Eph. 5.21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.  23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.  24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,  27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.  28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.  29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church —  30 for we are members of his body.  31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”  32 This is a profound mystery — but I am talking about Christ and the church.  33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

6.1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.  2 “Honor your father and mother” — which is the first commandment with a promise —  3 “that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.”

4 Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.  6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart.  7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men,  8 because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.

9 And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.

Ephesians 5:21 – 6:9

There are some parts of the NT that leave the modern person scratching his or her head – and this is one of those sections.
It seems like the apostle Paul is trying to establish an order for the Christian household, and for us – living in a different time with different values, these words  – especially the instructions to wives and slaves – seem outmoded – out of date.
Is Paul putting his stamp of approval on slavery?  Must every Christian wife submit every decision for her husband’s stamp of approval?
Does God want us to take the household framework of husband, wife, children and slaves and try to replicate it here and now, or might there be another way to translate God’s words to our time?
How can we apply Paul’s words to early Christian households to the great variety of Christian home situations we have today – including single parent families, extended families living together, blended families, and more..
What I want to do is to treat this large section as a whole, which it is, and to treat Paul’s words fairly by examining:
•    The context – who was Paul writing to, how were they living, how was Paul writing to their particular situation?
•    The verbs  – what attitudes and actions does God want all Christian households to put into practice?
•    The values – what are the core values of the Christian home?

run to Sunday!

But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.  Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.  For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person — such a man is an idolater — has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.  Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient.  Therefore do not be partners with them.
For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth)  and find out what pleases the Lord.  Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.  For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.  But everything exposed by the light becomes visible,  for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said: “Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
Ephesians 5:3-14

One of my favorite Van Morrison songs is called The Bright Side of the Road:

From the dark and lonely street
To the bright side of the road
We’ll be lovers once again
On the bright side of the road

Van the man contrasts walking on the dark end of the street – a lonely and destructive place – to “The Bright Side of the Road” – a place where two lovers walk hand in hand in the clear light of day.
Today’s passage from Ephesians contrasts walking in darkness with walking in light.

Paul’s encouragement to walk in the light is the fourth in a series of five walking instructions in Ephesians:

1. As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to walk (live a life) worthy of the calling you have received.        Eph. 4.1
2. So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer walk (live) as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.           Eph. 4.17
3. Walk in love (live a life of love), just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.          Eph. 5.2
4. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.  Walk (live) as children of light        Eph. 5.8
5. Be very careful, then, how you walk (live) — not as unwise but as wise,        Eph. 5.15

Thus far in Ephesians, we have learned to:

• walk in a way that is worthy of our calling
• not walk against God’s purposes, as we did in our pre-Christian days
• walk in self-giving love, as Jesus loves us by giving himself up for us

Now we come to a new walking instruction, in Ephesians 5:8, where the Word says:

• that we are to walk in the light because we are light.
• Light is who we are; in the light is where we belong.
• We no longer are darkness, so therefore we must no longer walk in darkness

Walking in darkness as opposed to walking in light is a contrast that is sprinkled throughout the Bible.  A couple of examples:

• The people walking in darkness have seen a great light… Isaiah 9:2
• Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.  John 8:2

God’s great Old Testament heartache was that Israel never lived up to her true identity.  God created Israel to be His people, gave them the gift of His presence, and commissioned them to be faithful to Him, to act justly and ethically.  By walking in the light they would fulfill their identity as God’s light to the nations  (Isaiah 51:4; 60:3).

For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person — such a man is an idolater — has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.  Ephesians 5:5

Israel’s first step into darkness, a step which led to all the others, was idolatry:
God’s people pursued other gods and neglected their own God.
The gift of God’s own presence wasn’t enough for Israel – they had to have more.  They were curious about the gods of the Egyptians, Canaanites and others.  Their own God, Yahweh, prohibited them from carving or painting images of what they thought God might look like, in order to preserve the purity of their union with Yahweh.  But the other nations made plenty of pictures and statues of their Gods – and so the Israelites often became envious of the artsy crowd down the road.

They went over and bought some little statues, worshiped the other gods, and gradually their lives became less and less filled with God’s light, and more and more filled with the dark and immoral lifestyles of the surrounding tribes and nations.

In the Ephesian believers, Paul saw the same sort of link between pursuing other gods, idolatry, and the behavior of some followers of Jesus.
Paul makes this link between bad behavior and idolatry in verse 5:
For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person — such a man is an idolater — has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.  Ephesians 5:5
So now we have both a central theme, walk in the light, and apowerful force that could keep is in the dark, idolatry.
Tomorrow, Sunday, we’ll explore all this further.

run to Sunday!

Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body.  “In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry,  and do not give the devil a foothold.  He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need.

Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Ephesians 4:25-5:2

Is it possible to do something good, only to spoil it with a bad attitude or angry outburst?  You bet! Been there – done that.
We’ve all heard the phrase “walk the talk” as a charge to us Christians to let our good deeds back up the good words we say about God.    This week’s passage, Ephesians 4:25-5:1 looks at the words/deeds partnership from the opposite angle.  Paul directs us to let our speech be consistent with our faith.
In last week’s passage, Ephesians 4:17-24, Paul wrote about living out of our new Christian identity instead of our old pre-Christian existence. This week’s text has an additional word about actions, the works of our hands.  In verse 28, Paul says that instead of using our hands to steal from others, we should put our hands to better use, working with them, and then opening them in generosity towards the needy.
But what of the person who works hard, but with a grumpy attitude?  What of the Christian who labors from 8-4:30, enjoying his co-workers, only to come home and treat his family badly? In this week’s passage, Paul says that our words as well as our deeds can reflect that we are God’s people.   How does this happen?   We live out of our new identity as God’s children, patterning our lives after Jesus, living lives of love with hope and energy drawing on his indwelling, unlimited power.
run to Sunday!

It’s been awhile – for various reasons – but now I am blogging again.

This week our kids go back to school.  Our two older kids will be in high school, one a junior and the other a freshman. Last week we went to Rio Mesa for freshman parents orientation, for academics and for the football program.  Trevor received jersey number 6 and has been practicing at wide receiver and defensive back.  Whatever playing time he gets will likely be at d-back.  The football program seems like it has the kids’ best interests at heart.

What most impressed me at the football meeting was listening to the coaches talk about training the boys to be better people as well as better players.  The head coach made the point that success, or at least effort, in school is a good predictor of success in life.  One thing I like about this high school is that the educators I have heard and met so far seem to really care about the kids, and go to great lengths to motivate them to learn not only the curriculum, but also life lessons that will help them to be successful people with healthy relationships.

