Sermon # 1028
February 13, 2011
Exodus 32:7-14
John 10:19-30
Dr. Ed Pettus
“A Conversational Relationship”
The comedian Lily Tomlin once asked: “Why is it that when we speak to God we are said to be praying but when God speaks to us we are said to be schizophrenic?” Let’s face it, when we hear someone say: “God told me to do this,” we are quite suspicious. And in some cases this is the right position to take, for we have seen too many cults whose leaders claim to hear God then lead his or her people to a fatal end. The Bible is not without this kind of language: “the Lord said to Moses”, or “the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah”. Sometimes it might be an angel who speaks to Joseph in a dream or tells Philip to go toward Gaza. Does the Lord speak to us?
The first scripture reading today includes a conversation between Moses and God. The first thing we might notice is the opening narration: “The LORD said to Moses.” We wonder if Moses heard a voice. Did Moses sense God speaking? The word Moses hears is so very specific: “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely.” We think that God has never been that specific with anything in our life. Why not? It is part of the reason we look up to Moses, these conversations, not like our prayers, not like any conversation we have ever had. God simply and clearly speaks to Moses. “9The LORD said to Moses, ‘I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. 10Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.’”
Then Moses seems rather nonchalant about it. He just responds as if talking to a buddy: “But Moses implored the LORD his God, and said, ‘O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?” By the end of Moses’ speech, God has changed his mind and about the disaster he planned against the people.
Maybe it is courageous on Moses’ part. Maybe Moses is like no other in relationship to God. Or perhaps Moses is an example for every believer. Perhaps this is the kind of relationship God desires to have with each one of us, a conversational relationship. We learn, in this type of conversation with God in Exodus 32, that God takes seriously our role as a covenant partner…as a conversational partner. We have a voice in the conversation that is truly considered. God listens to our side, to our perspective, to our hopes, our fears, and our insight. Perhaps we can have a conversational relationship with God.
Jesus teaches that his sheep know his voice. Listen again: “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:25-27). Those who cannot hear Jesus’ voice cannot hear because they do not believe. But to those who believe – the implication is that we who believe can hear Jesus’ voice. Hearing God is normal in the life of anyone who believes. A conversational relationship is possible for all who believe.
Moses, Abraham, Job, Jesus, Peter, and Paul, these and many others from the Bible teach us of the conversational relationship we have with God. We learn to listen, to hear the voice of God, and we seek to have the courage to converse with God. To that conversation we bring our voice. This is one of the wonderful things about the Psalms. What might we learn about our conversation with God from the Psalms? The Psalms give us voice, a language of prayer, if you will. The Psalms express the human condition and the expressions appropriate in addressing God: praise, fear, anguish, hope, confession, thanksgiving, complaint, worship, song, love…the language of prayer.
Dallas Willard, in his book, Hearing God, shares several guidelines for hearing from God. How can we have a conversational relationship with God?
1. Communion with God – a personal relationship, intimacy, knowing God. It is only in the context of our relationship with God that we can come to know God’s voice. As James says: “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you” (4:8). It is only in this close relationship that we begin to discern God’s voice. Communion with God.
2. Scripture is our companion…the more scripture we know the better we can hear and the better we can speak. In getting to know the people who conversed with God, we learn to engage in that same kind of conversation.
3. Pray for just such a relationship with God. Ask God to teach is to pray, to listen, to pay attention.
4. Warning: a conversational relationship with God does not make us any more important than anyone else. It is a way of life. Speaking with God has its concerns, of course, as we can sometimes grow to full of ourselves if we get puffed up about this relationship. Our prayer may need to be: “Lord, when we are wrong, make us willing to change, and when we are right, make us easy to live with!” (from Hearing God, Dallas Willard, p. 40).
God speaks to us – through impressions, a hearing in the mind, through circumstances, scripture, the community of faith, the still small voice, experience. But there is no magic formula. God speaks in many ways. More rare to have a burning bush, but more common just in a thought or impression. Most often through the Bible. This is where I believe we hear most often from God, but that is not to say that the kind of conversations like Moses had or Jesus had are not just as available and frequent as any other conversation.
One experience that I would lift up that sort of came to me outside of reading scripture or in conversation with someone: I was walking along the golf course thinking about ministry and preaching and I “heard” God say: “Just speak the truth.” It was not an audible hearing, but something deep within. There was no question in my mind that God had spoken. It is not a grand statement, in fact, it seems quite an obvious statement. Isn’t truth-telling what ministers are called to do? Well, yes, but my interpretation of the statement was to not be afraid to speak the truth as interpreted in scripture. Do not fear presenting the findings and insights from the Word of God on Sunday mornings. It was a strange experience, probably 16 years ago now, and yet I still recall the weight of what I believe God told me. Not an earth shattering word from God! No burning bush nearby – not even a burning flagstick! Some might argue that I was just hearing myself thinking through what I needed to do, if nothing else, just in trust that that is what God tells all ministers. I cannot say yes or no to that, but I can only convey that, to me, it seemed that God had spoken.
Perhaps you have had a feeling and said something like this to yourself or to someone else: “Something told me that this was not right.” There are those occasions when we sense or know something deep within. But sometimes we do not pay attention to that voice. Sometimes we tune out like hearing without listening to someone.
I had a salesman call me at church last week asking me if I thought consumerism was damaging the commitment of service among our people. I thought, how ironic that this guy is about to ask me to consume one more resource in order to teach against consumerism. Was God telling me this? Well, yes, in the sense that I have heard God speak through the scriptures and in learning about consumerism and being a servant of Christ. Was God speaking to me? Yes, but not through my other ear as I was on the phone with a guy from Texas. God was speaking through scripture, experience, education, and disgust with telemarketers!
I would not record such a word from God as: “The Lord said to me”, but I believe it to be the Lord none the less! I will still be amazed at stories in the Bible that seem much more dramatic than any daily ordinary event when God speaks. God speaks to us and we speak to God because, as Acts 17:28 says: “For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’”. God is with us and we abide in Christ, we cannot help but be at some level of conversation.
Above all, the basis for a conversational relationship with God is love. God loves us and wants to be in conversation with us. We love God and want to be in conversation with God. Brother Lawrence, a seventeenth century monk, said of this conversation:
There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God. Those only can comprehend it who practice and experience it; yet I do not advise you to do it from that motive. It is not pleasure which we ought to seek in this exercise; but let us do it from a principle of love, and because God would have us. ~Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God.
The foundation of our conversation is love. God comes to us in many ways to communicate love. God speaks and expects us to speak because of love. The good news is that God has taken the initiative in love, to speak and to listen, to love and to deliver. Sometimes we might be like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus who met Jesus on the road and yet did not realize they were talking with Jesus until Jesus broke bread with them. Other times we might have great clarity like Moses, but one thing is certain, God desires to be in conversation. God speaks to us and we will hear if we pay attention: to scripture, to one another, to life, to that whisper from within, to all the ways God may be speaking. Amen.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Sermon
Sermon # 1027
February 6, 2011
Matthew 4:23-5:12
Dr. Ed Pettus
“The Good News of the Kingdom”
Jesus came with a message. Jesus came to bring good news. He wanted then and wants us to realize something about the life we have on this earth. Jesus proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of heaven. After Jesus was baptized by John in the river Jordan, he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. The next story in Matthew’s gospel tells that when Jesus heard John the Baptist had been arrested, Jesus began to preach his message. His first words were: “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near”. As he called his disciples, he also went throughout Galilee visiting synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom. The beatitudes begin and end with the kingdom of heaven. The Sermon on the Mount is filled with the message of the kingdom of heaven. The gospel of Matthew also includes parables about what the kingdom of heaven is like.
I have been preaching recently about discipleship and our focus on Jesus Christ and today we look at his message to us. It is a message of good news. Good news does not sell well today – if it did we might hear more in news broadcasts. Bad news seems to sell. It certainly gets most of the air time. But Jesus is clearly a bearer of good news for the kingdom of Heaven has some near. It is in our midst. This message drew people to Christ. His fame spread very quickly throughout the region and people would bring their sick family and friend to meet Jesus. And he preached and healed, and when word gets out…word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertizing. Good news was welcomed in Galilee, and Jerusalem, and Decapolis, and Judea and beyond the river Jordan. People were coming from every direction to see this healer and preacher of good news.
These people were eager to hear about a new kingdom. Many had probably lost hope for something new. Some thought a new kingdom would come in power to overthrow the Roman Empire. Some were exhausted by the same old messages given by messengers who spoke empty words. So Jesus comes on the scene speaking as one with authority. People took notice. The downtrodden, the poor, the beaten, the wounded, the marginal, everyone heard and came to hear more. Great crowds came. It is hard for us to imagine the number of people or the kind of people who came to see and hear Jesus.
It is in this setting where Jesus goes up the mountain and sits down to proclaim his message of the kingdom. We have come to call this the Sermon on the Mount. The congregation included Jesus’ disciples and all of these people who have come to be healed of physical disease and spiritual dis-ease. Today we will focus on the most famous part of this sermon – the beatitudes.
The beatitudes are on the one hand a favorite text for many in the Christian community, but, on the other hand, they are also troubling for us. We have struggled to understand fully what they mean. But perhaps we are helped in seeing this message through the setting, through the message Jesus had been proclaiming up to this point and to whom he was speaking on the mountain.
Some have thought of the beatitudes as goals to be attained. We hear there is blessing for a type of person, meek or peacemaker or poor in spirit, and we try to become that type of person thinking that we could then be included in the blessings and mercies given in the sermon. But taking into consideration the setting and the message that the kingdom has come near, we might see the beatitudes, not as goals to attain, but as recognition of the church, that is, of who is welcomed. Later in Matthew Jesus welcomes again with the call: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
Jesus says, Blessed are…
Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, the mournful, the merciful, and so forth. He is addressing people hungry for good news, people searching for wholeness, those who have questioned if hope is even possible anymore. Blessed are…an address to the Christian community, the searchers who had come to see Jesus. Some of you are poor in spirit, some of you are meek, some of you have pain, some of you are pure in heart and Jesus has a message of good news for you…you have a place in the kingdom of heaven. Meekness and poverty of spirit and persecuted ones, these are not goals for us, this is who we are. It is who the people were who came out from all over the region to hear and see Jesus. In essence the message Jesus brings is that those who are peacemakers, the persecuted, the pure of heart…these are signs of God’s blessing. Blessed are you who are in the condition you are in. Blessed are you who have this character of heart and mind and soul that has come to hear the messenger of good news. Blessed are you who are not received anywhere else.
Blessed are those…for they will…
They will: inherit the kingdom, be comforted, inherit the earth, and so forth. Life in the kingdom is here and now but it is not yet fully realized either. They will see even more, they will see God, the will receive mercy, they will be filled. The beatitudes are about the character of the characters who came to hear Jesus and the destiny that is theirs to come and has even come near if not fully yet. The beatitudes open our eyes to who we are and give us the message of hope for the kingdom here and yet to come. Realizing who we are as God’s church in the world – we have hope in the kingdom of heaven.
Let’s take one example: Blessed are the poor in spirit. Who are they? Is “poor in spirit” something we should strive to become or a group Jesus sees gathered at the mountain? If anything we are not in a position to say whether or not we deserve to be in the kingdom of heaven or to receive God’s love or whether we are poor in spirit or meek or merciful. Poor in spirit – these are the kinds of people I think are poor in spirit: people who don’t understand the Bible. Has that ever happened to you? People who do not know what to pray. People who say they cannot grasp God’s love. People too sad or melancholy to believe they can be accepted by God. People who know they are bankrupt when it comes to the things of God. But who are those received into the kingdom? The least of these…those who believe they are un-receivable. Those who struggle with prayer and religion and spiritual disciplines and service and worship and communion. The poor in spirit is any who question or doubt and the good news preached to us in Jesus Christ is that we are welcomed in the kingdom of God!
