mistake.
Because he didn’t have a home. He didn’t have a kingdom. The king was actually chasing him.
One day he snuck into the king’s camp and cut off a corner of the king’s robe. He was immediately overcome with remorse for threatening the king’s life. He actually yelled at his own men, his own soldiers for failing to protect the king. That’s one of the things we do, isn’t it, when we mess up. We yell at the people closest to us even though we’re the ones who made the mistake.
That failure didn’t cost him much. Many years later as king he would give a lame man a position in his court. That was all this failure cost him.
From that point on, his life drastically improved. He married again – six times actually. He became king over all of Israel around the age of 32. He defeated most of the surrounding nations and enemies. He became a very successful man.
It's hard to imagine a man like that failing.
Adventure
But he did. One of the most, flagrant, the most obvious, the most destructive failures in all of history. I’m talking about David if you don’t know the story. I’m talking about the man who although he was a king with 7 wives, he committed adultery not just with another woman but with a married woman and he committed murder.
We’ve been taking a look at failures. With Moses, we saw that he didn’t face his failure. He didn’t confront it. With Abraham, we say that he didn’t know the truth. He lived a lie and he spread that lie to other people.
We get something else with David. We get force of failure. Some people like to call it the power of sin. I’m going to call it the force of failure.
Let me show you what I’m talking about.
Development
In this account, we come right away to David’s first failure. It is so small, so insignificant that you might not even notice. Samuel wrote, “In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.” (verse 1)
Maybe you say, like I did for many years, well, what’s wrong with that? I don’t see anything there. Take a look at other times when Israel went to war.
The previous fall, David did not fight the Ammonites, but he fought the Arameans (2 Samuel 10:17)
David defeated the Jebusites (5:6)
David defeated the Philistines (5:20, 5:25)
David defeated the Moabites (8:2)
David defeated Hadadezer (8:3)
What do you see? My point is that most of the time David went with the army to fight. He was not a politician in the sense of sitting in the office telling people what to do. He actually led the battles. (picture of David leading the army)
The other kings they stayed behind. We’ve got plenty of historical record that says most of the kings stayed behind. Not David.
You could say that David got the credit even though he wasn’t actually there. Most of the stories have enough detail to say, a lot of the time, David fought with the army.
Plus, Samuel emphasized “David remained in Jerusalem.” It is like he wanted us to see, all of the sudden, David acted like all the other kings.
I’m saying, this was David’s first failure. He didn’t do what he normally did. He didn’t carry out his vocation, his calling in life the way he was supposed to do. He didn’t act like God’s king.
It’s a sin of omission, not a sin of commission. I’m not saying it was the most awful, horrible evil thing ever. I simply want you to see the same thing that Samuel wants to see.
David stopped acting like God’s king and he started acting like a king of the world. He made a little choice that changed his whole life.
We recognize these little choices make a big difference. First rule of basic household finance: don’t spend more than you make. Only spend what you make. Because if you spend the first dollar, its easy to spend a hundred
Friends, David was a man after God’s own heart. David was a man filled with courage. David was conscience stricken when he cut off a piece of a man’s robe. That’s the kind of man he was.
And what did it take to wreck his life?
Friends, the most famous failures often start with really tiny steps. Here is your example for the day. In 1754, George Washington led a small group of British soldiers and Mingo warriors. He was only 22 years old at the time. He approached a French camp near Jumonvillee Glen. The exact circumstances will probably always be unclear. How 22-Year-Old George Washington Inadvertently Sparked a World War - HISTORY Washington at Jumonville | Tracts (fairmontstate.edu)
What we know is that Washington was terribly misinformed. He was severely inexperienced. They got in a huge fight.
He very likely started the fight. He probably shot the first shot. And he killed a prominent French emmissary. He set off with that little battle 9 years of war. The French and Indian war.
All because a man with no experience failed to check the information.
Friends, I don’t want to harp on you here.
The big failures in this story are obvious. David slept with a woman he was not married to. (verse 4) That’s adultery. David made sure Uriah was struck down (verse 15) That’s murder.
These are the big failures of this whole event. That’s what a man did who said, “I delight to do your will Lord”. That’s why we sang Psalm 40. David said that. I delight to do your will. Still he took a man who had sworn an oath to protect him and he put him to death.
Friends, this is the force of failure. Failure has this force to do the worse possible things in the world. Failure has this force to get even the best people to do terrible things, even people who have been converted. Failure has this force to destroy the human heart.
That force is devasting. That force is destructive. That force will rob you of the very best things of your life. Did you see what it cost David?
I hate reading the end of this story. It tears me up every time. Nathan said to David, “14 But because by doing this you have shown utter contempt for the Lord, the son born to you will die.” (verse 14)
David and Bathsheba got pregnant. Bathsheba gave birth to a son. And then their son died.
That’s the force of failure. That’s the ultimate destructive force of failure. Failure costs.
Friends, I'm not going to brush over this. I’m not going to just push past it. Everyone of us who has experienced failure, has gone through failure, has really felt this force. The cost.
What did failure cost you? It costs, it costs, doesn’t it?
The force of failure compounds. It takes the littlest things and turns them into bigger things and then bigger things and finally failure crushes us with this destructive force.
What did failure cost you? Maybe you are at a place in your life where the force of failure hasn’t really worked into your life. Where you haven’t felt it.
But let me tell you, do you think David felt that cost? Absolutely. Nathan said to David, “Nathan replied, “The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die” But your son will die.” And then his son died.
David got to live because someone else died. His own son.
You know how hard it is to watch someone else pay for failure? To watch failure work its force on someone else?
Don K – didn't want me to pay for his lunch. I feel the same way.
I know its not true, but every time I don’t pay I feel like I can’t pay my own way in life. Like I can’t take care of myself.
Now think about that. We don’t like it when someone buys breakfast or lunch for us. $10. Maybe $15.
Friends, you realize that Jesus died because you and I really can’t pay? You feel the force of that.
