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.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
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.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Sunday Sermon
Posting last two sermons:
Sermon # 1020
December 12, 2010
Hebrews 4:1-11
Dr. Ed Pettus
“The Rhythm of Faith”
In the movie Eat, Pray, Love, Liz Gilbert goes on a yearlong journey to find something that is missing in her life. After a broken marriage and general disillusionment about life, she begins her journey with something of an indulgence: four months in Rome – eating, drinking, playing, and learning the art of pleasure in what the Italians call “the sweetness of doing nothing”. After her time in Rome she moves on to India for a more “spiritual” quest at an ashram, a retreat center, to practice rituals in meditation. Liz finds her way back in Bali, Indonesia, where she returns to meet with a ninth generation medicine man named Ketut who, a year before, told her she would loose all her money and get it all back and would return to Bali to live for 3-4 months.
One of Liz’s quests is to find balance in her life – a goal to which we all might aspire. Ketut defines balance as “not too much God and not too much selfish”. We sometimes call that - moderation in all things! In the Christian faith we speak of a balance between work and rest. We use terms like balance or rhythm, health, and in more theological terms, graceful or grace-filled.
Today I want us to think together about the balance or rhythm of faith. Biblically we know such balance and rhythm from the very beginning of creation when God worked for six days and rested on the seventh. This is the rhythm of life and faith that God has built into creation itself – work and rest.
Robert McAfee Brown uses the terms withdrawal and return. A balanced life of faith oscillates between work and rest, withdrawal and return, action and contemplation. Without this rhythm of faith, life becomes…well, a mess! It seems to me that this time of the year, as we prepare for Christmas, life can easily becomes unbalanced. I don’t think that is what John the Baptist had in mind when he preached: “prepare the way of the Lord!”
The scripture for today from Hebrews 4 speaks of the elusive rest we too easily find ways to avoid.
9So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God; 10for those who enter God’s rest also cease from their labors as God did from his. 11Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may fall through such disobedience as theirs [Israel’s].
Fascinating that failing to rest leads to disobedience. Busyness may be one of the great curses of modernity. Sometimes we don’t even ask people how they are doing, but are you staying busy! When was the last time you were asked if you were getting enough rest? Maybe your doctor? Lynn Baab has a chapter in her book on Sabbath entitled: “Too busy to rest”. We have a culture that promotes busyness and productivity.
Resting is not a positive concept in our culture. But if we are busy we believe that we are good and right. We are doing something right if we are rushing along and keeping up with everything in the world and talking on our cell phones while we are driving to the mall. But what we find is that busyness leads to exhaustion. Busyness leads to emptiness. Busyness leads to despair. We feel pressure to be productive, to be constantly active, and that pressure increases during this time of year when we are “getting ready” for Christmas. People are asking me now: “are you ready for Christmas?” What do they mean by that? Have I got all my shopping done? Have I chopped down the tree and decorated the house and cooked a ham and sent out Christmas cards and planned all the family visits and wrapped the presents and attended parties? I’m not sure how to answer that question anymore.
Unfortunately I had to get out into the world on Friday. Fridays are usually very hectic in and around Princeton anyway, but Fridays in December seem especially so. I wasn’t feeling well; the medicine was not ready at Wal-Mart on the first visit, so I knew I was going to have to come back out again. Hectic shoppers, traffic overload, and all I wanted was somewhere to lie down! I know some people love the label of shopaholic and the frenzy of Christmas shopping, but to me it is just a blur and a tiresome commercialization. (I know, the economy would collapse without all this.)
I prefer the imagined stillness of a dark Christmas Eve only illuminated by the stars and the bright star that would lead the Magi. Silent Night – Holy Night.
Should Christmas time leave us exhausted and spending more than we want? It is sad that we have to consider the question: can we find rest in Christmas? Can we find Sabbath in December? Can we maintain the rhythm of faith?
9So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God; 10for those who enter God’s rest also cease from their labors as God did from his. 11Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may fall through such disobedience as theirs [Israel’s].
Christmas is a time, not for frantic planning and hectic shopping, not for exhaustion, but Sabbath rest and peace. Peace on earth and good will to people.
Peace of mind.
Peace of spirit.
Peace of body.
Peace of home.
Peace of worship.
The New Interpreters Bible contains this commentary on Hebrews 4: “The introduction of the theme of ‘rest’ into the presentation of the Christian life as that of a pilgrimage provides a striking image of the rhythm of faith: movement and rest. Psychologists and counselors have long understood this rhythm as basic to a healthy life, and leaders of organizations, including churches, are using it to design programming. But Hebrews can be additionally helpful in the reminder that the life of faith is not simply scheduled as periods of movement and periods of rest. Rest, says the text, does not just follow pilgrimage but occurs during pilgrimage as well (4:3). The rest of God is both present and future. Therefore, just as the Near Eastern proverb says, ‘There is going in my staying and staying in my going,’ so also does the preacher in Hebrews say, ‘There is rest in movement and movement in rest’” (Hebrews, pp.55-56).
We are on a pilgrimage of faith. We are on a specific faith journey in December – a journey to the manger. What I seek for myself and for all of us is a journey that can take the time to enter that rest that enables us to contemplate the joy of Christmas and the peace of Christmas. The pop theology phrase is: “the reason for the season”, but that has become something like a commercial jingle rather than a genuine call to enter into that rest that we might not fall into disobedience.
Perhaps we should take the time to ask ourselves if our over activity is disobedient. Perhaps we could rest long enough to see that we sometimes look like people who have camped out on Black Friday to make that 4:00am shopping run, plowing over anyone in our way to get that new cell phone or new toy. Rhythm does not rush, rhythm keeps balance, rhythm gives new life. Let’s keep a rhythm of faith, especially at Christmas when it is perhaps most needed. Amen.
Sermon # 1019
December 5, 2010
Luke 1:57-80
Dr. Ed Pettus
“The Benedictus”
The Benedictus is the title given to Zechariah’s speech in Luke 1:68-79. Benedictus is the Latin word for blessed or blessing, the first word Zechariah speaks in this passage. It is the last word spoken to us in worship, the benediction or the blessing, when the minister proclaims a blessing to the people: “may God’s grace be with you” is a blessing or a benedictus. Mary’s song is called The Magnificat named also by the first words of her song: “my soul magnifies the Lord”.
The preface to Zechariah’s prophecy is the birth of John. Last Sunday we looked at the pronouncement of the angel Gabriel, that barren Elizabeth would have a son and Zechariah was struck mute because he doubted this could happen since they were both getting on in years. Now we come to the time of the birth and, as was and still is custom, friends and family came to celebrate with Elizabeth.
On the eighth day it was time to circumcise and name the child. When we think about naming children we consider a variety of options. Should we go with a family name? Whenever we run across some strange name with someone we often ask if it is a family name. We might consider a name that has some specific meaning or we just like the sound of a particular name. Naming is important and we usually give it a great deal of time and consideration. Edwin was my grandfather’s name and Hoyt, my middle name, was a name from a good friend of my father. His name was Hoyt Hand. At least mine was in the middle and did not get full time use!
Elizabeth and Zechariah may have had ideas for a name when they were very young and expecting to have children in their early years, but no children came. Elizabeth was barren. But now, as they are getting on in years, they have a son, a most unexpected blessing, and the time has come to name him. During the circumcision the name would be given. The family members and religious leaders were expecting him to be named after his father, Zechariah, but Elizabeth spoke up and said: “No; he is to be called John.” This caused a stir among the gathered folks and so they motioned for Zechariah to clear things up, maybe they thought Elizabeth’s age was causing some unclear thinking. Zechariah, still unable to speak, wrote his name on a tablet: His name is John. The people went from confusion to amazement and just as quickly, Zechariah’s voice returned!
He began to speak and to praise God and everyone then went from amazement to fear and this event became the talk of the town. The buzz was about what this child would become and all this surrounding the process of selecting a name. The narrator adds: “the hand of the Lord was with him”. I suspect Luke is looking back over the story knowing what kind of person John would become and there is no other explanation of his life than “the hand of the Lord was with him”!
The next part of the narrative is Zechariah’s speech. I imagine, after being unable to speak for the duration of a pregnancy, that Zechariah had plenty to say and was ready to say it! The beginning (68-75) is unique to Jesus and the remainder (76-79) is in reference to John. Zechariah’s phrasing and content is along the lines of Old Testament prophecy. God has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them by raising up a mighty savior. He has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors. The language of rescue leads God’s people to the ability to serve without fear (74).
After this prophetic word about the savior, he addresses his son who will be called a prophet, preparing the way, leading people to salvation and forgiveness and this section ends with the language of leading our feet into the way of peace (79).
Jesus will rescue us from fear. Fear is a powerful force in our lives. Imagine being delivered from the fear that holds us back from achieving great things with God. I do not just mean fear of walking down a dark ally, but fear of risking ourselves for God. We fear of letting ourselves go, surrendering ourselves that we might grow even closer to God. We fear completely giving our lives over to the Lordship of Christ.