We could never “do” enough – that is why we cannot earn our place in the kingdom. Beatitudes are not goals or conditions we must achieve, but examples of people who are welcomed into the kingdom…these are the kinds of people who were welcomed nowhere else! If beatitudes were goals to be achieved they would be nothing more than a new legalism, a form of works righteousness. Do we really think that Jesus set our goals at being poor and mournful and meek and persecuted?
In Luke’s gospel and the parallel passage to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus also proclaims blessings to people who are in a particular way: poor, hungry, weeping…and the message is the same – there is hope in the kingdom of God. But then Jesus announces the opposite of beatitudes in the form of woes. The reason Jesus gives woes to the rich and the full and the laughing is because they have the danger of thinking they do not need the kingdom. It is terribly difficult to see the kingdom that has come near when we believe that we have it all and can get it all ourselves without any need for God. Terribly difficult.
I think that what people heard in Jesus’ words was that anyone is bless-able! There is no one God cannot change. In the beatitudes people heard an upside down world being set right side up! According to Dallas Willard: “[The beatitudes] are explanations and illustrations, drawn from the immediate setting, of the present availability of the kingdom through personal relationship to Jesus” (The Divine Conspiracy, p. 106). What is Jesus saying in the beatitudes? How do we live in response to them? “They serve to clarify Jesus’ fundamental message: the free availability of God’s rule and righteousness to all of humanity through reliance upon Jesus himself, the person now loose in the world among us. They do this simply by taking those who, from the human point of view, are regarded as most hopeless, most beyond all possibility of God’s blessing or even interest, and exhibiting them as enjoying God’s touch and abundant provision from the heavens” (p. 116).
Remember who came to see Jesus. These were the powerless, the weak and meek, the marginalized in society and they had little hope in their situation. Jesus sought to help people realize that they were able to be good, made good by being in a relationship with Jesus. That relationship means walking in the present kingdom of heaven, seeing the truth of Jesus’ message that the kingdom is here and is now and yet is to come. But we drift away from kingdom living and get swept into social and media expectations that say we need to have more and consume more and do whatever it takes to get ours and whatever else those messages are.
Jesus’ message brings us into the kingdom, helps us realize we are in the kingdom as we are – poor in spirit or meek or peacemaker or hungry or thirsty. The purpose of Jesus’ sermon was to help us become realistic with our lives and to open us to the nature of God’s kingdom. Jesus would go on to teach more about the kingdom. The kingdom is like a mustard seed, like yeast, like a treasure hidden in a field, like a net thrown into the sea and what we notice about these things is they are common things, like the common people who are received into the kingdom. This is the kingdom the world does not receive and of which it does not know. The kingdom is a condition of vision, love, hope, joy in which we dwell as God’s people, as a people in Christ.
I was trying to think of a way to visualize the kingdom that has come near, but Jesus himself said it is not a kingdom that we can say is over here or over there. It is a kingdom among us, or as could be translated, within us (Luke 17:20-21). It is the kingdom where we are welcomed, the kingdom we are to seek, and in which we are to grow to becoming changed in the inner life toward inward righteousness. We may not be able to see it but we can see a lot in the world that we know is not the kingdom of heaven.
In one way the beatitudes extend an invitation to those who have never been invited to anything – come to Jesus and in coming you will know the good news of the kingdom of heaven. For it is yours and you will be comforted, filled, called God’s children. In today’s world, this is still very good news, good news indeed! Amen.
February 6, 2011
Matthew 4:23-5:12
Dr. Ed Pettus
“The Good News of the Kingdom”
Jesus came with a message. Jesus came to bring good news. He wanted then and wants us to realize something about the life we have on this earth. Jesus proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of heaven. After Jesus was baptized by John in the river Jordan, he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. The next story in Matthew’s gospel tells that when Jesus heard John the Baptist had been arrested, Jesus began to preach his message. His first words were: “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near”. As he called his disciples, he also went throughout Galilee visiting synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom. The beatitudes begin and end with the kingdom of heaven. The Sermon on the Mount is filled with the message of the kingdom of heaven. The gospel of Matthew also includes parables about what the kingdom of heaven is like.
I have been preaching recently about discipleship and our focus on Jesus Christ and today we look at his message to us. It is a message of good news. Good news does not sell well today – if it did we might hear more in news broadcasts. Bad news seems to sell. It certainly gets most of the air time. But Jesus is clearly a bearer of good news for the kingdom of Heaven has some near. It is in our midst. This message drew people to Christ. His fame spread very quickly throughout the region and people would bring their sick family and friend to meet Jesus. And he preached and healed, and when word gets out…word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertizing. Good news was welcomed in Galilee, and Jerusalem, and Decapolis, and Judea and beyond the river Jordan. People were coming from every direction to see this healer and preacher of good news.
These people were eager to hear about a new kingdom. Many had probably lost hope for something new. Some thought a new kingdom would come in power to overthrow the Roman Empire. Some were exhausted by the same old messages given by messengers who spoke empty words. So Jesus comes on the scene speaking as one with authority. People took notice. The downtrodden, the poor, the beaten, the wounded, the marginal, everyone heard and came to hear more. Great crowds came. It is hard for us to imagine the number of people or the kind of people who came to see and hear Jesus.
It is in this setting where Jesus goes up the mountain and sits down to proclaim his message of the kingdom. We have come to call this the Sermon on the Mount. The congregation included Jesus’ disciples and all of these people who have come to be healed of physical disease and spiritual dis-ease. Today we will focus on the most famous part of this sermon – the beatitudes.
The beatitudes are on the one hand a favorite text for many in the Christian community, but, on the other hand, they are also troubling for us. We have struggled to understand fully what they mean. But perhaps we are helped in seeing this message through the setting, through the message Jesus had been proclaiming up to this point and to whom he was speaking on the mountain.
Some have thought of the beatitudes as goals to be attained. We hear there is blessing for a type of person, meek or peacemaker or poor in spirit, and we try to become that type of person thinking that we could then be included in the blessings and mercies given in the sermon. But taking into consideration the setting and the message that the kingdom has come near, we might see the beatitudes, not as goals to attain, but as recognition of the church, that is, of who is welcomed. Later in Matthew Jesus welcomes again with the call: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
Jesus says, Blessed are…
Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, the mournful, the merciful, and so forth. He is addressing people hungry for good news, people searching for wholeness, those who have questioned if hope is even possible anymore. Blessed are…an address to the Christian community, the searchers who had come to see Jesus. Some of you are poor in spirit, some of you are meek, some of you have pain, some of you are pure in heart and Jesus has a message of good news for you…you have a place in the kingdom of heaven. Meekness and poverty of spirit and persecuted ones, these are not goals for us, this is who we are. It is who the people were who came out from all over the region to hear and see Jesus. In essence the message Jesus brings is that those who are peacemakers, the persecuted, the pure of heart…these are signs of God’s blessing. Blessed are you who are in the condition you are in. Blessed are you who have this character of heart and mind and soul that has come to hear the messenger of good news. Blessed are you who are not received anywhere else.
Blessed are those…for they will…
They will: inherit the kingdom, be comforted, inherit the earth, and so forth. Life in the kingdom is here and now but it is not yet fully realized either. They will see even more, they will see God, the will receive mercy, they will be filled. The beatitudes are about the character of the characters who came to hear Jesus and the destiny that is theirs to come and has even come near if not fully yet. The beatitudes open our eyes to who we are and give us the message of hope for the kingdom here and yet to come. Realizing who we are as God’s church in the world – we have hope in the kingdom of heaven.
Let’s take one example: Blessed are the poor in spirit. Who are they? Is “poor in spirit” something we should strive to become or a group Jesus sees gathered at the mountain? If anything we are not in a position to say whether or not we deserve to be in the kingdom of heaven or to receive God’s love or whether we are poor in spirit or meek or merciful. Poor in spirit – these are the kinds of people I think are poor in spirit: people who don’t understand the Bible. Has that ever happened to you? People who do not know what to pray. People who say they cannot grasp God’s love. People too sad or melancholy to believe they can be accepted by God. People who know they are bankrupt when it comes to the things of God. But who are those received into the kingdom? The least of these…those who believe they are un-receivable. Those who struggle with prayer and religion and spiritual disciplines and service and worship and communion. The poor in spirit is any who question or doubt and the good news preached to us in Jesus Christ is that we are welcomed in the kingdom of God!
We could never “do” enough – that is why we cannot earn our place in the kingdom. Beatitudes are not goals or conditions we must achieve, but examples of people who are welcomed into the kingdom…these are the kinds of people who were welcomed nowhere else! If beatitudes were goals to be achieved they would be nothing more than a new legalism, a form of works righteousness. Do we really think that Jesus set our goals at being poor and mournful and meek and persecuted?
In Luke’s gospel and the parallel passage to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus also proclaims blessings to people who are in a particular way: poor, hungry, weeping…and the message is the same – there is hope in the kingdom of God. But then Jesus announces the opposite of beatitudes in the form of woes. The reason Jesus gives woes to the rich and the full and the laughing is because they have the danger of thinking they do not need the kingdom. It is terribly difficult to see the kingdom that has come near when we believe that we have it all and can get it all ourselves without any need for God. Terribly difficult.
I think that what people heard in Jesus’ words was that anyone is bless-able! There is no one God cannot change. In the beatitudes people heard an upside down world being set right side up! According to Dallas Willard: “[The beatitudes] are explanations and illustrations, drawn from the immediate setting, of the present availability of the kingdom through personal relationship to Jesus” (The Divine Conspiracy, p. 106). What is Jesus saying in the beatitudes? How do we live in response to them? “They serve to clarify Jesus’ fundamental message: the free availability of God’s rule and righteousness to all of humanity through reliance upon Jesus himself, the person now loose in the world among us. They do this simply by taking those who, from the human point of view, are regarded as most hopeless, most beyond all possibility of God’s blessing or even interest, and exhibiting them as enjoying God’s touch and abundant provision from the heavens” (p. 116).
Remember who came to see Jesus. These were the powerless, the weak and meek, the marginalized in society and they had little hope in their situation. Jesus sought to help people realize that they were able to be good, made good by being in a relationship with Jesus. That relationship means walking in the present kingdom of heaven, seeing the truth of Jesus’ message that the kingdom is here and is now and yet is to come. But we drift away from kingdom living and get swept into social and media expectations that say we need to have more and consume more and do whatever it takes to get ours and whatever else those messages are.
Jesus’ message brings us into the kingdom, helps us realize we are in the kingdom as we are – poor in spirit or meek or peacemaker or hungry or thirsty. The purpose of Jesus’ sermon was to help us become realistic with our lives and to open us to the nature of God’s kingdom. Jesus would go on to teach more about the kingdom. The kingdom is like a mustard seed, like yeast, like a treasure hidden in a field, like a net thrown into the sea and what we notice about these things is they are common things, like the common people who are received into the kingdom. This is the kingdom the world does not receive and of which it does not know. The kingdom is a condition of vision, love, hope, joy in which we dwell as God’s people, as a people in Christ.
I was trying to think of a way to visualize the kingdom that has come near, but Jesus himself said it is not a kingdom that we can say is over here or over there. It is a kingdom among us, or as could be translated, within us (Luke 17:20-21). It is the kingdom where we are welcomed, the kingdom we are to seek, and in which we are to grow to becoming changed in the inner life toward inward righteousness. We may not be able to see it but we can see a lot in the world that we know is not the kingdom of heaven.