The vast majority of choices high school students make have to do with their relationships.  Students live in relationship with parents, siblings, fellow students, and teachers; most choices they make are about those connections.

Center your life on the truth that is in Jesus verse 21
The most important thing about you is not what you do for a living, or how much money you make, or what clique you are in high school, or who your friends are – or  even your family background
The most important thing about you is that you are in Christ and Christ is in you.  We spend lots of time cultivating what is far less important – hobbies, reputation, image…
God wants us to make the effort – with the Spirit’s help – to cultivate Christ in our lives.  Seems like a pain – another religious thing to do – but it is amazing how once we take a step of faith – God id faithful to make it fun and interesting.  Take a step this week to cultivate your faith in Christ – and do it with someone else for it’s a lot more fun that way.  Try one or more of these ways of re-centering your life in Christ
Join a group of people who talk about Jesus
– encourage someone in their faith
get into a spiritual conversation
reach out in mission
pick up your Bible – cultivate Christ is the truth – the center  – of your life
Secondly in the school of Christ we are called to as Paul writes   Put off your old self, your former way of life  verse 22
As you make a new Christian habit, give an old pre-Christian habit to him – we’ve all got to deal with this – even pastors and elders and deacons
What is it that stops you form living out of that new Christian clothing that new identity God has given you in Christ
Is it grumpiness, rudeness, intolerance?
Deos your anger get the best of you?
Are you unable to see the other person’s point of view?
Do what others think of you matter more than living the Christian life?
Continually ask the Holy Spirit to renew your mind, that you might make wise relational and other kinds of decisions.
Put on the new self, living as Christians more and more each day, submitting our selves to Christ and His mission.
remember who you are – a baptized freshly clothed believer in Christ!
Give your faith away – no matter how young or old you are in Christ – part of your identity in Him is to serve as he served – so get out there and share the faith and life that God has given us in Christ
Serve in the church
Serve in the world

Friends – its time to go back to the school of Christ – to re-cloak ourselves in our Christian identity

more tomorrow….
run to Sunday!

(download May newsletter here)

Last week we received a request to host a memorial service for a young man who had been killed in a motorcycle accident.  Our immediate reaction was to agree to host the service, even though the family had no connection to our church.  Our office staff moved quickly to make arrangements, and the Boy Scouts graciously agreed to reschedule their use of the sanctuary for Monday night.

About a dozen family members came in to meet with me to plan the service.  They were devastated; eyes downcast and puffy with tears.  It was a Thursday night, and so with OneLife happening, Martha and Jenna were able to be in the crib room watching the little kids whose father had died.  The kids didn’t grasp what had happened; they played while the adults grieved and planned.

As Nick and I met with the family, our message to them was that we want to help them in any way we could.  They in turn wanted us to provide spiritual guidance, prayers, scripture and music for those who come to the service wondering why God had allowed such a terrible thing to happen.  As we were finishing up with our planning, we walked into the sanctuary, where we talked some more, then held hands as we prayed.

Later on that night, at the OneLife meeting, we were encouraged to care more about the people of the city than about our own success.     If we do our part, in caring for the people all around us, then God would do His part, blessing us in our ministry.

On Monday night over four hundred people – maybe closer to five hundred – packed our church sanctuary to say goodbye to their friend.  There was absolutely not a seat left in the house; people were standing against the walls, sitting in the overflow area, filling the choir loft, and spilling out in the narthex watching on the TV monitor. I shared encouragement from God’s Word.   Several family members and friends spoke also, remembering their friend and encouraging us to support one another.  Nick sang, as did a friend of the family named Cee Cee, whose twin sister was killed several years ago as an innocent bystander in a police chase.  Dozens of family members and friends thanked us afterwards; we praise God that we were able to show the love of Jesus to this slice of the Oxnard community.  All we did was say yes to the opportunity God provided.

Our ministry with this circle of people will continue, as our church sends out grief books at regular intervals to the widow, as Nick and I follow up with the people we met, and as we say yes to future opportunities for community outreach.

Resurrection is something only God can do, and He is doing it, making all things new, all around us, each and every day.  Our part is to say yes to God’s work in our lives, yes to the opportunities God gives us to love people in His name.

Think about it:  What is your focus, on just living life and succeeding, or on helping people in Jesus’ name?  God hurts for the people of this city; he wants to bring them new life, working through us, His church.

Jesus is alive and is making all things new.  The Lord is risen indeed!

run to Sunday!

Dear members and friends,

What do the baseball season and Easter have in common this year?  They both came early…. The season began on March 24th instead of the first week of April, with the Red Sox beating the Athletics in Tokyo.    And Easter was early also, coming on March 23rd.

Rabbi John Sherwood sent me an email containing the following:
The next time Easter will be this early (March 23) will be the year 2228 (220 years from now). The last time it was this early was 1913 (so if you’re 95 or older, you are the only ones that were around for that!).

The earliest Easter you will ever experience is over… or is it?  In the New Testament, Easter was a spectacular event; yet arguably even more spectacular is the continuing effect of Jesus’ resurrection on the world.

Without the resurrection, Jesus would have been a footnote in history, the New Testament and the church would not exist, billions would not know God through Christ, and all the tremendous works of compassion and education resulting from Christian mission would not have happened.

Even so, the resurrection of Christ is undervalued, both in society and in the church.  A couple of weeks ago, I wanted to put together an Easter hymn medley that went beyond the standard once-a-year hymns we sing on Easter.   So I looked over a couple of hymnals for compositions that speak to the resurrection in at least one stanza.   I only found one or two.

I was amazed to find the vast majority of hymns that trace the Christ-story go right from the cross to the second coming without even mentioning the risen Christ.   How Great Thou Art , one of my favorites, exemplifies this trends, moving from the cross in stanza three, to the return of Christ in stanza four, skipping over the resurrection entirely.  Most of our hymns are from a few decades when perhaps some theological truths were emphasized and others were not.

But resurrection is coming back into our music!  Several songs written in the past decade come to mind: Mighty to Save  “you rose and conquered the grave,” also You are My King “ I’m alive and well, your Spirit is within me, because You died and rose again,” and finally How Deep the Father’s Love for Us “I will boast in Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection.”   The church seems to be gradually rediscovering the power of the risen Christ, at least in our music.

Some of you may know that one of my favorite theologians is N.T. Wright.   Bishop Wright preached the following in his Easter sermon this past Sunday:

Easter is about real life, not escapist fantasy. Easter is about God’s judgment, calling the world to account and setting up his new, glorious creation of freedom and peace, and summoning all people everywhere to live in this new world. Easter is about God’s rich welcome to all humankind. We Easter people are called to celebrate all of that in practical ways, as well as in glad and uninhibited worship.

