A Mother's Right to Choose

A Mother’s Right to Choose

Luke 2:39-52

I bring to this subject a certain amount of fear and trepidation – fear because of something I have experienced my whole life and know nothing about (motherhood), and trepidation because I am in danger of revealing my ignorance. My thoughts on the subject were, however, triggered by a most unlikely event.

A couple of weeks ago, I went through an interesting exercise at the Democratic caucus to select a candidate to run for Abby Holman’s seat.

There were several people in the audience who had been prompted to ask me questions that were very thought provoking, albeit deadly ones for me in a left-leaning caucus.

The first question had to do with abortion, or, as many like to call it, a “woman’s right to choose.” A woman’s right to choose is a sacred right in some circles. Never mind that what led to the need to make such a choice was another series of choices made a few weeks earlier.

The second question had to do with minimum wage. I answered the first by saying that I was pro-life who voted pro-choice because of my oath of office to uphold the Constitution of the United States. That felt great. I answered the second question by saying that I thought that hiking the minimum wage as a substitute for an economic development program to help struggling Mom and Pop businesses was an act of cowardice. That felt even better.

You don’t have to be a progressive to believe in freedom of choice. Even God permits us freedom of choice. But you have to be clueless to believe that your choice is inconsequential to others around you.

To treat women as bearers of babies with no voice in the matter is to strip them of their personhood and objectify them out of the human family. That’s the approach taken by many pro-life folks. They would rather talk about fetuses than about women.

On the other hand, to treat a pregnant woman’s body as under her private and exclusive control is to do the same thing – to objectify her out of the human family. That’s the approach taken by many of the pro-choice folks. They would rather talk about women’s rights than about fetuses.

I submitted a Mother’s Day Op Ed piece to the KJ on this subject, maybe a bit late for Mother’s Day. What I was suggesting in that piece was that Rudy Guiliani, who is about to go down in flames because of his pro-choice position, would be better served if he talked less about a woman’s right to choose and more about a mother’s right to choose. That ties the woman and the fetus together in a social contract.

When we talk about a pregnant woman as a stand-alone, autonomous being, we separate her from the human family and from the social fabric of which she is a part. If she has the abortion for reasons other than her own safety, incest or rape, she risks further alienating herself from her social fabric because of her secret. Society loses, even though it may fail to notice the loss. It is cumulative.

To talk of a mother’s right to choose, on the other hand, connects the woman in a different way to her social fabric. It is an acknowledgment that the choices she makes impact not only herself but any number of other people in her sphere of influence. It is one thing to say that 45M women have chosen to have abortions since Roe v. Wade. If is quite another to say that 45M mothers have chosen to have abortions since Roe v. Wade.

Neither statement, however, says anything about the good news of those tens of millions who have chosen to bear their babies to term – mothers – good, bad and in between, to say nothing of the wide assortment of fathers.

There are a lot of other choices that fall into the same category. Often, the more obvious choices with which we are faced are the culmination of several not-so-good decisions. We can talk all we want about no-fault divorce, but there is usually enough fault in divorce to go around for everybody. Divorce is another choice that tears the at the fabric of society. Sometimes it is unavoidable, but anyone who goes through a divorce thinking that it is only about himself or herself is in delusion. No choice is made in a vacuum.

The point of elaborating on this on Mother’s Day is that we are celebrating the almost divine rite of motherhood, while 1.5M mothers a year are opting out mostly because of inconvenience. Maybe it is a reminder to us that Motherhood and apple pie do not always belong in the same sentence.

Of one thing we can be certain. We all have mothers. Some of your mothers have passed away. Some of you may have bad memories of your mothers. Others may have longed to be mothers but were unable. Even worse, your children may not contact you. What we need to get at, I think, is the common ground on which we all live. That common ground goes way beyond choice, or respective roles of men and women, or how successful your children may be or whether or not you have had the privilege of being a grandparent.

The common ground on which we live has to do with values. Values are carved out of the social fabric of our lives. We adopt and practice values, male or female, that either enhance or detract from life together in community.

The choices that we make as the people of God need to be weighed with regard to their effects on the human family around us.

Being a mother does not suggest a lack of initiative, education or ability. On the other hand, neither does it mean that our children have to be the focus of our lives. It does not mean freeing men from all responsibility in childrearing either. What it does mean is sharing responsibility not only for daily tasks but for the impact of our choices on others.

There is a stark reality to motherhood. The sentimental and feminine images dished out by Hallmark are images that only hurt those whose lives fall short. When you think about it, who do you know who lives up to such nonsense? Mother’s Day is too often a day for valorizing motherhood as a necessary and ultimate expression of womanhood. Too often, the church is inclined to suggest that “The greatest privilege and trust God ever gave women was motherhood.”

In reality, the greatest privilege and trust that God ever gave women was Godly choices – the same privilege and trust given to men. The notion that women’s lives do not begin until marriage between two virgins, a household that is financially secure, two or three children arriving just in time and a few housepets thrown in for good measure went out with high-button shoes.

Marriage between virgins is becoming increasingly rare. Nearly half of American adults are unmarried. The half that does get married gets divorced 50% of the time. One in five Americans struggles with infertility. Millions of others experience miscarriage, stillbirth, infant death or child death. Financial stress is the greatest contributor to divorce.

Not a pretty picture of the all-American family, is it?

We can turn to the Bible for stories about the lives of real women, and those stories are all over the map. Ruth was left childless and widowed at a young age but became the great-grandmother of King David. Rachel, Hannah, Sarah and Elizabeth were infertile. Eve and Mary lost sons under terrible circumstances – one by murder and exile and the other by assassination.