In one way the beatitudes extend an invitation to those who have never been invited to anything – come to Jesus and in coming you will know the good news of the kingdom of heaven. For it is yours and you will be comforted, filled, called God’s children. In today’s world, this is still very good news, good news indeed! Amen.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Sermon
Sermon # 1026
January 30, 2011
Luke 17:20-21
John 14:15-27
Dr. Ed Pettus
“Christ Focus”
Henry Jones lies on the stone floor with a gun shot wound. His voice is raspy as he repeats one instruction over and over: “Only the penitent man will pass. Only the penitent man will pass." The scene flashes to Indiana Jones who is entering a corridor of what we can only imagine are dangerous traps. Indiana is also quoting the instruction: “The penitent man will pass. The penitent... the penitent. The penitent man...” As the excitement builds, Indiana realizes the clue is a way through the corridor: “The penitent man is humble before God…” and as the cobwebs begin to move with a wind, Indiana gets it: “The penitent man is humble before God…” “He kneels before God.” Indiana makes it through the razor sharp triple pendulum, the first test. A few more traps to clear and he is on to the Holy Grail. Do you remember that scene from the Indiana Jones movie, The Last Crusade?
The penitent man kneels before God. This is our first step to God. Humility. Dallas Willard writes: “Only the humble person will let God be God” (Knowing Christ Today, p. 151). Humility. Jesus spoke of humility in this way: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me” (Matthew 18:3-5).
Humility means turning from an attitude that says I can take care of my own life. I can handle things, I can manage, I can do it alone. Children know better. They know that they need help and they are not afraid to ask. Humility is our surrender to God. It is that conversion of attitude that says I know that I cannot make it on my own, I need God. I must get on my knees as a penitent person, humble before God.
“Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” 13But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” 14I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 18:9-14).
Some people refuse to humble themselves. They may be too dignified or perhaps they will make a deal with God that they will work things out and if they run into any problems then they might call on God to give a helping hand. Sort of the “break glass in case of fire” relationship. The rich young ruler was one who refused to humble himself: “Then someone came to [Jesus] and said, ‘Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?’ …If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.’ 18He said to him, ‘Which ones?’ And Jesus said, ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; 19Honor your father and mother; also, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 20The young man said to him, ‘I have kept all these; what do I still lack?’ 21Jesus said to him, ‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ 22When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions” (Matthew 19:16-22). Only the penitent.
One of the most amazing scenes in the gospels is in Matthew 13:58 where it is said that Jesus could not perform any miracles: “And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief”. Imagine a group so arrogant, so disbelieving, so unwilling to humble themselves that Jesus could not even work a deed of power in their midst.
*****
We learn from the scripture that there is a particular kind of person God seeks. In Isaiah we read: “All these things my hand has made, and so all these things are mine, says the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look, to the humble and contrite in spirit, who trembles at my word” (66:2). God looks to the humble – God seeks out those who trust in him with all their heart, who surrender, submit their lives. This is our entrance into life in the kingdom and in relationship with God through Christ. Humility.
A second step involves the pursuit of inward righteousness. This is a hidden, inner dimension of faith that works in the secret places of the heart and soul. It is what we might consider our character. Jesus says something very interesting about inward righteousness: “Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:19-20). What righteousness will exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees? A righteousness within. The scribes and Pharisees sought to demonstrate their righteousness on the outside, with pubic prayers and outward behavior. They sought to be “seen” as righteous, but they failed to truly pursue righteousness in the inner being.
Without this inward righteousness we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. This is not the sense of going to heaven when we die, but it is the kingdom in which we are engage today, God’s kingdom. It is the kingdom Jesus taught as among us: “Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; 21nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you’” (Luke 17:20-21). This is the kingdom we enter through humility and this is the kingdom we engage through inward righteousness. It is a gift from God received from above. Jesus told Nicodemus: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” (John 3:3).
Living in the kingdom means that we are walking with Christ day by day, allowing the Spirit to work in us and we seek to transform our inner being – taking on the character of Christ. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6).
These two elements, humility and inward righteousness, bring us into the interactive environment of knowing Jesus Christ. We enter into the kingdom of God. We begin our journey with and to God. As we continue to progress in humility and righteousness we grow to expect Christ in our everyday existence. We being to “see” Jesus everywhere, all the time. Dallas Willard calls humility and inward righteousness the preliminaries that must be in place before we grow into two substantial elements of living life with Jesus in the kingdom of God.
Two substantial elements - First, we begin to receive more readily Christ’s “presence and activity where we are and in what we are doing at any given time” (Willard, Knowing Christ Today, p. 153). This reminds me of the benediction I have sometimes used written by Richard Halverson:
Wherever you go, God is sending you, wherever you are, God has put you there; He has a purpose in your being there. Christ who indwells you has something He wants to do through you, where you are. Believe this and go in His grace and love and power.
One of my favorite devotional readings from Oswald Chambers speaks of God using us in whatever circumstance we find ourselves. “You never can measure what God will do through you if you are rightly related to Jesus Christ. Keep your relationship right with Him, then whatever circumstances you are in, and whoever you meet day by day, He is pouring rivers of living water through you, and it is of His mercy that He does not let you know it. When once you are rightly related to God by salvation and sanctification, remember that wherever you are, you are put there by God; and by the reaction of your life on the circumstances around you, you will fulfill God's purpose, as long as you keep in the light as God is in the light” (My Utmost for His Highest, August 30). Being rightly related to God is Chambers’ phrase for what we are referring to today in humility and inward righteousness. We are seeking in these two actions, to be rightly related to God, that is, to live in the kingdom of God today.
Jesus teaches that we can live in this constant awareness of Christ’s presence: “Abide in me as I abide in you” (John 15:4). He also has this wonderful prayer of uniting us with him and God the Father: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 21that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, 23I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. 24Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:20-24). In the kingdom of God we are one in Christ, engaged in his ministry, his life, his mission, and ever growing, more and more into this awareness of Christ’s presence in the world and in us.
The second substantial element in our life in Christ is a natural movement from the practice of Christ’s presence – the desire to do what pleases God – obedience.
Obedience for Jesus is this: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments…Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them” (John 14:15-16, 23). Obedience and love are intertwined! “One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ 29Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” 31The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29-31).
Willard calls these four elements, taken together, the Christ focus. Humility, the intention of inward transformation, the practice of the presence of Christ, and progressive obedience – these enable us to focus our lives in Christ, with Christ, through Christ, for Christ. These four elements give us the ability to live an ordered life, practiced in humility, transformation, presence, and obedience. It is life in the kingdom of God, ever growing and learning how we might “eliminate distractions and keep our whole being focused upon constant companionship with Christ in our ‘nows’” (Willard, p. 156). Christ focus – day by day, moment by moment, as a student of Jesus, a disciple. I am seeking this kind of growth in Christ that enables me to have a Christ focus. I think of that as an awareness of God, a God consciousness that never goes away. I think this is the kind of yearning Paul had for the church when he said: “My little children, for whom I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you (Galatians 4:19). Christ is formed in you! A Christ focus. I’m not sure I have the pain of childbirth for that, but what I have is a hope for you and for myself, that we can continue to grow into this kingdom of God and to grow into faith, but most crucial, that we grow in a personal and intimate way in our relationship with Jesus. Take these four elements:
1. Humility
2. Intentional inward righteousness
3. Practicing the presence of Christ
4. Loving obedience
Take them on that we might develop a Christ focus. Christ focus. Live with that thought today: Christ focus in humility, in righteousness, in Christ’s presence, and in obedience. Amen.
*This sermon taken from reflections on Dallas Willard’s, Knowing Christ Today, p. 150ff.
January 30, 2011
Luke 17:20-21
John 14:15-27
Dr. Ed Pettus
“Christ Focus”
Henry Jones lies on the stone floor with a gun shot wound. His voice is raspy as he repeats one instruction over and over: “Only the penitent man will pass. Only the penitent man will pass." The scene flashes to Indiana Jones who is entering a corridor of what we can only imagine are dangerous traps. Indiana is also quoting the instruction: “The penitent man will pass. The penitent... the penitent. The penitent man...” As the excitement builds, Indiana realizes the clue is a way through the corridor: “The penitent man is humble before God…” and as the cobwebs begin to move with a wind, Indiana gets it: “The penitent man is humble before God…” “He kneels before God.” Indiana makes it through the razor sharp triple pendulum, the first test. A few more traps to clear and he is on to the Holy Grail. Do you remember that scene from the Indiana Jones movie, The Last Crusade?
The penitent man kneels before God. This is our first step to God. Humility. Dallas Willard writes: “Only the humble person will let God be God” (Knowing Christ Today, p. 151). Humility. Jesus spoke of humility in this way: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me” (Matthew 18:3-5).
Humility means turning from an attitude that says I can take care of my own life. I can handle things, I can manage, I can do it alone. Children know better. They know that they need help and they are not afraid to ask. Humility is our surrender to God. It is that conversion of attitude that says I know that I cannot make it on my own, I need God. I must get on my knees as a penitent person, humble before God.
“Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” 13But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” 14I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 18:9-14).
Some people refuse to humble themselves. They may be too dignified or perhaps they will make a deal with God that they will work things out and if they run into any problems then they might call on God to give a helping hand. Sort of the “break glass in case of fire” relationship. The rich young ruler was one who refused to humble himself: “Then someone came to [Jesus] and said, ‘Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?’ …If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.’ 18He said to him, ‘Which ones?’ And Jesus said, ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; 19Honor your father and mother; also, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 20The young man said to him, ‘I have kept all these; what do I still lack?’ 21Jesus said to him, ‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ 22When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions” (Matthew 19:16-22). Only the penitent.
One of the most amazing scenes in the gospels is in Matthew 13:58 where it is said that Jesus could not perform any miracles: “And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief”. Imagine a group so arrogant, so disbelieving, so unwilling to humble themselves that Jesus could not even work a deed of power in their midst.
*****
We learn from the scripture that there is a particular kind of person God seeks. In Isaiah we read: “All these things my hand has made, and so all these things are mine, says the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look, to the humble and contrite in spirit, who trembles at my word” (66:2). God looks to the humble – God seeks out those who trust in him with all their heart, who surrender, submit their lives. This is our entrance into life in the kingdom and in relationship with God through Christ. Humility.
A second step involves the pursuit of inward righteousness. This is a hidden, inner dimension of faith that works in the secret places of the heart and soul. It is what we might consider our character. Jesus says something very interesting about inward righteousness: “Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:19-20). What righteousness will exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees? A righteousness within. The scribes and Pharisees sought to demonstrate their righteousness on the outside, with pubic prayers and outward behavior. They sought to be “seen” as righteous, but they failed to truly pursue righteousness in the inner being.
Without this inward righteousness we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. This is not the sense of going to heaven when we die, but it is the kingdom in which we are engage today, God’s kingdom. It is the kingdom Jesus taught as among us: “Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; 21nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you’” (Luke 17:20-21). This is the kingdom we enter through humility and this is the kingdom we engage through inward righteousness. It is a gift from God received from above. Jesus told Nicodemus: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” (John 3:3).
Living in the kingdom means that we are walking with Christ day by day, allowing the Spirit to work in us and we seek to transform our inner being – taking on the character of Christ. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6).
These two elements, humility and inward righteousness, bring us into the interactive environment of knowing Jesus Christ. We enter into the kingdom of God. We begin our journey with and to God. As we continue to progress in humility and righteousness we grow to expect Christ in our everyday existence. We being to “see” Jesus everywhere, all the time. Dallas Willard calls humility and inward righteousness the preliminaries that must be in place before we grow into two substantial elements of living life with Jesus in the kingdom of God.
Two substantial elements - First, we begin to receive more readily Christ’s “presence and activity where we are and in what we are doing at any given time” (Willard, Knowing Christ Today, p. 153). This reminds me of the benediction I have sometimes used written by Richard Halverson:
Wherever you go, God is sending you, wherever you are, God has put you there; He has a purpose in your being there. Christ who indwells you has something He wants to do through you, where you are. Believe this and go in His grace and love and power.