And it’s all because Easter is about Jesus: the Jesus who announced God’s saving, sovereign kingdom; the Jesus who died to exhaust the power of this world’s rulers; the Jesus who rose again to be crowned as king over all things in heaven and on earth.

Hear it again:  In the Risen Christ, we are called to glad and uninhibited worship.    I think we experienced a bit of that on Easter Sunday, as our skillful and prayerful musicians did more than perform, they led us to worship the risen Christ with voice, organ, guitar, trumpet and drums.

Hear it again:  Easter is about God in Christ setting up his new, glorious creation.  In another sermon, preached at a Christian hospital dedication, the bishop spoke of the hospital’s ministry in light of God’s new creation:

(The hospital) offers healing and hope, not just as a crumb of comfort before we leave this world and go somewhere else, but as a genuine anticipation, and advance foretaste, of the new creation in which all wrongs will be righted, all hurts will be healed, and God will wipe away all tears from all eyes.

I am delighted that our church is sponsoring two surgeries at the CURE International hospital in the Dominican Republic.  We look forward to hearing about how God’s new creation, with the power of resurrection healing, will change the lives of two children and their families.

Bishop Wright closed his Easter sermon with these words:

God give us grace, this day and from now on, to live as Easter people, celebrating Jesus’ love and joy at his table and making his kingdom and justice known in his world.

May our hearts and voices continue to resonate with the sounds of resurrection; may our hands extend God’s rich welcome to everyone; may our feet take us to places where new creation needs to happen the most.

Christ is risen indeed!

Pastor Ted

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Romans 6:8-11

Easter “eBay or bElieve” sermon part 1:

Easter “eBay or bElieve” sermon part 2:

I am an occasional customer of eBay, the online auction house. I’ve bought maybe 6 or 8 items there over the years, northing out of the ordinary.
Mostly spare parts for computers, cell phone accessories. Back in Zimbabwe, in Africa where we used to live, eBay was used by several people we knew as kind of a connection to the outside world, to the larger culture.
eBay has helped some people begin small businesses and others increase their sales. My cousin Donni started a small side business shopping for vintage clothing at thrift shops and when she found rare items she put them up for sale on eBay.

Donni’s sister, my cousin Barbara, designs whimsical jewelry which she sells on eBay.
But beyond the normal items for sale there have been more than a few really strange items for sale over eBay’s history -– my favorites come in the “iconic food” category:

First up is the Virgin Mary on a half eaten ten year old grilled cheese sandwich, which sold on eBay for $28,000.
Another strange food item auctioned off on the internet is Jesus on a fish stick
You have to be 200% Catholic to get this I think – it is a Nacho cheese flavored Dorito shaped like the Pope’s hat – and amazingly this single Dorito sold for $1035
Back to the grilled cheese – how about a Hello Kitty on a grilled cheese which sold for only $61.00 – nothing compared with the $28k cheesy Mary– still – you could make a living if you sold enough Hello Kitty sandwiches at $60 a pop

One particular eBay item caught my attention last week. An Australian man wrote the following on the web site alife4sale.com
“Hi there, my name is Ian Usher, and I have had enough of my life! I don’t want it any more! You can have it if you like!…. it’s all going up for sale in one big auction. Everything I have and everything I am. On the day it is all sold and settled I intend to walk out of my front door with my wallet in one pocket and my passport in the other, nothing else at all, and get on the train, with no idea where I am going or what the future holds for me.”

So in June – just over two months away – Ian plans to sell his house, car, everything – not piece by piece but all at once – – in fact he is claiming that – if you are the winning bidder his friends – will actually try and become your friends – and that his employer will give the winning bidder a two week trial in Ian’s job….

Now while the right person could possibly settle in quickly to Ian’s old life – the trouble for Ian is that – no matter where he goes and what kind of new life he begins – Ian will still be Ian.

And if what we know about human nature is true, Ian will probably gravitate once again into the relationships and behavior which caused him to grow so weary of his life that he wants to sell it.

And so unless Ian has some kind of inner change, it is unlikely that changing all the surrounding stuff and people on the outside is really going to have any lasting effect on Ian. Imagine that – you sell your whole life, and nothing really changes.

Romans 6:8 from today’s scripture reading points us towards a kind of change that is vastly different from the change Ian Usher will experience after his eBay auction.
The change Paul wrote about in Romans 6:8 is both real and lasting. It’s the kind of change that affects both our life here on earth, and also our life after we die.
The change Paul describes doesn’t involve auctioning a house or spouse or pets or cars – in fact there is no auction or sale involved at all

Let’s take a close look at what Paul is saying here about the change which a connection with Jesus Christ can bring in our lives:

Look at the first three words of Romans 6:8… Now if we – Paul includes each and every person who trusts in Christ in his statement.
So if everyone who believes is included in this statement, there is no one left out – no one left behind – except of course those who don’t believe.

Some variations of Christianity make it seem like the pastors or priests or elders or deacons have kind of an inside track but for Paul here in Romans 6 it is just “we who believe” – Everyone who trusts in Christ is included in the life change Paul is offering – we’re all on a level playing field.

Now the next part of the sentence
Now if we died with Christ - How it this possible for us have died with Christ? When Jesus died, he died alone. Even his closest friends abandoned him. Two criminals died on crosses alongside Jesus, but Paul’s not talking about them. He is talking about us.

Paul is talking here about our life as it is – especially the bad parts – the parts we’d like to forget, or hide, or do over. In saying that we who believe have died with Christ, Paul means this bad part, or sinful nature, of every human being died when Christ died.

Sounds great – but how is that possible? Where is the connection between the badness in us and the death of Christ Jesus nearly 2000 years ago. How could my life in 2008 possibly be connected with Jesus’ death in the year 30 AD?

This leads us to the next two words in Romans 6:8

we believe – another way of saying this would be we have faith or we trust

Faith – belief – trust - is what connects our life here and now with the death of Christ back then. The death of Christ is both true in history and also true now “for us”,
Baseball season is coming and so let me use a baseball analogy –It is as if Christ dying and rising back then pitched the ball, and now by faith we have caught it.

• By faith, by belief, by trusting what he did for us, we become a part of what his death on that cross
• Faith unites us with the death of Christ. We therefore can say that “we died with Him”.
• By faith we can say our sin went to the cross with Him.
• By faith we can say our selfish nature died with Jesus – and then by faith and by the power of God’s Spirit.

