Musings092009,Preaching

Emil Williams, our pastor preaching from I Corinthians 1 today, brought out a number of good thoughts about effective preaching of the cross. The one that stood out most in my mind was that we can ruin the effectiveness of our message by too much eloquence. Paul was eloquent, but quite obviously not too much to ruin his preaching of the cross. (Emil also brought that out).

Musing about this caused me to move with this thought into other areas. I've experienced some complex speeches made by people with vast amounts of education that were hard for me to understand. When I looked about, I could see others with puzzled looks on their faces. That always troubles me. What's the point of speaking? Isn't it to communicate? If a speech is in a foreign language you don't know, do you listen to it?

I deal with Greek and Hebrew a lot because it is the original language of the Bible. I am not a Greek or Hebrew scholar. If asked, my seminary professors would have told them I was not. I studied Greek two years in seminary and Hebrew one, but I have only a rudimentary knowledge. My point is, I wouldn't care to listen to a speech or a sermon in either one. My wife loves the sound of fluently spoken Hebrew, and my mother sang Psalms in Hebrew at our local synagogue, but I don't think my wife would want to listen to either very long.

Communication is the key word when speaking. Paul communicated well in all of his writings, and I believe he spoke just as he wrote. I wonder why we can't do the same today?

I think Paul's admonition to the Corinthians in his first letter to them, chapter 14, verse 28, is excellent. "If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God." By the way, another good point in that verse is that preachers should take their own preaching to heart! I Peter 4:17 says, "For it is time for judgment to begin with the family of God; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God?" God gives the church pastors to be examples of the way to live, to speak the unvarnished truth as God has given it, and to display God's love to others. Pastors are given much by God, and much will be required of them/us. Jesus said in Luke 12:48, "...From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked."
God's gifts are given with His expectation of their serving a good purpose and of their accomplishing the end He intends. As pastors, we should keep that in mind. It is not something to make us fearful. God is our Father, and He loves us. We respond in love to Him. We try to use His gifts wisely. We communicate His messages with the results He desires in mind.

During the many years I preached, I constantly watched the congregation's response. I noted those who were disinterested, some slept! That spurred me to make my messages more interesting. I saw those perplexed looks on people faces sometimes. I did not hesitate to explain what I was saying using different words, different metaphors and different illustrations. I want to communicate!

The message we have is the most important the world has ever known or will ever receive. God loves all of us. We all have failed to respond to that love as we should have. Many of us have even rejected any mention of God! But Jesus came to earth as a baby, lived as we all live, except that He never sinned. He died as none of us could, or can. Oh, we could be put on a cross as He was, but He carried the sins of every human being who ever lived, or ever will live, as He died on that cross! None us could do that for even one person! Then on the third day, He arose. Death could not hold Him, and it cannot hold any of us who have placed our trust in Him. He is coming again, and when He does, all who trust in Him will spend eternity with Him!

There is no greater message. It doesn't take eloquence. It doesn't even require the messenger to be a Christian himself. It is God's Word, and His Word cannot be broken. When Aaron threw down his rod and it became a serpent, the Egyptians sorcerers did something similar. Later with the plagues God sent, the sorcerers' acts only increased the Egyptians misery. Conversely, an atheist can hand another lost person a Bible. That person can read it and be saved for eternity. All the atheist did was take away a candidate for hell and increase the Kingdom of God.

Eloquence is a unique and wonderful gift, but it must be used with love to carefully communicate God's truth!

Musings: 09/15/09, Temptation and Responsibility, by John

Temptation and Responsibility

Sometimes I find myself saying to God in prayer, "I'm sorry, Father. I just couldn't help myself." Have you ever said something like that to God? This morning, I wasn't praying exactly, but I was contacting our Father about things in general, and suddenly I Corinthians 10:12 popped into my consciousness. I learned it in the King James Version of the Bible, "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it." The New International Version translates it, "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it."

The fact is, none of us is able to resist temptation on our own. The writer knew by his own experience that temptations arise in everyone's life, and we cannot handle them! That's the reason the NIV translated that verb as "has seized." By the time we know we were tempted, we've already plunged into sin's domain! But we didn't have to do it. God has seen to it that there is an open escape route every time we have ever sinned. The Greek word used here is a combination of the preposition "ek" which has the basic meaning of "out of" or "away from," and "basin" which essentially means "pace." It could be translated as "walk away." Hmmm. There hasn't been a single time that we could not have walked away from our temptations!