One of my favorite devotional readings from Oswald Chambers speaks of God using us in whatever circumstance we find ourselves. “You never can measure what God will do through you if you are rightly related to Jesus Christ. Keep your relationship right with Him, then whatever circumstances you are in, and whoever you meet day by day, He is pouring rivers of living water through you, and it is of His mercy that He does not let you know it. When once you are rightly related to God by salvation and sanctification, remember that wherever you are, you are put there by God; and by the reaction of your life on the circumstances around you, you will fulfill God's purpose, as long as you keep in the light as God is in the light” (My Utmost for His Highest, August 30). Being rightly related to God is Chambers’ phrase for what we are referring to today in humility and inward righteousness. We are seeking in these two actions, to be rightly related to God, that is, to live in the kingdom of God today.
Jesus teaches that we can live in this constant awareness of Christ’s presence: “Abide in me as I abide in you” (John 15:4). He also has this wonderful prayer of uniting us with him and God the Father: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 21that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, 23I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. 24Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:20-24). In the kingdom of God we are one in Christ, engaged in his ministry, his life, his mission, and ever growing, more and more into this awareness of Christ’s presence in the world and in us.
The second substantial element in our life in Christ is a natural movement from the practice of Christ’s presence – the desire to do what pleases God – obedience.
Obedience for Jesus is this: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments…Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them” (John 14:15-16, 23). Obedience and love are intertwined! “One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ 29Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” 31The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29-31).
Willard calls these four elements, taken together, the Christ focus. Humility, the intention of inward transformation, the practice of the presence of Christ, and progressive obedience – these enable us to focus our lives in Christ, with Christ, through Christ, for Christ. These four elements give us the ability to live an ordered life, practiced in humility, transformation, presence, and obedience. It is life in the kingdom of God, ever growing and learning how we might “eliminate distractions and keep our whole being focused upon constant companionship with Christ in our ‘nows’” (Willard, p. 156). Christ focus – day by day, moment by moment, as a student of Jesus, a disciple. I am seeking this kind of growth in Christ that enables me to have a Christ focus. I think of that as an awareness of God, a God consciousness that never goes away. I think this is the kind of yearning Paul had for the church when he said: “My little children, for whom I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you (Galatians 4:19). Christ is formed in you! A Christ focus. I’m not sure I have the pain of childbirth for that, but what I have is a hope for you and for myself, that we can continue to grow into this kingdom of God and to grow into faith, but most crucial, that we grow in a personal and intimate way in our relationship with Jesus. Take these four elements:
1. Humility
2. Intentional inward righteousness
3. Practicing the presence of Christ
4. Loving obedience
Take them on that we might develop a Christ focus. Christ focus. Live with that thought today: Christ focus in humility, in righteousness, in Christ’s presence, and in obedience. Amen.
*This sermon taken from reflections on Dallas Willard’s, Knowing Christ Today, p. 150ff.
Sermon
Sermon # 1025
January 23, 2011
2 Peter 1:2-11
Dr. Ed Pettus
“Participants in the Divine Nature”
We have been focusing on keeping the Lord always before us as written in Psalm 16:8 and seeking to know Christ from Philippians 3. Last Sunday we spent time in Colossians 4 regarding the removal of the old sinful life and putting on a new life in Christ. Today we enter Peter’s second letter to the church. Our passage deals with building up our faith and spiritual life using what God has already given us. The letter begins with the greeting of grace and peace, words loaded with theological meaning, Christian code words, concepts we learn in our knowledge of God and of Jesus. Grace – the unmerited favor God gives us in Christ, and peace – shalom in the Hebrew, wholeness, contentment, and rest.
Peter encourages us as he reveals what God has given us already. God’s divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness. Just as he greets us with grace and peace in the knowledge of God, now he tells us that we have all we need for life through the knowledge of Jesus. It is in getting to know Jesus Christ that we come to know more and more of what God has given us. It’s like receiving a new gift to unwrap every time we learn a new verse of scripture or reflect on what Jesus did in healing someone. Imagine if you received a new wrapped gift in the mail every day…Monday you read the beatitudes and as you finish the UPS man drives up with a new gift. Tuesday a reflection on Psalm 100 and FedEx pops by with a gift. Wednesday – Psalm 16 and you cannot figure out how you missed it but there appears a gift on the kitchen table for you.
God gives us everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of Christ. Our response? Thank you, God, for these gifts, for this word, for that teaching, for this work, for that call. Thank you. And the more we give thanks, the more gifts that come. 2 Peter 4:4 “Thus he has given us…” he has given us more: through knowledge, through grace and peace, through his power, he has given us great promises. We are not told here what those promises are but we are told their purpose. Through his promises we may escape the corruption of the world. Through our relationship with God through Christ we are able to avoid all that garbage we see in the world. Through Jesus – that is the key to Peter’s exhortation. We know God’s provision, God’s power, God’s promises, only because we have come to know Christ. And having seen God’s gifts, we can also see the world for what it is – the corruption, the lust, the greed, the deception, and we can flee from it. We do not have to participate in the ways of the world. 1 John tells us more:
“Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live for ever” (2:15-17).
The word that Peter uses to talk about the corruption in the world is a word that denotes internal decay. In essence the world and its ways are rotting away, but we can escape that decay by participating in God’s will – God’s divine nature.
We may now participate in the divine nature. We are participants in the kingdom of God. We become children of God who play in a different kind of playground. We are citizens of heaven and a part of the priesthood of all believers. God has invited us into a new reality, a reality we discover, a reality revealed to us as we read and study the Bible, by getting to know Jesus Christ, by keeping the Lord always before us, by serving the Lord. God has invited us into this realm and said: “Make yourself at home, you have everything you need right here.” We have been asked to participate in the life of God. This is a life that does not decay, but lives forever. Being participants in the divine nature means that we share with God in his glory:
“So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, 3for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory” (Colossians 3:1-4).
As Paul tells us to seek the things that are above so too does Peter tell us to do something. Verse 5 begins with this phrase: “For this very reason…” For what reason? Because God has given us everything we need, because we have knowledge in Christ, because we have received promises, because we are now participants in the divine nature, for all these reasons…make every effort to support your faith. Make every effort. I’ve made the statement in my last two sermons that grace is not opposed to effort. Grace is opposed to earning, thinking that we can earn our salvation, but not opposed to the effort to grow in Christ since we have already been given everything we need in Christ. Peter tells us to make every effort, every effort to support our faith. Work at it, give it energy, time, devotion, love, discipline, obedience. This is no insignificant matter, but our very life, for Christ is our life.
The same was said about God’s word when Israel was preparing to go into the promised land:
45When Moses had finished reciting all these words to all Israel, 46he said to them: ‘Take to heart all the words that I am giving in witness against you today; give them as a command to your children, so that they may diligently observe all the words of this law. 47This is no trifling matter for you, but rather your very life; through it you may live long in the land that you are crossing over the Jordan to possess’ (Deuteronomy 32:45-47).
God’s word helps us to fulfill the word from Peter to make the effort to support our faith. We read and study God’s word that we might grow in Christ, know Christ, and know what it means to be participates in the divine nature.
So Peter bids us: “Support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, 6and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, 7and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love” (2 Peter 1:5-7). Eugene Peterson says it this way: “So don't lose a minute in building on what you've been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others” (The Message, 2 Peter 1).
If we make this effort then good things happen…as Peter puts it: we will be effective and fruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if we make no effort and we lack these things, then we are short sighted and blind and forgetful of what God has done and provided for us. What I think we tend to do is to think that God is just going to drop every insight into our lap, but what we find is that with no effort to see, we become more blinded by the deception of the world. As Liz Gilbert referred to this topic in her book Eat, Pray, Love: “eyes that are so caked shut with the dust of deception” (155). Our effort in faith is to grow in the knowledge of Christ until our eyes are opened to see the truth. St. Augustine said it this way: “Our whole business therefore in this life is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen” (from Eat, Pray, Love, p. 123).
We are participants in the divine nature. Participants by definition are active, included, taking part in something, and in this case, taking part in the kingdom of God, in the life of God. We have not been invited to sit down and watch but to live in obedience to God’s word, building our faith, making the effort! One of my favorite scenes from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies is the two pirates in the row boat and one is supposedly reading the Bible but he cannot read, so his response to the other pirate who points this out is that you get credit for trying. Make the effort!
Thomas Merton points out in a prayer that desiring to please God is pleasing to God:
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Desire and effort get us on the journey as participants in the divine nature. Obedience leads us into the transformation we seek and that transformation in turn makes us more obedient. But it takes desire and effort to become the obedient followers of Jesus that these passages from Psalms, Colossians, Philippians, and 2 Peter all anticipate.
Imagine yourself as a participant in the divine nature. You have been chosen to participate in the life of God, in the kingdom of God. We like to be selected, picked to play on the team, and God has chosen us to be his own. God has chosen us to come to know Jesus Christ his Son, personally and intimately, not just a knowledge for the head, but a knowing in the heart and soul. We are not just after information about Jesus, but transformation in Christ. We are participants in the divine drama, in the kingdom, in the story of God’s people today. Let us make every effort to support our faith: in prayer, in scripture study, in worship, in love, in peace and grace, in every way we can imagine to actively participate in the life God has given us in Christ Jesus our Lord. Receive God’s gift as a participant in the divine nature. Amen.
January 23, 2011
2 Peter 1:2-11
Dr. Ed Pettus
“Participants in the Divine Nature”
We have been focusing on keeping the Lord always before us as written in Psalm 16:8 and seeking to know Christ from Philippians 3. Last Sunday we spent time in Colossians 4 regarding the removal of the old sinful life and putting on a new life in Christ. Today we enter Peter’s second letter to the church. Our passage deals with building up our faith and spiritual life using what God has already given us. The letter begins with the greeting of grace and peace, words loaded with theological meaning, Christian code words, concepts we learn in our knowledge of God and of Jesus. Grace – the unmerited favor God gives us in Christ, and peace – shalom in the Hebrew, wholeness, contentment, and rest.
Peter encourages us as he reveals what God has given us already. God’s divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness. Just as he greets us with grace and peace in the knowledge of God, now he tells us that we have all we need for life through the knowledge of Jesus. It is in getting to know Jesus Christ that we come to know more and more of what God has given us. It’s like receiving a new gift to unwrap every time we learn a new verse of scripture or reflect on what Jesus did in healing someone. Imagine if you received a new wrapped gift in the mail every day…Monday you read the beatitudes and as you finish the UPS man drives up with a new gift. Tuesday a reflection on Psalm 100 and FedEx pops by with a gift. Wednesday – Psalm 16 and you cannot figure out how you missed it but there appears a gift on the kitchen table for you.
God gives us everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of Christ. Our response? Thank you, God, for these gifts, for this word, for that teaching, for this work, for that call. Thank you. And the more we give thanks, the more gifts that come. 2 Peter 4:4 “Thus he has given us…” he has given us more: through knowledge, through grace and peace, through his power, he has given us great promises. We are not told here what those promises are but we are told their purpose. Through his promises we may escape the corruption of the world. Through our relationship with God through Christ we are able to avoid all that garbage we see in the world. Through Jesus – that is the key to Peter’s exhortation. We know God’s provision, God’s power, God’s promises, only because we have come to know Christ. And having seen God’s gifts, we can also see the world for what it is – the corruption, the lust, the greed, the deception, and we can flee from it. We do not have to participate in the ways of the world. 1 John tells us more:
“Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live for ever” (2:15-17).
The word that Peter uses to talk about the corruption in the world is a word that denotes internal decay. In essence the world and its ways are rotting away, but we can escape that decay by participating in God’s will – God’s divine nature.
