This was written for and given at the Wanda UMC on October 20, 2019! The Scripture is from Exodus 34: 1-14…

 

It was the fall of 1965 when Dad bought our 23-acre farm northeast of Edwardsville. We had two small fields in the front where we grew various crops over the years, but the largest part of it, by far, was a Huge, steep hill that ran next to and behind the house and barns, which we divided into two separate pasture areas. Eventually we built a road up and around the back part of the hill and built a small pond on top of it, but most of it was just too steep to do much of anything with. However, dad always liked for things to ‘look’ as nice-and-tidy as possible, so we experimented with ways to mow even the steepest parts of it. The very steepest was at the rear of the property, and a tractor would just spin its tires trying to climb up. We finally found that by hooking-up the sickle mower, which only weighed around 400#, we could drive up around the front of the hill on the field-road we’d built and go straight down that section Very Slowly. The tractor would still slide towards the bottom, but with a little care and common sense it was doable.

My best friend in high school, at Edwardsville, was the youngest boy in a Catholic family, and his oldest brother was much, Much older than he was… So-it-was, that he actually had nieces and nephews close to his age… indeed, the oldest niece was in the same class in high school as We were, and the others stretched out back from there! Through him, I was at their home a number of times, helping with various projects during that time, and even dated the second-oldest girl on two different occasions!

After he and I graduated, That family split-up and I got called to help them move. I suppose it was sometime during that process that I’d invited the second youngest girl and her friend to come out to the farm for a ‘break’! Thinking to impress them, I hooked the big, old hay-wagon up to the tractor and gave them a ride up to the top of the hill in the back pasture, and once up there I thought I’d Really give them a thrill and go down the steep part!

I didn’t think about the fact that that wagon weighed around 15-1800#… a Whole lot more than the sickle mower that we would use to mow it!! At the top, I told them, “OK, the tractor will slide a bit, but don’t worry about it!”, and started down. Suddenly, the tractor started sliding a Whole lot sooner than I had anticipated… and it kept sliding Faster! Since there was a fence at the bottom, I angled it just enough to be able to make that turn, but I was moving pretty-good by then…remember, hitting the brakes would do No good if the wheels are already sliding! And Then… the right wheel went into a small wash-out hiding in the grass, and that heavy wagon on the back just pushed the tractor right on over! I managed to jump off, but the left wheel bounced off of my right leg as it came over and hit the ground, sliding the short distance on to the bottom of the hill.

The two girls on the wagon were perfectly fine, but had had a front-row seat to all of this… The tractor engine was still running, but the controls where buried in the dirt, so I screamed, “Get out of here before it blows-up!?!” They jumped off of the wagon and started running, with me limping along behind them as best I could…

Fast Forward to 2016.

With the coming of the internet and the increased speeds of the computers I was building, I had made efforts, through the years, to ‘catch-up’ with some of the people I knew back in my schooldays! In the spring of that year I had ‘friended’ another person with the same last name as my best friend and his nieces & nephews, and we would ‘like’ each other’s postings from time-to-time. Towards the end of the summer I messaged her and asked if she knew any of the ones that I knew in high school, and she answered, “Do you remember taking two girls out to the farm and giving them a ride on a wagon?”

 

(OOHHH!!) 🙂

 

And so-it-is, we got married that New Year Eves Day!! Now, part of the reason that we ‘rushed’ so to get married was that I had been without any health insurance for some years, and my blood pressure and diabetes was wildly out-of-control and she wanted to get me onto her Military benefits, including Mostly free healthcare. I had told her, up front, that I anticipated that I had 1-2 years to live yet, and she wanted to dispute that! But it was She who had neck surgery that next fall, as well as some other minor surgeries through the winter… Indeed, it was while taking her to a follow-up appointment for one of these at the VA hospital in downtown St. Louis that I asked her, “If you thought you were having a heart attack, where would You go?” And so, after finishing her appointments, I drove to the new St. Elizabeth Hospital in O’Fallon, walked into Emergency, and said, “I either ate something really bad, or I’m having a heart attack….” A week and 5 by-passes later they let me go home again. And two weeks after That I had a case of shingles!! I think That was worse than the surgery!!

But, by spring we had bought a used tractor & mower and I got out to cut her yard, AND managed to get to the ‘shop’ in Wood River to use the push mower over there on occasion. She, though, had still more issues and smaller surgeries, and this last May had her 4^th hip replacement surgery… Which put me into the position of full-time caregiver! The surgery went fine, but her muscles had had to be moved around and reattached, and there just was not enough ‘mass’ to hold that new hip in place properly as yet! One month after the surgery, I had gone to bed on one end of our house, with my phone next to me, while she stayed up watching TV on the other end. I was awakened by the phone ringing, and when answered, heard her screaming in pain and crying for me to come help her! Yes, it had come out, and it was Not a pleasant experience. After an ambulance ride to Barnes, some ‘special’ drugs, and a long night and next day, I took her home and we started the healing again. One month later it did it again!! This time I insisted on going to Des Peres, where they did the original surgery, and in a much calmer atmosphere, she had it put back into place yet again. Needless to say, I was Very uncomfortable leaving her alone to go do chores, or shopping or whatever… and it didn’t help when I would sometimes call and not get an answer! She had a Real Bad habit of leaving her phone in the other room and couldn’t hear it… I Knew this, but the only thing I could do was drop what I was doing and drive back to Troy to make Sure!! In September, her surgeon went back in and installed a different style ball-and-socket that is much more difficult to come out of place, and we started the healing process all over again!

Now, I’m telling you all of this to explain why when my Primary Physician suggested that I might benefit from some counseling, I agreed… and One of the first things my New Dr. suggested was that I write an entirely New sermon from scratch!!! And here we are!

You see, for all of my past accomplishments and achievements, I had hardly written Anything new since around 2009-10. The main exceptions to that were the occasional ‘arguments’ (I liked to call them ‘discussions’) that I would sometimes get in to on Facebook. And if I had not have already known, I would certainly have learned at that time that you can NOT use Scripture to back-up an argument with someone who doesn’t believe in the Bible!! I finally decided that those types of ‘discussions’ were not accomplishing anything but getting me stressed, and so I just quit doing it! But the few talks that I have given here through the years, as well as some I did while at another church, were all reworks of ones that I had given way-back-when. And even though many of them are Very good and worthy of repeating, I needed to see if I still had it ‘in me’ to write a new one!

Let me interject here, briefly, how I often decide what to talk about… A ‘Lectionary’ is a ‘suggested’ rotation of Bible verses, often on a three-year schedule, that will, according to the people who put them together, cover what They consider to be the necessary ‘highlights’ of the Bible. The speaker is in No Way Required to follow these suggestions, and there are several versions of them out there. The one I use, when I choose to, is printed in our Methodist ‘Book of Worship’. What I Like to do is print up all of the suggested verses for a given week and print them, in Large print, to read and ponder their meanings, and how, or IF, they connect, or correlate, to one another.

One of the fairly major accomplishments that I Did manage to get done this summer was clearing out one of her extra bedrooms and setting-up a private office area for myself. I even brought over my ‘main’ computer from Wood River, bought two larger monitors for it, and transferred all of my printers from Wood River as well! And one of the first things I opted to do in my new ‘digs’ was to put together a series of my old articles and sermons into a cohesive story I wound-up calling ‘What We Learn’. So far, I have gone through almost three full reams of white paper, four long ‘sets’ of staples, and a large number of black toner cartridges… I even invested in another new laser printer that was capable of printing both sides of a page without me having to count, separate, collate, and run through manually each page and chapter! For all of that, I have only managed to print and distribute around 50 copies of my ‘book’, and have been working on getting them out for people to read and critique for me. Some of the early copies I passed out here, as I had them, and when Cala went to Des Peres for her last surgery I passed them out to the nurses and doctors as I could. I even packaged several and mailed them to a number of people, including family, of course.

Now, family members swooned over it… as one would expect. And to date, every clergy member and/or preacher that has read it has been very impressed! Both my ‘Primary Physician’ and Cala’s surgeon have read it and stated how well-thought-out and clear it was about the point I was striving to make. But other than that, I am aware of only one person who has actually taken the time to read it, and That person has not had the time to discuss it with me! And I’ve had to ponder the question, ‘Why?’ And my pondering has lead me to believe that it is because it IS so ‘Biblical’!

So when I read these verses from Exodus as the first of this week’s ‘suggestions’, I immediately Knew what I had to talk about… God’s Law!!!

President Theodore Roosevelt once said that, “A Thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.”

As I researched that online, I found a site that had asked atheists what They thought about that statement. One of the kinder ones that I can mention here said that Roosevelt was an idiot for saying something like that, and that anyone who believed it was a greater idiot! I guess that makes me a pretty big idiot… at least in Their sight. ‘Remember what I said earlier about trying to use Scripture to argue a point to someone who doesn’t believe in God, or that the Bible is His Holy Word?

To be sure that people understand what my little booklet is about, I have started adding a ‘Warning’ to the cover… It reads, “Warning! Contains words, phrases & verses from ‘The Breathed Word of God’. May cause behavior, emotional and/or physical changes.” NOW they are forewarned about some of the content!

If you remember the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments, you know that when Moses came down from the mountain and found God’s chosen people worshipping a golden calf as their god, Moses was so angry he threw the stones down and shattered them! But God wanted them to have an actual copy of His Law… It was Important to Him that His people understand and obey that law, and so they needed an actual unchanging copy. So God has Moses make two new stones and come back to the mountain, where God wrote, yet again, the Words that he wanted His people to obey!

In verses 6 & 7 of today’s Reading, the Lord calls out to Moses that He was, “

“Yahweh!* The Lord !

The God of compassion and mercy!

I am slow to anger

and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.

I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations.*

I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin.

But I do not excuse the guilty.

 

I don’t think enough people believe that last line… “I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But I do NOT excuse the guilty.”

When Cala’s surgeon talked to me about having read my book, his main comment seemed to be how ‘Theological’ it, and I, was! He said, more than once, how Brave he thought I was to put something like that ‘out there’! I honestly wasn’t sure what he was referring to, and I didn’t want to impose any more on his time than I already had… after all, we were there for Cala’s follow-up visit, when HE brought up the subject of the book! But I suppose he took it as some kind of condemnation of homosexuality… and I have wondered if some others might have as well… But in actuality, Nothing could be Further from the Truth! My book is not about Any sin in particular, but about Reading, Understanding, and Obeying the ‘Breathed Word of God’!

Our ‘Call to Worship’ this morning was another of the ‘suggested’ Lectionary verses for this week… Let me read just verses 5 through 8 from the NIV and see if you can pick out the connection between it and the verses from Exodus…

 

Ps 99:5-8

Exalt the Lord our God

and worship at his footstool;

he is holy.

6 Moses and Aaron were among his priests,

Samuel was among those who called on his name;

they called on the Lord

and he answered them.

7 He spoke to them from the pillar of cloud;

they kept his statutes and the decrees he gave them.

8 O Lord our God,

you answered them;

you were to Israel a forgiving God,

though you punished their misdeeds.

There is a Whole lot more I could say about this, but I’ve already taken too much of our time this morning… Let me just add a short story about last summer’s ‘Annual Conference’ in Peoria…

Due to the vote that the ‘General Conference’ took during the Special session’ held in St. Louis last winter, the Bishop had us all meet Friday evening and discuss some of the ramifications of all of it, and how we thought it might affect the direction of the Methodist church from here.… Eventually we broke into small groups to fully discuss all of it… My group consisted of myself, two younger men who were both Clergy, and four women who were my age or older… just good, solid ‘women-of-faith’! I was Totally surprised by the attitudes and concerns expressed by the women of the group, and so told them this story…

“Suppose I was an adulterer. When that fact became known, would you attempt to rewrite the ‘Word of God’ to accept my sin as OK? Or would you come to me expressing your love for me and concern for my soul if I continued in my sin?” One of the ladies protested, “But That’s in the Bible!” I said, “It’s the SAME Verses!!” They all got a very confused look on their faces… They were strong matrons of their various congregations, but did not know what the Bible says!

And THAT is what my book, and this talk, is all about… We have Lost our knowledge and understanding of the Bible! And because of that we are Far too prone to accepting false teachings that sound so nice that we Want to believe… and just Don’t Know what the Truth is!

I’m sure most of us have heard or read, the saying, “Hell is not full of people that God rejected… Hell is full of people that rejected God!”