That brings us to our responsibility. We've already sinned. Jesus is our Payment. He died for us bearing our sins on His cross for us. Our responsibility is fairly simple and straightforward.

First, we need to accept our predicament. We are sinners, and not only can we not do anything about the sins we have committed, but we cannot stop sinning without God's help.

Second, when we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, God's Holy Spirit comes into our lives. He indwells us. We are already forgiven, and God's Spirit teaches us to recognize sin for what it is, and He encourages us to "walk away" from it. We follow Jesus. In this world, we cannot be sinless, but our lives are pointedly attached to Jesus, and we go in the direction He leads us, and we are constantly moving toward the perfection of being like Jesus in every respect.

As we walk to Jesus, we are walking away from sin. When we allow temptation to seize us, we are walking away from Jesus. Years ago, two ministers I knew were at a meeting with a group of us. One was teasing the other about coming in late. He, himself, was exactly on time, and he had passed his brother pastor on the thirty-mile trip. The conversation went like this:

The teased brother, I'll call "Bill," and the other, "Bob." Bill spoke first.

"Brother, does the Holy Spirit ever commit a sin?" Bob hesitated. He knew something was coming, but he didn't know what.

"No. Of course, He doesn't, Bill. We all know that," he said looking around at the rest of us, and grinning.

"Well, Bob, I was driving at the speed limit, and you must have been doing at least ten miles an hour over the speed limit when you passed me. If the Holy Spirit never commits a sin, then you must have left him ten miles behind you, and you couldn't expect Him to protect you. I should have started earlier, but the Holy Spirit was with me all the way."

I think Jesus was not only a "man of sorrows," but was also a person of laughter, and that He didn't mind the bantering of those two. Of course, the Holy Spirit never leaves any Christian, but too often we close our ears when He speaks to us. We have a responsibility to listen, to watch for temptations, and to be ready to walk away from them.

Musings: 09/07/09, How Does God Reveal Himself? by John

How many ways has God revealed Himself?

I can think of several right away, but I suspect the list is inexhaustible. God is eternal, and that means He is not limited. He's never out of energy or ingenuity. I firmly believe that means He never needs to do anything the same way twice unless it pleases Him. Some of His acts and some results we see may have similar characteristics, and that make us think, Oh! He did the same thing for me, too, and He did it just like that! But accomplishing the same end does not require identical actions. For instance, God may heal a person using only that person's immune system. He may also heal another using antibiotics, doctors, bed-rest, etc. The result is the same, but everything else may be different...My son, an MD, would say at this point, yes, but in the final analysis, the person's immune system must do the healing. The other things just help, but that cannot apply to instantaneous healing, and the Bible records many. He would agree with that, I think.

That brings to my mind that God has chosen by the foolishness of preaching to lead people to know Him, to be saved. They are immediately children of God. Does that mean preaching is the only way for a person to come to Jesus? Saul of Tarsus did not become a Christian by hearing a Gospel message. God struck him down on the Damascus road, blinded him, and in that process Saul came to know Him. The people in the Old Testament who trusted God did not trust God through preaching as far as we know. God spoke to Moses in a bush that burned, but was not reduced to ashes. Of course, God spoke to him, too. I once had a man try to persuade me to be a "limitless" man while he became tipsy on alcohol. Obviously, he only thought he knew how to be limitless. The only limitless being is God. That's a position we cannot attain. Isaiah 14:12 and following gives an account possibly of a king of that time, but ultimately it is a revelation of Satan. He had five "I will..." goals. "I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of the assembly,... I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High." So many of us have a variation of these goals in our mind. Putting yourself above God can be the worst heresy, but remembering God is God, and desiring to be like Him as a child of His family, is a worthy goal, and I believe He reveals Himself to us for that purpose.

Well, how about that? We just talked about three ways God revealed Himself in history, and a reason for His revealing Himself now! There are other revelations in history, of course. Three "men" appeared to Abraham before He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham recognized the three men who visited him as God's representatives, and he entertained them with a meal and shade from the sun's hot rays. Only two of those beings went to Lot's house in Sodom. Most today believe the third being was God. He promised Abraham that Sarai his ninety-year old wife would bare a son the next year. That prophecy was a revelation of God at work!