We may now participate in the divine nature. We are participants in the kingdom of God. We become children of God who play in a different kind of playground. We are citizens of heaven and a part of the priesthood of all believers. God has invited us into a new reality, a reality we discover, a reality revealed to us as we read and study the Bible, by getting to know Jesus Christ, by keeping the Lord always before us, by serving the Lord. God has invited us into this realm and said: “Make yourself at home, you have everything you need right here.” We have been asked to participate in the life of God. This is a life that does not decay, but lives forever. Being participants in the divine nature means that we share with God in his glory:
“So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, 3for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory” (Colossians 3:1-4).
As Paul tells us to seek the things that are above so too does Peter tell us to do something. Verse 5 begins with this phrase: “For this very reason…” For what reason? Because God has given us everything we need, because we have knowledge in Christ, because we have received promises, because we are now participants in the divine nature, for all these reasons…make every effort to support your faith. Make every effort. I’ve made the statement in my last two sermons that grace is not opposed to effort. Grace is opposed to earning, thinking that we can earn our salvation, but not opposed to the effort to grow in Christ since we have already been given everything we need in Christ. Peter tells us to make every effort, every effort to support our faith. Work at it, give it energy, time, devotion, love, discipline, obedience. This is no insignificant matter, but our very life, for Christ is our life.
The same was said about God’s word when Israel was preparing to go into the promised land:
45When Moses had finished reciting all these words to all Israel, 46he said to them: ‘Take to heart all the words that I am giving in witness against you today; give them as a command to your children, so that they may diligently observe all the words of this law. 47This is no trifling matter for you, but rather your very life; through it you may live long in the land that you are crossing over the Jordan to possess’ (Deuteronomy 32:45-47).
God’s word helps us to fulfill the word from Peter to make the effort to support our faith. We read and study God’s word that we might grow in Christ, know Christ, and know what it means to be participates in the divine nature.
So Peter bids us: “Support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, 6and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, 7and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love” (2 Peter 1:5-7). Eugene Peterson says it this way: “So don't lose a minute in building on what you've been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others” (The Message, 2 Peter 1).
If we make this effort then good things happen…as Peter puts it: we will be effective and fruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if we make no effort and we lack these things, then we are short sighted and blind and forgetful of what God has done and provided for us. What I think we tend to do is to think that God is just going to drop every insight into our lap, but what we find is that with no effort to see, we become more blinded by the deception of the world. As Liz Gilbert referred to this topic in her book Eat, Pray, Love: “eyes that are so caked shut with the dust of deception” (155). Our effort in faith is to grow in the knowledge of Christ until our eyes are opened to see the truth. St. Augustine said it this way: “Our whole business therefore in this life is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen” (from Eat, Pray, Love, p. 123).
We are participants in the divine nature. Participants by definition are active, included, taking part in something, and in this case, taking part in the kingdom of God, in the life of God. We have not been invited to sit down and watch but to live in obedience to God’s word, building our faith, making the effort! One of my favorite scenes from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies is the two pirates in the row boat and one is supposedly reading the Bible but he cannot read, so his response to the other pirate who points this out is that you get credit for trying. Make the effort!
Thomas Merton points out in a prayer that desiring to please God is pleasing to God:
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Desire and effort get us on the journey as participants in the divine nature. Obedience leads us into the transformation we seek and that transformation in turn makes us more obedient. But it takes desire and effort to become the obedient followers of Jesus that these passages from Psalms, Colossians, Philippians, and 2 Peter all anticipate.
Imagine yourself as a participant in the divine nature. You have been chosen to participate in the life of God, in the kingdom of God. We like to be selected, picked to play on the team, and God has chosen us to be his own. God has chosen us to come to know Jesus Christ his Son, personally and intimately, not just a knowledge for the head, but a knowing in the heart and soul. We are not just after information about Jesus, but transformation in Christ. We are participants in the divine drama, in the kingdom, in the story of God’s people today. Let us make every effort to support our faith: in prayer, in scripture study, in worship, in love, in peace and grace, in every way we can imagine to actively participate in the life God has given us in Christ Jesus our Lord. Receive God’s gift as a participant in the divine nature. Amen.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Sermon
Sermon # 1024
January 16, 2011
Colossians 3:1-17
Dr. Ed Pettus
“Spiritual Formation in Christ”
Jesus once said: “The Kingdom of the heavens is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened” (Matthew 13:33).
Any of you who have ever baked bread know the truth behind Jesus’ statement. A bit of yeast affects the entire loaf in such a way that permeates the loaf. The yeast infuses all the other ingredients giving the bread its fullness. The kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, is the yeast of our life. A bit of the kingdom mixed into our lives will permeate everything about us. No part of our life is unaffected by the kingdom of God. A passage of scripture memorized and lived out will affect all our life. A prayer for us, or by us, will change our life. The routine of worship will enrich our being. A Christian spiritual discipline practiced will reform our spirit.
Today I want to lift up spiritual formation in Christ, the “yeast” of spiritual growth. There are a lot of religions and movements and philosophies in the world that speak of the spiritual, that offer opportunities for spiritual formation. But when we refer to spiritual formation, it is, or should always be, spiritual formation in Christ. Christian spiritual formation is about taking on the character of Christ. Spiritual formation is about the change of mind, attitude, and disposition that leads us to be like Christ. Spiritual formation in Christ is about finding ways to infuse a little spiritual yeast into our lives.
Colossians is a good book to study for spiritual formation. Colossians 1-2 engage us in what Dallas Willard calls – enthralling the mind with Christ. The first two chapters of Colossians teach of the supremacy of Christ in all things. All things were created in him and through him. Paul realized the number of philosophies of the world that threatened the life of the church: “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.” And then he speaks of the supremacy of Christ: “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. 11In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead... If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world?” (Colossians 2:8-12, 20).
Christ’s authority is over all things. These writings encourage us to be enthralled with Christ’s supremacy or authority, to be gripped and captivated by the person of Jesus Christ.
When Paul moves to Colossians 3-4, he engages us in the objective of becoming Christ-like. The task in this teaching is to remove all the responses or tendencies of our life that oppose the kingdom of God. The metaphor Paul uses is an outward object to speak of an inward condition: clothing. The church was called to “change clothes.” Put on the fresh garment of Christ. Discard the old clothes – those tattered old clothes of evil desires, malice, slander and the like. They were to strip off the old self with its practices. In spiritual terms this meant being crucified with Christ, an action symbolized at our baptism. In practical terms this meant a change in disposition. We cannot simply keep living the same old life that sins against God and against one another.
To change our clothes is to take off the old, bad habits of our lives. Paul lists some inappropriate activity. He may have been listing some activities he had observed in the community or simply taking some random behaviors he knew to be inappropriate. Paul lists examples of inappropriate behavior for Christians. They are all old clothes to be removed. Take off those old rags of sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust, doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy. Take off the clothes of bad tempers, irritability, meanness, lying, and toss them in the fire.
Once those clothes are removed we are given new clothes to wear. Paul says: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (3:12-14).
Above all, out on love – putting on love. Love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love. Love is that favorite shirt that you like to put on in the evenings to relax. Love is that comfortable pair of shoes that you wear when you go out for the day.
Paul gives us some ideas of what wearing these clothes looks like when he says, “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (3:15-17).
Paul tells us to do something – to take off the old, put something to death, kill it, hang it on the cross and to put on something else – the character of Christ. Paul does not really tell us HOW to do this. Perhaps this is what he means by the phrase in Philippians “work out your salvation” (Philippians 2:12). Work out what you need to do to live in responsive obedience to Christ. Within the framework of salvation, tend to your life as faithful disciples seeking to please God and grow in Christ.
Did everyone who read what Paul wrote to the Colossians understand what to do and how to do it? How do we do put off the old and put on the new? Well I suggested two weeks ago that we keep the Lord always before us according to Psalm 16:8. I lifted up Paul’s letter of Philippians last Sunday that we seek to know Christ. Today we are looking more specifically at what Psalm 16 and Philippians 3 and Colossians 3 can mean for our life – that some things will be crucified in our life as we seek to keep the Lord ever before us and some things, godly things, will take their place when we are seeking to know Christ.
There are many things the scriptures reveal to us as specific acts of obedience: seeking first the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33); loving God and neighbor (Matthew 22:34-40); studying and meditation on scripture (Psalm 1, Proverbs 4:20-23); pursuing God (Psalm 42; 63); worship (Psalm 95:6).
We also learn from what Jesus did: he prayed, he got away for times of solitude and silence, he studied the word of God, he worshipped, he served and taught and preached and healed and showed compassion and treated others with dignity and fairness and kindness and love. The classic spiritual disciplines enable us to be formed in Christ and to have Christ formed in us. Practicing silence offers us the time to escape from the constant noise of life. It frees us from feeling like we have to always have something to say. Solitude places us in a position away from people, phones, internet, television – and isolates us in a positive way so that we might focus on being with God. Be still and know that God is God (Psalm 46). Study of the word enhances our experience of worship and worship feeds our study of the word.
One thing we might consider is asking ourselves when we are going about our daily tasks with the thought of Paul’s words in our minds: Do all things in the name of Jesus…ask ourselves - can I do this or that in the name of Jesus? Is this activity or action something I can truly do in the name of Jesus?
Spiritual formation in Christ is a life long journey. It takes a plan to put to death the earthly. It takes discipline to hang on the cross those things that reject Christ. It takes a plan to put on the heavenly, to seek the things that are above. It takes effort.
Dallas Willard in his book The Great Omission, points out eight issues dealing with spiritual formation in Christ:
1. The first is obedience. Spiritual formation in Christ deals with obedience to Christ’s life and teaching – obedience to the Christ.
2. The second is spirituality, that is, it is a matter of spirit. It is “from above”, like the wind. We cannot see it. And living in a visual oriented culture, we tend to discount the spiritual.
3. Third, spiritual formation is living from the reality of God. This means trusting that the reality presented us in Jesus Christ is the truth! We trust the Bible. We trust God. We trust that we live in the kingdom of God today.
4. Fourth is that spirituality is supernatural. This is again the recognition that our Christian spirituality is from above, from the Spirit, and therefore, from God – God is at work in you.
5. Fifth, spiritual formation is about the process of shaping our spirit – in the sense of shaping our will, shaping the heart to automatically bring us to act and live as citizens of heaven.
6. Sixth, spiritual formation reworks the whole self. We are transformed in this formation spirit, soul, and body. We are not primarily seeking to control actions through this work, but to rework the self in such a way that our actions naturally or supernaturally become natural to us – seeking to get this spiritual yeast to permeate our life.
7. Seventh, transforming our thought life, setting God always before us. Spiritual formation changes how we think.
8. Eighth and last! I mentioned this last Sunday when speaking about grace and works. Grace is not opposed to effort but grace is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude, effort is an action. Spiritual formation in Christ takes effort and it is only by God’s grace that we can take action to grow in Christ.
Spiritual formation in Christ entails obedience, a matter of spirit, lived from the reality of God, supernatural, shaping our will, shaping the whole being, transforming our thoughts, and takes effort! Put off the old garment of earthly desires and put on the new garment of Christ.
“[So] let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts…be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another…sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossian 3:15-17). Amen.
January 16, 2011
Colossians 3:1-17
Dr. Ed Pettus
“Spiritual Formation in Christ”
Jesus once said: “The Kingdom of the heavens is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened” (Matthew 13:33).
Any of you who have ever baked bread know the truth behind Jesus’ statement. A bit of yeast affects the entire loaf in such a way that permeates the loaf. The yeast infuses all the other ingredients giving the bread its fullness. The kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, is the yeast of our life. A bit of the kingdom mixed into our lives will permeate everything about us. No part of our life is unaffected by the kingdom of God. A passage of scripture memorized and lived out will affect all our life. A prayer for us, or by us, will change our life. The routine of worship will enrich our being. A Christian spiritual discipline practiced will reform our spirit.