You may also have heard that, “When the Bible says “do not lean on your own understanding,” (found in Proverbs 3: 5) the Bible is being serious. Your heart is deceitful, your emotions fluctuate, your understanding does not see the overall, big picture. God never lies, God never changes, God knows all. Trust Him.”

And some years ago I wrote, ““MY God is not fallible! He asks us to love Him above all others, and to love our neighbors as ourselves… He also gives us some guidelines of things to do, and some definite things to not do! However, MY God Is a Jealous God… He does not ask much of us… But what He asks, He demands!! It is NOT given to any one of us to rewrite His Word on any account… To do so is nothing short of the handiwork of Satan!”

In the 8 & 9th verse of our text today we read how, “Moses immediately threw himself to the ground and worshiped. And he said, “O Lord, if it is true that I have found favor with you, then please travel with us. Yes, this is a stubborn and rebellious people, but please forgive our iniquity and our sins. Claim us as your own special possession.”

READ your Bible! Understand what it says! Accept the Love that God has to give! And obey the commands that we have been given! And then SHARE all of that with as many people as you possibly can… because That is Also what we have been Commanded to do!!

This was written for the Wanda UMC on November 17, 2019!!

Earlier this week I ‘shared’ a ‘post’ on Facebook that showed a number of kids/people varying in the colors and styles of clothing, varying in height & weight, and, we would assume, varying in their ideologies, cultures, and ways of thinking, all entering a ‘Public School’… and all of them were coming out the same shade of gray, the same style of clothing, and, again, we assume, the same ways of thinking and behaving… Right down, it would seem, to the same exact outlook and expectations on and from life, itself!

The person that I had shared it From had written a lengthy piece about how the schools in the United States no longer attempted to educate our children about the ‘Hows’ and ‘Whys’ of life, or how to think and reason-through issues as they might arise, but had all been transformed into mere youth ‘stamping-stations’, teaching, usually by rote or memorization, just enough to get them graduated, or Worse, enough to ‘Place’ well on all of the aptitude tests that our government requires today! However, when I shared it to my ‘feed’ I didn’t realize that none of that persons comments had posted with it… It was Only the picture!! Still, my son responded, “Flowers are Red!”

How many people here this morning understand that reference?

Harry Chapin was a singer/songwriter whose heyday occurred in the early ‘70’s when songs such as “Cat’s In The Cradle”, “Taxi”, and “I Wanna’ Learn a Love Song’ gained him world-wide recognition and success. And though, much like ‘Mozart’, his personal life may not have been exemplary, his song-writing and story-telling was, at least to me, nothing short of genius! One of his early songs tells of a very young child in school drawing pictures of flowers with every crayon color in the box, when the teacher comes up to him and berates him for, A, it not being time for art, and, B, not drawing the flowers ‘correctly’. “Flowers are red, young man, and green leaves are green! There’s no need to see flowers any other way than the way they always have been seen!” But the kid responds, “There are so many colors in the rainbow! So many colors in the morning sun! So many colors in the flower, and I see every one!”

So, of course,

“The teacher put him in a corner. She said, ‘It’s for your own good. And you won’t come out ’til you get it right and are responding like you should. Well finally he got lonely… Frightened thoughts filled his head… And he went up to the teacher… And this is what he said, and he said

‘Flowers are red, and green leaves are green
There’s no need to see flowers any other way
Than the way they always have been seen”

Now, this song is on a collection I have of his ‘greatest hits’, and I had given another set of them to my son when he was still in high school… So, when he said that ONE short three-word phrase… ‘Flowers Are Red’, I knew exactly what he was referring to! And, YES, he had the entire concept and meaning of the meme that I had posted Dead-On!! But ONLY because we BOTH knew and understood the reference!!

OK, with That in mind, do any of you know the significance of the number ‘451’? What if, instead, I said ‘451 degrees Fahrenheit’? Anyone? Well, how about as a title, ‘Fahrenheit 451’? Ray Bradbury’s book was first released in 1953, and was required reading for many of us, and as late as 14 years ago, still was… Unfortunately, I can’t speak for today! ‘451 degrees Fahrenheit’ is the temperature at which most paper, especially book paper, starts to burn! And in the world created… or foreseen?… in Bradbury’s book, firemen are sent out to find and Burn books!

Guy Montag is the name of one of these firemen, and he has begun to question Why they are burning all of the books. He manages to sneak some away, one-at-a-time, and hide them in his house. He had begun asking ‘questions’ at work about why they did what they did, and when did it start, and the whole concept has him so upset he decides to not go into work one night. To his shock… and, we might, well, imagine, his dismay!… the Fire Chief, Captain Beatty, stops to check in on him!

Sitting on Montag’s bed (with a book hidden under the pillow!), the chief starts to explain…

 

“When did it all start, you ask, this job of ours, how did it come about, where, when? Well, I’d say it really got started around about a thing called the Civil War. Even though our rule book claims it was founded earlier. The fact is we didn’t get along well until photography came into its own. Then–motion pictures in the early twentieth century. Radio. Television. Things began to have mass.”

Montag sat in bed, not moving.

“And because they had mass, they became simpler,” said Beatty. “Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radio, magazines, books levelled down to a sort of pandering norm, do you follow me?”

“I think so.”

Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he had put out on the air. “Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.”

“Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten or twelve line entry.”

“School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything except pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?”

“Empty the theatres save for clowns and furnish the rooms with glass walls and pretty colours running up and down the walls like confetti or blood or sherry or sauterne. You like baseball, don’t you, Montag?”

“Baseball’s a fine game.”

“You like bowling, don’t you, Montag?”

“Bowling, yes.”

“And golf?”

“Golf is a fine game.”

“Basketball?”

“A fine game.”

“Billiards, pool? Football?”

“Fine games, all of them.”

“More sports for everyone, group spirit, fun, and you don’t have to think, eh? Organize and organize and super-organize super-super sports. More cartoons in books. More pictures. The mind drinks less and less. Impatience. Highways full of crowds going somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, nowhere.

“Now let’s take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic-books survive. And the three-dimensional sex magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank [goodness]. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade-journals.”

Yes, but what about the firemen, then?” asked Montag.

“Ah.” Beatty leaned forward in the faint mist of smoke from his pipe. “What more easily explained and natural? With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word `intellectual,’ of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally ‘bright,’ did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn’t it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won’t stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors. That’s you, Montag, and that’s me.”

 

Isn’t it amazing… no, Sad, and amazing… how close all of this comes to describing our society today? We may not have actually ‘banned’ All books… Yet… but how many places Have banned, and even Burnt, books in the past? Yes, it was a tool of the Nazi’s to gain & maintain power and control… but you DON’T have to go back that far. Wikipedia list some 4-500 major instances of books being burned throughout history, but the most recent was just this last October in Georgia… Yes, Georgia, U.S.A.!!! But as Bradbury wrote, we don’t Have to burn books anymore… we just refuse to acknowledge they exist… and ignore them!

Let’s read another passage from Bradbury’s book. Montag has secreted a book out of his house and makes his way to an old, unemployed college professor trying to remain hidden on the fringes of the society he finds himself in. The book Montag brings, hoping to gain an understanding of it, is the Bible… perhaps, we are told, the last remaining copy of it in North America… or even the world!!

The professor opens it, reading, and begins…

“It’s as good as I remember. [OH], how they’ve changed it – in our ‘parlours’ these days. Christ is one of the ‘family’ now. I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we’ve dressed him up, or is it dressed him down? He’s a regular peppermint stick now, all sugar-crystal and saccharine when he isn’t making veiled references to certain commercial products that every worshipper absolutely needs.”

 

What, do you suppose, would our ‘Captain Beatty’ have to say about our verses this morning?

 

1 Thess 5:1-11

“Now concerning how and when all this will happen, dear brothers and sisters, we don’t really need to write you. For you know quite well that the day of the Lord’s return will come unexpectedly, like a thief in the night. When people are saying, “Everything is peaceful and secure,” then disaster will fall on them as suddenly as a pregnant woman’s labor pains begin. And there will be no escape.

 “But you aren’t in the dark about these things, dear brothers and sisters, and you won’t be surprised when the day of the Lord comes like a thief. For you are all children of the light and of the day; we don’t belong to darkness and night. So be on your guard, not asleep like the others. Stay alert and be clearheaded. Night is the time when people sleep and drinkers get drunk. But let us who live in the light be clearheaded, protected by the armor of faith and love, and wearing as our helmet the confidence of our salvation.

“For God chose to save us through our Lord Jesus Christ, not to pour out his anger on us. Christ died for us so that, whether we are dead or alive when he returns, we can live with him forever. So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing.”

I mean, Where would we be if we did Not have these Words… and how many almost-countless others… to guide us… to Strengthen us… to give us hope when surrounded by despair… or Joy when we feel God’s presence in, and with, us?!?

About these verses in particular, The Life Application Commentary tells us that, “Paul warned Christians not to be surprised by Christ’s return. The only way for believers not to be surprised is to be morally ready and spiritually vigilant at all times. Knowing that Christ’s return will be sudden and unexpected should motivate us to always be prepared. We are not to live irresponsibly — sitting and waiting, doing nothing, seeking self-serving pleasure, or using the time until he returns as an excuse not to do God’s work of building his kingdom. No one should develop a false sense of security based on precise calculations of events or let their curiosity about the end times divert them from doing God’s work. Are you working, serving, and waiting?”

 

Many years ago, as I worked with the youth-group at Wesley Chapel, up north, I tried to get the kids to watch the movie that had been made of ‘Fahrenheit 451’ during a sleep-over at the church, but couldn’t get them to sit through more than 15 minutes of it… they just Flat Refused to watch it! By coincidence, some of them had a teacher at school who handed them the Book of it soon after to read for class! Again, they argued the point… “WHY?!?” they cried! “What does it have to do with US?” At least the teacher had the authority to Make them read it… though I suspect some used the ‘Cliff Notes’ to just pass the class… which, unfortunately, is what the Point of the book is all about… the ‘dumbing-down’ of America!!

As an example… for many years, that same youth-group had Worked through-out the year to raise money for their mission trips each summer. Each of these trips would take them to different places around the country and have them interacting with and actually Helping others! Along with the usual car-washes and dinners throughout the year, one of their traditional fundraisers each fall was to go around raking leaves for people. One lady, every year, had them come to her farm to do the leaves and pull-off all of the clematis that would cover her shrubs every year… That ONE project took All of us most of a day, and it was Hard work… but she always gave them several hundred dollars for doing it!!! And there were a number of other members who always looked forward, and even counted on, their coming to clean-up the yards every fall… again, it was a Lot of work, but it was also a fun time of working together and interacting with each other… it also taught them HOW to work, how to be responsible, and was a MAJOR money-maker for the group!

When I started preaching every week at the Lynnville UMC, time-constraints forced me to back away from working with the youth, and the Pastor was able to put-in a couple that he could control. They stopped doing ALL of the work-oriented projects and started selling donuts and flowers, and such for their fund raisers… and the monies raised were used for them to go to a camp, instead of going on a mission trip!! Within two years the youth-group, a part of that church for decades, had disbanded, due to lack of interest and participation!

There are those who want to blame all of our ‘troubles’ on ‘government’ or ‘Big Brother’… (Yes, THAT is from a Different book!) But I put it to you that is the PEOPLE who allow it! It is every one of you… and you… and Me… who have failed to pay attention to, and Allow… all of what is happening in the world today!

I counted ten Bibles sitting on my desk at home, All different translations, and the reference program that I use has 15-20 different translations, total, in it! And, yes some of my earliest physical copies are worn, dog-eared, and even torn, in places… but others look almost brand-new!

How many are sitting in your homes? Are they well-read and worn, treasured necessities in your lives? Or are they sitting on a shelf, or even a table, looking impressive for others to see?

Because, whether we blame the government or ourselves for all of this apathy and neglect, our ‘dumbing-down’, not only of our children, but of ourselves… The Ultimate blame lies with Satan! And if we continue down this path, we ALL Lose!!

Remember, Paul tells us to, “…be on your guard, not asleep like the others. Stay alert and be clearheaded. Night is the time when people sleep and drinkers get drunk. But let us who live in the light be clearheaded, protected by the armor of faith and love, and wearing as our helmet the confidence of our salvation.

“For God chose to save us through our Lord Jesus Christ, not to pour out his anger on us. Christ died for us so that, whether we are dead or alive when he returns, we can live with him forever. So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing.”

And ALWAYS Remember… Flowers are NOT all Red!?!