Karl Barth says that our faith need not be complete – it is normal, and acceptable to come to Christ “with question marks as well as with exclamation points”
This is great news! We don’t need to have it all figured out in order to follow Jesus.
There is a cult group which meets in Lake Hughes California. They think that in order to faithfully follow Christ you need to have every piece of the Bible – every belief about God – figured out correctly. Not surprisingly, this group believes that they and only they are the true church.

The next phrase after we believe speaks to the second half of the “in Christ” reality:

we will also live with him

Because Jesus Christ was raised from the dead – we trust God that a new person, a new you and the new me, will stand alive at the end of history.
Paul is talking about our resurrection being tied to Christ’s resurrection.
This is not heaven – floating around on clouds. Neither Jews nor early Christians believed in heaven the way most people do today.
When Paul says “we will also live with Him” he means that just as Jesus was bodily raised, and then met with his friends eating laughing teaching loving – so also shall you and I who believe be raised to that kind of new life at the end of history in a resurrection body.
When we die, our spirits go to Christ. When history ends and when Christ returns, all believers in Christ are raised just as Christ was raised on Easter.

So to sum up, faith connects us with Christ, in death and in life.
The “old me” is dead in Christ, by faith united with Him in his death.
The “new me” will be made alive in Christ at the future resurrection, when Christ shall return and “the dead shall be raised, incorruptible”

Faith in Christ is what distinguishes someone who is a Christian from someone who is not.
If you trust that Jesus God in human form, and that Jesus died and was raised for you, then you have become a Christian.
Faith is the test, – and a word for testing out who a person really is, is found the OT – the word is shibboleth.

In Judges chapter 12, the men from Gilead had taken control of the Jordan river crossing from the men of another tribe named Ephraim. The defeated men of Ephraim had to cross back over the Jordan to get home. To be allowed safe passage back over the river, they had to pretend to be Gileadites. And so the Gileadites had to devise a test to see who was truly one of their own, and who was not. So they asked the men crossing over to pronounce a word that only a man of their own tribe could pronounce, as a test. Are you one of us, or not?

Let’s read from Judges
The Gileadites took the fords of the Jordan against the Ephraimites. Whenever one of the fugitives of Ephraim said, “Let me go over,” the men of Gilead would say to him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” When he said, “No,” they said to him, “Then say Shibboleth,” but he said, “Sibboleth,” for he could not pronounce it right. Then they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Judges 12:5-6

I want to show you a brief video clip from the series, The West Wing. In this clip, President Bartlet receives in the Oval Office a Chinese refugee who is part of a group seeking asylum in the USA because they have been persecuted in China as Christians.
The President must determine if the man and his group are genuine Christians, or if they are just pretending in order to come into the USA.

Do you pass the shibboleth test? Do you know a few things about religion – which never seems to be enough –
Or today – maybe for the first time – do you realize that faith – and not a list of memorized facts – is what can change your life?

Do you believe that faith in the risen Christ can bring true and lasting change?

Do you have faith today to say yes I have died with Christ – yes I am alive with him… and yes – I want to join with other Christians to change the world one person at a time.

Your life may have lots of question marks as well as exclamation points, mine does also
but don’t give up and auction your life on eBay…
Don’t give up on your life -
Have faith;
See your life as a life worth saving – that’s how God sees you. Trust your life to Jesus today….

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again!

run to Sunday!

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage — with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

2 Timothy 4:1-5

The message below was spread out over two Sundays, Feb 24 and Mar 2.

There’s been a fierce argument over this past week on the importance of words. The two remaining Democratic presidential candidates have been going back and forth on how important words are. Since one of the candidates is a more inspiring speaker, the other one is naturally minimizing the importance of words and speeches.

I am biased in favor of words. As I read history, what I see is that great speeches and sermons and fireside chats can make a huge difference in the church, and in the world.

How much more so, then, can the words of Almighty God shape human events, and hearts, and minds?

Paul writes in our text about the ministry of proclaiming God’s Word – preaching and teaching. After thirty years of preaching and teaching, Paul gave Timothy his mission statement:

Preach The Word.

My message is influenced by a 1967 John Stott sermon on this text. I found it on allsouls.org, my favorite sermon site.

The Word verse 2
When Paul writes “Preach The Word,” he means to preach the Bible. Now I’m sure many of you have heard speeches posing as sermons: A scripture is read before the speech, but the speech is not really a sermon, it is not really The Preached Word, because the speaker, doesn’t preach from God’s word, rather he or she speaks from his or her thoughts, loosely connected at best to a biblical text, or two or three or ten.

To preach The Word in the way that Paul intends means to preach The Bible:

First of all, Paul means to preach from the OT, which was his Bible and the Bible of the early church, before the NT was fully formed. Paul wanted Christians to open Genesis, Isaiah, Chronicles Psalms, Proverbs – the Older Testament to God’s covenant love for us.

Secondly, by Preach the Word Paul means to preach what the Apostles taught, the particular Christian message, the good news that: Jesus died, rose from death, and is coming again, and that by trusting in Christ we can know God and be part of God’s mission to save the world.

Later on after the apostles had all died, the next generation came together and prayerfully discerned from among all the early Christian writings what was scripture, and what was not; what came from the apostles and what did not, what measured up to the standard of apostlic teaching and what did not. Guided by the Holy Spirit, this was the process by which the NT was formed.

And so for us having both OT & NT in our hands, “Preach the Word” means to preach the OT, preach the NT, and in particular to preach the message about Jesus and his mission to save the world.

So the first phrase Paul uses to describe God’s message in v.2 is The Word.

The second phrase Paul uses in verse 3

sound doctrine v. 3

What did Paul mean by this phrase, sound doctrine? What does he mean when he predicts the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine?

One way to restate “sound doctrine” in light of Paul’s Greek original would be to say “healthy, or wholesome teaching.”

We know from our own experience that we as fallen people do not naturally gravitate towards what is healthy for us.

Paul wrote that people do not naturally seek out wholesome teaching, but he goes on to say (paraphrased) you, Timothy teach wholesomely in an unwholesome world. Give them what is right, what is proven, what is good for them, even when it opposes everything else they are hearing; teach them God’s Word. Don’t be tempted to always give them what they want; rather, give them what they really need, what is good for them, what will feed them, what will cause them to grow and become stronger.

Imagine if we gave our kids only what they asked for instead of what they really needed. What would your children’s world look like if they had only the things they asked for, and nothing else? I think we’d be looking at lots of candy, toys..

Kids ask for a lot of neat things, but besides giving them some of what they want, our job is to give kids a lot of what they need. Love. Affirmation. Security. An introduction to Jesus Christ. Responsibility. A sense of right and wrong. And of course Vegetables.