Today I want to lift up spiritual formation in Christ, the “yeast” of spiritual growth. There are a lot of religions and movements and philosophies in the world that speak of the spiritual, that offer opportunities for spiritual formation. But when we refer to spiritual formation, it is, or should always be, spiritual formation in Christ. Christian spiritual formation is about taking on the character of Christ. Spiritual formation is about the change of mind, attitude, and disposition that leads us to be like Christ. Spiritual formation in Christ is about finding ways to infuse a little spiritual yeast into our lives.
Colossians is a good book to study for spiritual formation. Colossians 1-2 engage us in what Dallas Willard calls – enthralling the mind with Christ. The first two chapters of Colossians teach of the supremacy of Christ in all things. All things were created in him and through him. Paul realized the number of philosophies of the world that threatened the life of the church: “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.” And then he speaks of the supremacy of Christ: “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. 11In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead... If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world?” (Colossians 2:8-12, 20).
Christ’s authority is over all things. These writings encourage us to be enthralled with Christ’s supremacy or authority, to be gripped and captivated by the person of Jesus Christ.
When Paul moves to Colossians 3-4, he engages us in the objective of becoming Christ-like. The task in this teaching is to remove all the responses or tendencies of our life that oppose the kingdom of God. The metaphor Paul uses is an outward object to speak of an inward condition: clothing. The church was called to “change clothes.” Put on the fresh garment of Christ. Discard the old clothes – those tattered old clothes of evil desires, malice, slander and the like. They were to strip off the old self with its practices. In spiritual terms this meant being crucified with Christ, an action symbolized at our baptism. In practical terms this meant a change in disposition. We cannot simply keep living the same old life that sins against God and against one another.
To change our clothes is to take off the old, bad habits of our lives. Paul lists some inappropriate activity. He may have been listing some activities he had observed in the community or simply taking some random behaviors he knew to be inappropriate. Paul lists examples of inappropriate behavior for Christians. They are all old clothes to be removed. Take off those old rags of sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust, doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy. Take off the clothes of bad tempers, irritability, meanness, lying, and toss them in the fire.
Once those clothes are removed we are given new clothes to wear. Paul says: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (3:12-14).
Above all, out on love – putting on love. Love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love. Love is that favorite shirt that you like to put on in the evenings to relax. Love is that comfortable pair of shoes that you wear when you go out for the day.
Paul gives us some ideas of what wearing these clothes looks like when he says, “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (3:15-17).
Paul tells us to do something – to take off the old, put something to death, kill it, hang it on the cross and to put on something else – the character of Christ. Paul does not really tell us HOW to do this. Perhaps this is what he means by the phrase in Philippians “work out your salvation” (Philippians 2:12). Work out what you need to do to live in responsive obedience to Christ. Within the framework of salvation, tend to your life as faithful disciples seeking to please God and grow in Christ.
Did everyone who read what Paul wrote to the Colossians understand what to do and how to do it? How do we do put off the old and put on the new? Well I suggested two weeks ago that we keep the Lord always before us according to Psalm 16:8. I lifted up Paul’s letter of Philippians last Sunday that we seek to know Christ. Today we are looking more specifically at what Psalm 16 and Philippians 3 and Colossians 3 can mean for our life – that some things will be crucified in our life as we seek to keep the Lord ever before us and some things, godly things, will take their place when we are seeking to know Christ.
There are many things the scriptures reveal to us as specific acts of obedience: seeking first the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33); loving God and neighbor (Matthew 22:34-40); studying and meditation on scripture (Psalm 1, Proverbs 4:20-23); pursuing God (Psalm 42; 63); worship (Psalm 95:6).
We also learn from what Jesus did: he prayed, he got away for times of solitude and silence, he studied the word of God, he worshipped, he served and taught and preached and healed and showed compassion and treated others with dignity and fairness and kindness and love. The classic spiritual disciplines enable us to be formed in Christ and to have Christ formed in us. Practicing silence offers us the time to escape from the constant noise of life. It frees us from feeling like we have to always have something to say. Solitude places us in a position away from people, phones, internet, television – and isolates us in a positive way so that we might focus on being with God. Be still and know that God is God (Psalm 46). Study of the word enhances our experience of worship and worship feeds our study of the word.
One thing we might consider is asking ourselves when we are going about our daily tasks with the thought of Paul’s words in our minds: Do all things in the name of Jesus…ask ourselves - can I do this or that in the name of Jesus? Is this activity or action something I can truly do in the name of Jesus?
Spiritual formation in Christ is a life long journey. It takes a plan to put to death the earthly. It takes discipline to hang on the cross those things that reject Christ. It takes a plan to put on the heavenly, to seek the things that are above. It takes effort.
Dallas Willard in his book The Great Omission, points out eight issues dealing with spiritual formation in Christ:
1. The first is obedience. Spiritual formation in Christ deals with obedience to Christ’s life and teaching – obedience to the Christ.
2. The second is spirituality, that is, it is a matter of spirit. It is “from above”, like the wind. We cannot see it. And living in a visual oriented culture, we tend to discount the spiritual.
3. Third, spiritual formation is living from the reality of God. This means trusting that the reality presented us in Jesus Christ is the truth! We trust the Bible. We trust God. We trust that we live in the kingdom of God today.
4. Fourth is that spirituality is supernatural. This is again the recognition that our Christian spirituality is from above, from the Spirit, and therefore, from God – God is at work in you.
5. Fifth, spiritual formation is about the process of shaping our spirit – in the sense of shaping our will, shaping the heart to automatically bring us to act and live as citizens of heaven.
6. Sixth, spiritual formation reworks the whole self. We are transformed in this formation spirit, soul, and body. We are not primarily seeking to control actions through this work, but to rework the self in such a way that our actions naturally or supernaturally become natural to us – seeking to get this spiritual yeast to permeate our life.
7. Seventh, transforming our thought life, setting God always before us. Spiritual formation changes how we think.
8. Eighth and last! I mentioned this last Sunday when speaking about grace and works. Grace is not opposed to effort but grace is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude, effort is an action. Spiritual formation in Christ takes effort and it is only by God’s grace that we can take action to grow in Christ.
Spiritual formation in Christ entails obedience, a matter of spirit, lived from the reality of God, supernatural, shaping our will, shaping the whole being, transforming our thoughts, and takes effort! Put off the old garment of earthly desires and put on the new garment of Christ.
“[So] let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts…be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another…sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossian 3:15-17). Amen.
Sermons
Sermon # 1023
January 9, 2011
Philippians 3:7-15
Dr. Ed Pettus
“To Know Christ”
Last Sunday I preached on keeping the Lord always before us. Today is along those same thoughts in that we keep the Lord always before us by our knowledge – that is, getting to know Jesus Christ. The reading from Philippians speaks of the value of knowing Christ: “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord…I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him…I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings.”
Knowing Christ surpasses all things for Paul. We are told that if we have lots of money we will be happy or if we get more stuff, we will be satisfied. If we conform we will be liked. If we accept things as they are we will be balanced. But none of these things are biblical thoughts. The Bible teaches us that there is nothing more important to our lives than knowing God.
The apostle Paul is a classic example of a disciple seeking Christ. He is one of the most important figures in the church of Jesus Christ. Paul was also an important figure before his life as an apostle. He was a Pharisee in the Jewish religion, a very high position. He had all the credentials that made him well known and respected. Paul had a certain status, reputation, and I imagine if he were alive today we would want to meet him as much as any celebrity or famous athlete. But Paul had enemies as well, because the Church had enemies. When Paul wrote this letter to the Philippians he was in prison because of his faith. The Church at Philippi encountered teachers who sought to add requirements to the gospel and sought to confuse Paul’s message. Those enemies would often use their credentials to elevate their own importance and seek to bring credibility to what they taught. Paul was as qualified as anyone of his day and perhaps more so because of his background both as a Jew and an apostle of Christ. Yet Paul regarded all his status and all his credentials as nothing compared to the value of knowing Christ. Paul “boasted” of his status in order to show that it meant nothing to him when it came to knowing Jesus.
Paul wanted to know Christ. Nothing else mattered to him. He didn’t just give up things he could not have cared less about, but he counted everything, even the things that meant the most to him, as garbage in comparison to knowing Christ.
If we were to take the time to look closer at scripture we would find many more references to knowledge than we might expect. Jesus says this: “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Eternal life means knowing God and Christ. This also means that eternal life is not something we look to in the distant future or only in heaven, but eternal life is now in knowing God. The more we know, the greater our awareness of the life God gives us.
John tells us in 1 John: “Now by this we may be sure that we know him, if we obey his commandments” (1 John 2:3). Obedience to God’s commands is a way of knowing that we know! We have assurance of knowledge when we do what God calls us to do. We develop a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. A real relationship is not in knowing about someone, it is in knowing someone personally. Anyone can read the Bible and know about Jesus, but one who receives Christ and obeys Christ and seeks to be like Christ, this is the one who gets to know the person of Christ.
What does it take to get to know someone? It takes time. It takes talking and listening. It takes sharing life experiences. As we learn more about one another and get to know one another we may begin to share more; we care more for each other, we receive care and give care. We get to know Jesus also by reading and studying his life and his words. We get to know Jesus by what he did and by what he commands us to do. We know more about Jesus through the letters of the early church and how they understood and knew Jesus.
Paul knew that Jesus laid down his life and Paul laid down his own life each day for Christ, and yet, Paul said he had not yet obtained the closeness to Christ for which he was constantly searching. “Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus”. There is always more depth to this friendship with Christ. There is more depth to Christ and more depth to the human person, but we live for the most part on the surface of our lives. We become seduced by the superficial, by appearances, by possessions, by the empty promises of a world that never wants to look below the surface. Our tendency is to hide, to mask ourselves so that the surface of our lives is all that is seen.
Paul wanted to get to the depth of Christ, to the resurrection and to his sufferings. We may want to share in his resurrection until we think about it awhile and realize that in order to share in the resurrection we must first die. Die to self, die to the world, die to sin…therefore, we must first become like him in his death. To be like Christ is to share in his suffering and death so that we may also share in his resurrection. Symbolically we do that through our baptism, going under the waters, dying to self, to be raised out of the waters to new life. That is one of the meanings of baptism and in light of Philippians it means we share with Christ in his suffering and resurrection. True friendships share in the ups and the downs of life. To really know someone is to know both the joys and the sufferings of that person. My best friends are among those whom I have shared great tragedies and we have also shared experiences of celebration.
We know something of Christ’s suffering when we suffer, and we take comfort in knowing that Christ understands our suffering because he has suffered himself and has been with us through our own suffering. Paul said in Philippians 1:29: “for it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him.” That means that trusting and suffering are both gifts granted by God. Eugene Peterson renders that passage beautifully when he says: “There’s far more to this life than trusting in Christ. There’s also suffering for him. And the suffering is as much a gift as the trusting.” We share in Christ’s suffering by paying attention to our pain, by learning from it, by trusting that God will bring us through it to something better on the other side. Walter Brueggemann, when writing about the story of the blind man Bartimaeus, says: “Had [Bartimaeus] not cried out in pain, he never would have some to a new life of discipleship” (p. 56, Finally Comes the Poet). That is, our suffering will lead us to knowing Christ, for Christ has suffered, and even more, Christ has suffered for us.
After Paul talks about sharing in the suffering of Christ he moves to the metaphor of running (and I think that by linking suffering and running Paul shared the same view of running that I do). Paul uses several phrases that allude to the Greek athlete, “pressing on, straining forward,” and “reaching the goal.” It takes a little more effort to run. Dallas Willard says that grace is not opposed to effort, but grace is opposed to earning. That is, we do not get to know Jesus in order to earn our salvation, but when Christ has entered our lives we continue to make every effort to know him. Effort. It takes effort to get to know Jesus.
We value that which we give our time and effort and resources. The value Paul placed on knowing Christ may cause us to ask ourselves about the value we place on knowing Christ. We all may ask ourselves that question, “Do we value knowing Christ?” “Do we consider everything else as nothing compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ?”