I’m going to ‘try’ to start posting some of my ‘stuff’ on here again!! 🙂

This was written for and given at the Lynnville UMC on January 19, 2003, and any ‘dates’ mention correspond to That time… The Scripture verses are from John 1: 43-51…

 

In the latter part of 1964, mom and dad made the deal to purchase our twenty-three acre farm north of Edwardsville, and we moved in just before Christmas. The previous owner had apparently been selling off some of the dirt from the big hill in the back pasture, and part of the deal included leveling off and dressing up that area. Over the course of the rest of that winter one of our new neighbors made a point of stopping in and introducing himself. (Actually, he made quite a nuisance of himself, over time, but he did eventually hire me to work for him.) One of the things we learned from him was that, along with the equipment he used on his farm, he had an assortment of very old heavy construction equipment, and it was he who was going to do the work on that hillside once the weather and ground warmed up and dried out.

So it was that on an early spring day I was standing down close to the barn, next to two of the new fences we had already put up that winter, watching him move dirt with the old cable-operated Cat D7 that he had used to ditch and drain the swamp-land that he now farmed. Suddenly, I felt my stomach tighten-up as a very strange thought filled my mind.

Now, keep in mind that until we moved to that farm, none of us had ever met our neighbor. And though I was certainly familiar with all types of construction equipment, even at that age, I doubt that I had ever seen one quite that old up close until that day.  Not only that, but those fences that I was standing next to did not exist until we built them that winter. And yet at some time in the past, while still living in Hartford, I had dreamed that very scene! There was the crawler on the side of the hill with him on it, pushing dirt, as seen through the wire fence from exactly the position I was standing in. A cold chill ran up and down my spine!

If this had been the only time something like this had happened, I would have just chalked it up to an over-active imagination and let it go at that. The thing was, it had happened before, and it happened in later years. And while many of those occurrences were just vague feelings of ‘déjà vu’, some were much stronger feelings of actually having ‘experienced’ the situation before! But this one was the clearest and the only one I still remember, probably because it had a Caterpillar in it.

As I got older, these experiences either stopped or reached the point were I believed I probably HAD actually seen something like that at some point in time. But a few years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat from a dream that I had a very vivid memory of! We were driving down a gravel road very near a body of water that was flooding, and I somehow got the car wheels into it and was sucked in! This picture haunted me for some time, and even though I knew it had only been a dream, I couldn’t shake the feeling of fear and danger that it had created in me.

Some time later, we chanced to take an outing towards Hannibal, and as we crossed the bridge we noted the Mississippi River being up quite a bit. After returning to the Illinois side, I thought I might drive around and see how close I could get to the river and check it out. We explored until we found ourselves driving down a gravel road running along the river. Suddenly, that great empty yawning feeling of fear gripped me as I recognized parts of my dream! Without thinking a moment more about it, I stopped and turned around right in the middle of the road and got out of there! Now, I don’t know that anything would have happened had I continued on towards the river, but I do know that that lingering fear of danger left me after that day.

Now, I have to tell you that I do not believe that anybody but God can see into the future! And I’m sure that someday all of this will be explained to us. But still, the ‘other-world’-ly feeling that we get from stories like this can help us to understand a little of how Nathanael felt in today’s verses.

As we join our story today, John has been telling of Jesus’ experience with John the Baptist and how Jesus called Andrew to follow Him. Andrew then went to his brother Simon and told him all about Jesus. When brought to Him, Jesus said’ “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter). (Both Cephas, which is Aramaic, and Peter, which is Greek, mean rock.) The next day, Jesus leaves for Galilee and calls Philip to follow Him. Philip, in turn, runs to tell his friend, Nathaniel. Now, in the list of disciples in the other Gospels, Philip and Bartholomew are listed together, while here in John, we find Philip and Nathanael paired up. Since Bartholomew is not mentioned in the fourth Gospel and Nathanael is not mentioned in the synoptic Gospels, Nathanael would seem to be none other than Bartholomew. One of the possible reasons given for this is that Bartholomew is not a proper name; it signifies the son of Ptolomy… Nathanael might have been his own name.

In any case, Nathanael’s first words to Philip were, “Can any good come out of Nazareth?”  ‘Barnes’ Notes’ tell us that…

The character of Nazareth was proverbially bad. To be a Galilean or a Nazarene was an expression of decided contempt. Nathanael asked, therefore, whether it was possible that the Messiah should come from a place proverbially wicked. This mode of judging is not uncommon. It is not by examining evidence, but by prejudice. Many persons fill their minds with prejudice against religion, and then refuse any evidence to the contrary. They refuse to examine the subject, for they have set it down that it CANNOT be true.

Philip, however, had the best possible answer for Nathanael… “Come and see!” Again quoting from ‘Barnes’ Notes’…

 (Philip) did not sit down to REASON with (Nathanael), or speculate about the possibility that a good thing could come from Nazareth… he asked him to go and examine for himself… to see the Lord Jesus, to hear him converse, to lay aside his prejudice, and to judge from a fair and candid personal inquiry.

In these few verses we find four examples of people finding Christ. In the first, He is pointed out as the Messiah by a teacher (John the Baptist) and the students follow…Then, one of them runs home and gets his brother to come with him, and he is called. Next, in today’s verses, Philip is called directly by Jesus… after which he hurries to tell his friend. ‘The Wycliffe Bible Commentary’ states that, “Philip vindicated Jesus’ confidence in him as a disciple by finding Nathanael and breathing to him conviction that Jesus of Nazareth was the long-awaited One who fulfilled the predictions of Moses and the prophets. One may witness to the Lord even if his understanding is incomplete or even faulty.” In other words, even though Philip was a brand-new convert, whose knowledge of the Lord was in its infancy, he was still able to convince his friend to come meet Jesus.

When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false.” Jesus’ statement about Nathanael reveals that Nathanael was an honest man. The Greek word for false is also translated as “guile”, (which) means “deceit, cunning, and falsehood.” Nathanael was void of such characteristics. The ‘Life Application Commentary’ says that, “Jesus’ direct, intimate knowledge of him must have taken Nathanael by surprise. He was not offended, just intensely curious.” So Nathanael asks, “How do you know me?” And it is in Jesus’ answer that we begin to find clues to who He really is!

“I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.” The ‘Life Application Commentary says that it is, “Here (that) Jesus unveiled his omniscience to Nathanael. Jesus had been aware of Nathanael’s exact location before Philip called him. According to Jewish tradition, the expression “to sit under the fig tree” was a euphemism for meditating on the Scriptures. Thus, Jesus had seen Nathanael studying the Scriptures before Philip had called him to come and see Jesus.

          “The early disciples of Jesus were well versed in the Scriptures. Life in the small towns of Israel revolved around the synagogue, where the Old Testament was constantly read, taught, and argued. Unlike many of the studied religious leaders of the day, these simple men understood the Scriptures, and knew what to look for. So when the Messiah came, they recognized him!” Also, ‘Barnes’ Notes’ point out that, “It is clear, from the narrative, that Jesus did not mean to say that he was bodily present with Nathanael and saw him… but he knew his thoughts… his desires, his secret feelings and wishes.”

Jesus was impressed with how quickly Nathanael grasped the full impact of the situation. “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that. I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

Jesus knew about Nathanael before the two ever met. Jesus also knows what we are really like. And that can be disturbing to some. An honest person will feel comfortable with the thought that Jesus knows him or her through and through. A dishonest person will feel uncomfortable. We can’t pretend to be something we’re not because God knows who we really are and what we think at every moment!

This is the part that frightens us… that Jesus sees what is done in secret… He sees us when we little think of it… He sees us in our private devotions, hears our prayers, and marks our meditations… and He sees us during all of those times when we are NOT doing any of those things!

In a made-for-TV movie some years ago, an ex-preacher, played by William Shatner, made a last-minute decision to ‘look’ at all of the demons that had taken over the airplane that they were on, even though they were only seconds away from being saved. When he looked, the door behind him was blown open and he was sucked out to his death, just as the sun rose and drove the demons back into where they had come from. I mention this only because of what his ‘wife’ said afterwards when asked why he did it. “It was a last act of faith,” she said. “You see, if there really were demons, then there must also be a God!” Perhaps that’s why we sometimes get nervous when we hear stories like the ones I told at the beginning… they take us into the world of the occult, which many believe brings us closer to the world of Satan. And if Satan is somehow proved to us, then God must also be real… and not everyone is ready for that kind of reality!

Many people have conditioned themselves to believe in God and Christ only on an ethereal level, that is, they are only real to us in our minds… and that is part of what faith is. But there is so much more. Nathanael and Philip and Andrew all had the opportunity to touch the living Lord… to listen to His words… to be a part of His ministry! He was REAL! Today, two-thousand years later, we have lost touch with some of that reality. And when we are confronted with it, it frightens us, much as it might have frightened Nathanael! But… Christ is just as alive today as He was when He told Nathanael that He had seen him under the fig tree! God is just as real as when He appeared before Moses in the burning bush! And when we are confronted with that reality, it frightens us… because we are forced to consider just how prepared we really are!

Are you prepared for the reality of meeting Jesus? Will He say, “Here is an honest person who has served me well”, or will He not know you? The time for reality is NOW!

 

Found this on my desk as I was going through papers today and thought it was a good one to post on here… It was given at the Hartford congregation on July 12, 2009…

Matthew 5: 13-16

          How many of you remember ‘The 1910 Fruitgum Company’? How about the ‘Peppermint Trolley Company’… the ‘Cowsils’?  …How about the ‘Archie’s’? OK, then, who would like to explain what was meant by the term, ‘bubblegum music’? 

          The lyrics were simple (some would say simple-minded!), and the tunes were catchy and easy to sing,,, and so, ‘professional’ music people tended to look down their noses and say that these groups, and all of their songs, were aimed at kids, or teeny-bobbers’… who you might expect to be seen blowing bubbles at any given time… and were not meant to be taken seriously at all! And I will freely admit that there can be little sociological significance to “Yummy, yummy, yummy, I got love in my tummy…”, especially compared to something like, “He ain’t heavy, He’s my brother!”

          You see, in many ways, the mid-sixties was a time of social upheaval… and much of that was reflected in the pop-culture of the time. But at the same time, there was a very strong conservative undercurrent that resisted all such change. And so, one could find Andy Williams crooning, ‘Moon River’, the Ames Brothers singing ‘Cab Driver’,  Neil Diamond doing ‘Stones’, and the Beatle’s ‘Revolution’ all being played on the same radio station! At the theater, you could choose to see Goldie Hawn in ‘Butterflies Are Free’ or John Wayne in ‘Hellfighters!’ one time, and choose between Dustin Hoffman in ‘The Graduate’ or Julie Andrews in ‘Mary Poppins’ another! And people would take note of which of those you went to see… your peers would pay attention to the songs you liked, which ones you sang along with… and they would judge you, and place you into ‘categories’ of  ‘cool’ or ‘not cool’… or, in my day, I guess it was either ‘hip’ or ‘L7’.

          Now, when the Prom Committee selected ‘Butterflies Are Free’ as our Prom movie my Junior year, I had no choice but to go see it… and to this day, I could not tell you what it all meant. And when one of mom’s professors at SIUE recommended for the class to go see ‘The Graduate’, she thought I was old enough to see it as well and took me along… it was twenty years before I got the full import of all of what that was about! But I Chose to go see ‘Hellfighters’, and to this day it is one of my favorites! (I love all of the big, yellow Caterpillars in it!) And as recently as two years ago, I showed ‘Mary Poppins’ to a friend to try to illustrate a point! (That there is More to life than just Money!) So, those who were closest to me at that time knew, pretty well, what my values were… and I would say that, for the most part, we shared those values… after all, that was part of what makes close friends ‘close’!

          I have to admit, though, that my taste in music has always been what can only be described as ‘mixed’. Yes, I had a lot of ‘Three Dog Night’, I have ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vita’,  Iron Butterfly’s (the original ‘heavy-metal’ group) first album, the ‘Worst of the Jefferson Airplane’ (with lyrics like, “One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small…” … their take on ‘Alice in Wonderland’…), and some Beatle’s albums… I had (and Have!) a lot of Neil Diamond, I’ve seen Judy Collins in concert at least twice over the years and got Peter, Paul, and Mary to each sign one of their album covers for me after one of their concerts a few years ago! But I also had, and have, albums by The Peppermint Trolley Company, The 1910 Fruitgum Company, and the Cowsil’s. I used to say that my library ranged from Beethoven to Bacharach to the Beatles, and that is Just as true today as it was forty years ago!