Paul knows that many would be begging for something new, fresh, exciting, interesting. Toys and Candy. A little of this and a little of that.

But Paul knew that to know God, people needed the whole Bible taught consistently, faithfully, soundly.

Paul knew that to be a part of God’s mission, people needed to understand who God is:

One God existing eternally in three persons.
Paul knew that to be whole, people needed to hear about
– the Father and his love
– The Son and his grace
– The Spirit and his peace

Paul wanted Timothy to give his people what is good for them – wholesome, healthy teaching about God and his Ways; in other words, sound doctrine.

The third phrase Paul uses is in v. 4,

the truth v.4

What does Paul mean when he writes: They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. ?

We see examples in the Bible of people easily diverted from what is central, from what is most important. It’s not only today that we humans have short attention spans; this phenomenon of people becoming easily distracted has been around forever.

The classic example is Moses going up to visit with God on Mount Sinai. Moses was about to meet with God. This is a pretty big deal.
Instead of sitting silently, or worshiping God, or praying for Moses at this most important moment, what did God’s people do?

They built a giant statute of a calf, and begin to worship that.

In the NT, reading the letter to the Hebrews, it is clear that some believers had moved away from direct worship of God and had begun to worship angels. Some easily distracted people began to take their eyes off of Christ and ask, well wasn’t Moses and weren’t the angels better than Jesus in some ways?

Talk about being distracted… Think of Jesus’ disciples, so easily side-tracked from Jesus and his mission, so quick to argue, to eager to fight and to jump to conclusions.

Even in some parts of God’s church today, people are easily distracted by leaders who stray away from what is central. These influential Christians, mostly to press their personal issues or to make a name for themselves, promote teachings, or doctrines, that are in direct conflict with God’s word.

They twist the truth about God and ask people to believe made up stories, myths and fables and other untruths that are so very interesting but ultimately untrue and empty, leading nowhere but to blind paths and dead ends.

Paul, by using the word truth, is saying that what we have in scripture is unchangeable. It comes from God and is given to us. Through humans and cultures to be sure, but form God. It is not for us to twist, change, or neglect the parts that we disagree with.

Rather, we are to approach God’s Word with hearts and minds wide open, to be led into the truth by the one who revealed it in the first place, the Holy Spirit.

As students of God’s Word, we seek to understand and apply God’s Word with minds and hearts engaged, studying diligently and praying fervently.

We want God’s Word to sink into us, to shape us, to lead us to the truth about God and His ways.

Some preachers and scholars act as if God’s word is a lump of clay to be shaped by them into something usable. This is folly. God’s word has been given to us, from God, through people. God is the potter, we are the clay. God uses the truth of his Word to mold us and to shape us

So thus far we have learned to approach the Scriptures as God’s Word, as Sound Doctrine, and as The Truth.

In discovering just how valuable God’s Word is, we’ve made an amazing find. This masterpiece which we can hold in our hands, and which anyone can own for just a few dollars, is in fact priceless.
Why? Because it is a message from God to us.

Back before we really knew its value, when the Bible was just a book those religious people read, when it was perhaps gathering dust on the bookshelf

Back then, we didn’t think much about what we should do with our Bible; after all, it was just cloth and paper like any other book

But now that we realize the value of it, we need to ask God a question – what do we do with this true, sound, healthy Word, this masterpiece- this message from God to us.

04 VISUAL PREACH THE WORD
Paul’s supplies an answer to this question in the central phrase of this passage –
that wonderful motto or mission statement for all Christians and for the whole church:

PREACH THE WORD

Long before there was internet, TV, radio or even newspapers, town criers stood out in to the public square, loudly proclaiming the news of the day.

This verb translated “Preach” means to proclaim, to publicly declare God’s message in the public marketplace of ideas and relationships.

And so besides preaching from the pulpit in the sanctuary, we as a church are called to get the word out there into the public marketplace; out into places like Starbucks, myspace, facebook and youtube, where people exchange messages and ideas, hopes and dreams.

It’s pretty cool that since we began posting on youtube last year, more than 400 times each month someone watches one of our videos. I really didn’t expect much action at all, yet in a small way, but beyond our modest expectations, the Word is getting out beyond our walls into the public arena.

Driving by our late 1960’s-designed campus (beautiful courtyard, nice interior, but someone stark-looking from the street), most people don’t seem to notice the signs & crosses. We’ve had comments that our buildings look like an office complex or a government facility.

What can we do about that? Well we have a wonderful public square here at the corner of busy “H” street, as people travelling north and south have to pause and wait for the 4 way stop, along with a steady stream of walkers. We are now considering ways in which to make our message more visible at the corner; to get the word out that Jesus is alive and that God’s Word is preached and taught in this place. The multi-talented Nick and I will be talking about increasing our visibility this week with our building & grounds guys… Nick has designed our new logo and is preparing the website for re-launch on Palm Sunday. Small but necessary steps…

We’re incrementally more effective in spreading the Word.   Small steps so far, with another step coming this Thursday evening as OneLife launches.   We want to get the Bible in people’s hands and Jesus in peoples hearts – and so we are starting a relational and contemporary Thursday night ministry geared to reaching people would not normally think of attending church on Sundays.

Bottom line – we are committed to preaching the Word, to getting God’s message out into the world.

Turning to today’s text, we hear the language of persuasion – the scripture is urging us to not be dissuaded from proclaiming God’s message.   Paul’s letter to Timothy was written in the ancient style of paraenesis, or exhortation, urging. A paraenetic letter is a letter that urges the reader to take particular actions. In our text today, we read of four exhortations to preach the word.
First , preach the Word in light of the reality of Jesus Christ

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word…

Notice that Paul writes about the God and Jesus in both the present and the future. Jesus stands with God as witness to our preaching, and Jesus stands ready to come again and wrap up the salvation of which we preach.

The point here is that Jesus is real, that he is really with us, and that he really and truly returning at the end of history. The story of his coming the first time, and the promise of his future return are not some made up jive. Jesus is real. He really came, lived and died for our sins. He truly rose from the grave. He is now present in this world, set high above as king, yet so near by His Spirit, empowering us in His mission. And truly he is coming back to finish everything left undone, to put the new heavens and new earth into action once and for all.

We spread God’s Word in light of the reality of Jesus, knowing that he stands with us as we preach, and that he stands ready to return when the time for preaching is done.
Second, preach God’s Word both urgently and consistently

Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season… 2 Tim 4:2

In Ecclesiastes we read that there is a time or a season for every human activity a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,  8 a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

Yet God wants us to be ready always – whatever season of life we find ourselves in – he wants us to always be ready to share our faith, to spread God’s Word  in season and out of season.