One of the ways we keep the Lord always before us (Psalm 16:8) is to know Christ. In my experience, the more one knows Christ, the more we want to know. Paul knew that he could seek his goal to know Christ because Christ already knew him. He could seek because he had been found. This is the Christ who knows us already; we can make it our goal to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and his suffering. Get to know Christ through your own struggles and joys. Get to know Christ through prayer and fellowship and the scriptures and worship; get to know Christ, press on toward that goal, forgetting what lies behind for our prize is not on this earth but is God’s heavenly call. If we have any other goal in mind, anything less than total commitment, we will stumble and fall. Let us strain forward to what lies ahead. Let us press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. Amen.
January 9, 2011
Philippians 3:7-15
Dr. Ed Pettus
“To Know Christ”
Last Sunday I preached on keeping the Lord always before us. Today is along those same thoughts in that we keep the Lord always before us by our knowledge – that is, getting to know Jesus Christ. The reading from Philippians speaks of the value of knowing Christ: “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord…I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him…I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings.”
Knowing Christ surpasses all things for Paul. We are told that if we have lots of money we will be happy or if we get more stuff, we will be satisfied. If we conform we will be liked. If we accept things as they are we will be balanced. But none of these things are biblical thoughts. The Bible teaches us that there is nothing more important to our lives than knowing God.
The apostle Paul is a classic example of a disciple seeking Christ. He is one of the most important figures in the church of Jesus Christ. Paul was also an important figure before his life as an apostle. He was a Pharisee in the Jewish religion, a very high position. He had all the credentials that made him well known and respected. Paul had a certain status, reputation, and I imagine if he were alive today we would want to meet him as much as any celebrity or famous athlete. But Paul had enemies as well, because the Church had enemies. When Paul wrote this letter to the Philippians he was in prison because of his faith. The Church at Philippi encountered teachers who sought to add requirements to the gospel and sought to confuse Paul’s message. Those enemies would often use their credentials to elevate their own importance and seek to bring credibility to what they taught. Paul was as qualified as anyone of his day and perhaps more so because of his background both as a Jew and an apostle of Christ. Yet Paul regarded all his status and all his credentials as nothing compared to the value of knowing Christ. Paul “boasted” of his status in order to show that it meant nothing to him when it came to knowing Jesus.
Paul wanted to know Christ. Nothing else mattered to him. He didn’t just give up things he could not have cared less about, but he counted everything, even the things that meant the most to him, as garbage in comparison to knowing Christ.
If we were to take the time to look closer at scripture we would find many more references to knowledge than we might expect. Jesus says this: “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Eternal life means knowing God and Christ. This also means that eternal life is not something we look to in the distant future or only in heaven, but eternal life is now in knowing God. The more we know, the greater our awareness of the life God gives us.
John tells us in 1 John: “Now by this we may be sure that we know him, if we obey his commandments” (1 John 2:3). Obedience to God’s commands is a way of knowing that we know! We have assurance of knowledge when we do what God calls us to do. We develop a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. A real relationship is not in knowing about someone, it is in knowing someone personally. Anyone can read the Bible and know about Jesus, but one who receives Christ and obeys Christ and seeks to be like Christ, this is the one who gets to know the person of Christ.
What does it take to get to know someone? It takes time. It takes talking and listening. It takes sharing life experiences. As we learn more about one another and get to know one another we may begin to share more; we care more for each other, we receive care and give care. We get to know Jesus also by reading and studying his life and his words. We get to know Jesus by what he did and by what he commands us to do. We know more about Jesus through the letters of the early church and how they understood and knew Jesus.
Paul knew that Jesus laid down his life and Paul laid down his own life each day for Christ, and yet, Paul said he had not yet obtained the closeness to Christ for which he was constantly searching. “Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus”. There is always more depth to this friendship with Christ. There is more depth to Christ and more depth to the human person, but we live for the most part on the surface of our lives. We become seduced by the superficial, by appearances, by possessions, by the empty promises of a world that never wants to look below the surface. Our tendency is to hide, to mask ourselves so that the surface of our lives is all that is seen.
Paul wanted to get to the depth of Christ, to the resurrection and to his sufferings. We may want to share in his resurrection until we think about it awhile and realize that in order to share in the resurrection we must first die. Die to self, die to the world, die to sin…therefore, we must first become like him in his death. To be like Christ is to share in his suffering and death so that we may also share in his resurrection. Symbolically we do that through our baptism, going under the waters, dying to self, to be raised out of the waters to new life. That is one of the meanings of baptism and in light of Philippians it means we share with Christ in his suffering and resurrection. True friendships share in the ups and the downs of life. To really know someone is to know both the joys and the sufferings of that person. My best friends are among those whom I have shared great tragedies and we have also shared experiences of celebration.
We know something of Christ’s suffering when we suffer, and we take comfort in knowing that Christ understands our suffering because he has suffered himself and has been with us through our own suffering. Paul said in Philippians 1:29: “for it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him.” That means that trusting and suffering are both gifts granted by God. Eugene Peterson renders that passage beautifully when he says: “There’s far more to this life than trusting in Christ. There’s also suffering for him. And the suffering is as much a gift as the trusting.” We share in Christ’s suffering by paying attention to our pain, by learning from it, by trusting that God will bring us through it to something better on the other side. Walter Brueggemann, when writing about the story of the blind man Bartimaeus, says: “Had [Bartimaeus] not cried out in pain, he never would have some to a new life of discipleship” (p. 56, Finally Comes the Poet). That is, our suffering will lead us to knowing Christ, for Christ has suffered, and even more, Christ has suffered for us.
After Paul talks about sharing in the suffering of Christ he moves to the metaphor of running (and I think that by linking suffering and running Paul shared the same view of running that I do). Paul uses several phrases that allude to the Greek athlete, “pressing on, straining forward,” and “reaching the goal.” It takes a little more effort to run. Dallas Willard says that grace is not opposed to effort, but grace is opposed to earning. That is, we do not get to know Jesus in order to earn our salvation, but when Christ has entered our lives we continue to make every effort to know him. Effort. It takes effort to get to know Jesus.
We value that which we give our time and effort and resources. The value Paul placed on knowing Christ may cause us to ask ourselves about the value we place on knowing Christ. We all may ask ourselves that question, “Do we value knowing Christ?” “Do we consider everything else as nothing compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ?”
One of the ways we keep the Lord always before us (Psalm 16:8) is to know Christ. In my experience, the more one knows Christ, the more we want to know. Paul knew that he could seek his goal to know Christ because Christ already knew him. He could seek because he had been found. This is the Christ who knows us already; we can make it our goal to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and his suffering. Get to know Christ through your own struggles and joys. Get to know Christ through prayer and fellowship and the scriptures and worship; get to know Christ, press on toward that goal, forgetting what lies behind for our prize is not on this earth but is God’s heavenly call. If we have any other goal in mind, anything less than total commitment, we will stumble and fall. Let us strain forward to what lies ahead. Let us press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Sermon
Sermon #1022
January 2, 2011
Psalm 16
Dr. Ed Pettus
“The Lord – Always Before Me”
Thursday is Epiphany, the day we recognize the wise men coming to the stable where the Christ was born. The church year begins with the anticipation of the birth of Christ and Advent. We began the church year on November 28 of 2010, but our calendar year began yesterday, January 1, 2011! This is a time for beginnings, a time to think about birth, genesis, a new start. Some will make new year resolutions and consequently places like the fitness center will be full for the next two months. Some will vow to pray more or be kinder to co-workers or finally clean out the basement. For others life will go on as usual, perhaps with just a sense of the new year bringing in a new sense of excitement.
I’m not really one for new year resolutions only because I never really keep them very well. I want to. I think about what I would like to do differently, but as those of you older than I know, it gets more and more difficult to teach an old dog new tricks. But – the Christian life is consistently renewing, repenting, learning, growing. Christians who are truly growing are learning new things, growing closer to God, experiencing conversions and always hoping for even more.
Psalm 16 is a great prayer for renewal and recommitment. Psalm 16:8 could be adopted as a discipleship theme and a new beginning: “I keep the Lord always before me!” That is what a good disciple does; that is what an apprentice does. A disciple is just like an apprentice. An apprentice keeps the master of the craft always before him or her so that the apprentice may one day become as skilled as the master. The apprentice watches, listens, studies, and does what it takes to become like the master.
Our goal is to have Christ formed in us, in fact, that was a goal of the apostle Paul, that Christ be formed in people. He writes to the Galatians: “I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you” (Gal. 4:19).
I remember when I was learning how to play the guitar I was always trying to play like the people who seemed to me to have mastered the art. I would spend as much time as I could with them, watched how they played, asked questions, and tried to emulate their style and technique. I did my best to master their skill. When I was much younger and learning to play football, I watched other players: Joe Namath was one of my favorites and I wanted to be able to throw a ball like he did and play with the same confidence I saw in him.
Any of you who have sought to learn a new craft or skill know what you had to do to learn and the same is true for learning to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. We spend time with the master, studying what he did, listening for what he is doing now, and seeking to keep Christ always before us.
One of the ways we study and learn from Christ is to study the Bible. We study the gospels which tell us specifically about Jesus and what he did and said. No less important are the words Jesus himself studied in the Old Testament like Psalm 16. Imagine Jesus at home or in the synagogue hearing the same words we heard a moment ago. I imagine him listening to verse 2: “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.” Later in his life Jesus would be teaching the disciples as he says: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Apart from God we have nothing and we are nothing. Colossians 3 speaks of Christ as our life: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.” Christ is our life. Our life is hidden with Christ in God. No good apart from God. Apart from Christ we can do nothing.
Well, my thoughts on a new year have revolved around Psalm 16 and specifically verse 8: “I keep the Lord always before me.” How do we keep the Lord always before us. One way is by prayer. Psalm 16 is a prayer beginning with a petition for protection. “Protect me, O God, for I take refuge in you.”
It is significant that the Psalm is a prayer, as all the Psalms are! Prayer is a primary discipline for keeping the Lord always before us. Whether we are praying for something, praying to praise God, or just simply focusing our heart and mind upon God’s presence, we do that in prayer.
Sometimes prayer is just wanting to be with God, wanting to keep God always before us. Not asking God for everything on our shopping lists, not a one-way conversation we may offer, but simply being with God, aware that God is with us.
What, then, does this prayer offer? The Psalmist understands that protection comes when one takes refuge in God. Refuge – taking shelter from the rain, a child running to her mother for protection. We take refuge, we trust God for shelter, protection, and security. A disciple trusts in Christ to be protected.
Verse 2 acknowledges that there is nothing good apart from God, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.” The simple affirmation is that all we are and all we do depends on our relationship with God. Apart from God we are not much more than empty shells. Apart from God we have no hope. Apart from God we can do nothing. Apart from God we have nothing.
Verses 5-8 are all about God. The Psalmist acknowledges God is our chosen portion, cup, and lot. The Lord gives counsel and instructs even through the night. The Lord is thus blessed, in prayer, by the disciple and kept ever before him.
The result, verse 9, is a glad heart, a joyous soul, and a secure body. Three desires we seek in our lives: happiness, joy, and security. You see, we are not a people who pursue happiness, who seek joy, or who search for security. Life is not all about the pursuit of happiness. The life of the disciple is lived in pursuit of God, keeping the Lord always before us, and the result of that pursuit is happiness, joy, and safety.
That, I believe, is a problem in our nation. We have pursued what amounts to the god of happiness, rather than the living God of Psalm 16. We have come to believe in our pursuit of happiness that we deserve certain rights or ownership, a certain standard of living, and we will do everything in our power to “make it” our own. A disciple of Christ can certainly enjoy the blessing of this life, but a disciple understands that the blessing is not the object, not the goal of this life. The goal is to follow God, to keep the Lord ever before us. Psalm 16 affirms that if we do that, good things will come. If we pursue happiness there is no assurance that we will find God, but if we pursue God there is the promise of happiness. What are we pursuing in our lives today? Let us strive to keep the Lord always before us.