          Now, when I first started putting all of this together, it was with the thought that I would point out how I had tried to hide my fondness for bubblegum music and it’s like… but the more I dwelt on it the more I remembered that, generally, I was Never one to bandy-about how I really felt about something… and the truth of the matter is that, in addition to the ‘bubblegum’ style songs, there were also a number of Really Good, serious songs on many of those albums as well… and I did what I could to see to it that as many people as possible became aware of them as well, playing them at every opportunity that I could!

          Would that I had been as out-going and open about my Faith!! Well I remember telling the neighbor girl, who was older and really pretty, about my getting baptized, and her cry of dismay, “You’re not one of those Holy Rollers, are you?!” I didn’t know what a ‘Holy Roller’ was, but if she didn’t like it, then I Definitely was NOT one, and very strongly told her that! After that, I just opted to not discuss religion with her. And for the most part, that just became the easiest way to deal with living in a secular world… don’t discuss religion!

How many Christians over the last two-thousand years have taken that same attitude… and so, failed Utterly at Being a Christian?! What fools men be!

In Proverbs 28:26, the writer tells us, “He who trusts in himself is a fool…but he who walks in wisdom is kept safe.” And what one of us has never had the thought that ‘we knew best’? And if it seemed better to keep-the-peace by not discussing, or even showing, our faith, who did it hurt?

But what is the definition of Faith? There may be a number of ways to phrase it, but I like this illustration from Practical Bible Illustrations from Yesterday and Today… “It was a good answer that was once given by a poor woman to a minister who asked her, “What is faith?” She replied: “I am ignorant, and I cannot answer well, but I think it is taking God at His word.”” So the next question becomes, “What is God’s word”?

In Matt 5:13-16, Jesus Himself tells us, “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” And in Eph 4:11-13 we read, “It was he [speaking of Christ] who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”  Let me read that again, “It was [Christ] who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we ALL reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” … and we aren’t going to do that by keeping silent and playing it safe!!

For the most part, over the years, nobody could ever accuse me of not speaking my mind on most any particular subject… though I would Hope that with age has also come the wisdom to sometimes just keep my mouth Shut! But I have to admit that, as easy as it might be for me to defend and even promote bubblegum music, Case tractors, and western clothes, it can Still be difficult to spout-off about Christ and what He means, not only to the world-at-large, but to each and every one of us as individuals… but it is Exactly that that He is expecting me to do, each-and-every day! And it is Exactly that… that He is expecting each-and-every one of You to do, as well!!

Another example from the Practical Bible Illustrations from Yesterday and Today tells of  Philip Henry, who, upon visiting a tanner one day, found him so busy tanning a hide, that he was not aware of his approach until he tapped him on the shoulder. The man was startled by Mr. Henry’s unexpected arrival and exclaimed, “Sir, I am ashamed you find me here.” “Nay,” replied Mr. Henry, “may the Lord Jesus when He comes find me discharging, with the same faithfulness and zeal, the duties of my calling.

May the same be said of each of us!!

Hello Again!!!
This was written and first used for the service I did on Oct. 3, 2004 at the Lynnville (IL) UMC, and when I chanced across it, I deemed it Very suitable to use again down here on Oct. 12, 2008 at the Hartford East Maple Street Chapel. ! I think you’ll see why as you read it!

Steve

Lamentations 1: 1-6

How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations! She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave.

Bitterly she weeps at night, tears are upon her cheeks. Among all her lovers there is none to comfort her. All her friends have betrayed her; they have become her enemies.

After affliction and harsh labor, Judah has gone into exile. She dwells among the nations; she finds no resting place. All who pursue her have overtaken her in the midst of her distress.

The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to her appointed feasts. All her gateways are desolate, her priests groan, her maidens grieve, and she is in bitter anguish.

Her foes have become her masters; her enemies are at ease. The LORD has brought her grief because of her many sins. Her children have gone into exile, captive before the foe.

All the splendor has departed from the Daughter of Zion. Her princes are like deer that find no pasture; in weakness they have fled before the pursuer.

Illinois State Fair

I don’t remember exactly how many times my family went to the Illinois State Fair when I was growing up, but it was certainly more that once. Living as we did, though, here close to St. Louis, the drive to Springfield was not something to be taken lightly… indeed, it involved much forethought and planning. So I guess that’s why it seems that each trip we did make was usually with one group of relatives or another, and became quite the family outing!

One of the trips that really stands out in my memory was the year that they advertised that a mile-long line of farm machinery was to be on display. And what I remember most about that was the Allis-Chalmers exhibit. As best I remember, Allis had built what they called the largest bulldozer ever made… and it may well have been at that time. It was so large that only two had been built to that point. One had been shipped to Saudi Arabia or one of those Middle Eastern countries, while the other had been driven from the plant on the south side of Springfield to the fairgrounds and was on display. The plaque mounted on it told of how they had taken railroad ties and laid them all the way along Sixth Street to get it there, picking them up from behind and putting them back in front… it took all of one night, and the entire road had to be closed during the move… it was that big! There was one set of stairs built going up along the track on one side with a walkway built over the track leading to the operator’s platform, and another walkway and set of steps leading off and down the other side, and there was a long line of people waiting their turn to climb up and walk across that platform just to look at the controls and wonder how the operator would ever be able to see what he was actually doing!

Oh! I almost forgot the best part! Sitting on the hood… right between the exhaust pipe and the air-cleaner… was a brand new Allis-Chalmers garden tractor with a ‘dozer blade mounted of the front of it! The signs noted that the two units represented the largest and smallest bulldozers ‘in the world!’ Whether that were actually the case or not, that image will forever be burned into my memory!

Aside from that, these trips were infrequent enough that I never lost that feeling of ‘magic’ that always seemed to come over me when we were there, and what I came away with, when all was said and done, was really just a montage of rides, vendors, cows and horses, and people… Lots and lots… and lots… of people! I think it fair to say that it was always wall-to-wall people!

And that was part of the magic of it… part of what made it alive and vibrant! It was all of those colorful people coming together… vendors hawking their Cheese-on-a-stick or lemon-shake-ups… salesmen lifting bowling balls with their vacuum cleaners… ‘carneys’ and street sweepers… and the masses of people there to show their animals and sweet corn and quilts, as well as those of us there to watch them show their animals and marvel at their sweet corn and ooh-and-aah at their quilts! People and people and more people! I would have to say that that has always been one of my most vibrant memories of the state fair, even today… all of the people!

I believe that it was the latter part of 1983 when I went to work for the Case dealer that used to be on the north side of Springfield, across from the airport. They had been a dealer since the 1920’s, and still had a fairly large customer base, with a very large number of Case tractors to service all around that area. And one of their oldest customers kept a small fleet of Case utility tractors at the fairgrounds to clean out stalls and load manure and such things on a yearly contract. And of course, it was only a matter of time before I got to make my first service call on one of them.

Driving up to the main gates in the service truck, I found them open and nobody around! I drove in cautiously, looking all around for any signs of life… Indeed, I couldn’t bring myself to drive any faster than I could walk along that road, since that was the only way I had ever traveled down it before! Slowly, I made my way to the cattle barns where I had been told the tractor was, continuously staring around me at all of the emptiness! No vendor’s trailers… no elephant ears… no radio or TV stations doing live broadcasts… no nothing! And mainly… no people!! Since my only memory of it was of wall-to-wall crowds… people of all types and sizes and shapes doing all kinds of different and exciting things… all of this emptiness really kinda’ spooked me! Spooked? That was it… it seemed more like a ghost town!

I remembered seeing a real ghost town, once, on one of our family vacation trips out to California. This, though, was no rotting pile of wood buildings… from the highway you could see a small city on the side of the mountain we were coming down… a city of large brick buildings and factories, not just wood houses! And yet, it was so obvious from all of the broken windows and general neglect that it was deserted… all of the people were gone! It had been a silver mining town, and apparently a very successful one! But when the silver ran out, the town died and the people just up and left! It was spooky! That was the same feeling I got being at the fairgrounds with nobody around… and it describes the mood that Jeremiah was describing in the first of these verses! ‘How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations! She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave.’

The Wycliffe Bible Commentary tells us that, “The book (of Lamentations) consists of five beautiful poems, one for each chapter. The first four are dirges, but the fifth is more like a prayer poem. The first four are alphabetical in arrangement, each having twenty-two stanzas… with each stanza beginning with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet.”

The author is considered to be Jeremiah the prophet (here, considered as Jeremiah the poet!), and as we learn in Barnes’ Notes, “Their subject is the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans. In the “first” of these poems… the one that these verses are from… the prophet dwells upon the miseries of hunger, of death in battle, of the profanation and plundering of the sanctuary, and of impending exile, oppressed by which the city sits solitary. In the “second,” these same sufferings are described with more intense force, and in closer connection with the national sins which had caused them, and which had been aggravated by the faithlessness of the prophets. In the “third,” Jeremiah acknowledges that chastisement is for the believer’s good, and he dwells more upon the spiritual aspect of sorrow, and the certainty that finally there must be the redeeming of life for God’s people, and vengeance for His enemies. In the “fourth,” Judah’s sorrows are confessed to have been caused by her sins. Finally, in the “fifth,” Jeremiah prays that Zion’s reproach may be taken away, and that Yahweh will grant repentance unto His people, and renew their days as of old.”

Why are we studying all of this this morning? What have we to do with the sorrows of a nation lost to its sins how many thousands of years ago? What need we concern ourselves with the suffering of a race of people who one could only say fully warranted all that God brought down on them at that time? Because it could just as easily happen again today… and it could happen to us!

Let me ask you something… consider with me some of the changes that those of us who have gone to the Illinois State Fair over the years have noted… it obviously no longer emphasizes agriculture… its focus has slowly grown much more towards attracting and entertaining the more urbanite and ‘sophisticated’ crowds… especially in the evenings! But what has that meant? How many beer tents are there now? How many venders selling tattoos and t-shirts and other paraphernalia that range from distasteful to down-right borderline illegal, and certainly immoral? And if all of this is going on right in the midst of what was once one of our greatest wholesome entertainment affairs, how goes the rest of the country? And how much more do you think God will be willing to take?

I once read a newspaper article that told how ‘spies’ were infiltrating our churches and religious institutions… willing to ‘suffer’ through the liturgies and hymns and sermons in order to catch someone in the act of making a political statement so that they might rush that information to various government agencies… in particular, the IRS… so as to cause their loss of religious tax standing and who knows what else! Satan has gained a very large and devoted following dedicated to the discrediting, demoralizing, and destruction of the Church… and it seems, at times, as if his following is growing faster and stronger than Christ’s. Time was when preachers were expected to sometimes preach politics from the pulpit… time was when Christian ideas and ideals formed the backbone of this country… time was when the Church stood up for social and political issues of all sorts!

Just as one example, when the Cherokee Indians, and others, were being forced to leave their homes and move to reservations, many Christians fought on their behalf to prevent it, and when they couldn’t, many rode with them to offer what aid they could, and to try to see to their being treated humanely.

My point is that there are many instances when acknowledging and doing God’s Will leads us to be more politically aware and active! We must research the candidates and issues, and determine who will best follow the Lord’s leading in determining the direction we are to go. And if there be no suitable candidates, then we must find and promote and elect our own!

How do we do all of that? Where do we get the strength to stand up for the Lord’s teachings and fight Satan at his own game? A clue can be found in Luke 17, verses 5 & 6… “The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.” You know, a mustard seed is not very big… in fact, it is one of the tiniest seeds in the world! But Jesus says that if we have only as much faith as might fill up such a seed, we can change the world! And that is what we each must start to do… change the world, in the name of God!

For, as I have said a number of times already, unless we do… unless each and every one of us begins in dire earnest to change the world in God’s name… unless we turn the tide of sin that is ravaging this country of ours… then these words of Jeremiah may well apply to us someday…

How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations! She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave.

Bitterly she weeps at night, tears are upon her cheeks. Among all her lovers there is none to comfort her. All her friends have betrayed her; they have become her enemies.

After affliction and harsh labor, Judah has gone into exile. She dwells among the nations; she finds no resting place. All who pursue her have overtaken her in the midst of her distress.

The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to her appointed feasts. All her gateways are desolate, her priests groan, her maidens grieve, and she is in bitter anguish.