That’s the cost of failure. That's where failure worked out its force.
This our dear Lord and only Saviour and Mediator before God, Jesus Christ, did for us by his blood and death, in which he became a sacrifice for us; and with his purity, innocence, and righteousness, which was divine and eternal, he outweighed all sin and wrath he was compelled to bear on our account; yea, he entirely engulfed and swallowed it up, and his merit is so great that God is now satisfied and says, “If he wills thereby to save, then there will be a salvation. (Sermons of Martin Luther, vol. 2, p. 344)
You and I will never feel the full force of failure.
Because Jesus felt that force.
Action
Feel the force. Feel the cost.
You know why this matters. I meet with people all the time who say, pastor, I’m a pretty good person. I don’t do wrong.
I get that. I know we aren’t murderers. We aren’t committing adultery. Good.
But our failures will cost. Got to feel that force.
If I come to you and say, hey I just want you to know I paid your debt for you. What is the first thing you are going to say?
A lot of you will say, oh, I didn’t even know I had a debt. Then you might say, how much was it? Does it matter?
Friends, I want you to know that I’m willing to feel the force, so that you don’t have to feel the full force of your failures. I hope you are willing to do the same thing.
But God would have you and I know that Jesus felt the full force, he felt the full weight of our failures so that you and I would feel some of the force, but we’d never feel the full cost.
Failure costs, but you will never feel its full force.
Text
Genesis 20:1-18
Now Abraham moved on from there into the region of the Negev and lived between Kadesh and Shur. For a while he stayed in Gerar, 2 and there Abraham said of his wife Sarah, “She is my sister.” Then Abimelek king of Gerar sent for Sarah and took her.
3 But God came to Abimelek in a dream one night and said to him, “You are as good as dead because of the woman you have taken; she is a married woman.”
4 Now Abimelek had not gone near her, so he said, “Lord, will you destroy an innocent nation? 5 Did he not say to me, ‘She is my sister,’ and didn’t she also say, ‘He is my brother’? I have done this with a clear conscience and clean hands.”
6 Then God said to him in the dream, “Yes, I know you did this with a clear conscience, and so I have kept you from sinning against me. That is why I did not let you touch her. 7 Now return the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live. But if you do not return her, you may be sure that you and all who belong to you will die.”
8 Early the next morning Abimelek summoned all his officials, and when he told them all that had happened, they were very much afraid. 9 Then Abimelek called Abraham in and said, “What have you done to us? How have I wronged you that you have brought such great guilt upon me and my kingdom? You have done things to me that should never be done.” 10 And Abimelek asked Abraham, “What was your reason for doing this?”
11 Abraham replied, “I said to myself, ‘There is surely no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.’ 12 Besides, she really is my sister, the daughter of my father though not of my mother; and she became my wife. 13 And when God had me wander from my father’s household, I said to her, ‘This is how you can show your love to me: Everywhere we go, say of me, “He is my brother.”’”
14 Then Abimelek brought sheep and cattle and male and female slaves and gave them to Abraham, and he returned Sarah his wife to him. 15 And Abimelek said, “My land is before you; live wherever you like.”
16 To Sarah he said, “I am giving your brother a thousand shekels[a] of silver. This is to cover the offense against you before all who are with you; you are completely vindicated.”
17 Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelek, his wife and his female slaves so they could have children again, 18 for the Lord had kept all the women in Abimelek’s household from conceiving because of Abraham’s wife Sarah.
Listening and Listening guide
Sermon
He was already an old man when God called him to leave his family and land and go to a new place. 75 years old. He packed up all he had on his back and he moved hundreds of miles with no home waiting for him at the other end. He stopped in mountains where he could watch his flocks without causing problems.
He was a nomad. When a famine came, he left that land. He went to Egypt. He escaped by a miraculous turn of events.
He became powerful. He collected more cattle, sheep. His family also grew. He got a servant in his household pregnant and she had a son.
Then another man took interest in his wife. That was partially his own doing. He had taught her to say, “I’m his sister”. Again, a miraculous turn of events protected him and their marriage. They escaped.
And they became one of the most influential families in all of history. He became the father of not one, not two, but three religious groups. All nations on earth have literally been blessed through him.
I’m talking about Abraham and his wife Sarah.
Adventure
Today we want to talk specifically about that instance in his life when another man took interest in his wife. That man was named Abimelek and he was the king of Gerar. He was a leader of the nation that would become part of the Philistines. And if that name means anything to you, you should know it, because the Philistines caused the Israelites trouble for many years.
It was these events that soured the relationship between the Israelites and the Philistines. It was these events that let the Philistines become a people that the Israelites never conquered.
All of that started with Abraham’s time with Abimelek and the story he told Abimelek.
Development
What did Abraham tell Abimelek?
He told Abimelek a version of the truth. We hear what Abraham told Abimelek in a dream he had. “God came to Abimelek in a dream one night and said to him, “You are as good as dead because of the woman you have taken; she is a married woman.” Now Abimelek had not gone near her, so he said, “Lord, will you destroy an innocent nation? Did he not say to me, “She is my sister” and didn’t she also say, “He is my brother”. Then we hear later, “Besides, she really is my sister, the daughter of my father, though not of my mother”. (verses 3-5)
Abraham told them a version of the truth. He practiced endogamy. It’s technically not incest. Incest is marrying your brother or sister, father or mother, or uncles and aunts. No, he married a half-sister.
So when Abraham and Sarah told the Philistines they were brother and sister, that was partially true. Can you imagine ever doing that? I’ve been married for 15 years. We’ve had our challenges and we love each other deeply. I have never seriously thought of saying, this is Rachel. she is my girlfriend, or she is a cousin, or her? I don’t know her. I can’t imagine doing something like that. What’s going on here?
Abraham and Sarah were in the territory of Gerar. Abraham had gained significant power and influence. We know he had over 300 trained men in his own private army. If he had moved down to Gerar as a married man, the king of Gerar almost certainly would have seen him as competition. He would have said, this guy Abraham is trying to take over my land and my people.