God wants us to preach and teach and otherwise spread God’s Word with a consistent urgency and passion:
– at all times and in all places
– both when it goes well and when it does not,
– when it is convenient to us and when it is not, consistently, in season and out of season   whether times seem favorable or not, whether it is a bother or not – keep on spreading the word like a farmer sows seed…

This instruction is not just for pulpit preachers but for all who hold God’s Word in their hands, for all who hold Jesus in their hearts. We are to take this word – this masterpiece – and get it out there! We’re not to wait for the world come here to find Jesus, our commission is to take Jesus with us out into the world.

But what about people’s feelings?  What about people’s right not to be offended, not to be intruded upon?  Shouldn’t we leave the evangelism, the persuasion to the Baptists and Pentecostals?  We’re proper Presbyterians after all.

John Stott, and Anglican priest, speaking to a reserved British audience
taught that we can share the Word, which sometimes offends on its own, without being offensive ourselves…..

Stott exhorts us to share the gospel:
* Urgently, but not rudely, or insensitively
* Clearly, yet not as a pusher, rather as someone who gently invites people to trust in Christ
* Faithfully, but not as someone who has faith all figured out.

Third, preach the Word practically, with real world relevance

…correct, rebuke and encourage… 2 Tim 4:2
When we preach, teach or share God’s word, it should in connect with people where they are.
•    It should have a practical impact on people’s lives.
•    It should relate to them where they are.
•    John Stott calls for Christians to know God’s Word and, equally as thoroughly, to know and be engaged in this world.  One foot in scripture and one in the world.  His book on preaching is called Between Two Worlds.

Paul in our text uses three very practical verbs to describe the scripture’s relevance –correct, rebuke and encourage
These three verbs describe ways in which the variety of messages in Scripture can address a variety of people in various situations:

* When we are full of doubt, God’s Word can correct or convince us out of doubt and into faith
* When we are full of sin, God’s Word can rebuke or convict us of sin and cause them to turn from sin and towards God through Christ,
* When we are full of fear, God’s Word can encourage, lift up, cast a vision of a good God and of a hopeful future walking with a mighty God who protects us and assures us that there is no reason to fear or fret because God is with us..

Some have called the Bible an owner’s manual. I wonder what would happen if you opened the owner’s manual to your car and found 66 separate books – history, poetry, wisdom literature, prophecy about your car’s future, etc..

A better description of the Bible would be to say it is the story of God. From cover to cover the Bible tells of a God who begins by creating and ends by re-creating.

In between the Bible is a great big epic story of a God who creates, seeks and saves, and of people being encountered by God who calls them into relationship. Some run towards God and embrace Him; others run away.

But while the Bible is a great big epic, it is also a very practical guide to daily living, which is where we get the “owner’s manual” description.

The Bible can be applied directly to so many life-situations:

gossip, conflict, decision-making, doubt, fear, worry, stress, sickness, you name the human condition and the Bible has something to say about it.

So the Bible is a practical book, and as we spread God’s Word, we can help others to understand just how relevant it is to their lives.
Fourth, preach the Word carefully and patiently, allowing God to bring the results
…with great patience and careful instruction.
But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

These two verses sound a bit like a commitment to military service. Those of us enrolled in God’s service (all believers) have duties to discharge, like a soldier does.
The work we do is the work of the evangelist, the one who spreads the good news message, the Word of God, the gospel.
The life we live is blessed with God’s presence, but it’s sometimes very hard.
The stress level gets high, yet we must keep our heads screwed on straight, keep on thinking clearly, not letting ourselves get sidetracked or react sinfully.

We hold in our hands the Bible, God’s Word, to be preached and shared anywhere there are people who need to hear it. Not just on Sundays, but every day. Not just to church people, but to everyone.

Preach the Word: urgently, passionately, consistently, patiently, practically; all by the power of the Spirit, in the presence of God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ!

run to Sunday!

The blog is back after more than a month off for Christmas, the mission trip, the Super Bowl (no I have not gotten over it yet) and more.

We are in the midst of Bible Month at First Pres. Why “Bible Month”? Goes back to a decision we made at session (our church council), having reflected on what some mega-churches, particularly Willow Creek, have uncovered in self-evaluation. Seems that Willow, with thousands in attendance, wanted to evaluate their ministry of the past two decades. On numbers alone, you’d have to say they are successful. Lots of people, pastors, buildings, money, projects, influence.

However, when they asked their people if they had made progress in their spiritual lives, the answer was a resounding no. Wow.

Willow Creek is now saying that over two decades that their ministries gave people the following impression: if you showed up to their excellent services and programs, you would grow spiritually. Willow now confesses that they failed to teach people to take responsibility for their own spiritual lives, to become self-feeders. Willow believes that they created a dependency on programs, and never communicated that the programs were intended to supplement private spiritual practice, not to replace it. People faithfully showed up to Willow week after week, year after year, delegating responsibility for their own growth to the mega-church professionals. Thousands of churches followed this model. Millions remained treading spiritual water.

Our response at First Pres is to set aside a month for the promotion of personal Bible study. Is this just another church program, creating more dependency on the church? Maybe; but we hope not. Our aim is to help people make the Sunday-Monday connection, to self-feed from Scripture on the weekdays, to take responsibility for spiritual growth, rooted in personal study of the Word.

Sundays after worship we are listening to the excellent John Stott lecture series The Bible and the Christian Life. This series provides a solid foundation on the nature of scripture and how to approach it. I am roughly coordinating my Sunday sermons to the Stott series:

2/17 2 Tim 3:14-17 Hear the Message

2/24 2 Tim 4:1-5 Teach the Message

3/2 2 Tim 4:6-18 Mobilize the Message

3/9 Women’s Sunday – service led by Presbyterian Women

3/16 Luke 19:28-40 Activate the Message

3/23 Luke 24:1-12 Live the Message

3/30 Guest Preacher,
Rev. Craig Jones of the Theological College of Zimbabwe

_____________________________________________________________________

In his second letter to Timothy, Paul wrote this letter from the emperor’s prison in Rome, where he was being held for the last time.  Paul knew the end was near; this colored his message to Timothy. As we read 2 Timothy, we catch Paul’s sense of satisfaction in the sufficiency of Christ, mingled with alarm at the dangers facing the church, and urgency for ensuring the integrity of the preached word and the church.