John’s preparation for the coming messiah guides us to the way of peace, not because John is the way – he makes that clear in his message – but because Jesus is the way to peace. Life without fear, life with total peace. It is only made possible because God chose the most unlikely people to bring peace and to release us from fear.
Luke makes a point to set the redemption of God under the nose of King Herod of Judea. The people of Israel expected the redeemer to come like a great king, but God chooses to bring the message of salvation through the son of a barren woman and an old priest. In the reign of the great King Herod, God does not act through him, but through a virgin named Mary, through the very people oppressed by Herod’s rule.
That is how God seems to work, choosing the weakest people to do the greatest things. Think about how you might plan to save the world. Would you start with a barren woman? Would you start with a couple too old to have children? Would you start with a teenage girl and then put her in a situation where she would have to tell her fiancé that she is pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit? I don’t think anyone could have dreamed up this kind of plan, well, other than God.
Zechariah was told by the angel Gabriel earlier in chapter one, that John would be filled with the Holy Spirit and would turn many people to God (15-16). In this prophetic word from today’s reading he sees two things John will do: prepare the way of the Lord and give the knowledge of salvation (76-77). I guess you can’t ask for greater expectations out of your infant son!
Zechariah’s Benedictus is a testimony to God’s amazing plan of salvation for God’s people. It is grand in language, but in another sense, it is a most simple, humble plan. God does not use royalty or people of privilege to bring forth his plan, but people of humble means, even people we would see as unable to bring forth any plan, let alone one that selects a barren woman to give birth to the messenger of God and a virgin to give birth to the savior. It is amazing. It is surprising. It is the way of God. It reminds us that God can do amazing things through any one of us. It assures us that God can and will do amazing things for the sake of our salvation and peace.
Perhaps the word for us from this text is to receive God’s word today – not in the sense that God needs to bring a Savior to the world as he did then, but God calls each of us to become the storytellers, to speak through word and deed of the Savior and the amazing voices of Zechariah and John. We are the voices today – telling the amazing story of redemption and peace. Amen.
Sermon # 1020
December 12, 2010
Hebrews 4:1-11
Dr. Ed Pettus
“The Rhythm of Faith”
In the movie Eat, Pray, Love, Liz Gilbert goes on a yearlong journey to find something that is missing in her life. After a broken marriage and general disillusionment about life, she begins her journey with something of an indulgence: four months in Rome – eating, drinking, playing, and learning the art of pleasure in what the Italians call “the sweetness of doing nothing”. After her time in Rome she moves on to India for a more “spiritual” quest at an ashram, a retreat center, to practice rituals in meditation. Liz finds her way back in Bali, Indonesia, where she returns to meet with a ninth generation medicine man named Ketut who, a year before, told her she would loose all her money and get it all back and would return to Bali to live for 3-4 months.
One of Liz’s quests is to find balance in her life – a goal to which we all might aspire. Ketut defines balance as “not too much God and not too much selfish”. We sometimes call that - moderation in all things! In the Christian faith we speak of a balance between work and rest. We use terms like balance or rhythm, health, and in more theological terms, graceful or grace-filled.
Today I want us to think together about the balance or rhythm of faith. Biblically we know such balance and rhythm from the very beginning of creation when God worked for six days and rested on the seventh. This is the rhythm of life and faith that God has built into creation itself – work and rest.
Robert McAfee Brown uses the terms withdrawal and return. A balanced life of faith oscillates between work and rest, withdrawal and return, action and contemplation. Without this rhythm of faith, life becomes…well, a mess! It seems to me that this time of the year, as we prepare for Christmas, life can easily becomes unbalanced. I don’t think that is what John the Baptist had in mind when he preached: “prepare the way of the Lord!”
The scripture for today from Hebrews 4 speaks of the elusive rest we too easily find ways to avoid.
9So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God; 10for those who enter God’s rest also cease from their labors as God did from his. 11Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may fall through such disobedience as theirs [Israel’s].
Fascinating that failing to rest leads to disobedience. Busyness may be one of the great curses of modernity. Sometimes we don’t even ask people how they are doing, but are you staying busy! When was the last time you were asked if you were getting enough rest? Maybe your doctor? Lynn Baab has a chapter in her book on Sabbath entitled: “Too busy to rest”. We have a culture that promotes busyness and productivity.
Resting is not a positive concept in our culture. But if we are busy we believe that we are good and right. We are doing something right if we are rushing along and keeping up with everything in the world and talking on our cell phones while we are driving to the mall. But what we find is that busyness leads to exhaustion. Busyness leads to emptiness. Busyness leads to despair. We feel pressure to be productive, to be constantly active, and that pressure increases during this time of year when we are “getting ready” for Christmas. People are asking me now: “are you ready for Christmas?” What do they mean by that? Have I got all my shopping done? Have I chopped down the tree and decorated the house and cooked a ham and sent out Christmas cards and planned all the family visits and wrapped the presents and attended parties? I’m not sure how to answer that question anymore.
Unfortunately I had to get out into the world on Friday. Fridays are usually very hectic in and around Princeton anyway, but Fridays in December seem especially so. I wasn’t feeling well; the medicine was not ready at Wal-Mart on the first visit, so I knew I was going to have to come back out again. Hectic shoppers, traffic overload, and all I wanted was somewhere to lie down! I know some people love the label of shopaholic and the frenzy of Christmas shopping, but to me it is just a blur and a tiresome commercialization. (I know, the economy would collapse without all this.)
I prefer the imagined stillness of a dark Christmas Eve only illuminated by the stars and the bright star that would lead the Magi. Silent Night – Holy Night.
Should Christmas time leave us exhausted and spending more than we want? It is sad that we have to consider the question: can we find rest in Christmas? Can we find Sabbath in December? Can we maintain the rhythm of faith?
9So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God; 10for those who enter God’s rest also cease from their labors as God did from his. 11Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may fall through such disobedience as theirs [Israel’s].
Christmas is a time, not for frantic planning and hectic shopping, not for exhaustion, but Sabbath rest and peace. Peace on earth and good will to people.
Peace of mind.
Peace of spirit.
Peace of body.
Peace of home.
Peace of worship.
The New Interpreters Bible contains this commentary on Hebrews 4: “The introduction of the theme of ‘rest’ into the presentation of the Christian life as that of a pilgrimage provides a striking image of the rhythm of faith: movement and rest. Psychologists and counselors have long understood this rhythm as basic to a healthy life, and leaders of organizations, including churches, are using it to design programming. But Hebrews can be additionally helpful in the reminder that the life of faith is not simply scheduled as periods of movement and periods of rest. Rest, says the text, does not just follow pilgrimage but occurs during pilgrimage as well (4:3). The rest of God is both present and future. Therefore, just as the Near Eastern proverb says, ‘There is going in my staying and staying in my going,’ so also does the preacher in Hebrews say, ‘There is rest in movement and movement in rest’” (Hebrews, pp.55-56).
We are on a pilgrimage of faith. We are on a specific faith journey in December – a journey to the manger. What I seek for myself and for all of us is a journey that can take the time to enter that rest that enables us to contemplate the joy of Christmas and the peace of Christmas. The pop theology phrase is: “the reason for the season”, but that has become something like a commercial jingle rather than a genuine call to enter into that rest that we might not fall into disobedience.
Perhaps we should take the time to ask ourselves if our over activity is disobedient. Perhaps we could rest long enough to see that we sometimes look like people who have camped out on Black Friday to make that 4:00am shopping run, plowing over anyone in our way to get that new cell phone or new toy. Rhythm does not rush, rhythm keeps balance, rhythm gives new life. Let’s keep a rhythm of faith, especially at Christmas when it is perhaps most needed. Amen.
Sermon # 1019
December 5, 2010
Luke 1:57-80
Dr. Ed Pettus
“The Benedictus”
The Benedictus is the title given to Zechariah’s speech in Luke 1:68-79. Benedictus is the Latin word for blessed or blessing, the first word Zechariah speaks in this passage. It is the last word spoken to us in worship, the benediction or the blessing, when the minister proclaims a blessing to the people: “may God’s grace be with you” is a blessing or a benedictus. Mary’s song is called The Magnificat named also by the first words of her song: “my soul magnifies the Lord”.
The preface to Zechariah’s prophecy is the birth of John. Last Sunday we looked at the pronouncement of the angel Gabriel, that barren Elizabeth would have a son and Zechariah was struck mute because he doubted this could happen since they were both getting on in years. Now we come to the time of the birth and, as was and still is custom, friends and family came to celebrate with Elizabeth.
On the eighth day it was time to circumcise and name the child. When we think about naming children we consider a variety of options. Should we go with a family name? Whenever we run across some strange name with someone we often ask if it is a family name. We might consider a name that has some specific meaning or we just like the sound of a particular name. Naming is important and we usually give it a great deal of time and consideration. Edwin was my grandfather’s name and Hoyt, my middle name, was a name from a good friend of my father. His name was Hoyt Hand. At least mine was in the middle and did not get full time use!