But when Abraham said, she is my sister, all that competition went away. Suddenly Abraham was a wealthy shepherd and merchant, looking for a good home and good business partners and willing to share his sister to get some better relationships. Do you see that? It’s like in all the sports movies where the new running back moves to town. He is a great athlete and there is all kinds of tension with the local popular quarterback. Then boom, the running back’s sister starts dating the quarterback! What happens? All the tension goes away.
Now, imagine, what if that brother and sister, the new running back and his sister, had said, we’re dating. We’re dating from the start. What would that have done with the relationship with the quarterback? There would have been nothing to ease the tension.
One of the things that is fascinating about Abraham, Abraham is the guy who let his nephew Lot decide which land he got and which land Abraham got. Abraham asked God to save Sodom and Gomorrah for ten righteous people. Abraham jumped up and he went to war with only 300 trained men to save his selfish nephew Lot. Abraham did a lot of tough stuff in his life. When did Abraham have problems in his life?
He slept with a mistress. He allowed his wife to abuse her servant. He sent that woman and her son away. And now what does Abraham do?
This was how Abraham thought his wife should love him. “‘This is how you can show your love to me: Everywhere we go, say of me, “He is my brother.” (verse 13)
I want you to think about that for a second. Maybe you don’t like it at first because you don’t like the idea of someone teaching you how to show love. I wouldn’t get too hung up on that. Maybe you don’t know it, maybe you don’t do it, but you often have to say, how can I love you right now? Do you want a hug? Dinner? Want me to leave you alone? How can I love you? So that isn’t necessarily bad. But imagine this...
Imagine I come to you and I say, here is a thousand dollars. I want to give you a thousand dollars. You would probably say, wow, that’s awesome! Thanks. Really? Are you sure you want to give me a thousand dollars? And I say, yup, it’s all for you. You just have to spend it on me. Yeah, that’s it. It’s all yours. Just spend it on me.
Would you feel loved? Would you feel cared for? Would you feel important? Absolutely not! You’d probably throw the money back in my face and say, just go spend the money yourself!
You know the word for love here... the word Abraham uses for love.... he doesn’t tell Sarah, here is how you express your passion and desire for me. He doesn’t say, here is how you express your friendship and appreciation for me. He says, here is how you express your faithfulness to me. Here is how you express your commitment to me.
Abraham didn’t really give his wife a gift. He gave her a loan. When he loved her, he expected her to give it right back, the way he wanted it, all the time. He didn’t know love.
See, this is Abraham’s failure. He did not know love. And then you step back and say...
Abraham lived a lie.
And because he lived a lie he made Sarah live a lie.
And because Sarah lived a lie, Abimilek lived a lie.
And because Abimilek lived a lie, their whole nation almost died.
This is what happens when you and I don’t love truth.
But I want you to see also how God gives them the truth. Look at verse 7 “Now return the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live.” (verse 7) What you got to know about this, “These are the only uses of the words prophet and pray in Genesis” (Andrew E. Steinmann, Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary, ed. David G. Firth, vol. 1 of The Tyndale Commentary Series (London: Inter-Varsity Press, 2019), 206)
You see this? God let’s a man who has been deceived, who lived a lie, speak the very words to give life.
That’s because behind Abraham was a far greater prophet who didn’t just speak the truth, but was truth himself. One day would come the prophet who said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”. He would not have to pray for the truth. He would speak the truth himself. He would not have to ask for life. He would just speak life himself.
(the difference between a child who tells something true but doesn’t know what they are saying and an adult who has learned through sacrifice and loss)
AJ wanting to read the Bible, he has his win Bible.
Behind Abraham was the great prophet who would come some day and not just pray for
Know the truth so we can all live.
Action
Friends, do you see what happens here?
It’s easy to think that Jesus is just another Trojan Horse.
(maybe let me teach you everything vs let me go ahead of you)
One of the most famous failures of truth in history is the story of the Trojan Horse. Remember that one? The prince of Troy took the beautiful queen of the Greeks. Because of that, the Greeks went to war against the Trojans. But the Greeks could not get into the city of Troy. So what did the do?
They built a massive horse. They gave it to the Trojans as a gift. The Trojans put the horse in their city. And they had a party.
But what happened that night? Greek soldiers were hiding in the horse. In the middle of the night, the soldiers broke out, opened the gates, and began to kill everyone.
It's easy to think Jesus is that, isn’t it? And sometimes things happen that make us feel that is true. Christians seem to divorce just as much as nonChristians.
Jesus is much more like a Gobstopper
Acts 13:26-62
Sermon
Listening guide
Text
Lessons
1 Corinthians 3:16-17
Sermon
The vast majority of people right now have no sense of God
What is God up to? They say nothing. A few people are willing to admit, “I can’t find God. I don’t sense that God is here.”
The very few people who say, I sense God. I have an awareness of him. They almost always say,
“I sense him out there – in the woods, on the lake. I don’t feel him, I don’t sense him at church.”
When I ask people, where did you see God show up this week? Nobody ever says it was in the church building, it was at worship.
Complete loss of the sense of God’s presence. (immanence and transcendence.) Maybe mention a shell – the buffered soul Charles Taylor called it. It keeps any awareness of the divine
So when people come to church, they don’t sense God
Church building might feel like a home – safe and warm
Maybe like a business – cold and functioning
Or visiting a therapist
They don’t come here as a place where we meet with God.
Can we imagine any more what it might feel like to go to a place and have a sense that God is truly present?
Pick anyone in the world that you would like to see.
If you could see anyone who would you like to see?
That is the kind of experience Jacob had in a certain place. He had a fabulous experience with God one time. Afterwards, he said, “Surely God is in this place” (Gen 28:16). He literally named the place “Bethel” - the house of God.
Adventure/discover
Place where God lives
The second symbol of God’s people. Last week we took a look at the first tangible symbol of God’s people as we wait for his return. Land. God’s people develop land – a place – not only shows they are God’s people but he is at work as he brings life.