Her foes have become her masters; her enemies are at ease. The LORD has brought her grief because of her many sins. Her children have gone into exile, captive before the foe.

All the splendor has departed from the Daughter of Zion. Her princes are like deer that find no pasture; in weakness they have fled before the pursuer.

I for one am not willing to set back and just let that happen!
How about you?!

    Well, here I am again!! No excuse except just so busy! I first wrote this for The Lynnville UMC and gave it on March 27, 2005, then used it again, after a very minor rewrite January 27, 2008 at the Hartford East Maple Street Chapel… I always thought it was a very powerful message, and thought it appropriate to put on here… even though not everybody ‘gets’ the bit about the Electric Monk… Douglas Adams Is an ‘aquired taste’… 🙂

    From chapter two of ‘Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency’…

High on a rocky promontory sat an Electric Monk on a bored horse. From under its rough woven cowl the Monk gazed unblinkingly down into another valley, with which it was having a problem.

The day was hot, the sun stood in an empty hazy sky and beat down upon the gray rocks and the scrubby, parched grass. Nothing moved, not even the Monk. The horse’s tail moved a little, swishing slightly to try and move a little air, but that was all. Otherwise, nothing moved.

The Electric Monk was a labor-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.

Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to believe things they’d have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City…

The problem with the valley was this. The Monk currently believed that the valley and everything in the valley and around it, including the Monk itself and the Monk’s horse, was a uniform shade of pale pink. This made for a certain difficulty in distinguishing any one thing from any other thing, and therefore made doing anything or going anywhere impossible, or at least difficult and dangerous. Hence the immobility of the Monk and the boredom of the horse, which had had to put up with a lot of silly things in its time but was secretly of the opinion that this was one of the silliest.

How long did the Monk believe these things?

Well, as far as the Monk was concerned, forever. The faith which moves mountains, or at least believes them against all the available evidence to be pink, was a solid and abiding faith, a great rock against which the world could hurl whatever it would, yet it would not be shaken. In practice, the horse knew, twenty-four hours was usually about its lot.

…

This Monk had first gone wrong when it was simply given too much to believe in one day. It was, by mistake, cross-connected to a video recorder that was watching eleven TV channels simultaneously, and this caused it to blow a bank of illogic circuits. The video recorder only had to watch them, of course. It didn’t have to believe them all as well. This is why instruction manuals are so important.

So after a hectic week of believing that war was peace, that good was bad, that the moon was made of blue cheese, and that God needed a lot of money sent to a certain box number, the Monk started to believe that 35 percent of all tables were hermaphrodites, and then broke down. The man from the Monk shop said that it needed a whole new motherboard, but then pointed out that the new improved Monk Plus models were twice as powerful, had an entirely new multi-tasking Negative Capability feature that allowed them to hold up to sixteen entirely different and contradictory ideas in memory simultaneously without generating any irritating system errors, were twice as fast and at least three times as glib, and you could have a whole new one for less than the cost of replacing the motherboard of the old model.

    For those who might not know, this little piece of nonsensical foolishness is typical of all that came from the pen of Douglas Adams, author of this series of books as well as the five-volume trilogy, ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy!’ And I use it this morning only to illustrate a point and ask a question… and that is… What do you believe… and why?

    These verses from Matthew contain the very essence of what we as Christians profess to believe… “The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’”

    The man Jesus was nailed to a cross and crucified… He was dead, wrapped in burial cloths, laid in a tomb, and sealed-in by a giant stone rolled in front of it… that much, even the Hebrews acknowledge! But these verses, and others like them, tell us that He arose from that tomb… resurrected from the grip of death… and was seen and heard by numerous individuals and groups before ascending into heaven!

What do you believe?

    A man I once knew through my work was telling about stopping and visiting a Jewish synagogue while on vacation some years ago. The rabbi invited him in and offered to show him around and answer any questions that he might have. During the course of that visit, he got around to asking the rabbi what he thought about Jesus. The rabbi answered that they believed that he might have been a prophet, but certainly no more than that! “Well, how do you explain His resurrection?” the man asked. “We believe that His followers stole Him from the tomb and hid the body, then spread that story,” was the reply.

What do you believe?

    Much hoopla had been made a few years ago about a fictional book entitled ‘The DaVinci Code’. In fact, the only factual things contained in it are some of the locations and names of organizations. However, many people seemed to embrace it as a new source of enlightenment, gleaning from its fictional pages new insights and ‘truths’… in effect, believing its untruths and fantasy because they are closer to what many people want to believe!

    Yet, in the book ‘The Da Vinci Deception,’ author and pastor Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer debunks every single concept contained in the ‘Code’. For example, in the chapter titled ‘The Quest for the Historical Jesus’ he writes…

“The attempt to debunk the Jesus of the New Testament has a long history. For centuries liberal scholars have tried to separate the historical Jesus (Jesus the mere man) from what they call “the Christ of faith”; that is, the Christ of legend and myth. They have tried to peel away all of the miraculous sayings and works in the Gospels to find this man, Jesus. In the process, they have ended up with as many different “historical Jesuses” as there are scholars. Rather than writing a biography of Christ, each scholar has, in effect, written a biography of himself!

This search for the historical Jesus is a kind of Rorschach ink-blot test. Since the New Testament was deemed unbelievable and one’s own conception of Jesus was all that mattered, many different portraits of Christ have emerged. Some writers pictured him as a countercultural hippie; others saw him as a Jewish reactionary, a charismatic rabbi, or even a homosexual magician. The famed humanitarian Albert Schweitzer wrote his own biography of Christ and concluded that it was Jesus’ insanity that drove him to claim divinity.

The life of Christ is a mirror in which each scholar sees a reflection of his own doubts, aspirations, and agenda.

In the end, the authors reveal more about themselves than about Jesus. Their dizzy contradictions and subjective opinions have forced many scholars to throw up their hands in exasperation and admit that the quest for the historical Jesus has ended in failure. The scholars discovered that the portrait of Christ in the New Testament is a whole piece of cloth; they were not able to find the seam in the garment that would separate “Jesus the mere man” from “Jesus the divine miracle worker.” No razor blade was sharp enough to carve up the New Testament with any rational objectivity. Realizing that the search for the historical Jesus was futile, some even concluded that the best course of action is to simply say that we know nothing whatsoever about him.

Perhaps you’ve heard the story about Edward Burne-Jones’s celebrated painting, Love among the Ruins. The painting was destroyed by an art firm that had been hired to restore it. Though they had been warned that it was a watercolor and therefore needed special attention, they used the wrong liquid and dissolved the paint.

Throughout the ages men have tried to reduce the bright New Testament portrait of Christ to gray tints—to sponge out the miracles, to humanize his claims. So far, however, no one has found the solvent needed to neutralize the original and reduce it to a cold, dull canvas. No matter who tries to blend its hues with those of ordinary men, the portrait remains stubborn, immune to those who seek to distinguish between the original and a supposed updated revision.

Try as they might, these unbelievers cannot find a purely human Jesus anywhere on the pages of the New Testament. Their subjectivism left them with random bits and pieces of information, but no coherent view of Jesus. They are faced with a clear choice: Either accept him as he is portrayed in the New Testament or confess ignorance about him. In effect, they are faced with the stark realization that the Gospel portrait is either all true or all false. Determined not to accept a miraculous Christ, some scholars have opted to say that there might not have been a historical Jesus at all!

The point is that no matter how far we try to go back to find the real Jesus, we always meet a supernatural Jesus. It is unbelief and not scholarship that forces people to say that the New Testament was built on “fabrication” and that faith “is that which we can imagine to be true.”

Augustus lived before scholars chewed up the Scriptures according to their personal whims. Nevertheless, even in his day some people believed what they wanted and discarded the rest. He wrote, “If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it’s not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”

    What do you believe?

    Some years ago I wrote an article about the little town of Merritt, some miles to the west of where I lived outside of Jacksonville. Merritt was never very big, but at sometime during the last one hundred years it did have a railroad. One morning in the early spring, as the sun began its morning climb ever earlier, the light was just right as I drove through to highlight the old roadbed. The only thing actually left is a field road that runs diagonally to the road, and the remains of an old elevator, but on this morning the sun hit both just enough to remind one of what once was. Now, to the best of my memory, I have never seen any picture of Merritt, let alone a picture of the railroad, or of a locomotive in Merritt. But I had no trouble at all picturing in my mind a small, puffing steam engine working its way through town pulling a short freight, or maybe even a mixed train. After all, I know what a train looks like, and on this morning I could envision what the rail looked like. Only a small amount of imagination was required to ‘combine’ the two images in my head.

    It usually isn’t hard to think about or picture in your mind things that have happened or been built, or people that have been a part of the last 1-2 hundred years or so. We have historical records, paintings, pictures, and accounts of many things. Sometimes we even have the actual physical evidence. An old barn and foundation may remain, or entire villages, such as New Salem, might be reconstructed. Complete battles and battlefields, such as Gettysburg, may be preserved and mapped out, while cities like Chicago and St. Louis have museums to show how they have grown and evolved. We can see pictures of the people, walk the streets and touch and study the buildings and tools of the people who built this country. It is not difficult to ‘see’ and believe how it was then! I don’t have to have seen a train in the town of Merritt to believe that there once was one!

    However, if we go back, say, two thousand years, things become more difficult. Yes, some traces of historical buildings and cities might remain, some artifacts can be studied and learned from, but for the most part we rely on written records from that time to tell us what is was like. But these can be few and far between, and may not always be complete. What we sometimes wind up with is only a very small window into the facts and history of that time.

    That’s why we sometimes read and reread the Gospels and other books in our Bible and wonder why the people living in that day couldn’t recognize what was going on around them. What we forget is that these books were, and are, intended to focus on God and Jesus and seek to give us all of the theological answers into the mysteries of eternal life and salvation. But actual life was still going on all around the world… just as it was 200 years ago… and as it is today. These people were real people… living… working… providing for their families and their old age… doing all of the everyday things that we do today. Only the ‘how’ is different!

    We might, well, imagine them thinking… “Who has time to pay attention to a wild man baptizing people in the wilderness? And what was all that about the Messiah being here? Well, the priests will sort it all out and let us know what we need to know!” And, except for those who really listened… and understood… life went on as always.

    We have the advantage, and disadvantage, of two thousand years. Yes, it’s true, we have only written records of that time and place, but oh… what records they are! The beauty and wisdom contained in all of the Bible… but especially poignant in the New Testament… is alone worth the study. But more than that, it tells us the story of God… of the love that He has for His people, and how those same people failed Him time after time… It tells of how Jesus became flesh-and-blood and lived on this earth as the Son-of-Man in order to become the ultimate sacrificial lamb… how He was crucified on the cross of Calvary for each of us sitting here today… and how He rose from death as proof of the power of God, His Father! His wisdom and His love flows from every page… He is real!

    But what do you believe?

    Yes, the fact that I have actually seen a steam engine helps me to picture one in Merritt. But I do not have to have been in Jerusalem two thousand years ago to ‘see’ how it was. And I do not have to have met ‘Jesus-the-man’ to believe that He was real. He is real to me today. And though I try to imagine what God is, or might look like, and am incapable of it, I still know that He is very much real. I can see and feel His handiwork around me everyday.

    Faith? Some might call it that. But I KNOW that steam engines once huffed through Merritt. And I KNOW that Jesus once walked the streets of Jerusalem. I KNOW that God loves me and works in my life every day. And I know that Christ died for my sins and was buried, and arose on the third day. How about you?

What do you believe?

     Well, once again it has been some months since I’ve had a chance to sit down and and do something with this… For those who have been sitting on the edge of their seats in breathless anticipation, this is ‘Part 4′ of the last three entries, and was delivered on March 25 of this year (2007). Yes, it gets kinda’ personal… but the message applies to ALL!!!

Matthew 18: 1-6

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

“And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

 

 

     The few people who have visited me in my little trailer here in Hartford usually comment on the number of books that seem to fill much of the living room, den, and bedroom. These run the gamut from scientific thesis’ such as this one by Robert Baker, Ph.D. called The Dinosaur Heresies to the almost complete collection of Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonrider’s of Pern series… from books like this physics discussion on the origins of the universe entitled The God Particle to what I believe are all of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation books. I have a lot of Harold Bell Wright’s books, including his most-well-known, The Shepherd of the Hills, a great number of The Man From Uncle books, and scads and scads of Star Trek and Star Wars novels! I have big picture books, such as this one on Case tractors as well as reference and how-to books such as this Complete Idiots Guide to Upgrading & Repairing Computers. One of my favorites is this titled All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Watching Star Trek. I also have one bookcase pretty well dedicated to children’s books, some of which I bought to read to my son as he was growing up, but many that I bought and first read when I was in junior and senior high school. Occasionally I like to pull out one of these and ‘escape’ back to a simpler time and place. I chanced to read one such book this week… this one… A Horse of Her Own. With out going into a lot of detail, an orphaned girl who grew up with and loves horses goes thru a series of trials and events that eventually lead to her being given a very special horse and her uncle and family being brought from Ireland to raise her as their own… in short, a happy ending! You see, back then it seemed like you could pretty-well count on every story having a happy ending!