Elizabeth and Zechariah may have had ideas for a name when they were very young and expecting to have children in their early years, but no children came. Elizabeth was barren. But now, as they are getting on in years, they have a son, a most unexpected blessing, and the time has come to name him. During the circumcision the name would be given. The family members and religious leaders were expecting him to be named after his father, Zechariah, but Elizabeth spoke up and said: “No; he is to be called John.” This caused a stir among the gathered folks and so they motioned for Zechariah to clear things up, maybe they thought Elizabeth’s age was causing some unclear thinking. Zechariah, still unable to speak, wrote his name on a tablet: His name is John. The people went from confusion to amazement and just as quickly, Zechariah’s voice returned!
He began to speak and to praise God and everyone then went from amazement to fear and this event became the talk of the town. The buzz was about what this child would become and all this surrounding the process of selecting a name. The narrator adds: “the hand of the Lord was with him”. I suspect Luke is looking back over the story knowing what kind of person John would become and there is no other explanation of his life than “the hand of the Lord was with him”!
The next part of the narrative is Zechariah’s speech. I imagine, after being unable to speak for the duration of a pregnancy, that Zechariah had plenty to say and was ready to say it! The beginning (68-75) is unique to Jesus and the remainder (76-79) is in reference to John. Zechariah’s phrasing and content is along the lines of Old Testament prophecy. God has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them by raising up a mighty savior. He has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors. The language of rescue leads God’s people to the ability to serve without fear (74).
After this prophetic word about the savior, he addresses his son who will be called a prophet, preparing the way, leading people to salvation and forgiveness and this section ends with the language of leading our feet into the way of peace (79).
Jesus will rescue us from fear. Fear is a powerful force in our lives. Imagine being delivered from the fear that holds us back from achieving great things with God. I do not just mean fear of walking down a dark ally, but fear of risking ourselves for God. We fear of letting ourselves go, surrendering ourselves that we might grow even closer to God. We fear completely giving our lives over to the Lordship of Christ.
John’s preparation for the coming messiah guides us to the way of peace, not because John is the way – he makes that clear in his message – but because Jesus is the way to peace. Life without fear, life with total peace. It is only made possible because God chose the most unlikely people to bring peace and to release us from fear.
Luke makes a point to set the redemption of God under the nose of King Herod of Judea. The people of Israel expected the redeemer to come like a great king, but God chooses to bring the message of salvation through the son of a barren woman and an old priest. In the reign of the great King Herod, God does not act through him, but through a virgin named Mary, through the very people oppressed by Herod’s rule.
That is how God seems to work, choosing the weakest people to do the greatest things. Think about how you might plan to save the world. Would you start with a barren woman? Would you start with a couple too old to have children? Would you start with a teenage girl and then put her in a situation where she would have to tell her fiancé that she is pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit? I don’t think anyone could have dreamed up this kind of plan, well, other than God.
Zechariah was told by the angel Gabriel earlier in chapter one, that John would be filled with the Holy Spirit and would turn many people to God (15-16). In this prophetic word from today’s reading he sees two things John will do: prepare the way of the Lord and give the knowledge of salvation (76-77). I guess you can’t ask for greater expectations out of your infant son!
Zechariah’s Benedictus is a testimony to God’s amazing plan of salvation for God’s people. It is grand in language, but in another sense, it is a most simple, humble plan. God does not use royalty or people of privilege to bring forth his plan, but people of humble means, even people we would see as unable to bring forth any plan, let alone one that selects a barren woman to give birth to the messenger of God and a virgin to give birth to the savior. It is amazing. It is surprising. It is the way of God. It reminds us that God can do amazing things through any one of us. It assures us that God can and will do amazing things for the sake of our salvation and peace.
Perhaps the word for us from this text is to receive God’s word today – not in the sense that God needs to bring a Savior to the world as he did then, but God calls each of us to become the storytellers, to speak through word and deed of the Savior and the amazing voices of Zechariah and John. We are the voices today – telling the amazing story of redemption and peace. Amen.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Sunday Sermon
Sermon # 1018
November 28, 2010
Luke 1:5-25
1st Sunday of Advent
Dr. Ed Pettus
“Sing, O Barren One”
Isaiah 54 begins with these words:
Sing, O barren one who did not bear;
Burst into song and shout, you who have not been in labor!
Barren women do not sing. Barren women cry because they are without children. The shame of not giving an heir to the family often led to other arrangements like we have when Sarah and Abraham feared that God’s promise of a son would not and could not come to fruition. Sarah gave Abraham one of her servants to serve as a surrogate mother for God’s promise to be fulfilled. But that was not God’s plan. The barren Sarah would indeed bear a son, Isaac, and so she would sing, and she would laugh.
Isaiah continues:
For the children of the desolate woman will be more than the children of her that is married, says the LORD. Enlarge the site of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left, and your descendants will possess the nations and will settle the desolate towns.
The promise is for more children than can be imagined, so many children that you will have to build a bigger house, or as the poem says: “enlarge your tent”!
Hannah, from the book of Samuel, is another example of this kind of story. She was barren. She was in misery and prayed to the Lord and the Lord heard her prayer and she conceived and had a son named Samuel. When God’s plan comes to pass Hannah sings her song:
“My heart exults in the LORD; my strength is exalted in my God. My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in my victory. ‘There is no Holy One like the LORD, no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God.” Hannah’s song becomes the model for Mary’s song, another woman who has a miraculous birth, not one from barrenness, but one greatly unexpected, nonetheless!
Today’s gospel lesson takes us along another journey with a barren woman. Elizabeth, Zechariah’s wife, is one who exemplifies the Isaiah song. She is barren. She and Zechariah are old, old enough to know they are too old to have a child. But that was not God’s plan.
Zechariah was a priest and the story points both to his and Elizabeth’s lineage, Zechariah from a strong line of priests and Elizabeth from the house of Aaron. Luke tells us:
Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years.
It is an interesting contrast: they are both righteous, blameless in accordance with the commandments and regulations of the Lord and yet there is a contrast to that righteousness, the enigma is the conjunction “but”. They are righteous, and yet, they are righteous – “but” – they have no children. In essence the story makes no sense at this point – righteous, but no children. According to Jewish thinking, righteousness equals a house filled with children. So the story sets us up for this odd circumstance of barrenness.
I think also there is a bit of humor here in the phrase “getting on in years”. I guess it is a polite way to say they were getting old, too old for children. Well, God has a sense of humor too and sometimes God’s sense of humor works out with tremendous blessing. One day Zechariah is in the sanctuary and an angel appears to him:
“When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him. But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John.”
This is great news to Zechariah, but also a little hard to believe. After all, he was getting on in years. He even tells the angel he is an old man and his wife is getting on in years too. Well, in this case it is not wise to second guess the angel of the Lord and Zechariah is struck mute until John is born. Elizabeth does conceive and she sings her own song: “This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favorably on me and took away the disgrace I have endured among my people.”
Elizabeth will give birth to the one who will proclaim the coming of the Messiah, John the Baptist.
Barren women cannot sing until God intervenes, then there is singing and laughing and celebrating.
Barren women having children are stories of the impossibilities of God. It is the lesson we will learn again in the Christmas narrative, that nothing is impossible with God. These are the stories of life when life seems impossible. These are the stories of hope when hope is lost. These are the stories that bring us into Advent, a time of hope and great anticipation as we look to God to do the impossible: to give barren Elizabeth a child named John who will announce the good news of the coming Messiah; to give Mary a child named Jesus, the Messiah, who will announce the good news of the kingdom, of salvation, of healing, of hope. God intervenes and God intervenes still today.
When we think nothing can come of a situation, when we think someone is beyond redemption, when we think there is no way to make all the payments due, when we think no peace is possible in a conflict, whatever the hopeless circumstance, the message of scripture comes to us: Sing, O barren one. Sing, O hopeless one. Sing, O depressed one. We can sing only because we know that there is nothing impossible with God. We can sing because we know that the Lord still intervenes. The good news to begin our Advent journey is that we can sing no matter what “barrenness” we may face.
The song may not be today, but it will come. Elizabeth thought she would never sing, but even when she was getting on in age, she was able to sing of the glory of God. Hannah thought she would never sing, but out of her barrenness – a child. Sarah thought she would never sing, but even when she laughed at God’s promise of a son, she could sing. Sing, O barren one. Barrenness can sometimes serve as a metaphor for what seems impossible to us. Advent is a season in the church year to consider our impossibilities and the possibilities of God. Sing, O barren one. Sing, O unhappy one. Sing, O (insert your impossible situation here) one! For the Lord hears our prayers and the Lord does impossible things that we may indeed sing. For the Lord has come. O come, O come, Emmanuel! Amen.
November 28, 2010
Luke 1:5-25
1st Sunday of Advent
Dr. Ed Pettus
“Sing, O Barren One”
Isaiah 54 begins with these words:
Sing, O barren one who did not bear;
Burst into song and shout, you who have not been in labor!