Second symbol is God’s dwelling.
Today we want to make that place.
Development
God always had a dwelling among his people. "[The temple] was the divine dwelling-place of the God of Israel which set them apart from other nations...It was the place where (the LORD – original YHWH) lived and ruled in the midst of Israel, and where through the sacrificial system which reached its climax in the great festivals, he lived in grace, forgiving them, restoring them, and enabling them to be cleansed of defilement and so to continue as his people.” (NT Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, pg 224-225)
The garden of Eden “8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” Ge 3:8–9
The tabernacle “42 “For the generations to come this burnt offering is to be made regularly at the entrance to the tent of meeting, before the Lord. There I will meet you and speak to you; 43 there also I will meet with the Israelites, and the place will be consecrated by my glory. 44 “So I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar and will consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve me as priests. 45 Then I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God. 46 They will know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of Egypt so that I might dwell among them. I am the Lord their God.” Ex 29:42–46.
The temple “10 When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of the Lord. 11 And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled his temple. 12 Then Solomon said, “The Lord has said that he would dwell in a dark cloud; 13 I have indeed built a magnificent temple for you, a place for you to dwell forever.” (1 Ki 8:10–13)
Brief overview there. Hopefully you see, God wants to be in a specific place for his people.
Bible teaches 2 things about God’s presence
God is present everywhere - omnipresence
Present at certain times and places for his people to do good – gracious presence
God wants to be at a specific place for his people to do good.
1990 New York City – hundreds of people professed faith in Jesus in a very short time
1994 Toronto Blessing
2010s Vancouver – hundreds of people baptized
Let me give us a little illustration.
Everyone needs oxygenation all the time. If you checked the oxygenation level
There are certain times, if you’re going to be a runner or swimmer, or you’re sick, you’re going to have surgery, when you need a special dose of oxygen.
That’s what this is. God shows up in a time and place and says, I’m going to increase the grace in your life.
This is something that is so awesome about Christianity.
Some religions say God is everywhere and might even say God is everything
Others say God is in a certain place
But Christianity says
That is something you and I need.
It’s good to go to work, to mow the lawn or trim the trees or maybe in winter plow the snow. You do it well. You get close to the edges. You do it quickly without mowing up the grass. You do it well because you believe God is with you and he is watching you. He matters.
You go home and maybe its not that day or the next day but the next day and you fight with your spouse. You’re a little sick of your parents always being around so you’re pulling back. Not just healthy boundaries. You’re not loving them. You can’t help but think some days, I’ve done the same thing for 5 or 7 or 10 or 15 years, does it even matter anymore? Look at me, you think. I’m so many years old and this is all I’m doing. What you need is a God who meets you in a special place. Everything you’ve done wrong doesn’t count against you. Here you have value not because of what you do, but because I chose you.
Desperately need
Time and place to say you are absolutely forgiven
On top of that, you are valued no matter what you do or who you are
This is the good news.
Yes God is everywhere, but there is also a place where he meets with you and me for our good.
The God of heaven and earth lives here like nowhere else.
Action
This is absolutely what the Bible says for you and me, and its what you and I get to make happen.
16 Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple. (1 Co 3:16–17)
Was a building, now he choses to live in us. It’s all of us, together.
Think about it like a musical group. So many. You pick yours. (Maybe you like YoYo Ma and his cellos. Maybe its Manuel Lin Miranda and the rap from Hamilton. Maybe you like Brendon Urie from Panic at the Disco. Or maybe you want to go back to someone like Beethoven or Mozart.)
Sure they are great performers. But you need them all.
You need someone to direct or conduct
You need music that you can all play together.
You can be a great performer
Bible as the our text, our music
A whole group of performers
Jesus Christ as our conductor
This is God’s temple. We are.
Other ways of thinking try to convince that you are God or that God doesn’t care and he isn’t coming.
God says you and I are messed up and a wreck
Jesus died to become the wind – the wind that fills you and me, that makes alive.
His body “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” … 18 The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” 20 They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.” (Jn 2:16–22)
A non-physical “57 Then some stood up and gave this false testimony against him: 58 “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple made with human hands and in three days will build another, not made with hands.’ ” 59 Yet even then their testimony did not agree.” (Mk 14:57–5)
In my time, I have been in some amazing churches. I’ve toured the Crystal Cathedral in Los Angeles, the Basilica of St Mary in Minneapolis, the ancient ChongwenMen church in Beijing, the Castle Church and the City Church in Wittenberg, and the massive Basilica of St Peter in Rome.
None holds a candle to the building Jesus is making right in front of me.
We are the people of God. We are the church. We are his temple.
Nothing in this whole earth can stop us. Not even the devil himself.
Build a great church. Build a great temple.
Tell the world God is in this place.
John 4:19-24
Daniel 3
2 Corinthians 9:6-15
Sermon
I smile a little bit when I ask you, is there anything I can pray for you about? And you say, no, everything is good. I chuckle a little to myself and say, good, I’ll join you in praising God!
Isn’t it great that we have many reasons to praise God?
You don’t ever have to feel bad or guilty about sharing praise.
There are plenty of cranky, unhappy people
Great praise is a great thing. Football … the parents love to praise the coaches.
Praise is to express delight, to say enjoyment
Adventure
God isn’t the only one who can directly produce praise. We can produce praise. Like players on a football game.
He says this today in 2 Corinthians 9. He makes two points.
First, he says that the church is supposed to be a group of cheerful and generous people.
Second that generosity will lead people to praise God.
We can tell the church is the church in part when people praise God for what we do. The church is not the church until people praise God for what we do.
Development
First, we have to actually do things that lead to praise.
God says it like this, “Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. 7 Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” (verse 6-7)
And then later on he says, “You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, others will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else.” (verse 11, 13)
He is speaking of money.
He invites the Corinthians to join him in giving.
An offering for the people in Jerusalem.