     Some few years back I wrote a 10-12 week Bible Study using old TV westerns as the basis for my points. We would all sit a watch a Have Gun/ Will Travel, The Rifleman, and others along those same lines, then I would ask a series of questions about what moral lessons could be learned from them and back up those lessens with Scripture. You see, again, back then, most TV shows still had moral values and content as well!

     Not so today!!!

     In the first of this series of talks, way back in January, I told you, among other things, about how we are not to judge our own lives by those around us, but by the example set for us by Jesus when He walked this earth as one of us. I also gave you some statistics regarding STD’s and teen pregnancies, and told you about how a friend of mine from high school felt compelled to have an abortion back then because we had been taught that that was a better alternative to being an unwed mother.

     In the second of these talks, I showed you how the world, in general, and this country, in particular, have become more and more accepting of things that our parents generation would have found embarrassing, their parents would have seen as shameful, and the generations before that would have called just plain sinful… and in the talk right after that one I explained how knowledge is learned so quickly today that the morals and lessons taught us in and by history are often ignored, or, at best, explained away as irrelevant, and then delved into how much we truly need to be accepting and teaching the basics of right and wrong.

     As an example to all of this, I also told you how when her teen age daughter came to her last fall and told her she was pregnant, my friend who had had the abortion in high school accepted her with open arms and worked very hard to show her support of and love for her daughter! Knowing my penchant for writing, I received an email from her last November asking me to critique a little thing she was trying to put together just to kind-of clear her own thoughts and feelings. Upon reading it, I asked her if I might use it sometime, and she said ‘yes’ on the condition that I honor her anonymity, and explain that it really wasn’t a finished, polished piece… it was just a good Christian mother making an observation and trying to understand a little bit about life. Let me read it this morning… It is titled Precious In His Sight

 

     Some time ago my daughter realized she was pregnant. Overnight her life changed dramatically. Previous to this change she had been a college student completely focused on her own life and what pleased her. She partied with her friends and stayed out too late socializing instead of getting needed rest.

     Suddenly with the realization that she was now responsible for the life of a precious child, she was consumed by what was best for this other human being. She ate healthier foods and included more fruits and vegetables in her diet. She exchanged caffeinated and alcoholic drinks for water and juice. She made sure she got plenty of rest, took vitamins, and was more careful about everything she did.

     Sadly, a few weeks later she had a miscarriage. It was a time of great disappointment for her and she struggled with the loss of her child. However, what was interesting was how quickly the changes that had taken place disappeared and were quickly replaced by the old habits.

     Suddenly I wondered why it is that when it comes to a helpless, precious child we quickly become responsible and know what is best for this other human being. Why is it that we consider this human being precious enough to do what is absolutely in their best interest but we do not consider ourselves precious enough to treat ourselves in the same manner?

 

     The Bible says “don’t you know your bodies are the temple of God” and the familiar children’s song says

 

     Jesus loves the little children. All the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.

 

     Yes, we are all precious in His sight and we should consider ourselves precious enough to always do what is in our best interest whether it be the foods we eat, the drinks we consume, the decisions we make, or the people we choose to call friends. God wants what is best for us just as we want what is best for our children. Never forget that YOU are precious in His sight, precious enough to deserve the very best for your life.

 

     In this passage from Matthew, the disciples are still trying to explain Heaven in earthly terms and ask, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Let me read His answer from the Amplified Bible… which adds some words to help clarify and/or explain what’s being said… this time…

 

     And [Jesus] said, Truly I say to you, unless you repent (change, turn about) and become like little children [trusting, lowly, loving, forgiving], you can never enter the kingdom of heaven [at all].

 

     Whoever will humble himself therefore and become like this little child [trusting, lowly, loving, forgiving] is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

 

 

     First of all, it is very true that we each need to learn to trust… and love!… Jesus and each other as lovingly, as forgivingly, as trustingly… and as openly as a child does his parents! For if we are truly brothers and sisters in Christ, then God IS our Father!!!

     But Jesus goes on, in this passage, to say…

 

     … whoever receives and accepts and welcomes one little child like this for My sake and in My name receives and accepts and welcomes Me.

 

     But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in and acknowledge and cleave to Me to stumble and sin [that is, who entices him or hinders him in right conduct or thought], it would be better (more expedient and profitable or advantageous) for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be sunk in the depth of the sea.

 

     I remember being in this building on Easter Sundays in the sixties when there was literally standing room only! For three days prior, there had been scores of teenagers from all over Illinois and Missouri meeting and studying and singing and fellowshipping and Worshiping God, and on Sunday, each of them, and usually a lot of their families would crowd in to this place for a final Service, and to share some of what they had learned.

     Each summer of my youth, one of the highlights was attending the week-long Vacation Bible School we did each year, as well at some of the other churches in town.

     Now… this building is closed, barred and barricaded at all times but for special occasions and the few hours we meet on Sunday mornings. We are far more concerned about keeping the local kids out than we are about getting them in! Now, don’t get me wrong… I understand the logistics and the need for keeping things secure and safe… but maybe we’re going about it the wrong way!!! Jesus tells us that whoever causes any of these children to stumble and sin is better off with a millstone tied about their neck… and I put it to you that our ignoring of the situations around us… our closing our eyes to the world that exists right outside these windows and doors… our failing to address the physical and Spiritual needs of the children right here around us… not to mention their parents!… is as much a sin to God as if we were enticing them to actually be evil!

     Now, I know the arguments… none of us are as young as we once were… we should be able to sit back and enjoy our ‘old-age’… and many here feel their duty is in pouring over and understanding each and every tiny bit of Scripture. But if we don’t pass on all of that learning and understanding, it dies with us! In John 4:35, 36, Jesus says…

 

     Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.

     And Paul states, in Acts 20:35,

     In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.'”

 

     A Christian’s work in this life is Never done… and all of these facts and figures that I have given you… all of these changes in attitudes and acceptance of sinful things… even the very emptiness of so many buildings like this one each and every Sunday… all point to our failure of working to secure that harvest… and so it is as much us who, by default, are leading these children into sin as it is anyone else!

     You know… in spite of how so many of the stories we learned in our youthful years all seemed to have happy endings… far too many of life’s stories of reality do not! Let’s not add to those unhappy stories just because we feel so secure and safe in our own faithfulness that we ignore those who are not! Just how heavy is that millstone?

I called this ‘Part 2 of Hebrews 5:1-14’ in my notes, since the two were a continuation of one main subject and I was able to give the two talks on consecutive Sundays, but as I have said, it was part of a four-part series, and as such this would be ‘Part 3’… 🙂  

The Purpose of Proverbs

These are the proverbs of Solomon, David’s son, king of Israel.

Their purpose is to teach people wisdom and discipline, to help them understand the insights of the wise. Their purpose is to teach people to live disciplined and successful lives, to help them do what is right, just, and fair. These proverbs will give insight to the simple, knowledge and discernment to the young.

Let the wise listen to these proverbs and become even wiser. Let those with understanding receive guidance by exploring the meaning in these proverbs and parables, the words of the wise and their riddles.

Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.

A Father’s Exhortation: Acquire Wisdom

My child, listen when your father corrects you. Don’t neglect your mother’s instruction. What you learn from them will crown you with grace and be a chain of honor around your neck.

My child, if sinners entice you, turns your back on them! They may say, “Come and join us. Let’s hide and kill someone! Just for fun, let’s ambush the innocent! Let’s swallow them alive, like the grave; let’s swallow them whole, like those who go down to the pit of death. Think of the great things we’ll get! We’ll fill our houses with all the stuff we take. Come, throw in your lot with us; we’ll all share the loot.”

My child, don’t go along with them! Stay far away from their paths. They rush to commit evil deeds. They hurry to commit murder. If a bird sees a trap being set, it knows to stay away. But these people set an ambush for themselves; they are trying to get themselves killed. Such is the fate of all who are greedy for money; it robs them of life.

Wisdom Shouts in the Streets

Wisdom shouts in the streets. She cries out in the public square. She calls to the crowds along the main street, to those gathered in front of the city gate: “How long, you simpletons, will you insist on being simpleminded? How long will you mockers relish your mocking? How long will you fools hate knowledge? Come and listen to my counsel. I’ll share my heart with you and make you wise.

“I called you so often, but you wouldn’t come. I reached out to you, but you paid no attention. You ignored my advice and rejected the correction I offered. So I will laugh when you are in trouble! I will mock you when disaster overtakes you— when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster engulfs you like a cyclone, and anguish and distress overwhelm you.

“When they cry for help, I will not answer. Though they anxiously search for me, they will not find me. For they hated knowledge and chose not to fear the Lord. They rejected my advice and paid no attention when I corrected them. Therefore, they must eat the bitter fruit of living their own way, choking on their own schemes. For simpletons turn away from me—to death. Fools are destroyed by their own complacency. But all who listen to me will live in peace, untroubled by fear of harm.”  NLT

“’Nake comin’, Dad.” I wasn’t quite asleep, yet, but was headed there. “What?” I asked. “’Nake comin’, Dad! ‘Nake comin’!”

My three-year-old son and I were spending the weekend with my mother and her husband at the trailer they owned and kept at a campground in Missouri. He and I were just settling in for the night when he sat upright and pointed down the covers, “’Nake comin’!” I rolled over to look and saw an inchworm making its way towards the pillows. Trying very hard not to laugh, I reassured him that it was only an inch-worm and nothing to worry about, then scooped it up and threw it outside. Thus reassured, we both settled in and went to sleep.

Though very intelligent for his age (after all, I AM his father!), Ted’s vocabulary at three years of age just did not have enough words in it, yet, to fully describe what he was seeing. The word he did know that most closely described it was ‘snake’! He had seen them at the zoo and read about them in some of his books, and he knew that some snakes were dangerous… hence his insistence on getting my attention focused on what was steadily approaching up the sheet.

I tend to look at everything with a very analytical point of view, and very early on I had made an intense study of the oxen drive wheel used to power the carding mill in the village at New Salem State Park. For those of you who may not have seen it, this consists of a huge wooden turntable set to turn on an angle. A giant beam is mounted to rub on one side of it as a brake and is controlled by a wooden lever in the mill. The brake is set and two oxen are brought up into a stall, complete with feed racks, facing uphill on one side of the wheel, where the oxen dutifully begin eating. When the mill is ready, the brake is released and the weight of the oxen on that side of the wheel causes it to move down. If the oxen want to continue eating, they have to keep walking uphill to stay even with their food. They walk uphill as the wheel moves around. Underneath the wheel is a large wooden gear with handmade wooden teeth engaging another wooden gear connected to a hand-hewn log shaft running under the mill. After going through another set of wooden gears under the building, the power is transferred by belt up into the mill to power the carding machine. Ox power!

Many has been the time that I have walked up to different people and groups trying to figure out just what all of that massive woodwork was and took the time to explain it to them. On a visit some years ago, I approached what I would say was a junior-high class standing around it, and could see and hear them coming up with some very strange ideas and comments as to what it was and how it worked… none of which were even close to being right. As they were beginning to move on, I walked up and asked, “Do you understand how it works?” The teacher stepped out of the group and said, “No! Please explain to us how it works!” They all turned back towards the wheel and listened as I pointed out the different aspects and what their importance was in making everything work like it should. And as they all walked away I could tell from their comments that they had understood what I had been telling them, and were amazed at how everything had been put together to work with ‘Ox Power’. However, I couldn’t help but think that some, if not most, of them were still wondering why they hadn’t just installed an electric motor! They understood the nuts-and-bolts of the machinery, but were unable to deal with the concept of there ever having been a time when something like that was not only necessary, but would have been considered high-technology.