Barren women do not sing. Barren women cry because they are without children. The shame of not giving an heir to the family often led to other arrangements like we have when Sarah and Abraham feared that God’s promise of a son would not and could not come to fruition. Sarah gave Abraham one of her servants to serve as a surrogate mother for God’s promise to be fulfilled. But that was not God’s plan. The barren Sarah would indeed bear a son, Isaac, and so she would sing, and she would laugh.
Isaiah continues:
For the children of the desolate woman will be more than the children of her that is married, says the LORD. Enlarge the site of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left, and your descendants will possess the nations and will settle the desolate towns.
The promise is for more children than can be imagined, so many children that you will have to build a bigger house, or as the poem says: “enlarge your tent”!
Hannah, from the book of Samuel, is another example of this kind of story. She was barren. She was in misery and prayed to the Lord and the Lord heard her prayer and she conceived and had a son named Samuel. When God’s plan comes to pass Hannah sings her song:
“My heart exults in the LORD; my strength is exalted in my God. My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in my victory. ‘There is no Holy One like the LORD, no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God.” Hannah’s song becomes the model for Mary’s song, another woman who has a miraculous birth, not one from barrenness, but one greatly unexpected, nonetheless!
Today’s gospel lesson takes us along another journey with a barren woman. Elizabeth, Zechariah’s wife, is one who exemplifies the Isaiah song. She is barren. She and Zechariah are old, old enough to know they are too old to have a child. But that was not God’s plan.
Zechariah was a priest and the story points both to his and Elizabeth’s lineage, Zechariah from a strong line of priests and Elizabeth from the house of Aaron. Luke tells us:
Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years.
It is an interesting contrast: they are both righteous, blameless in accordance with the commandments and regulations of the Lord and yet there is a contrast to that righteousness, the enigma is the conjunction “but”. They are righteous, and yet, they are righteous – “but” – they have no children. In essence the story makes no sense at this point – righteous, but no children. According to Jewish thinking, righteousness equals a house filled with children. So the story sets us up for this odd circumstance of barrenness.
I think also there is a bit of humor here in the phrase “getting on in years”. I guess it is a polite way to say they were getting old, too old for children. Well, God has a sense of humor too and sometimes God’s sense of humor works out with tremendous blessing. One day Zechariah is in the sanctuary and an angel appears to him:
“When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him. But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John.”
This is great news to Zechariah, but also a little hard to believe. After all, he was getting on in years. He even tells the angel he is an old man and his wife is getting on in years too. Well, in this case it is not wise to second guess the angel of the Lord and Zechariah is struck mute until John is born. Elizabeth does conceive and she sings her own song: “This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favorably on me and took away the disgrace I have endured among my people.”
Elizabeth will give birth to the one who will proclaim the coming of the Messiah, John the Baptist.
Barren women cannot sing until God intervenes, then there is singing and laughing and celebrating.
Barren women having children are stories of the impossibilities of God. It is the lesson we will learn again in the Christmas narrative, that nothing is impossible with God. These are the stories of life when life seems impossible. These are the stories of hope when hope is lost. These are the stories that bring us into Advent, a time of hope and great anticipation as we look to God to do the impossible: to give barren Elizabeth a child named John who will announce the good news of the coming Messiah; to give Mary a child named Jesus, the Messiah, who will announce the good news of the kingdom, of salvation, of healing, of hope. God intervenes and God intervenes still today.
When we think nothing can come of a situation, when we think someone is beyond redemption, when we think there is no way to make all the payments due, when we think no peace is possible in a conflict, whatever the hopeless circumstance, the message of scripture comes to us: Sing, O barren one. Sing, O hopeless one. Sing, O depressed one. We can sing only because we know that there is nothing impossible with God. We can sing because we know that the Lord still intervenes. The good news to begin our Advent journey is that we can sing no matter what “barrenness” we may face.
The song may not be today, but it will come. Elizabeth thought she would never sing, but even when she was getting on in age, she was able to sing of the glory of God. Hannah thought she would never sing, but out of her barrenness – a child. Sarah thought she would never sing, but even when she laughed at God’s promise of a son, she could sing. Sing, O barren one. Barrenness can sometimes serve as a metaphor for what seems impossible to us. Advent is a season in the church year to consider our impossibilities and the possibilities of God. Sing, O barren one. Sing, O unhappy one. Sing, O (insert your impossible situation here) one! For the Lord hears our prayers and the Lord does impossible things that we may indeed sing. For the Lord has come. O come, O come, Emmanuel! Amen.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
2 Sunday Sermons!
Sermon # 1015
November 7, 2010
1 Thessalonians 2:13
Dr. Ed Pettus
“Essential Tenets: The Authority of Scripture”
A few Sundays ago I preached on the God-breathed word, the inspiration of scripture. Today I want to take up what is considered an essential tenet of our faith, a key orthodox belief, a cornerstone of the Reformed faith – the authority of scripture. If you were able to be here when I preached on inspiration, we observed that the scripture is given a spiritual life of sorts, for God has breathed life into his word. God has poured out his spirit on the word. According to Hebrews the word is active and living. We can believe all that, confess that, and trust that, but what does it mean that the inspired word of God is an authority for our life and faith?
The point or question I want to raise this morning is not about our view of scripture, but what authority does scripture hold? Not about inspiration, infallibility, and the like, but what authority do we give to the text? We can believe in the authority of scripture in accordance with the word and with our confessions, but will be submit to the authority? Will we let it be with us according to God’s Word?
Reformed Theology holds to two forms of revelation. One is general revelation, basically that God is revealed to us in nature, creation, and just in simple observation. Psalm 19 would be an example of general revelation: “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork” (1). The other type of revelation is called special revelation of which there are three kinds: revelation in the history of Israel and the person of Jesus Christ, revelation in scripture, and revelation in the Christian church. Shirley Guthrie understands these two forms in the sense that the first (general revelation) is from us to God, that we seek God in nature and human life, and the second (special revelation) is from God to us, that God seeks and finds us (Christian Doctrine, p. 40).
Our focus this morning is on the scripture as a special revelation wherein God has taken the initiative to reveal himself to us. We experience that revelation in three ways: in the person of Jesus Christ – the word made flesh (John 1); the written word (2 Timothy 3:16); and in the preached word and sacrament (Acts 13:44).
What do our confessional statements say about the authority of scripture?
From the Second Helvetic Confession:
We believe and confess the canonical Scriptures of the holy prophets and apostles of both Testaments to be the true Word of God, and to have sufficient authority of themselves, not of [humans]. For God himself spoke to the fathers, prophets, apostles, and still speaks to us through the Holy Scriptures (5.001).
This is God reaching out to us through the scriptures!
We judge, therefore, that from these Scriptures are to be derived true wisdom and godliness, the reformation and government of churches; as also instruction in all duties of piety; and, to be short, the confirmation of doctrines, and the rejection of all errors, moreover, all exhortations according to that word of the apostle, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof,” etc. (II Tim. 3:16–17). Again, “I am writing these instructions to you,” says the apostle to Timothy, “so that you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God,” etc. (I Tim. 3:14–15). SCRIPTURE IS THE WORD OF GOD. Again, the selfsame apostle to the Thessalonians: “When,” says he, “you received the Word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it, not as the word of men but as what it really is, the Word of God,” etc. (I Thess. 2:13.) For the Lord himself has said in the Gospel, “It is not you who speak, but the Spirit of my Father speaking through you”; therefore “he who hears you hears me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Matt. 10:20; Luke 10:16; John 13:20), (5.003).
Two points on the authority of scripture from this confession:
1) the Bible has sufficient authority in and of itself. What I believe that means for us today is that we do not need to defend the authority of the Bible by using sources outside the Bible. Part of the problem in the church is that, after years of study since the Reformation and the Enlightenment, the church has bought into the belief that we had to prove the Bible valid by using outside sources. For instance, science and archeology became authorities to which the Bible must submit itself to be proven true. We basically gave up the notion that the Bible has its own authority and thought we had to give it credibility from something else. In other words, we gave more authority to science, reason, rationality, modern philosophies, and the like, and in turn, lost our confidence in the scripture as God’s Word
2) The second point from this confession is that the Bible is our authority in how we life our life. “From these Scriptures are to be derived true wisdom and godliness, the reformation and government of churches; as also instruction in all duties of piety…(quoting the Bible) that you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God”. The Bible is sufficient for us to know how we ought to live. To that end the Westminster Confession adds:
The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of [humans]. (6.001).
The Larger Catechism also speaks of the authority of scripture for faith and obedience:
Q. 3. What is the Word of God?
A. The holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God, the only rule of faith and obedience.
Q. 4. How does it appear that the Scriptures are the Word of God?
A. The Scriptures manifest themselves to be the Word of God, by their majesty and purity; by the consent of all the parts, and the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God; by their light and power to convince and convert sinners, to comfort and build up believers unto salvation. But the Spirit of God, bearing witness by and with the Scriptures in the heart of [humanity], is alone able fully to persuade it that they are the very word of God.