He says, if you do this well, people will praise because of you.
I find this hard to imagine. I feel like I get criticized even for the good things that I try to do. Vicinia, kicked out over latest COVID scare. …
And now, I’m supposed to do things that are so good that people will praise God because of them. Doesn’t Paul know how bad I am at so many things? Doesn’t Paul know how much I mess up at so much of life? Doesn’t Paul know how critical people are of religion and religiosity and religious belief?
Paul knows all of that too well.
Paul had been that person.
At one time, Paul had been deeply opposed to the Christian faith.
Paul had been highly critical of everything that Christianity did.
Paul understood exactly the mindset that said, there is nothing that these Christians can do that is good.
Paul had already gone through the challenge of overcoming that mindset. What I mean is, he had already gone through the challenge of becoming the person that other people praised God for him.
Paul made tents among the Corinthians. He didn’t ask for a thing from them.
He even gave back and supported the Corinthians from what he made.
There was an irony here. Paul probably went to about 20 cities. He worked in other ones. Only Corinth tells us he made tents.
Paul is saying, I overcame all the criticism. I became that generous person. He modeled the very thing that he is telling them to do. To be generous, to be giving in such a way, that people praise God.
2 characteristics of giving that leads people to praise God, then 2 motivations. 2 characteristics, 2 motivations.
First, 2 characteristics.
Heartfelt - “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give” (verse 7)
What Paul wants to point out here is that the kind of giving that leads to praise is not just head giving.
We’re all taught this basic principle that says some amount of giving is necessary in life. You need to learn to be a generous person. Probably something like “to whom much has been given much shall be required”. We even pass that principle on to our kids.
Paul says, the kind of giving that leads to praise comes from a heart conviction, not just a head conviction.
Andrew Carnegie is a helpful example here. By the age of 33 he had built up the company US Steel and was a multimillionaire. He wrote himself that said, “Everyone must have an idol. The amassing of wealth is one of the worst kinds of idolatry.” He wrote in this note that he was going to quit business at the age of 35 and then spend his life learning. “systematic instruction” he said. (Keller, Counterfeit Gods, pg 69) That’s the key. He went for the head. Not the heart.
If you’ve watched the documentary “The Men Who Built America” you know Carnegie didn’t quit at 35. He became a billionaire. And he was incredibly generous. He built the library system. And yet, what did many people point out? He left his men working in poverty. “We didn’t want him to build a library for us, we wanted better wages.”
What’s that say for you and for me? We will never give like Carnegie. Around here we aren’t going to outgive the MacPhersons.
Heart giving, giving that is driven by compassion and empathy and sympathy and mercy will turn so many more heads.
Genuine giving - “not reluctantly or under compulsion”
What Paul wants to point out here is that our giving can’t be seeking. If we are forced to give, then we are giving to get. Even if it is just giving so that others will leave us alone. That kind of giving won’t produce praise.
Comparison two men bring home, hate to use it, it’s cliché so it works, two men bring home a bouquet of flowers.
The one lady says oh thank you, they’re so beautiful. Let’s put them out and enjoy them.
The second lady says, what, thanks a lot, that’s going to get you really far. What’s going on there? You might think that he bought roses when she prefers daisies (that’s my family). You might say he overspent the budget for the month and she is ticked. But more likely you’d say he is just trying to win her favor, he is just trying to get back in her good graces.
He is just giving to get.
Paul says, if you want to give in a way that leads to praise, you can’t give under compulsion. If you’re compulsed, you’re forced to do something. You might be giving so that the person stops bugging you. You might be giving so that your coworkers think you’re good. That’s the thing, so much of our giving is giving to get. We aren’t actually giving to give.
If you want to produce praise, you need to actually give. Not give to get.
That’s the kind of giving the church does.
The church is still not the church until people praise God. We not a humanitarian group. If all they talk about is us, that misses the point.
How do we become people who help people pivot their praise?
The Bible says, “10 Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God”
There’s no better illustration than this. Charles Spurgeon, the old Baptist preacher, used to say what if you knew you were dying of something and I had a medicine that could cure you for sure? You said, “I want to buy that medicine.” And he said, “Well, if you go to the distributor, it’s extremely expensive and you might have to lose your home. You might have to lose your record collection. You might have to lose everything in order to buy it.” What would you say?
You would say, “What good is my home if I don’t have that? What good is my record collection if I don’t have that? This thing is so precious, this medicine is so precious, that all these other things that always were important to me, that seemed very expensive to me, look cheap. The preciousness of that medicine has made everything else in my life expendable.”
He says, “he will increase the store of your seed”. That means he will give you the stuff to be generous.
He also says, “he will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.” (verse 11) What does that mean?
It means that on the cross, God said you are worth infinite value to me. Jesus said there was a medicine that was worth everything. I won’t hold anything back from you.
In another place God says Jesus has become our righteousness (1 Cor 1:30)
Luther says every day a Christian is somebody who gets up and says, “I’m rich. I’m rich. I’ve been adopted into the family. I’ve been accepted in the beloved. I have a guarantee to rule and reign forever. I have his holy power living in me, that will inevitably overwhelm all my flaws, all my weaknesses, all my sadnesses.” A Christian is somebody who feels absolutely rich, and therefore can help people pivot their praise.
Let’s be God’s people and listen to people praise.
Action
I know this time is financially crazy.
I think I’ve said this before, the church is experiencing some of that.
I’m not asking you to give more. What I want you to do is believe that we are God’s people and we can help people pivot their praise.
I hear people say, no one praises God, no one has anything good to say about God. Then let’s do this. Let’s be God’s people and help people pivot their praise.
James 2:1-17
Sermon
James 1:19-27
Sermon
I want to talk to you today about doing gospel good. Doing gospel good. What is it?
Gospel good is this. Actions that both people who know you personally and God receive as good.
Actions
Actually good for real people
Genuine, authentic, not hypocritical
And we’ll get what makes this really gospel good later. I want to unpack this today.