The prayer concludes with confidence in God – God will not abandon! “For you do not give me up to Sheol, or let you faithful one see the Pit.”
God will direct and give pleasures: “You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
In this Psalm we see a picture of discipleship. One who prays to God. One who proclaims affirmations of faith and trust and confidence in God. This is one who knows that God is at work in his life. He has seen the results of God’s presence in the marks of gladness, joy, and security. Psalm 16 gives us a good beginning, keeping the Lord continually before us.
Keep the Lord always before us! We might have various views about the Muslim faith, but one thing I admire about them is their prayer life. As I understand it they stop whatever they are doing five times during the day and pray. We, instead, claim we do not want to be legalistic about prayer, or something like that, and what we end up with is no prayer at all…well, except in an emergency. We treat prayer like a “break glass in case of fire” scenario rather than a discipline to know God and keep the Lord always before us. Paul asks us to go even further than praying five times a day when he encourages us to pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17). The Christian life is to be a life of prayer – keep the Lord always before us.
We read Paul’s words and on the face of it we rationalize that Paul did not mean we should always be praying, but what does he mean? The Psalmist is not saying anything different in keeping to Lord always, always before us. We think of how we might live this way and we become somewhat paralyzed by it and, like a new year’s resolution, we simply give up. It is a work of God consciousness. One of my favorite books is Joshua, a novel about Jesus in a modern setting and one of the phrases used to describe Joshua was that he breathed God. He breathed God! Imagine a life of faith that breathes God! Every minute of thought is brought back to God. Every opportunity available is a prayer to God.
Now we know that we have other things to think about. I hope that a surgeon will be focused on the tissue about to be cut, the CPA is clear on what figure to put on a certain line, but also that when the moment allows, God is also in their thoughts. Our task in keeping the Lord before us is to direct and redirect our minds to God. Dallas Willard likens this to a compass: “Soon our minds will return to God as the needle of a compass constantly returns north” (The Great Omission, p. 125). As we are constantly distracted by our busyness, by our noisiness, and by our yearning for things other than God, we need to foster this compass mentality. I have recently lost my laptop computer, it sits at the shop for repairs if even able to be fixed, so I have been living without my constant distraction, without the constant glow of the screen. (How could I possibly get this sermon prepared? ) What am I going to do for news, sports, games, general surfing, not to mentions all the Bible resources so easily accessed? I had to resort to writing with a pen! We grow accustomed to certain ways of doing things and when those patterns are disrupted we grow anxious. We need a compass to get our bearings.
The Christian compass is with keeping the Lord always before us. Willard says that “this is the fundamental secret of caring for our souls” (p.125). We begin when we receive Christ into our lives and we nourish this discipline of mindfulness through prayer and scripture and worship and silence and solitude and other disciplines that help us to train the mind for discipleship – that is, for keeping the Lord always before us.
I encourage you to think about a new or renewed commitment to keep the Lord always before you. Memorize Psalm 16:8, “I keep the Lord always before me.” Better yet, memorize the whole Psalm! Psalm 16 is a good Psalm for discipleship. As we look to 2011, we might ask: are we living as those who keep God continually before us? Are we pursuing God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength? Is our heart glad? Does our soul rejoice? Does our body rest secure? These are the marks of discipleship. I pray that we may have those marks in our life as a result of keeping God always before us. Amen.
January 2, 2011
Psalm 16
Dr. Ed Pettus
“The Lord – Always Before Me”
Thursday is Epiphany, the day we recognize the wise men coming to the stable where the Christ was born. The church year begins with the anticipation of the birth of Christ and Advent. We began the church year on November 28 of 2010, but our calendar year began yesterday, January 1, 2011! This is a time for beginnings, a time to think about birth, genesis, a new start. Some will make new year resolutions and consequently places like the fitness center will be full for the next two months. Some will vow to pray more or be kinder to co-workers or finally clean out the basement. For others life will go on as usual, perhaps with just a sense of the new year bringing in a new sense of excitement.
I’m not really one for new year resolutions only because I never really keep them very well. I want to. I think about what I would like to do differently, but as those of you older than I know, it gets more and more difficult to teach an old dog new tricks. But – the Christian life is consistently renewing, repenting, learning, growing. Christians who are truly growing are learning new things, growing closer to God, experiencing conversions and always hoping for even more.
Psalm 16 is a great prayer for renewal and recommitment. Psalm 16:8 could be adopted as a discipleship theme and a new beginning: “I keep the Lord always before me!” That is what a good disciple does; that is what an apprentice does. A disciple is just like an apprentice. An apprentice keeps the master of the craft always before him or her so that the apprentice may one day become as skilled as the master. The apprentice watches, listens, studies, and does what it takes to become like the master.
Our goal is to have Christ formed in us, in fact, that was a goal of the apostle Paul, that Christ be formed in people. He writes to the Galatians: “I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you” (Gal. 4:19).
I remember when I was learning how to play the guitar I was always trying to play like the people who seemed to me to have mastered the art. I would spend as much time as I could with them, watched how they played, asked questions, and tried to emulate their style and technique. I did my best to master their skill. When I was much younger and learning to play football, I watched other players: Joe Namath was one of my favorites and I wanted to be able to throw a ball like he did and play with the same confidence I saw in him.
Any of you who have sought to learn a new craft or skill know what you had to do to learn and the same is true for learning to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. We spend time with the master, studying what he did, listening for what he is doing now, and seeking to keep Christ always before us.
One of the ways we study and learn from Christ is to study the Bible. We study the gospels which tell us specifically about Jesus and what he did and said. No less important are the words Jesus himself studied in the Old Testament like Psalm 16. Imagine Jesus at home or in the synagogue hearing the same words we heard a moment ago. I imagine him listening to verse 2: “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.” Later in his life Jesus would be teaching the disciples as he says: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Apart from God we have nothing and we are nothing. Colossians 3 speaks of Christ as our life: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.” Christ is our life. Our life is hidden with Christ in God. No good apart from God. Apart from Christ we can do nothing.
Well, my thoughts on a new year have revolved around Psalm 16 and specifically verse 8: “I keep the Lord always before me.” How do we keep the Lord always before us. One way is by prayer. Psalm 16 is a prayer beginning with a petition for protection. “Protect me, O God, for I take refuge in you.”
It is significant that the Psalm is a prayer, as all the Psalms are! Prayer is a primary discipline for keeping the Lord always before us. Whether we are praying for something, praying to praise God, or just simply focusing our heart and mind upon God’s presence, we do that in prayer.
Sometimes prayer is just wanting to be with God, wanting to keep God always before us. Not asking God for everything on our shopping lists, not a one-way conversation we may offer, but simply being with God, aware that God is with us.
What, then, does this prayer offer? The Psalmist understands that protection comes when one takes refuge in God. Refuge – taking shelter from the rain, a child running to her mother for protection. We take refuge, we trust God for shelter, protection, and security. A disciple trusts in Christ to be protected.
Verse 2 acknowledges that there is nothing good apart from God, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.” The simple affirmation is that all we are and all we do depends on our relationship with God. Apart from God we are not much more than empty shells. Apart from God we have no hope. Apart from God we can do nothing. Apart from God we have nothing.
Verses 5-8 are all about God. The Psalmist acknowledges God is our chosen portion, cup, and lot. The Lord gives counsel and instructs even through the night. The Lord is thus blessed, in prayer, by the disciple and kept ever before him.
The result, verse 9, is a glad heart, a joyous soul, and a secure body. Three desires we seek in our lives: happiness, joy, and security. You see, we are not a people who pursue happiness, who seek joy, or who search for security. Life is not all about the pursuit of happiness. The life of the disciple is lived in pursuit of God, keeping the Lord always before us, and the result of that pursuit is happiness, joy, and safety.
That, I believe, is a problem in our nation. We have pursued what amounts to the god of happiness, rather than the living God of Psalm 16. We have come to believe in our pursuit of happiness that we deserve certain rights or ownership, a certain standard of living, and we will do everything in our power to “make it” our own. A disciple of Christ can certainly enjoy the blessing of this life, but a disciple understands that the blessing is not the object, not the goal of this life. The goal is to follow God, to keep the Lord ever before us. Psalm 16 affirms that if we do that, good things will come. If we pursue happiness there is no assurance that we will find God, but if we pursue God there is the promise of happiness. What are we pursuing in our lives today? Let us strive to keep the Lord always before us.
The prayer concludes with confidence in God – God will not abandon! “For you do not give me up to Sheol, or let you faithful one see the Pit.”
God will direct and give pleasures: “You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
In this Psalm we see a picture of discipleship. One who prays to God. One who proclaims affirmations of faith and trust and confidence in God. This is one who knows that God is at work in his life. He has seen the results of God’s presence in the marks of gladness, joy, and security. Psalm 16 gives us a good beginning, keeping the Lord continually before us.
Keep the Lord always before us! We might have various views about the Muslim faith, but one thing I admire about them is their prayer life. As I understand it they stop whatever they are doing five times during the day and pray. We, instead, claim we do not want to be legalistic about prayer, or something like that, and what we end up with is no prayer at all…well, except in an emergency. We treat prayer like a “break glass in case of fire” scenario rather than a discipline to know God and keep the Lord always before us. Paul asks us to go even further than praying five times a day when he encourages us to pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17). The Christian life is to be a life of prayer – keep the Lord always before us.
We read Paul’s words and on the face of it we rationalize that Paul did not mean we should always be praying, but what does he mean? The Psalmist is not saying anything different in keeping to Lord always, always before us. We think of how we might live this way and we become somewhat paralyzed by it and, like a new year’s resolution, we simply give up. It is a work of God consciousness. One of my favorite books is Joshua, a novel about Jesus in a modern setting and one of the phrases used to describe Joshua was that he breathed God. He breathed God! Imagine a life of faith that breathes God! Every minute of thought is brought back to God. Every opportunity available is a prayer to God.
Now we know that we have other things to think about. I hope that a surgeon will be focused on the tissue about to be cut, the CPA is clear on what figure to put on a certain line, but also that when the moment allows, God is also in their thoughts. Our task in keeping the Lord before us is to direct and redirect our minds to God. Dallas Willard likens this to a compass: “Soon our minds will return to God as the needle of a compass constantly returns north” (The Great Omission, p. 125). As we are constantly distracted by our busyness, by our noisiness, and by our yearning for things other than God, we need to foster this compass mentality. I have recently lost my laptop computer, it sits at the shop for repairs if even able to be fixed, so I have been living without my constant distraction, without the constant glow of the screen. (How could I possibly get this sermon prepared? ) What am I going to do for news, sports, games, general surfing, not to mentions all the Bible resources so easily accessed? I had to resort to writing with a pen! We grow accustomed to certain ways of doing things and when those patterns are disrupted we grow anxious. We need a compass to get our bearings.
The Christian compass is with keeping the Lord always before us. Willard says that “this is the fundamental secret of caring for our souls” (p.125). We begin when we receive Christ into our lives and we nourish this discipline of mindfulness through prayer and scripture and worship and silence and solitude and other disciplines that help us to train the mind for discipleship – that is, for keeping the Lord always before us.
I encourage you to think about a new or renewed commitment to keep the Lord always before you. Memorize Psalm 16:8, “I keep the Lord always before me.” Better yet, memorize the whole Psalm! Psalm 16 is a good Psalm for discipleship. As we look to 2011, we might ask: are we living as those who keep God continually before us? Are we pursuing God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength? Is our heart glad? Does our soul rejoice? Does our body rest secure? These are the marks of discipleship. I pray that we may have those marks in our life as a result of keeping God always before us. Amen.
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