The Holy Spirit is at work in us to persuade that the scripture is the very word of God. So, how do we give authority or demonstrate that authority in our life?
The Bible recognizes authority by submission. It is not too far away from Christmas and so I’ll begin with Mary, in her conversation with the angel Gabriel. Mary comes to believe that God’s word is true and she will bare a son. She yields her life to that word in Luke 1: “Let it be with me according to your word.” I can think of no better prayer for the believer when it comes to living under the authority of God’s Word. “Lord, let it be with me according to your word.”
Say that prayer with me!
LORD – LET IS BE WITH ME – ACCORDING TO YOUR WORD.
Let’s say it as a congregation!
LORD – LET IS BE WITH US – ACCORDING TO YOUR WORD.
That is a prayer that submits to the authority of scripture!
Jesus demonstrates the authority of scripture when he quotes Deuteronomy as he faces temptation in the desert, telling the devil that we do not live by bread alone but we live by the word of God. We live by the word! It is not just the food we eat that sustains us, but the very word of God. We know that the body will eventually cease to function without bread, without food. So too will the spirit, the soul; our being will die without the word of God.
Sometimes we use the expression “get a life” when we come across someone who complains about everything or really when someone complains about the most insignificant of things. “Man, get a life.” In essence we are saying that there is more to life than some of the petty things we so concern ourselves with. “Get a life.” “Dude, stop focusing on minor things. Get a life!” What the authority of scripture is telling us is: “Get a life.” Not just a life, but get life in this word of God. Psalm 119 testifies in numerous verses about God’s word for life: Revive me according to your word (25); your promise gives me life (50); I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life (93); give me life, O Lord, according to your word (107).
What if our imaginations could again be stirred with the understanding that God’s word gives us life? What if we took the time to engage the word seeking to live under its authority? What authorities do we live by? When we are young we look to parents and teachers as authorities. Dad seems to know everything when we are ten years old. As we grow up we look to other sources as authoritative: education, government, ourselves, philosophies, experts on everything from finances to diet, and all sorts of views to which we are eager to submit. We want to trust the Bible as the authority, but we question and doubt and try other things. What Reformed Theology advocates is that the Word of God, the Bible, is our authority for all things for faith and life and obedience to God. This means that the Bible does not take a secondary role to any other authority: human, cultural, ideological, political, scientific, and so on.
The scripture has authority only in that this word is God’s word. It is illuminated by the work of the Holy Spirit. It is alive and active in our lives (Hebrews 4:12) and as believers it is at work in us (1 Thess. 2:13). As we get into this word, the word gets into us, to reform our lives, to lead us to obedience, to bring us joy and hope and love and faith and promises and all that the person of Jesus Christ gives us through his life, death, and resurrection.
The scriptures are the word of God revealing God to us. God is seeking us through this word. May we submit to its authority, yielding our lives to the truth revealed in God’s word, in the word made flesh – Jesus Christ, and in the work of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Sermon # 1016
November 14, 2010
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
Dr. Ed Pettus
“The Message of the Cross”
Foolishness. We do not use the word foolish as much as I think people used to. We use words like stupid or idiot, but fool or foolish is not as vogue as it once was. The apostle Paul uses a word in the Greek that is usually translated as foolish: the message of the cross is foolish – to those who are perishing.
Some of our guests today (Madrigals) know about foolishness on TV these days. How many of you watch The Soup? For those who do not know, The Soup is a show that makes fun of other shows, reality shows, dumb comments on talk shows and so on. Basically The Soup highlights foolishness. There is plenty of foolishness on TV!
To those who do not know the cross of Christ, Paul says they consider the message of the cross foolish. The message of the cross is idiotic. Those who take up the cross are foolhardy. Those who take up the cross will be branded as absurd and unwise. Call us crazy, foolish, absurd, idiotic, but we see it as wise to follow Christ. So many in the world hear what we say and they think we are foolish, or they hear the commands we take seriously and they think we are crazy: “Love your enemies. Turn the other cheek. Sacrifice your life for the sake of others. Pray for those who persecute you.” We are seen as foolish, and yet, we know, as Paul knew, that to the ones being saved the message of the cross is the power of God. It is amazing that the cross can be seen so very differently. To the lost the cross is foolishness. To the saved it is the power of God.
Those people we might watch on a show like The Soup are truly the foolish ones, not just because of the things they say and do on TV, but they do not know the message of the cross. There are fools and there are fools. I do think we who believe are fools but a very different kind of fool. I think of it this way: it is foolish like a child who does not know to get out of the rain or who knows to come in but stays out anyway! Children do not stay in the rain because they have weighed the consequences of getting wet with the possibility of catching a cold. They do not consider the rain may be accompanied by lightening. No, they want to play in the rain. They are deemed foolish because they want to play in what adults have learned, through years of their parents calling them out of the rain, as a foolish thing to do.
It is foolish for a child to stay out in the rain, at least from the adult perspective. The child’s foolishness is expressed in the desire to play in the rain. Jesus once said, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it" (Mk. 10.15). I imagine that in some way, we used to know that playing in the rain was something of a recognition of the power of God. I imagine that in some way we know that the message of the cross is the power of God.
God’s foolishness in the cross is the power of God because it can only be understood by those who have come to reclaim the power of being like a child. It is foolish in what we might call a good way. Foolish like a child who steps innocently into the commands of her parent. Foolish like a child who trusts wholeheartedly in the unconditional love of parents. Foolish like the foolishness of children, playful, spontaneous, and laughing at the world that doesn’t get it!
We need foolishness that is like a child who easily allows the Spirit of God to break out in surprising and amazing ways. We love the innocent and joyous attitude of children. A Sunday school teacher asked the children just before she dismissed them to go to church, "And why is it necessary to be quiet in church?" Little Sally jumped up and yelled, "Because people are sleeping!"
It is funny and it is somewhat profound. Some of us do sleep, sleeping with our eyes wide open because we can look out into the rain and see no reason to go play! Children never “sleep” through the fun. They never miss an opportunity to romp in the power of God!
Jesus had a playful foolishness about himself, especially in his stories. The kingdom of God is like…a mustard seed that starts out little and grows up to be big. Like a man who throws a party and nobody came, so he got mad and invited people you wouldn’t hang out with if your life depended on it. The kingdom of God is like a guy who is careless in how he sows his seed. Like bread dough that you have to play with awhile to get it to rise.
Jesus used a totally different rationality than that of the world. He was playful, foolish, and imaginative. We want to come in out of the rain where everything is safe and dry. But the gospel is never safe; it is outrageous, insubordinate, like a kid who won’t come in out of the rain. The gospel is a call to become foolish, like a kid again.
BE A KID AGAIN...
~ Grow a milk mustache. ~ Read the funnies--throw the rest of the paper away. ~ Dunk your cookies. ~ Play a game where you make up the rules as you go along. ~ Step carefully over sidewalk cracks. ~ Go home today and change into some play clothes. ~ Try to get someone to trade you a better sandwich. ~ Have a staring contest with your cat. ~ Give someone a "hug-around-the-neck." ~ Blow the wrapper off a straw. ~ Refuse to eat crusts. ~ Make a face the next time somebody tells you "no." ~ Ask "Why?" a lot. ~ Have someone read you a story. ~ Eat dessert first. ~ Whatever you're doing, stop once in a while for recess. ~ Walk barefoot in wet grass, in the rain.
Jesus said we should become like children. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:10, we are fools for Christ, and Paul says God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom.
Oh, to be a kid again…foolish, playful, willing to trust God unconditionally, speaking the truth as you see it, sharing, caring, seeing smooth stones as precious gems, romping in the rain, and in the reign of God.
Be a kid like little Johnny. Johnny had been misbehaving and was sent to his room. After a while he emerged and informed his mother that he had thought it over and then said a prayer. "Fine," said the pleased mother. "If you ask God to help you not misbehave, He will help you." "Oh, I didn't ask Him to help me not misbehave," said Johnny. "I asked Him to help you put up with me."
Little Johnny makes no apology for his behavior, which is called “misbehavior” by his mother. He simply prays for those around him to put up with him. Jesus made no apology for his behavior, which the scribes and Pharisees called misbehavior (healing on the Sabbath, picking grain on the Sabbath, forgiving sin, etc.). Jesus just prayed for those around him, even when he hung from the cross – Father, forgive them, they just don’t get it!