Second Timothy is the last letter from Paul that we have. One might call it Paul’s last will and testament, handed over to his delegate, Timothy. Timothy was trained, commissioned and sent by Paul. With Paul in chains, Timothy spoke for Paul, and so in Timothy the Word of God was “unchained” …I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But God’s word is not chained. (2 Tim 2:9)

When you move from one job to the next, or retire, isn’t it satisfying to hand over your job confident that your successor has every opportunity to succeed? At each of my ministry transitions, I have been blessed to leave with every confidence that the ministry would move forward under new leadership. It’s a good feeling to know that the person who follows you is called and capable, and that the ministry you are passing on is in good shape.

The Paul-Timothy transition happened at an unstable time for the church. In many ways the church had yet to find its feet. Paul’s letters project an unswerving faith in the Lordship of Christ over the church and the world. Surely with Jesus on the throne, everything would work out well for God’s people.

But in 2 Timothy, Paul seems gravely concerned about the future of the church. With Paul in prison, Timothy had become the focus of attacks from Paul’s opponents. Paul paints a picture of the gospel’s opponents and their teaching throughout 2 Timothy:

They say that the resurrection has already taken place, and they destroy the faith of some. 2 Tim 2:18

Comment – The message preached by the opponents is different than the apostolic message; the false teachers taught that believers in Christ did not have a future resurrection to look forward to.

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God — having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them. 2 Tim 3:1-5

Comment – The self-centered lifestyle of the opponents is different than Christ-centered servant lifestyle lived out by the apostles.

…while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. 2 Tim 3:13

Comment – The opponents are named as both evil and false; they are pretending to be good apostles, but they are neither sent from God (apostles) nor are they good.

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 2 Tim 4:3-4

Comment – The apostolic teaching is named as “sound;” (see 1 Tim 1:10) one could substitute the phrase “tested truth.” Opponents of the gospel will not gravitate towards tested truth, but rather towards untested ideas, new teaching to satisfy consumers wanting the latest variety, the trendiest model. Truth, predicts Paul, will matter less to people than novelty, and so people will believe myths which tickle their ears. False ideas will be adopted instead of time-tested truths.

Continue in The Message Paul was concerned for “Continuity in Content.” He knew that Timothy was a different person than he was, and that in every local congregation the leadership would take on a different look and feel, relative to both the leadership and the context. Change was inevitable. But for Paul there was one thing that could not change, the content of the message about Jesus Christ.

For Paul, who Jesus is and what he did were realities that neither a changing world nor changing leadership could alter. The message proclaiming the person and work of Jesus Christ could not be changed, because to change the message would be to bear false witness, to lie, about God and His work.

Paul urged Timothy to trust the message he had received from trustworthy people, specifically from Timothy’s mother and grandmother as well as from Paul himself. (2 Tim 1:5) Timothy received the gospel from people he knew, who cared about him, not from strangers who were here today, gone tomorrow. Kind of like the contrast between the ministry of a good pastor or elder and that of a TV personality. One is invested in your life, the other just an image on a screen.

Timothy was raised in a godly family and so he learned the scriptures (OT) from an the age of five, according to Jewish practice. His family’s role was crucial, but Timothy came to faith as the Spirit shaped him though Scripture, which made him wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Learning the OT scriptures prepared Timothy’s heart for the message of Christ, and so Timothy believed and was saved through the true message taught by true people.

God-breathed Scripture God’s revelation in Jesus Christ unfolded in time and history, was witnessed by the apostles, and recorded in Scripture. The message about Jesus is the culmination of all in Scripture. Paul says here that all scripture was breathed upon, or inspired, by God. Just as God breathed, creating the first people, so also God breathed, creating the scriptures.

The Bible was written by humans, but ultimately it came from God. In our passage the Bible is called, uniquely in the NT, holy scriptures. The word holy speaks to the divine origin of the scriptures. Men wrote them down, but the words came, through human hearts and minds and hands, from God.

This is a crucial point. Not only are the scriptures words of men pointing to God, they are also words of God. All scripture, meaning every book of the Bible, is the Word, and all books together, the whole Bible, is the Word. We believe that God worked in and through the authors of scripture to produce messages that tell us how God saves, and how we can be a part of God’s salvation. We believe that God worked through the early church to canonize, or set the rule, of what is scripture and what is not. The Bible is a finished work.

The gospel part of Scripture is the “good news message,” that which was preached by the apostles, and so we use the adjective apostolic to describe the content of the gospel message. The apostles uniquely received their authority to speak and to write the New Testament from Jesus himself. One may measure modern teachings about Christ against the gospel preached by the apostles. False teachings about Christ are different from what the apostles taught; true teachings are apostolic, consistent with what the apostles preached and taught, as authorized by Jesus himself.

The Use of Scripture

…useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Good things in life may be used properly, or abused dangerously. Paul wrote here to show how scripture could be used properly, in contrast to the abuse of scripture practiced by false teachers out for their own gain.

The false teachers abused the Bible by interpreting scripture wrongly to prove their false teaching and to justify their false living. Paul encouraged the right use of Scripture for teaching the truth and correcting falsehood, for rebuking selfish living and commending the Christ-centered life.

The overarching purpose of using the Bible properly is so that each person called by God would be well-equipped to do the work of God.

And so to sum it all up:

• Let’s continue living the scripture-based live, as first shared with us by trustworthy messengers.
• Let’s trust the scriptures because they are inspired by God and because they lead us to Christ who saves us.
• Let’s use the scriptures daily, so that we are well-equipped to serve God.

run to Sunday!

When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son. Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy, and they shared her joy.

On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah, but his mother spoke up and said, “No! He is to be called John.”

They said to her, “There is no one among your relatives who has that name.”

Then they made signs to his father, to find out what he would like to name the child. He asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone’s astonishment he wrote, “His name is John.” Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue was loosed, and he began to speak, praising God. The neighbors were all filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these things. Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, “What then is this child going to be?” For the Lord’s hand was with him.

His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied: “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and has redeemed his people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago), salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us — to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath he swore to our father Abraham: to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.”

And the child grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the desert until he appeared publicly to Israel.

Luke 1:57-80

Reggie Jackson was a big power hitter for the Oakland A’s and NY Yankees in the 1970’s.  Jackson batted fourth in the lineup, known as the cleanup spot, since it was his job to clean the first three batters from the bases to score at home plate.   Reggie used to say that if the first three batters did not get on base, then he could not do his job of hitting them home.

Imagine that Jesus is the cleanup hitter, the one who brings home the message of salvation to those who are willing to receive Him.
If Jesus is the cleanup hitter, then who hits in front of him?  Who prepared the people of Israel to open their ears and hearts to receive Jesus?