I know how hard it is do good right now. Let me give us an example from my past to consider. Family that I worked with for a time. Helped them get food. Helped them to get basic items for life. Worked on projects around the house. Provided Christian guidance. Good relationship. I appreciated the intimacy, the honesty. It was good.
Eventually the whole relationship exploded. There were a number of reasons, but one thing said was something like; “you said one time you were good at working people“. The takeaway, that person thought I was good at manipulating people. That was there takeaway from my words and actions.
I'm not telling you this because I want you to think I’m a hypocrite. I’m not telling you this because I want pity. I’m not telling you this because
I’m telling you this because, if you are a religious person, I can almost guarantee you people don’t think you are as good as you think you are.
What do I mean?
I mean the most basic religion is to say, if I’m a good person, then God will love me and forgive me and accept me and bless me. Religious people almost always say, I feel loved, I feel accepted, I feel blessed. I must be a pretty good person.
I don’t think it’s that hard to prove. Do you know how many people ask me to forgive them or assure them they’re forgiven? You can probably guess. You know how often you’ve told me, pastor, I feel really bad about what I’ve done. I feel guilty. It doesn’t happen that often.
What is that? That’s nothing other than religious people thinking they’re pretty good. That’s not what other people see.
Study by David Kinnaman in the early 2000s. About the way non-religious people perceive religious people. One non-religious person said, “Christianity has become marketed and streamlined into a juggernaut of fearmongering that has lost its own heart.” (David Kinnaman, unChristian, pg 15)
I know you’ve seen that first hand and so have I. I was just hearing from an acquaintance who said a relative was changing religions. That person told Christians, don’t judge me, the bible says don’t judge me. Don’t be a bunch of hypocrites.
And you know what, God agrees. Twice in this lesson, James says, “don’t deceive yourselves”. What’s he saying? He is saying, it’s really easy to think you are doing good when you aren’t.
The Christian idea of doing good is different. Christianity says, God loves me and forgives me and accepts me because of Jesus. He died and rose for me. And because of that, I will do good. I will listen to God and people and do good for both. That is the Christian idea of doing good. That is gospel good.
That happens no matter how bad or crappy or cruddy the times are. A lot of stuff stinks now. Really does. Stuff stunk for James too. Life was a mess. We talked about it a little bit last time
people were scattered
Poverty
Trials
Still James said, “do what it says” (verse 22) He said, don’t just be hearers of the word and deceive, not everyone else, but yourselves, and do what it says. This is the basic premise: The message of the gospel leads us to do good for real people.
There are at least three things to pay attention to or to think about as you try to do gospel good.
First, moral (verse 24)
Moral or morality means determining what is right and wrong and then living out those beliefs
People are generally not immoral. They’re not amoral. They’re hyper moral.
Like this family. You'd think after everything we’d have a lot of cred but we didn’t. People are really picky.
They don’t often have a good foundation. “accept the word planted in you” - he is trying to help people see that most of us haven’t accepted the Word as our foundation for our morality.
We tend to act like an anorexic person.
Verbal (verse 26)
Personal (verse 27)
Words and actions that go together for people.
It’s one thing to say, I want to do something good and then make a post on Instagram. Make the good things you do for specific people so that your words and actions line up.
I know this is asking a lot.
Everything is so confusing right now. Everything is so hard right now. Even the businesses are in the business of telling us what good we are supposed to be doing.
So I want to give you this encouragement. James says, doing good should be kind of like looking into a mirror. It should be that natural. It is just who you are. This is verse 23 and 24.
Then to complete his illustration, listen to God’s Word. And listen to the people next to you. And when you’ve got a chance to do something that both the people next to you and the Bible call good.
He is saying, this is how natural it is. This is how normal it is. You just ask people, how can I help? How can I serve?
And then, its like he catches himself. He says, “look at the perfect law that gives freedom”. (verse 25) What is that talking about?
Let’s take an example like Snow White. When the Queen looks into the mirror all the time, she says, mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all. And her view of herself becomes distorted.
You need to see the good you are supposed to be doing. You also need to see the freedom you have.
What is he saying? He is saying, look at the Bible. Even more than that, the use of the word “law” here. In James, its confusing, its hard. But commentators point out that it basically means the gospel here. It means Jesus great teaching that is filled with the gospel. (“it is necessary to associate ‘the perfect law of liberty’ closely with the gospel”, Douglas Moo, TNTC,
If you want to be great, serve. (Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant – Mark 10:43)
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Emile Cailliet – never saw a Bible. Did some graduate work. Went off to war
"A Bible, you say? Where is it? Show me. I have never seen one before!"
She complied. I literally grabbed the book and rush to my study with it. I opened and "chanced" upon the Beatitudes! I read, and read, and read - now aloud with an indescribable warmth surging within. I could not find words to express my awe and wonder. And suddenly the realization dawned upon me: this was the book that would understand me!
I continued to read deeply into the night, mostly from the Gospels. And lo and behold, as I looked through them, the One of whom they spoke, the One who spoke and acted in them became alive to me.
The providential circumstances amid which the book had found me now made it clear that while it seemed absurd to speak of a book understanding a man, this could be said of the Bible because its pages were animated by the presence of the living God and the power of his mighty acts. To this God I prayed that night, and the God who answered was the same God of whom it was spoken in the book. (histheo-calliet_emile.docx (sharepoint.com))
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You have to have something else to look at. If you’re only looking at yourself, you’re a slave to yourself.
This is what the ancient church captured. Ancient church lived. Epistle to Diognetus, middle of the 100s.
“Christians are not distinguished from other men by country, language, nor by the customs which they observe. They do not inhabit cities of their own, use a particular way of speaking, nor lead a life marked out by any curiosity. The course of conduct they follow has not been devised by the speculation and deliberation of inquisitive men. The do not, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of merely human doctrines.
Instead, they inhabit both Greek and barbarian cities, however things have fallen to each of them. And it is while following the customs of the natives in clothing, food, and the rest of ordinary life that they display to us their wonderful and admittedly striking way of life.