Unfortunately, much of that same way of thinking has permeated the way youth (and many adults!) perceive religion and moral values. Through the magic of modern technological advances, ‘miracles’ occur around us everyday! Imagine the pioneer of nine decades ago walking into a modern home and seeing a television picture… a doctor transported from a Civil War surgery into one of today’s medical marvels… or a ‘mule skinner’ suddenly seeing a 747 overhead! These things which we take so much for granted would surely seem to be miracles to our forefathers. Yet, to us they are just part of our everyday life, with more ‘miracles’ being invented everyday. Is it any wonder, then, that many of OUR generation, let alone our youth, have a problem dealing with the miracles and ‘stories’ that we read about in the Bible as being anything too special?

Note these statistics from the Ethics of American Youth Survey a few years ago…

Who cheats on tests?

74% of Christian Youth

76% of Non-Christian Youth

Who lies to their parents?

93% of Christian Youth

93% of Non-Christian Youth

Who physically hit someone when angered?

63% of Christian Youth

67% of Non-Christian Youth

The point is, there is little or no difference between many kids who are called Christian and non-believers! And that is because we have failed in passing on to them the full context and meaning of the Good News of Jesus Christ… and that is at least partly because that for all intents and purposes, many of us have failed, ourselves, to grasp the full import of Christ’s message.

For the most part, many who consider themselves Christians today, including our youth, have not been taught any of the ‘heavy’ ideas and ideals of religion… they have learned what I have termed ‘religion-lite’! Yet, since the only word in most vocabularies that came close to describing it was ‘religion’, that’s what most assumed they were learning. But the numbers in this survey tell a different story!

Some years back, I wrote what amounts to a lengthy essay concerning my thoughts on youth ministry in particular, and all ministry in general. I’d like to read just two-or-three sections of it, slightly modified for today…

“Sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll!!!”

“Times change, and we with time…

But not in the ways of Friendship!”

These words appear on several Christmas cards that I like to send when I have a chance each year (they have TRAINS on them!) to those who I truly feel close to but just don’t get to see that often. And they are very true…times DO change! But what is it that has changed?

How often have we heard, or even thought ourselves, that life used to be so much simpler? But it wasn’t! In the fifties, women spent 2-3 hours a day, or more, preparing meals from scratch, and many still used wringer-washers to do the laundry, while men worked at least forty hours a week to earn the money needed to purchase that food and other necessities at the store. One hundred years before that, entire families would work endless hours raising and harvesting their needs as well as preparing it. And during the time of Christ the idea of working ‘24/7’, as we say today, was just a given…that’s what one did to survive! A simpler time? I think not! But through it all, has man changed? NO! Technology has!!!

Throughout time, man has learned…he has learned about his world…he has learned about life…and he has learned how to do and/or build things that make that life easier. And each succeeding generation has been able to learn from those before and build even further. And all of this has led us to the ‘miracles’ that we enjoy today…instant food…virtually instant transportation and/or communication around the world…and instant access to the entire collective knowledge of mankind! The problem is that now a person can ‘learn’ about almost anything they want without necessarily learning all of the history and lessons that surround it. In other words, they can learn how to do good or evil without first learning what good and evil really are, and how whichever it is might affect them and those around them.

There are drugs in school, today. There is also rampant promiscuousness. But you know what? There were drugs in my high school in the ‘60’s! And where do you suppose the idea of ‘free love’ came from? How about the ‘50’s? The 1800’s? People …Jesus talked about sex… and drugs were just as much a part of that society’s problems as they are today! The only difference is technology! Today, technology has not only improved on ‘natural’ drugs, but has gone on to be used to build ‘designer’ drugs, while the magic of movies, television, and radio bring all of it, and the lure of sex, to the forefront of everyone’s attention! (How many products can you name that don’t use some sort of sexual ‘tease’ in their advertising? And how many shows, themselves, use sex as their primary premise?)

So, again, the problems that kids face today are no different than the problems that have been faced by kids their age throughout time. The only differences are this: First of all, there is no question but that these sins are far more ‘out in the open’ than they used to be. I knew there were drugs in my school, but I didn’t know, for sure, who had them. I had my suspicions, but that was all. Today, sources would seem to be much more visible. And that is, I believe, at least partly due to what I see as the other primary problem…many of today’s parents have lost the notion that many sins are sins…many of them have lost the clear-cut notion of good and evil…and consequently fail to pass on any ideas of good and evil to their children. And without a basic knowledge of good and evil, what is there to guide the youth of today?

Getting Back to Basics!

The December 2002 issue of Readers Digest has an article in it written by David McCullough. In it he describes how we Americans, at least, are losing our history. He tells of an undergrad telling him after a lecture how she never realized before that the original thirteen colonies were all on the eastern seaboard…how a recent survey at colleges and universities showed that more people believed Ulysses S. Grant to be the American general at Yorktown…and how none of the nation’s top 50 learning institutions now require American History as part of the curriculum! And he goes on to explain that without that knowledge…without knowing not only WHAT happened before, but also WHY it happened…these people will be doomed to repeat the same mistakes! As I have said before, each generation learns from the one before and builds on that knowledge. But if we ignore the lessons of the past then we must, forsooth, repeat them!

The same exact idea holds true for our religious beliefs and faith! How many crazy ideas have I heard people speak that were purported to be spiritual! In fact, one young man that had gone on two different mission trips with us had apparently fallen into a ‘cult’ that told him that the only way to be really ‘close to God’ was through death! And his personal knowledge of the Bible and the teachings within were not complete enough to show him the truth that WAS THERE! He was found dead in his college dorm room… suicide by hanging!

ANY ministry that purports to educate ANYONE, youth or adult, MUST begin with the BASICS! The Bible is not difficult to read…and it is not intended to be difficult to understand. Generally, if a passage seems too difficult, either we are trying too hard to make it mean what it doesn’t, or the meaning of the language has changed too much over time. God intended for EVERYONE to read, study, and UNDERSTAND His word!

Epilogue

Razzle-dazzle! That’s what they called one type of camouflage used in WWII. An entire warship would be painted into all kinds of strange shapes with wild colors. Close up, the effect was startling! But on the open ocean, it was invisible! In the razzle-dazzle of today’s world it becomes difficult to see things as they really are…our eyes trick us into seeing, or not seeing, only what others intend for us to. The reality gets lost in the hypes and colors and sales pitches to the point that we wind up taking what someone else tells us we want while our true needs and desires are subverted to nothingness.

As you search to hear God’s voice, don’t be distracted. Search out the truth! Search out what is real! Because, without a belief in the basics…without a firm foundation on which to stand… without the conviction that the Bible is God’s word and that what it says is truth…any gains that seem to be made will be false! For, as I’ve said before, one TRUE follower of Christ is worth more than one hundred luke-warm followers…because the luke-warm followers will still wind up the same as those who never chose to follow in the first place.

There is no such thing as a Partial Christian. That would kinda’ be like being partly pregnant!

Next time, we’ll talk about that!

This is the second talk in a series of four I did this winter (This one was given on Feb. 25, 2007)… just thought I’d share…

 

The Jewish high priest is merely a man like anyone else, but he is chosen to speak for all other men in their dealings with God. He presents their gifts to God and offers to him the blood of animals that are sacrificed to cover the sins of the people and his own sins too. And because he is a man, he can deal gently with other men, though they are foolish and ignorant, for he, too, is surrounded with the same temptations and understands their problems very well.

 

Another thing to remember is that no one can be a high priest just because he wants to be. He has to be called by God for this work in the same way God chose Aaron.

 

That is why Christ did not elect himself to the honor of being High Priest; no, he was chosen by God. God said to him, “My Son, today I have honored you.”

 

And another time God said to him, “You have been chosen to be a priest forever, with the same rank as Melchizedek.”

 

Yet while Christ was here on earth he pleaded with God, praying with tears and agony of soul to the only one who would save him from [premature] death. And God heard his prayers because of his strong desire to obey God at all times.

 

And even though Jesus was God’s Son, he had to learn from experience what it was like to obey when obeying meant suffering. It was after he had proved himself perfect in this experience that Jesus became the Giver of eternal salvation to all those who obey him. For remember that God has chosen him to be a High Priest with the same rank as Melchizedek.

 

There is much more I would like to say along these lines, but you don’t seem to listen, so it’s hard to make you understand.

 

You have been Christians a long time now, and you ought to be teaching others, but instead you have dropped back to the place where you need someone to teach you all over again the very first principles in God’s Word. You are like babies who can drink only milk, not old enough for solid food. And when a person is still living on milk it shows he isn’t very far along in the Christian life, and doesn’t know much about the difference between right and wrong. He is still a baby Christian! You will never be able to eat solid spiritual food and understand the deeper things of God’s Word until you become better Christians and learn right from wrong by practicing doing right. TLB

 

 

I do not make a habit of spending a lot of time reading articles and such on-line, but occasionally while checking email or taking care of some on-line business a headline in one of the side-boxes catches my eye and I take a look at it. One such article was this one written by a Rory Evans. According to the information at the end of the article, Ms. Evans is a writer and editor in New York City, and contributes to magazines such as Allure, Glamour, and Blueprint. I’d like to read just 2-3 paragraphs from it, if I may… It is titled “Look who’s happily unmarried”, and reads…

Get your grandma her fan and smelling salts: More and more couples are living in sin. The recent report of a Census Bureau survey found that married-couple households in the U.S. are now outnumbered. A hair more than half — 50.3 percent — of households are headed by unmarried people, and 31.7 percent of American children are being raised in unmarried homes.

No offense to Granny or anything, but “these numbers suggest that couples living together can’t be scandalous,” says Nicky Grist, the executive director of the Alternatives to Marriage Project (unmarried.org). “It’s hard to scandalize when you’re the majority.” Sure enough, the number of people reporting themselves as part of unmarried couples spiked about 14 percent in the past six years.

…

 

“Unmarried long-term relationships are absolutely more accepted than they were a generation ago,” says Elana Katz, MSW, a psychotherapist specializing in family therapy and divorce mediation in New York City, and a senior faculty member at the Ackerman Institute for the Family. “These relationships are also popular with different age groups for different reasons. They’re an alternative for people who were divorced and don’t want to be married again. They also allow 20-somethings to dress-rehearse for either civil or religious commitments.”

…

She goes on to describe how many ‘couples’ fear the messiness of divorce, and yet would like some of the protections and ‘perks’ of being married, such as insurance and owning (and, when necessary, dividing) property, and how laws are being written and passed to, in her words, ‘catch-up’ with those concerns.

One of the things I did in my last talk was to use a little ‘poetic license’ to rewrite one paragraph from the ‘Life Application Commentary’, on the 5th chapter of 1^st Corinthians. Editing for brevity, it read thusly…

 

The effect of this on the morals of the United States can be easily understood. It has become the most frivolous, dissipated, corrupt, and ultimately the most effeminate and feeble country in the world. It is necessary to make these statements… because no small part of the irregularities which arose in the churches of the United States, and which would give the apostle occasion to write this Epistle to us instead of the Corinthians, are produced by this prevailing licentiousness of the people; and by the fact, that gross and licentious passions had received the countenance of law and the patronage of public opinion.

 

Do we need any further proof that ‘gross and licentious passions have received the countenance of law and the patronage of public opinion’ than the sentiments expressed in this article?

 

Concerning these words from Hebrews, Carl Ketcherside, in his book ‘The Royal Priesthood’, wrote…

 

In conjunction with the statement that Christ was “designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek” [the writer of Hebrews] continues, “About this we have much to say which is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing” (Heb. 5:11). This indicates that it is a difficult task to expound the truths concerning the priesthood of Christ to those whose hearing has become dull. The original word for “dull” means “lazy, sluggish, indolent, stupid.” The word for “hearing” relates to the ability to perceive truth or grasp the force of reasoning. The occasion of the dullness of the Hebrews is assigned to the fact that they have not had “their faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.” The result was that at the time when they should have been teachers they required someone to teach them again the first principles of God’s Word.

We face today the same difficulty as did the writer of the Hebrew letter. The subject of God’s priesthood falls upon ears that are dulled by inattention, traditionalism and prejudice. The average member of the church does not have his faculties trained to distinguish good from evil. Men, who long ago should have become teachers, must still have rudimentary principles explained to them over and over again. There is no limitation of the Holy Spirit’s ability to explain, the limitation is upon the part of man to grasp. The limitation could be removed by the diligent application of the faculties through study. Trained faculties like trained soldiers are not produced by merely hearing textual lectures.

 

This book was copyrighted in 1956… just over 50 years ago! And I think that I can say that our ears have become even more dulled than they were back then… if that’s possible!