John was his name – John the Baptist.   John came before Jesus to say that people must prepare themselves for the coming of the Lord.   John came to say that people should listen to Jesus, because he would speak the truth   John came to say that people should follow Jesus, because he would lead them to know God the Father

When John was born, Luke tells us that “Elizabeth’s neighbors and relatives shared her joy.”  In middle Eastern cultures when a child is about to be born, family members, friends and often times a band of local musicians gather outside the home.    A child’s birth was an occasion to strike up the band!  Hey maybe we ought to send our church choir out to the hospital whenever a child is born to our congregation!

Every male among you shall be circumcised.  You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.  Genesis 17:10

Eight days after John was born, he still didn’t have a name. A father would normally name, or at least agree to a name, for his son. Normally the family would not wait eight days to name their child.  But remember that John’s father Zechariah had lost his ability to speak, and probably his hearing also, when he did not believe the angel’s word to him.
All Israelite boys had to be circumcised.  This was Jewish law, to make the mark of the covenant on each boy.  It would happen on the 8th day after the son was born.  The father would perform the deed on his own son, who would then be marked for life as one of God’s people.
Circumcision of baby boys is very common today, but back when God first told Abraham that Israelite boys should be circumcised, it was something new to them, something that marked God’s people as being different from all the other uncircumcised tribes who were their neighbors.

Circumcision was both public and private; the whole family gathered for the event, and the whole community knew that Jewish boys had the covenant mark.

But at the same time the mark was in a private area, and so if he wanted to, a Jewish man could pretend not to be a Jew, and no one would know.
The same thing goes for baptism – it happens publicly, but there is no giant B or cross on our heads, and so it is up to us whether to live like Christians or not, since when we are out there in the world, and sometimes out there it is only God and us – and it is up to us in those moments whether to follow Christ or not.
This is the kind of relationship God wants with us; public in the sense that we are ready to let people know about our faith, yet also private in that we try to do what is right even when we think that no one else is looking.

Picture this –whole extended family – Elizabeth and Zechariah’s grandmothers, aunties – everyone – crowds into the family home for the circumcision and they can’t believe that he doesn’t have a name yet.

When you were a young adult, did your parents or other relatives ever try and make or influence  those kinds of decision for you:  “you really should name that baby boy after your grandfather, he will be so thrilled!!!”

Well in this case that is exactly what happened.  Luke tells us that the relatives coming into the house said “he doesn’t have a name yet?  Let’s name him after his father – Zechariah!”
Elizabeth knew her husband could not speak, and so she spoke up – “No, we will call him John” – the name given to them by the angel
But the word of a woman in that culture wasn’t enough – those busybody relatives persisted:
“John” they said  “why John’s not a family name.. how could you name him John?”

At that moment Zechariah regained his faith.  It is amazing how bossy relatives can push a man as far as he can go
– here is Zechariah who has not spoken for three months, grabbing a pen and writing emphatically:  “His name is John.”

God had mercifully intervened in the life of John’s family.  Luke says as the story begins that one reason for the extraordinary joy at John’s birth was because of God’s mercy.

God does not just wind us up and let us alone; he is a personal God who cares about each of us, helping us to know him better as by receiving his blessings.

Remember that Elizabeth was an old woman, past childbearing age.  The only way she could have conceived a baby was for God to do something special for her – and God did.  Not only did God help her to get pregnant, but he gave her and Zechariah a son whose name would be known throughout history – John the Baptist.

And so as God was busy fulfilling his plan of salvation, he did some wonderfully kind things for people like Zechariah and Elizabeth along the way.

This is the God we serve.  A kind God; a merciful God.  You and I may not think we are right at the center of God’s plan, we may not think of ourselves as key players in salvation history, yet isn’t our God awfully kind to us along the way.  How wonderful it is to receive God’s mercy!

What Luke shows us next is that Zechariah after naming his son blesses God with a song, and then to bless his son with a song as well.

In today’s story Zech sings of God visiting to show mercy both at the beginning and at the end of his song.  Mentioning something at both the beginning and the end was a common feature in ancient composition

When I as the listener hear something mentioned at the end that I also heard at the start, I know both that the idea is important and that the story or song is about to end.

In this song – the theme is clear – that God was about to visit his people, and as any good visitor would do, God was bringing a gift – the gift of mercy.

God was about to come in the person of Jesus to bring redemption; through Jesus God would redeem, or buy his people back, from slavery to sin and other enemies

Another way of putting it is to say that God in Christ would bring salvation – God would save his people – us – so that together with God, we could change the world.

What salvation, what God’s mercy does for us is that it puts us in a position to serve God, and as we serve God, we show God’s mercy, God’s forgiveness, to others
If we have been forgiven, then we can forgive others, and as each person shares God’s mercy and God’s forgiveness, the world gets changed.

Zechariah sang praise to God, became God was about to visit us to show us mercy, so that we could serve God by visiting others to show them mercy

The first part of Zecharaih’s song was sung to his God

This next part of his song is sung to Zechariah’s son, John

It is a bit like what I do at a baptism, I praise God for making salvation available to this person, then I say a word of blessing over the one who’s been baptized.

Zechariah’s song for his son echoes what the angle Gabriel had told him.
Noctice how Zecharaiah has changed since the angel first came to him
Back then he was fearful, doubting.  But now, singing to his son, he is full of faith and confidence.
Back to teh main theme,  that this whole song, and indeed the Christmas event, is about God visiting us to to show us mercy

Here Zechariah sing:

because of the tender mercy of our God,
by which the rising sun will come
to us from heaven
to shine on those living in darkness
to guide our feet into the path of peace.”

Zechariah is singing of God’s mercy, and he likens God’s coming in Christ to the dawning of a new day.

Jesus here is depicted as a rising sun, who will come and shine, bringing light to those in darkness, and through forgiveness, guiding our feet to walk in the way of peace.

The message of Christmas is clear, and it was clear in Zechariah’s praise song even before Jesus was born.

God has a great big plan of salvation
At the heart of God’s plan is one simple truth
That God lives to spend time with us
and so he has visited us in the person of Jesus
and in God’s visit with us, he has brought us forgiveness.
so that we could know God through Christ
and know his peace in our hearts

Someone’s coming this Christmas
and I don’t mean Santa Claus

Jesus came to visit more than 2000 years ago, and by his Spirit he wants to come to each home, to each family, to each person this Christmas as well.

Welcome Jesus into your home, into your family, into your heart.
Receive Jesus this Christmas
receive his mercy
know that he has come to save us.

As God has visited us in Christ with mercy

go and visit someone and show them God’s mercy

receive Jesus, the king of peace

and then go and share Jesus and his peace with others

run to Sunday!