They live in their own countries, but they do so as those who are just passing through. As citizens they participate in everything with others, yet they endure everything as if they were foreigners. Every foreign land is like their homeland to them, and every land of their birth is like a land of strangers.
They marry, like everyone else, and they have children, but they do not destroy their offspring.
They share a common table, but not a common bed.
They exist in the flesh, but they do not live by the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, all the while surpassing the laws by their lives.
They love all men and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned. They are put to death and restored to life.
They are poor, yet make many rich. They lack everything, yet they overflow in everything.
They are dishonored, and yet in their very dishonor they are glorified; they are spoken ill of and yet are justified; they are reviled but bless; they are insulted and repay the insult with honor; they do good, yet are punished as evildoers; when punished, they rejoice as if raised from the dead. They are assailed by the Jews as barbarians; they are persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who hate them are unable to give any reason for their hatred.” Letter to Diognetus
This is gospel good.
Action
Listen to someone else, listen to God and find a small act of good you can do.
Ask someone, how can I help? How can I serve? What can I do for you? How can I pray for you?
I know we’re tired. I know we’re confused. I know things seem to keep getting worse.
Bring gospel good. Do gospel good.
James 1:2-18
One of my acquaintances...I told this woman that I was a pastor. She said, wow, that must be really hard. I wasn’t looking for any sympathy or pity and so I said something like, I don’t think it is any harder than any of your jobs. She said, no, that’s not what I mean. I mean inspiring people
Jokingly I said, yeah, I’ve given up on inspiring people. I'm just aiming for survival. Just keep our heads up and keep going, that will be enough.
She is right. It is incredibly hard to inspire people. The world seems so crazy and upside down. We feel like there is trouble everywhere.
And it really is. In fact, we really connect with the people to whom James wrote.
In verse 1, we hear that this man James was writing to the “12 tribes scattered among the nations” (verse 1). By this point, the 12 tribes of Israel no longer exist. But he is writing to his people. The descendants of the 12 tribes.
They are going through some terrible things. They’ve been
Scattered – sounds like us after 18 months of pandemic; we’re not sure where to go or not to go anymore
Lacks wisdom – sounds like us making decisions in a difficult, shifting economy
Divide between the rich and the poor – growing inequality
We could go on and on because the list of troubles that these people are going through are no different than the troubles you and I experience.
But James wants us to look at a deeper level.
Whatever troubles you and I have gone through, they are really nothing compared to what is going on on a much deeper level.
A lot of our fundamental ways of looking at life as Americans have been tested. re is a clash, a collision of views that we’re experiencing.
This time of testing, that makes it feel like there is intense trouble.
You know what I’m talking about. You know what I’m saying. Even if you wouldn’t talk about it in exactly the same way....
You would say for example, that we’ve been told as Americans, “the customer is always right”. It’s my way. That we the people make the government and all the institutions.
Schools telling parents
We’ve got businesses telling employees who can work there and what they have to do to
I’m not taking a position on either side, but I’m saying that we feel this clash, this collision in our minds saying, I’ve been told my whole life that the customer is always right and what am I supposed to do about this.
“My body, my choice” has always been the position of a certain group of people or a certain party. But now, a different group completely has started saying the same thing.
“You can be anything you want to be.” But now with increasing polarization, especially on social media, all the sudden there are some things we can’t be. You can’t be too masculine. You can’t be too feminine. Some people even feel like they can’t be the person they were born as – their ethnicity, their gender.
You're feeling the testing, you’re feeling the clash, you’re feeling the collision. The basic belief, the basic idea of American life is to be true to myself. That’s the meaning of life. The meaning of life is to be true to myself.
When we think of getting tested, many of us think of feeling encouraged to do bad things. To be naughty. If we know the Bible stories, we might think of someone like Judas who was tempted to betray his friend for money. We might think about a guy who wants to steal someone else’s wife.
James wants to tell us that there can be many kinds of trials. “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds” (verse 2) We’re going to come back to the joy part in a second.
What you are going through right now, all of these troubles are a huge test. It’s a huge test if you are the person you should be. Are you mature? Are you complete? Will you make it through?
And today he is going to give us the basic thing, the first thing to be mature. To be complete. To really, not in a superficial way, but in a deep way, be true to ourselves.
Development
What is that?
It’s not bad to get that our deepest convictions are getting challenged.
God would say, that’s a good thing. “may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (verse 4) Because most of your beliefs about the world are wrong. They’re just plain wrong.
It’s easy to laugh at someone who says, “the customer is always right”. We all laugh at that and say, haha yeah right. And yet, if you get into any kind of a position in a business or an organization, you better not tell You realize, its much harder to have correct and true beliefs about life than we thought.
God says, look, most of everything you believe about the world is just plain wrong. Many people believe that the most important thing in life is to be a good person. Just be a good person and everything will be okay. If I'm a good person, then the gods or the universe or whoever is out there will bless me and take care of me and I’ll be accepted and approved. But that’s not true. That’s no more true than saying, “the meaning of my life is to be true to myself.”
“be true to myself” isn’t correct. The only thing that is true is to say we’re poor, wretched, and lost people. We’re more lost and broken and hurt and confused than we could possibly know or imagine. And yet at the same time, at the same time, we are forgiven and loved and accepted and welcomed in Jesus Christ.
That’s the gospel. The gospel is the first thing we need to get through this test. The gospel means that we are are lost and broken and sinful but we are also loved and forgiven in Jesus.
That’s the kind of belief that can stand up. That's the kind of belief that can put the world back right. God is showing you that here in all kinds of little ways in James.
It’s that belief. It’s that conviction that says, I’m forgiven and accepted only because of Jesus. And God wha
He says here. “consider it pure joy when you face trials” (verse 2) How can you have joy when you face trials? Who can do that?