The message of the cross is radical foolishness, impetuous, spontaneous, like a kid who refuses to come in out of the rain. Perhaps it is an attitude that we adults should use when approaching God. Such an attitude of childlike foolishness will help us to shed our tendency to be in control of the gospel, to make the gospel seem like sanity to the perishing. We may try to make the message of the cross sound sane, but in believing and proclaiming, we become fools. Ω
November 7, 2010
1 Thessalonians 2:13
Dr. Ed Pettus
“Essential Tenets: The Authority of Scripture”
A few Sundays ago I preached on the God-breathed word, the inspiration of scripture. Today I want to take up what is considered an essential tenet of our faith, a key orthodox belief, a cornerstone of the Reformed faith – the authority of scripture. If you were able to be here when I preached on inspiration, we observed that the scripture is given a spiritual life of sorts, for God has breathed life into his word. God has poured out his spirit on the word. According to Hebrews the word is active and living. We can believe all that, confess that, and trust that, but what does it mean that the inspired word of God is an authority for our life and faith?
The point or question I want to raise this morning is not about our view of scripture, but what authority does scripture hold? Not about inspiration, infallibility, and the like, but what authority do we give to the text? We can believe in the authority of scripture in accordance with the word and with our confessions, but will be submit to the authority? Will we let it be with us according to God’s Word?
Reformed Theology holds to two forms of revelation. One is general revelation, basically that God is revealed to us in nature, creation, and just in simple observation. Psalm 19 would be an example of general revelation: “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork” (1). The other type of revelation is called special revelation of which there are three kinds: revelation in the history of Israel and the person of Jesus Christ, revelation in scripture, and revelation in the Christian church. Shirley Guthrie understands these two forms in the sense that the first (general revelation) is from us to God, that we seek God in nature and human life, and the second (special revelation) is from God to us, that God seeks and finds us (Christian Doctrine, p. 40).
Our focus this morning is on the scripture as a special revelation wherein God has taken the initiative to reveal himself to us. We experience that revelation in three ways: in the person of Jesus Christ – the word made flesh (John 1); the written word (2 Timothy 3:16); and in the preached word and sacrament (Acts 13:44).
What do our confessional statements say about the authority of scripture?
From the Second Helvetic Confession:
We believe and confess the canonical Scriptures of the holy prophets and apostles of both Testaments to be the true Word of God, and to have sufficient authority of themselves, not of [humans]. For God himself spoke to the fathers, prophets, apostles, and still speaks to us through the Holy Scriptures (5.001).
This is God reaching out to us through the scriptures!
We judge, therefore, that from these Scriptures are to be derived true wisdom and godliness, the reformation and government of churches; as also instruction in all duties of piety; and, to be short, the confirmation of doctrines, and the rejection of all errors, moreover, all exhortations according to that word of the apostle, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof,” etc. (II Tim. 3:16–17). Again, “I am writing these instructions to you,” says the apostle to Timothy, “so that you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God,” etc. (I Tim. 3:14–15). SCRIPTURE IS THE WORD OF GOD. Again, the selfsame apostle to the Thessalonians: “When,” says he, “you received the Word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it, not as the word of men but as what it really is, the Word of God,” etc. (I Thess. 2:13.) For the Lord himself has said in the Gospel, “It is not you who speak, but the Spirit of my Father speaking through you”; therefore “he who hears you hears me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Matt. 10:20; Luke 10:16; John 13:20), (5.003).
Two points on the authority of scripture from this confession:
1) the Bible has sufficient authority in and of itself. What I believe that means for us today is that we do not need to defend the authority of the Bible by using sources outside the Bible. Part of the problem in the church is that, after years of study since the Reformation and the Enlightenment, the church has bought into the belief that we had to prove the Bible valid by using outside sources. For instance, science and archeology became authorities to which the Bible must submit itself to be proven true. We basically gave up the notion that the Bible has its own authority and thought we had to give it credibility from something else. In other words, we gave more authority to science, reason, rationality, modern philosophies, and the like, and in turn, lost our confidence in the scripture as God’s Word
2) The second point from this confession is that the Bible is our authority in how we life our life. “From these Scriptures are to be derived true wisdom and godliness, the reformation and government of churches; as also instruction in all duties of piety…(quoting the Bible) that you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God”. The Bible is sufficient for us to know how we ought to live. To that end the Westminster Confession adds:
The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of [humans]. (6.001).
The Larger Catechism also speaks of the authority of scripture for faith and obedience:
Q. 3. What is the Word of God?
A. The holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God, the only rule of faith and obedience.
Q. 4. How does it appear that the Scriptures are the Word of God?
A. The Scriptures manifest themselves to be the Word of God, by their majesty and purity; by the consent of all the parts, and the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God; by their light and power to convince and convert sinners, to comfort and build up believers unto salvation. But the Spirit of God, bearing witness by and with the Scriptures in the heart of [humanity], is alone able fully to persuade it that they are the very word of God.
The Holy Spirit is at work in us to persuade that the scripture is the very word of God. So, how do we give authority or demonstrate that authority in our life?
The Bible recognizes authority by submission. It is not too far away from Christmas and so I’ll begin with Mary, in her conversation with the angel Gabriel. Mary comes to believe that God’s word is true and she will bare a son. She yields her life to that word in Luke 1: “Let it be with me according to your word.” I can think of no better prayer for the believer when it comes to living under the authority of God’s Word. “Lord, let it be with me according to your word.”
Say that prayer with me!
LORD – LET IS BE WITH ME – ACCORDING TO YOUR WORD.
Let’s say it as a congregation!
LORD – LET IS BE WITH US – ACCORDING TO YOUR WORD.
That is a prayer that submits to the authority of scripture!
Jesus demonstrates the authority of scripture when he quotes Deuteronomy as he faces temptation in the desert, telling the devil that we do not live by bread alone but we live by the word of God. We live by the word! It is not just the food we eat that sustains us, but the very word of God. We know that the body will eventually cease to function without bread, without food. So too will the spirit, the soul; our being will die without the word of God.
Sometimes we use the expression “get a life” when we come across someone who complains about everything or really when someone complains about the most insignificant of things. “Man, get a life.” In essence we are saying that there is more to life than some of the petty things we so concern ourselves with. “Get a life.” “Dude, stop focusing on minor things. Get a life!” What the authority of scripture is telling us is: “Get a life.” Not just a life, but get life in this word of God. Psalm 119 testifies in numerous verses about God’s word for life: Revive me according to your word (25); your promise gives me life (50); I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life (93); give me life, O Lord, according to your word (107).
What if our imaginations could again be stirred with the understanding that God’s word gives us life? What if we took the time to engage the word seeking to live under its authority? What authorities do we live by? When we are young we look to parents and teachers as authorities. Dad seems to know everything when we are ten years old. As we grow up we look to other sources as authoritative: education, government, ourselves, philosophies, experts on everything from finances to diet, and all sorts of views to which we are eager to submit. We want to trust the Bible as the authority, but we question and doubt and try other things. What Reformed Theology advocates is that the Word of God, the Bible, is our authority for all things for faith and life and obedience to God. This means that the Bible does not take a secondary role to any other authority: human, cultural, ideological, political, scientific, and so on.
The scripture has authority only in that this word is God’s word. It is illuminated by the work of the Holy Spirit. It is alive and active in our lives (Hebrews 4:12) and as believers it is at work in us (1 Thess. 2:13). As we get into this word, the word gets into us, to reform our lives, to lead us to obedience, to bring us joy and hope and love and faith and promises and all that the person of Jesus Christ gives us through his life, death, and resurrection.
The scriptures are the word of God revealing God to us. God is seeking us through this word. May we submit to its authority, yielding our lives to the truth revealed in God’s word, in the word made flesh – Jesus Christ, and in the work of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Sermon # 1016
November 14, 2010
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
Dr. Ed Pettus
“The Message of the Cross”
Foolishness. We do not use the word foolish as much as I think people used to. We use words like stupid or idiot, but fool or foolish is not as vogue as it once was. The apostle Paul uses a word in the Greek that is usually translated as foolish: the message of the cross is foolish – to those who are perishing.
Some of our guests today (Madrigals) know about foolishness on TV these days. How many of you watch The Soup? For those who do not know, The Soup is a show that makes fun of other shows, reality shows, dumb comments on talk shows and so on. Basically The Soup highlights foolishness. There is plenty of foolishness on TV!
To those who do not know the cross of Christ, Paul says they consider the message of the cross foolish. The message of the cross is idiotic. Those who take up the cross are foolhardy. Those who take up the cross will be branded as absurd and unwise. Call us crazy, foolish, absurd, idiotic, but we see it as wise to follow Christ. So many in the world hear what we say and they think we are foolish, or they hear the commands we take seriously and they think we are crazy: “Love your enemies. Turn the other cheek. Sacrifice your life for the sake of others. Pray for those who persecute you.” We are seen as foolish, and yet, we know, as Paul knew, that to the ones being saved the message of the cross is the power of God. It is amazing that the cross can be seen so very differently. To the lost the cross is foolishness. To the saved it is the power of God.
Those people we might watch on a show like The Soup are truly the foolish ones, not just because of the things they say and do on TV, but they do not know the message of the cross. There are fools and there are fools. I do think we who believe are fools but a very different kind of fool. I think of it this way: it is foolish like a child who does not know to get out of the rain or who knows to come in but stays out anyway! Children do not stay in the rain because they have weighed the consequences of getting wet with the possibility of catching a cold. They do not consider the rain may be accompanied by lightening. No, they want to play in the rain. They are deemed foolish because they want to play in what adults have learned, through years of their parents calling them out of the rain, as a foolish thing to do.