God spoke to Elijah in a quiet voice, and He revealed Himself to Elisha. Exactly how God revealed Himself to others before He sent His One and only Son Jesus, you can read for yourself in both the Old and New Testaments. We have dealt with, and will deal with just a few examples here.

At exactly the right moment in history, God sent Jesus to reveal Himself with great clarity to all mankind. A good many people have claimed God has spoken to them since that time. I'm one of them, but it happened to me only once. That changed the direction of my life. That change has lasted for 55 years so far.

Let's think about some other Biblical revelations. We've already talked about Saul who became Paul. We didn't mention Mary Who saw Jesus at the open tomb after the resurrection. We haven't mentioned the two men on their way to Emmaus who walked and talked with the resurrected Jesus and rushed back to Jerusalem to tell the Apostles. We haven't mentioned the eleven disciples to whom Jesus appeared after the resurrection, nor have we mentioned that Stephen saw the heavens open and the Son of God standing as he was being stoned to death.

Peter was with Jesus all through His ministry even to His trial. Some time after Jesus ascended into heaven, Peter prayed on a housetop. He must have felt a shock when he thought God contradicted His Law. He gave Peter a vision of all sorts of creepy, crawling things and ordered him, "Peter, rise, kill and eat!" But Peter knew immediately Who spoke to him and eventually he realized that we are to accept, not reject, everyone as they come to God. That was a tremendous revelation for the human race!

I think one other revelation should receive special attention. Many believe the Apostle John did not write Revelation. They cite the great difference in style, vocabulary and lack of polish between the Gospel and Revelation. Almost everyone agrees Revelation was written sometime between 90 and 110 AD. I believe John the Apostle wrote it, and that those differences constitute no problem. He was a fisherman, and it is not likely he ever wrote like an educated Greek. I believe he spoke the Gospel to a secretary who wrote it down. Exiled on the isle of Patmos, it is doubtful he had anyone to whom he could dictate. There's also the possibility, that he received the revelations over a short period of time and wrote rapidly. The Book is full of pictures that appear in rapid sequence. The style is apocalyptic. The author meant for the Christian, at least not Roman, reader of that day to understand it well. We, like the Romans, are not too familiar with all the imagery used to hide the message from the Roman persecutors, but Revelation is a comforting message from God. It tells us He has everything under control, and we are safe even though as Christians we may have to suffer as members of His family. He assures us the suffering will not be too long, and our future with Him is bright and wonderful! Read it! It reveals Jesus and the Father as One beautifully! Don't worry about the times and seasons and number puzzles. God has all of that in His control and when the end comes, all will be revealed to us, but not before.
Back to the present. If you haven't had a revelation of God yourself, look to Jesus. He told Phillip, "Don't you believe that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work." (John 14:10). When we receive Him, God begins His eternal revelation of Himself to us, and it will not cease as long as we live on earth, then we will see Him as He is! And that will make us like Him! (I John 3:2)

The visions came to him as an ecstatic experience. Both situations would result in a more telegraphic, style and reduced vocabulary. I think the visions, although we know they are apocalyptic in form, are wonderful expressions of the awesome majesty of God. Exactly how God provided those visions for John may have been in a trance as suggested in the first chapter, but they could have come in a multitude of ways. The whole revelation may have happened in a moment, or it could have happened over a long period of time. God is not limited by time or anything else.

God may reveal Himself to you in myriad ways, or in just one way. The most certain is through the testimony of Christians who have experienced rebirth in Jesus and are citizens of God's Kingdom right now. His Holy Spirit will both inspire the witness and make it believable to you. Has that happened for you yet? Once when my wife and I were newlyweds we walked along a riverbank in Mississippi. We came upon a tenant house, more of a shack really. The day was hot and the door stood open. It looked as if no one lived there. My wife called out just to see, and a young woman in a faded wash dress, shoeless, came to the door. She was probably surprised someone was in her front yard. We exchanged greetings, and my wife went inside with her. In just a short time, my wife came out with God's glory on her face! A new sister had just been born into the family of God! However it happens, God continues to reveal Himself to those who want to know Him. Isaiah reports God as saying, "Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." (Isaiah 1:18) And again, "Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear." (Isaiah 59:1) And in another, "Seek me and you will find me if you seek me with your whole heart." Put your heart into it, and God will reveal Himself to you, believe it!