If you believe that I’m a good person, so everything will be okay, what happens the first time your girlfriend breaks up with you, or you lose your first job, or you get cancer? If you believe you are a good person, how can you have joy when you experience those kinds of trials? What will you end up saying to yourself?
You'll say, I thought I was a good person. I thought I was doing the right thing. I shouldn’t have to suffer like this. This doesn’t seem fair. This doesn’t seem right.
But the gospel would say to you and me, Jesus has endured the very worst trial – he was separated from his father – so that he could be joined with us and you and I would never be separated from God.
We can say, yes, my girlfriend broke up with me because I am a messed up person and I probably did something and I betrayed her trust and I hurt her and I messed up the relationship. At the same time I know that my God has endured a test so much worse than this so that he would never leave me. Even if my girlfriend does leave me, my God never will.
Or if you or I get cancer, we can say, I realize that I have this cancer because I am a broken person and I’m falling apart and I’m supposed to be heading into the grave. But my God went through a far worse test, he suffered eternal death so that whatever death I die, it’s only temporary. Even if I die for a time, I won’t die forever. I will rise again.
This is what the gospel does for us. It lets us turn this whole messy world back around.
“Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. But the rich should take pride in their humiliation” (verse 9) Again, we say, how can I take pride in my poverty? If the meaning of life is to be true to myself and my lack of money keeps me from being true to myself, you’ll never have pride when you’re poor. But if you say, God made himself poor in Jesus so that I could be rich, you’ll say, yes, I realize I’m poor. But I’m also rich. Richer than I could imagine.
We could go on and on. Jesus says, you’re going through a time of testing, a time of trial. You feel like the world is turned upside down and is just a mess. Let me tell that the gospel is a thing that will turn the world back right.
What we’re feeling is like an hourglass. You ever watch an hourglass? Sand flows down and there is something mesmerizing about it. The cool thing is, you can just turn it over and it goes around again. Turn it over and it goes down again.
And what God says is, stop trying to turn the hourglass around. Stop trying to put it all back. Do you know what you could do with this hourglass?
God says, I can remake the hourglass. I can do it in a new way.
There is just one way to turn the hourglass around. Change the sand.
Can God do that? “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights.” (verse 17)
And you say, can God do that? Does God do that?
Example of this, I was told this week about a conversation a middle aged man, and a 70 year old man had.
He said he asked this man, hey how you doing? He said, I’m good. And then the younger guy said, what you don’t think this is crazy. The older guy said, you know what was crazy. The 60s were crazy.
The younger guy said, oh you mean the summer of love and VW's and the Beach Boys. Crazy like that. He said, no man, that's all stereotyped.
You don't understand the psychological trauma that the 60s were.
He said, you're dealing with racial tensions right now. You're worried about how technology is shaping people. You think politics is a mess right now.
He said, you've got to understand how sort of homogeneous and stable the world was after World War Two. There was this era where for the most part there was pretty shared cultural narratives. There were some people excluded from it, but for the most part it was pretty stable.
And then he said, we had the civil rights movement and he said, you think that you know you're traumatized because people are dying at the hands of the police?
He said I lived at a time were the leaders were assassinated. He said when Martin Luther King Junior was killed, you don't know what that did to the black community and then Malcolm X was killed and then Fred Hampton was executed. He said there was just this sense of racial trauma with the civil rights movement.
He said you think you've got political chaos, so people forget that JFK was incredibly controversial when he was elected. And then JFK was assassinated. And then they wanted his brother Bobby to run. And then Bobby was assassinated. And then Watergate happened and people would completely lost trust in the institution of government.
You think you're dealing with war. We have the Cold War, Vietnam, Vietnam War. We had the draft and draft burnings. Our aversion to violence was horrific.
You think your technology is good because you can do FaceTime calls he's like. We put a man on the moon. We put a man on the moon.
He said there was the rise of mass media, couldn't believe it and he says you you think you're struggling with LGBTQ realities? How do you make sense of sexual confusion and everything happening in our culture? He said you should have understand what the pill did which was sex without consequence.
It's like you don't understand how procreation was separated from sex and what that did in our larger culture you don't understand.
The Stonewall riots and how that came into for the most part, a stable understanding of the family and changed it is that there was so much confusion.
Then there's the hippies and the counterculture. It was just wild.
The middle aged man said, Ok.
And then he said this to me, he said. You know what came next?
I said no, this is the Jesus movement.
Out of all of the confusion, another movement of Jesus came.
And he said, here's the thing about the Jesus movement. The reason it happened is because every structure, every ideology, every vision of life was tested and broken and pushed to the max.
And here's what people found out. They all weren’t enough and a couple of burned out kids read the gospels, read about the Kingdom of Jesus, the way of Jesus, the community of Jesus.
They took it seriously, and that potent fruit that had been hiding under all these other structures came up again and it change the church in the United States. They made it to the cover of the Time magazine.
You think God can’t turn this right? Just you watch.
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Friends, this is what God calls you to and I too. And there is one way to get there.
“He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.” (verse 18)
We are on the very edge of a birth of a new movement, but it’s threatened. It’s not threatened by the pandemic, or vaccines, or racial issues, or the government. It’s threatened by us. We need a new birth.
Friends, there is no guarantee or church structures, or great leaders, or our futures. There is the victory of God through Jesus. I don’t know what life is going to look like in a day, a week, a month, or a year, but I know what that word of truth says. And it says if you take hold of his victory, you hold on to his win, you too can be a kind of a firstfruits.
Some of you are on the verge of compromise, you are ready to give in. You want to marry the times and be accepted and fit and conform.
Don’t do it. This is the time to come alive by the word of truth.
I want to encourage you. I want to call you to believe in the gospel. To build a community of love and carry this in our very hands.
What’s the future going to look like in Otsego and Plainwell. It’s going to be what we make it to be. So let’s pray that the Holy Spirit would come and fill us with faith, fill us with hope. Fill us with belief
Belief in the gospel. The gospel will get us past this test.
Mark 10:2-16
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