It is foolish for a child to stay out in the rain, at least from the adult perspective. The child’s foolishness is expressed in the desire to play in the rain. Jesus once said, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it" (Mk. 10.15). I imagine that in some way, we used to know that playing in the rain was something of a recognition of the power of God. I imagine that in some way we know that the message of the cross is the power of God.
God’s foolishness in the cross is the power of God because it can only be understood by those who have come to reclaim the power of being like a child. It is foolish in what we might call a good way. Foolish like a child who steps innocently into the commands of her parent. Foolish like a child who trusts wholeheartedly in the unconditional love of parents. Foolish like the foolishness of children, playful, spontaneous, and laughing at the world that doesn’t get it!
We need foolishness that is like a child who easily allows the Spirit of God to break out in surprising and amazing ways. We love the innocent and joyous attitude of children. A Sunday school teacher asked the children just before she dismissed them to go to church, "And why is it necessary to be quiet in church?" Little Sally jumped up and yelled, "Because people are sleeping!"
It is funny and it is somewhat profound. Some of us do sleep, sleeping with our eyes wide open because we can look out into the rain and see no reason to go play! Children never “sleep” through the fun. They never miss an opportunity to romp in the power of God!
Jesus had a playful foolishness about himself, especially in his stories. The kingdom of God is like…a mustard seed that starts out little and grows up to be big. Like a man who throws a party and nobody came, so he got mad and invited people you wouldn’t hang out with if your life depended on it. The kingdom of God is like a guy who is careless in how he sows his seed. Like bread dough that you have to play with awhile to get it to rise.
Jesus used a totally different rationality than that of the world. He was playful, foolish, and imaginative. We want to come in out of the rain where everything is safe and dry. But the gospel is never safe; it is outrageous, insubordinate, like a kid who won’t come in out of the rain. The gospel is a call to become foolish, like a kid again.
BE A KID AGAIN...
~ Grow a milk mustache. ~ Read the funnies--throw the rest of the paper away. ~ Dunk your cookies. ~ Play a game where you make up the rules as you go along. ~ Step carefully over sidewalk cracks. ~ Go home today and change into some play clothes. ~ Try to get someone to trade you a better sandwich. ~ Have a staring contest with your cat. ~ Give someone a "hug-around-the-neck." ~ Blow the wrapper off a straw. ~ Refuse to eat crusts. ~ Make a face the next time somebody tells you "no." ~ Ask "Why?" a lot. ~ Have someone read you a story. ~ Eat dessert first. ~ Whatever you're doing, stop once in a while for recess. ~ Walk barefoot in wet grass, in the rain.
Jesus said we should become like children. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:10, we are fools for Christ, and Paul says God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom.
Oh, to be a kid again…foolish, playful, willing to trust God unconditionally, speaking the truth as you see it, sharing, caring, seeing smooth stones as precious gems, romping in the rain, and in the reign of God.
Be a kid like little Johnny. Johnny had been misbehaving and was sent to his room. After a while he emerged and informed his mother that he had thought it over and then said a prayer. "Fine," said the pleased mother. "If you ask God to help you not misbehave, He will help you." "Oh, I didn't ask Him to help me not misbehave," said Johnny. "I asked Him to help you put up with me."
Little Johnny makes no apology for his behavior, which is called “misbehavior” by his mother. He simply prays for those around him to put up with him. Jesus made no apology for his behavior, which the scribes and Pharisees called misbehavior (healing on the Sabbath, picking grain on the Sabbath, forgiving sin, etc.). Jesus just prayed for those around him, even when he hung from the cross – Father, forgive them, they just don’t get it!
The message of the cross is radical foolishness, impetuous, spontaneous, like a kid who refuses to come in out of the rain. Perhaps it is an attitude that we adults should use when approaching God. Such an attitude of childlike foolishness will help us to shed our tendency to be in control of the gospel, to make the gospel seem like sanity to the perishing. We may try to make the message of the cross sound sane, but in believing and proclaiming, we become fools. Ω
Monday, November 1, 2010
Sunday Sermon
Sermon # 1014
October 31, 2010
Romans 5:1-11
Dr. Ed Pettus
“Always Reforming”
While many people have or will be recognizing and celebrating Halloween this weekend, today is a great day in the life of the church for a very different reason. Today is Reformation Sunday. On October 31, 1517, in Wittenberg Germany, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses, 95 theological statements published for debate. This was the way theological debate occurred in the 16th century, theologians posted their beliefs for debate with church leaders. Martin Luther’s 95 theses started the chain reaction that lead to the great reformation and the beginnings of the Protestant Church. Luther was not alone in the reformation as many theologians took off in various directions with ideas that challenged the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Luther’s teachings lead to the formation of the Lutheran Church.
John Calvin was another theologian who began preaching, teaching, and writing theology similar to Luther but also differed enough to branch off into another strand of thought that would lead to the Presbyterian Church. There were others who also challenged the status quo of the church and thus we have today Methodist, Baptists, Pentecostals, and all other Protestant denominations.
In Luther’s 95 declarations there were two leading issues addressed in the life of the church: justification by grace alone (instead of works) and the church’s sale of indulgences (paying to have sins forgiven). Indulgences were the most egregious corruption in the church. Priests collected money from people basically charging them for forgiving sins, even to purchase forgiveness for those they believed to be in purgatory. The other major theology was works righteousness. Luther claimed that nothing we did could earn us salvation, but said: “we do not become righteous by doing righteous deeds but, having been made righteous, we do righteous deeds” (A History of Christian Thought, Gonzalez, p. 29).
The Reformation was a long process over many years of debate and thought. John Calvin, for instance, began writing the Institutes (his systematic theology) in 1536 and they were not completed in the form we have today until 1559. Over twenty years of refining what Calvin interpreted in the Bible. Calvin redefined how the people of God thought about the character of of God and God’s relationship with humankind and his thought helped to shape what we know today as Reformed theology. One theologian who studied with Calvin was John Knox, from Scotland who helped shape the the church in Scotland. More reforms developed all across England, Holland and France until the Reformed movement was growing all over Europe.
Now let me take an aside here to point out that the Catholic Church today is vastly different from that of the time of the Reformation. The Catholic Church has itself been through reforms that have redefined how Catholics view scripture and grace and faith. The Reformation taught the Church that every group, Protestant or Catholic, need reforming any time we get away from scripture as our authority.
Donald McKim, in his book Presbyterian Questions, Presbyterian Answers, distinguishes the Reformation in this way:
Other reformers agreed with Luther’s criticisms of the Roman Church, but also began to differ with him on some items of biblical interpretation. This led to be recognized as another “Protestant” movement. Theologians such as Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, and Heinrich Bullinger became leaders of this movement, which became known as the Reformed tradition. The term “Reformed” came from a comment by Queen Elizabeth I in England that the followers of Zwingli and Calvin were more “reformed” than the Lutherans, in that they wanted a more thoroughgoing reform of worship practices based on their understanding of the Bible.
”Reformed theology” refers to the theological beliefs taught by these early Reformed theologians and the tradition of their followers that began after their deaths and which continues to the present day…Reformed theology is marked by a recognition that Christian faith needs constantly to be articulated and confessed (Presbyterian Questions, Presbyterian Answers, McKim, p.4).
Presbyterians consider Calvin to be the father of Presbyterianism. His cornerstone theology is his work called Institutes of the Christian Religion where he discusses topics such as God, humanity, sin, grace, sacraments, scripture, and our “favorite” predestination. One of the most prominent theological articulations from Calvin are his five points that set Calvin apart from another theologian named Ariminius, those five points are popularly known as TULIP – T-U-L-I-P. TULIP stands for T- Total Depravity, that humans are totally affected by sin, U- Unconditional Election, that God elects persons to salvation, L- Limited Atonement, that Christ died for the elect, I- Irresistible Grace, that we cannot resist God’s grace, and P- Perseverance of the Saints, that once we are saved we will not be lost. TULIP has been debated ever since Calvin proposed these five points. Not all Presbyterians adhere to all the points, but that is the nature of reformed thought, we are always debating theology!
Other hallmarks of the Reformation for Presbyterians are recorded in our Book of Order, part of our church constitution. In Chapter two we read:
(G-2.0400) In its confessions, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) identifies with the affirmations of the Protestant Reformation. The focus of these affirmations is the rediscovery of God’s grace in Jesus Christ as revealed in the Scriptures. The Protestant watchwords—grace alone, faith alone, Scripture alone — embody principles of understanding which continue to guide and motivate the people of God in the life of faith.