The first verse of one of my favorite Praise & Worship songs goes…

Open the eyes of my heart Lord
Open the eyes of my heart
I want to see You
I want to see You

And yet, Jesus, Himself, quoted these words from Isaiah when He said, In Mathew 13, verses 13-15…

This is why I speak to them in parables: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:

“‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.

For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes.

Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’

 

We all know the words! They have been spoken to us in many ways for thousands of years! In Leviticus, chapter 20, verse 13, we read… “The penalty for homosexual acts is death to both parties. They have committed a detestable act and are guilty of a capital offense.” And Deuteronomy 23:17 states that “No prostitutes are permitted in Israel, either men or women; you must not bring to the Lord any offering from the earnings of a prostitute or a homosexual, for both are detestable to the Lord your God.” 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 says… “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” And this from Romans 1:18-32… The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

We all know these things!!! But like my friend from high school said, we, along with so many others, too often choose to either ignore them or at least try to ‘reinterpret’ them to mean what we want them to mean! How do we fight that?

By going back to and maintaining the basics!

Next time, we’ll discuss those basic!

As some of you know, I get to speak about once-a-month here at the little church I grew up in in Hartford. In January of this year (2007) one of our patriarchs passed away unexpectedly, and it chanced that my turn was the week after. Using that as a start, I wrote what turned into a series of four sermons, each interconnected with the previous ones. To those who don’t know the specific people, just imagine someone you Do know like them (We ALL have people like this in our lives, somewhere!)

Since school is out for the summer, I will try to post one-or-two of these each week in the order that I gave them. This is the first, and was given on January 28, 2007… 

 

Oh, yeah… those of you familier with any of the speeches I wrote for Speech Class last fall might recognize parts of this…

 

Let me read something to you and see if you can guess when it was written… and maybe even who wrote it…

 

I can hardly believe the report about the sexual immorality going on among you—something that even pagans don’t do. I am told that a man in your church is living in sin with his stepmother. You are so proud of yourselves, but you should be mourning in sorrow and shame. And you should remove this man from your fellowship.

 

Even though I am not with you in person, I am with you in the Spirit. And as though I were there, I have already passed judgment on this man in the name of the Lord Jesus. You must call a meeting of the church. I will be present with you in spirit, and so will the power of our Lord Jesus. Then you must throw this man out and hand him over to Satan so that his sinful nature will be destroyed and he himself will be saved on the day the Lord returns.

 

Your boasting about this is terrible. Don’t you realize that this sin is like a little yeast that spreads through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old “yeast” by removing this wicked person from among you. Then you will be like a fresh batch of dough made without yeast, which is what you really are. Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us. So let us celebrate the festival, not with the old bread of wickedness and evil, but with the new bread of sincerity and truth.

 

When I wrote to you before, I told you not to associate with people who indulge in sexual sin. But I wasn’t talking about unbelievers who indulge in sexual sin, or are greedy, or cheat people, or worship idols. You would have to leave this world to avoid people like that. I meant that you are not to associate with anyone who claims to be a believer yet indulges in sexual sin, or is greedy, or worships idols, or is abusive, or is a drunkard, or cheats people. Don’t even eat with such people.

 

It isn’t my responsibility to judge outsiders, but it certainly is your responsibility to judge those inside the church who are sinning. God will judge those on the outside; but as the Scriptures say, “You must remove the evil person from among you.”

 

Any thoughts?… Paul wrote this first letter to the church at Corinth around 55 AD… but by reading it from the New Living Translation, which puts these old thoughts into new words, one could easily get the impression that they were written in this country at anytime in the last 50 years or so! Kinda’ scary, ain’t it?

Now, Barnes’ Notes tell us that…

 

… the city of Corinth became eminent among all ancient cities for wealth, and luxury, and dissipation. It was the mart of the world. Wealth flowed into it from all quarters. Luxury, amusement, and dissipation, were the natural consequents, until it became the most gay and dissolute city of its times, – the Paris of antiquity.

 

There was another cause which contributed to its character of dissoluteness and corruption. I refer to its religion. The principal deity worshipped in the city was Venus; as Diana was the principal deity worshipped at Ephesus; Minerva at Athens, etc. Ancient cities were devoted usually to some particular god or goddess, and were supposed to be under their peculiar protection. Corinth was devoted, or dedicated thus to the goddess of love, or licentious passion; and the effect may be easily conceived

….

Her shrine appeared above those of the other gods; and it was enjoined by law, that 1,000 beautiful females should officiate as courtesans, or public prostitutes, before the altar of the goddess of love. In a time of public calamity and imminent danger, these women attended at the sacrifices, and walked with the other citizens singing sacred hymns. When Xerxes invaded Greece, recourse was had to their intercession to avert the impending calamity. They were supported chiefly by foreigners; and from the avails of their vice a copious revenue was derived to the city. Individuals, in order to ensure success in their undertakings, vowed to present to Venus a certain number of courtesans, which they obtained by sending to distant countries. Foreign merchants were attracted in this way to Corinth; and, in a few days, would be stripped of all their property. It thus became a proverb, “It is not for everyone to go to Corinth,” – (ou pantas andros eis Korinthon estin plous).

 

The effect of this on the morals of the city can be easily understood. It became the most frivolous, dissipated, corrupt, and ultimately the most effeminate and feeble portion of Greece. It is necessary to make these statements, because they go to show the exceeding grace of God in collecting a church in such a city, the power of the gospel in overcoming the strongest and most polluted passions of our nature; and because no small part of the irregularities which arose in the church at Corinth, and which gave the apostle occasion to write this Epistle, were produced by this prevailing licentiousness of the people; and by the fact, that gross and licentious passions had received the countenance of law and the patronage of public opinion.

 

 

Let me use a little poetic license and rewrite and reread that last paragraph…

 

The effect of this on the morals of the United Statescan be easily understood. It became the most frivolous, dissipated, corrupt, and ultimately the most effeminate and feeble country in the world. It is necessary to make these statements, because they go to show the exceeding grace of God in collecting a church in such a country, the power of the gospel in overcoming the strongest and most polluted passions of our nature; and because no small part of the irregularities which arose in the churches of the United States, and which would give the apostle occasion to write this Epistle to us instead of the Corinthians, were produced by this prevailing licentiousness of the people; and by the fact, that gross and licentious passions had received the countenance of law and the patronage of public opinion.

 

“…That gross and licentious passions had received the countenance of law and the patronage of public opinion.” Does that sound like this country to you?

America! The land of freedom and opportunity! And over the years, many have interpreted that freedom as the freedom to express themselves in everyway, including sexuality. Indeed, the whole concept of ‘Playboy’ magazine was to address and encourage what it considered the sexual freedoms of all men and all women! And each succeeding generation has loosened up a little more and a little more until many of today’s parents can find no evil in their children’s activities, or, at best, find it difficult to address them because of the ‘sins’ in their own lives. Let me explain that…

A friend of mine in high school was teaching his girlfriend how to drive. His first instructions to her were to “Drive like I tell you, not like I do!” That doesn’t work!

Let’s look at some numbers… According to the National center for Health Statistics, in the year 2003 alone, there were more than 34,000 new cases of syphilis, 877,478 new cases of Chlamydia, and well over 300,000 new cases of gonorrhea! The Illinois Dept of Public Health statistics for 2001 and 2002 record almost 40,000 teenagers having babies just in Illinois! And I didn’t even look up any numbers for Aids and HIV!

Another friend of mine in high school found herself pregnant shortly into college, knew her family would disown her, and flew to New York to have an abortion. (Remember, this was 1971 or 2… It was illegal in Illinois, at the time.) She has since had three wonderful kids, the two youngest of which are now in college. She has never told any of them about her earlier experience… and indeed, has become a very staunch anti-abortionist… which is another story for another day… yet, somehow, they knew! And so, when the middle girl came to tell her mother last fall that she was pregnant, she knew that ‘mom’ would accept and forgive her… as she did, most lovingly. But my point is that each generation has become more accepting of such things… and so each succeeding generation has been allowed still more ‘freedoms’… and next, more… and the next, still more! Just as an example, in an article in ‘The Sunday Oregonian’, from Portland, Oregon, Dr. James Allen states, “If there are 40 episodes (of ‘Sex and the City) a year, how many sexual partners do the characters in that show have? If you multiply that by the number of years the show’s been on, the number is astounding.” Is it any wonder that our concept of what is acceptable behavior and what is not has become distorted?

I still keep in touch with some of my old high school friends, and whenever this one I mentioned would start ‘beating herself up’ for past sins, I tried to say that we had been indoctrinated from youth to accept that whole concept of individuality, sexual freedoms, and, yes, even abortion, as being modern normality… and that because of that indoctrination, we weren’t responsible for our actions at that time… and yet, she very pointedly tells me that, yes, we were! We had been brought up in the church, and should have known… indeed, DID know, but chose to ignore… right from wrong! I can’t argue that point! Which leads me to my main point…

Last Sunday, those of us here sat in a circle downstairs and shared our thoughts, experiences, and insights into the life and Theology of Clint, and how much he would be missed. I sat there sorta’ feeling like the ‘odd-man-out’ since I had not had much time to update my childhood memories of him… but I found myself thinking how powerful an image of what a ‘good’ man was supposed to be he had always been to me… and how much I failed to live up to that image in my own life. And yet… there is a danger in thinking that… let me explain…

John Wesley was a very ‘good’ man, and became very strong in his faith, and worked hard to help others understand and believe as he did… and was so successful at it that the movement he founded… the Methodists… continues today! However… one of my biggest problems with the Methodist was that they were too prone to go back to Wesley for their teachings and understandings of Theology and ideals… instead of to the original source… the Bible! Last Sunday, I’m sure that each of us here were comparing our lives to that of Clint’s and considered ourselves as ‘coming up wanting’… but it is NOT RIGHT… and we do him a great injustice in doing so! Each of us are to live our lives by God’s Word… each of us are solely accountable to Him for our actions… and each of us are to minister for Him in our daily lives to the best of our abilities! God will not compare us to how close we are like Clint… but to how close we are like Jesus! Which brings me back to these words of Paul’s to the Corinthians…

The Life Application Commentary tells us that…

 

Paul used the case of the incestuous relationship to confront the Corinthians with their obvious lack of true maturity. Although they claimed great spiritual health, he regarded this situation as a gangrenous limb. It was too late for preventive treatments or normal surgery. The disciplinary actions Paul directed were spiritual crisis intervention. They ought to be applied carefully in church discipline. Paul was dealing with a scandal, while at the same time making it clear that the Corinthian behavior had allowed incest to become acceptable. Even today, discipline of people within the church must begin with repentance by all the church.

 

I can stand up here this morning and tell you, quite unabashedly, that my life in no way compares to Clint’s… I am a sinner… I have sinned in the past… I sin today… and I think I can say I will probably sin in the future! Does that mean I shouldn’t be up here talking to you? I hope not! Indeed, I can sometimes truly feel God pulling and leading me to recognize and acknowledge my sins so that those who hear and see me might know how weak I am as a human… but how strong I can be with God! And the same is true of each and every one of you!

I know I’m out of time, and it seems as if I have opened up and just barely touched on a number of serious topics this morning… so I thing it is safe to assume that this will be another ‘Part One’ in a series… for now, let me close with what the Life Application Commentary actually uses as the introduction to 1 Corinthians…

 

Lawsuit.

Split.

Scandal.

Tragically, contemporary headlines often trumpet bad reports from local churches. News of leaders’ sexual escapades, disgruntled and disgraced members’ lawsuits, unethical and irresponsible fiscal practices, and blatant heresies seems to parade weekly across television screens. [In John 13:35], Jesus had told the Twelve that his followers would be known by their love.Yet, today, many who claim to follow him are marked by anything but love. Instead of standing apart from the world, the church has taken the appearance of other, secular institutions and has blended in.

 

What would God say to these errant believers, to churches and individuals who have strayed from obeying his commands? He said it nearly 2,000 years ago through Paul to Christians in decadent Corinth, a city similar to many communities today. Paul wrote letters, now known as 1 and 2 Corinthians, urging believers to focus on Christ, forsake immorality, settle their differences, reject false teachers, unify, and . . . love. As you read these personal and powerful epistles written first to ancient Greeks, know that the words and principles apply to this generation as well.

 

And remember this… ‘this generation’… means each one of you… it means me… it means all of our kids… and their kids… and so on… and so on…