(G.2.0500) In its confessions, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) expresses the faith of the Reformed tradition. Central to this tradition is the affirmation of the majesty, holiness, and providence of God who creates, sustains, rules, and redeems the world in the freedom of sovereign righteousness and love. Related to this central affirmation of God’s sovereignty are other great themes of the Reformed tradition:
(1) The election of the people of God for service as well as for salvation;
(2) Covenant life marked by a disciplined concern for order in the church according to the Word of God;
(3) A faithful stewardship that shuns ostentation and seeks proper use of the gifts of God’s creation;
(4) The recognition of the human tendency to idolatry and tyranny, which calls the people of God to work for the transformation of society by seeking justice and living in obedience to the Word of God.
When at seminary we would joke sometimes that it seems impossible to have three “alones” but there they are, grace alone, faith alone, scripture alone. These were three foci of the reformed movement: focus on the grace of God to bring us justification in the righteousness of God, faith alone as the way to that justification, and scripture as our authoritative source to reveal grace and faith.
I selected the Romans 5 reading today because Romans was a key book for Luther in criticizing the church. The phrase “justification by faith” completely changed Luther’s life bringing him the joy that had been missing from his life prior to reading the Bible. What Luther took joy in discovering was that God’s gift of grace and God’s gift of faith and God’s gift of salvation is truly a gift, not something we earn. This reading of the text changed the Christian Church forever. We are who we are today because of those who came before us to pave the way in Reformed theology.
As the Book of Order states we are “The church reformed, always reforming…” Perhaps better said still: “The church reformed, always being reformed, because God does the reforming. Reformed and always reforming demonstrated a faith that is living, growing, changing, learning. We cannot be settled with faith. What we know of God at age ten is different when we are twenty and thirty and as we grow older we come to know and appreciate more about God. The Reformed tradition itself calls us to be ever studying, ever growing, ever faithful, ever grateful. Today we celebrate our history as the church reformed.
Perhaps we could consider this Reformation Sunday as a call to reclaim our history as a people of reformed faith – to renew our understanding of the centrality of the scripture and the gifts of God in grace and faith. Some would argue that we have forgotten who we are as the church of Jesus Christ, that our identity has become shaky at best, and that we need to get back to our roots as reformed thinkers. Who knows, the Spirit of God may once again move through the church and lead us to another great reformation. Ω
October 31, 2010
Romans 5:1-11
Dr. Ed Pettus
“Always Reforming”
While many people have or will be recognizing and celebrating Halloween this weekend, today is a great day in the life of the church for a very different reason. Today is Reformation Sunday. On October 31, 1517, in Wittenberg Germany, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses, 95 theological statements published for debate. This was the way theological debate occurred in the 16th century, theologians posted their beliefs for debate with church leaders. Martin Luther’s 95 theses started the chain reaction that lead to the great reformation and the beginnings of the Protestant Church. Luther was not alone in the reformation as many theologians took off in various directions with ideas that challenged the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Luther’s teachings lead to the formation of the Lutheran Church.
John Calvin was another theologian who began preaching, teaching, and writing theology similar to Luther but also differed enough to branch off into another strand of thought that would lead to the Presbyterian Church. There were others who also challenged the status quo of the church and thus we have today Methodist, Baptists, Pentecostals, and all other Protestant denominations.
In Luther’s 95 declarations there were two leading issues addressed in the life of the church: justification by grace alone (instead of works) and the church’s sale of indulgences (paying to have sins forgiven). Indulgences were the most egregious corruption in the church. Priests collected money from people basically charging them for forgiving sins, even to purchase forgiveness for those they believed to be in purgatory. The other major theology was works righteousness. Luther claimed that nothing we did could earn us salvation, but said: “we do not become righteous by doing righteous deeds but, having been made righteous, we do righteous deeds” (A History of Christian Thought, Gonzalez, p. 29).
The Reformation was a long process over many years of debate and thought. John Calvin, for instance, began writing the Institutes (his systematic theology) in 1536 and they were not completed in the form we have today until 1559. Over twenty years of refining what Calvin interpreted in the Bible. Calvin redefined how the people of God thought about the character of of God and God’s relationship with humankind and his thought helped to shape what we know today as Reformed theology. One theologian who studied with Calvin was John Knox, from Scotland who helped shape the the church in Scotland. More reforms developed all across England, Holland and France until the Reformed movement was growing all over Europe.
Now let me take an aside here to point out that the Catholic Church today is vastly different from that of the time of the Reformation. The Catholic Church has itself been through reforms that have redefined how Catholics view scripture and grace and faith. The Reformation taught the Church that every group, Protestant or Catholic, need reforming any time we get away from scripture as our authority.
Donald McKim, in his book Presbyterian Questions, Presbyterian Answers, distinguishes the Reformation in this way:
Other reformers agreed with Luther’s criticisms of the Roman Church, but also began to differ with him on some items of biblical interpretation. This led to be recognized as another “Protestant” movement. Theologians such as Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, and Heinrich Bullinger became leaders of this movement, which became known as the Reformed tradition. The term “Reformed” came from a comment by Queen Elizabeth I in England that the followers of Zwingli and Calvin were more “reformed” than the Lutherans, in that they wanted a more thoroughgoing reform of worship practices based on their understanding of the Bible.
”Reformed theology” refers to the theological beliefs taught by these early Reformed theologians and the tradition of their followers that began after their deaths and which continues to the present day…Reformed theology is marked by a recognition that Christian faith needs constantly to be articulated and confessed (Presbyterian Questions, Presbyterian Answers, McKim, p.4).
Presbyterians consider Calvin to be the father of Presbyterianism. His cornerstone theology is his work called Institutes of the Christian Religion where he discusses topics such as God, humanity, sin, grace, sacraments, scripture, and our “favorite” predestination. One of the most prominent theological articulations from Calvin are his five points that set Calvin apart from another theologian named Ariminius, those five points are popularly known as TULIP – T-U-L-I-P. TULIP stands for T- Total Depravity, that humans are totally affected by sin, U- Unconditional Election, that God elects persons to salvation, L- Limited Atonement, that Christ died for the elect, I- Irresistible Grace, that we cannot resist God’s grace, and P- Perseverance of the Saints, that once we are saved we will not be lost. TULIP has been debated ever since Calvin proposed these five points. Not all Presbyterians adhere to all the points, but that is the nature of reformed thought, we are always debating theology!
Other hallmarks of the Reformation for Presbyterians are recorded in our Book of Order, part of our church constitution. In Chapter two we read:
(G-2.0400) In its confessions, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) identifies with the affirmations of the Protestant Reformation. The focus of these affirmations is the rediscovery of God’s grace in Jesus Christ as revealed in the Scriptures. The Protestant watchwords—grace alone, faith alone, Scripture alone — embody principles of understanding which continue to guide and motivate the people of God in the life of faith.
(G.2.0500) In its confessions, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) expresses the faith of the Reformed tradition. Central to this tradition is the affirmation of the majesty, holiness, and providence of God who creates, sustains, rules, and redeems the world in the freedom of sovereign righteousness and love. Related to this central affirmation of God’s sovereignty are other great themes of the Reformed tradition:
(1) The election of the people of God for service as well as for salvation;
(2) Covenant life marked by a disciplined concern for order in the church according to the Word of God;
(3) A faithful stewardship that shuns ostentation and seeks proper use of the gifts of God’s creation;
(4) The recognition of the human tendency to idolatry and tyranny, which calls the people of God to work for the transformation of society by seeking justice and living in obedience to the Word of God.
When at seminary we would joke sometimes that it seems impossible to have three “alones” but there they are, grace alone, faith alone, scripture alone. These were three foci of the reformed movement: focus on the grace of God to bring us justification in the righteousness of God, faith alone as the way to that justification, and scripture as our authoritative source to reveal grace and faith.
I selected the Romans 5 reading today because Romans was a key book for Luther in criticizing the church. The phrase “justification by faith” completely changed Luther’s life bringing him the joy that had been missing from his life prior to reading the Bible. What Luther took joy in discovering was that God’s gift of grace and God’s gift of faith and God’s gift of salvation is truly a gift, not something we earn. This reading of the text changed the Christian Church forever. We are who we are today because of those who came before us to pave the way in Reformed theology.
As the Book of Order states we are “The church reformed, always reforming…” Perhaps better said still: “The church reformed, always being reformed, because God does the reforming. Reformed and always reforming demonstrated a faith that is living, growing, changing, learning. We cannot be settled with faith. What we know of God at age ten is different when we are twenty and thirty and as we grow older we come to know and appreciate more about God. The Reformed tradition itself calls us to be ever studying, ever growing, ever faithful, ever grateful. Today we celebrate our history as the church reformed.
Perhaps we could consider this Reformation Sunday as a call to reclaim our history as a people of reformed faith – to renew our understanding of the centrality of the scripture and the gifts of God in grace and faith. Some would argue that we have forgotten who we are as the church of Jesus Christ, that our identity has become shaky at best, and that we need to get back to our roots as reformed thinkers. Who knows, the Spirit of God may once again move through the church and lead us to another great reformation. Ω
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