Some women are blessed to be mothers. Others are not. That is a sad reality. But the Bible makes it clear that we cannot rest our hopes and dreams on our families. Last week we talked about Hannah giving up her only son, Samuel. Families are human institutions that will let us down, and we will let them down from time to time. Our hopes and dreams rest in Jesus alone.

Our experience of being loved and loving in turn does come not from what we produce but from a Godly love of each other regardless of our circumstances. For all of us, male and female alike, the mothering love of God is our hope, our help and our sustaining grace.

Emerson once said, “People are what their mothers make them.” Abraham Lincoln said, “All that I am or hope to be, I owe it all to my aged mother.” History is replete with dedicated mothers. History is also replete with people of all circumstances devoted to Christ. They called her “Mother Theresa.” She was a nun.

To be a Christian brings a different perspective to what it means to be human.

We hear too much these days in evangelical circles about how the man ought to be the head of the house and lord it over the woman. Such a notion runs contrary to Christianity. It was Jesus who taught us that the New Covenant would bring equality to women. The Apostle Paul tells us that in Christ there is neither male nor female.

The lasting influence that we make on others has less to do with our status as Moms and Dads than it does with our status of being the King’s kids. But even being a King’s kid carries with it no guarantees. In the case of Mary, answering the call of God brought on suffering beyond belief.

We have come through a tough time since Betty Friedan wrote her book, “The Feminine Mystique,” in which she claimed that women are trapped in an unwanted life of domesticity. Radical feminism assaults the self-esteem of women who make mothering their own children or those of others a priority. Women of that generation are finding out something that we men knew all along – how empty it is to chase success. Some long for the simple thrill of putting a bandaid on a kid’s skinned knee.

Like it or not, the stay-at-home Mom is not held in high regard in our culture anymore. She may be admired for what she has given up, but that is a long distance from being treated as an equal in a world of high achievers.

One woman who was tired of being asked at parties what she does developed a great line. “I am socializing two homo sapiens in the dominant values of the Judeo-Christian tradition in order that they may be instruments for the transformation of the social order in the teleologically-prescribed Utopia inherent in the eschaton.”

James Dobson is a pro at creating these motherhood myths. He is not such a pro, however, at coming up with answers that resonate in today’s world. He and Shirley were interviewed by Sean Hannity recently, when Shirley said that if the Ten Commandments had been on the classroom wall the massacre in VA might not have happened – “Thou shalt not kill.” If they are that far removed from reality, you have to wonder how much stock you can place in all those other notions of what constitutes a family.

What strikes me from this passage in Luke is how average Jesus’ life seems. His family was one of the crowd of people going to Jerusalem for the Passover. Like any other mother, Mary wanted to hang onto Him for as long as possible. But at 12 years of age, a tension was developing between the safe boundaries of Jesus’ family and His call to areas of greater concern – His Father’s business.

As this tension increased with time, how frightening it must have been to a mother who wanted to shield Him from the dangers she knew He would face. Finally, her worst fears came true, as she saw Him executed as a common criminal. A cross was all that this talk about His Father’s business had gotten Him, and Mary’s heart ended up as the angel had told her it would – pierced through, not by one sorrow, but by many sorrows.

A mother’s love and the Father’s business were two competing forces at work in Jesus’ life. We also are pulled by two competing forces. The test of true discipleship is not only the ability to take the right road – the Father’s will – but the willingness to let go of all that keeps us from carrying out His will. That lesson was a crushing one for Mary.

What is even more difficult is letting go of what we want in order to offer the best to someone else. There is not much payback in such a life, and it may not be much respected in our culture, but selflessness requires that our little acts of kindness – motherhood, if you wish – have service to God as their motive.

Mary had certain expectations of her children – that they would be tagging along with the crowd walking back home from Jerusalem. All day long they walked and talked. As evening came on, and she and Joseph gathered the kids together, they realized that Jesus was missing. Imagine the panic that set in when it took them 3 days to find Him – in, of all places, the temple courts.

What was He doing? We are taught to believe that He was teaching. But that was not only the case. He was listening and asking questions – learning about the human face of God’s redemptive work with the people of Israel, knowing all along that He Himself would soon be the rejected salvation of Israel. In addition to listening and asking questions, Jesus was offering His own thoughts, and we are told that they were amazed at His understanding and His answers to the questions they were asking of Him.

It was just a good old 3-day discussion. We have no idea where He slept or if He slept or where He ate – those critical matters of parenting. All we know is that what He was doing had priority over the panic that had gripped His parents. It was a message to His Mom that she had to begin to let go.

There are some who might have kicked Jesus out of the house. I do not imagine that Mary calmly asked him, “Son, why have you done this to your father and me?” There was probably a certain amount of screaming that preceded that question.

Jesus did not answer the question. Instead, he asked her a question, “Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know that I had to be in my Father’s house?” We are told that they did not understand what He was saying to them in distinguishing His Father from his father. I am willing to bet that their anxiety was minimized a bit when the elders told them how amazing he was – perhaps a little pride crept in.

The best part of this story is in the 51^st and 52^nd verses: “Mary pondered these things and treasured them in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men.” The act of motherhood, then, had less to do with making sure that Jesus did the right things than it did with His mother thinking about the significance of what had taken place and treasuring those things in her heart. She had given birth to God’s promise to Israel.

The pondering and treasuring were vital to her survival when she witnessed His friends and her friends abandoning Him in His hour of need.

I like that picture of motherhood much better than the one on the Hallmark cards, don’t you? That permits motherhood to be what it is, rather than what somebody else thinks it ought to be. That makes room for the childless woman to touch a life, for the unmarried woman to nurture a soul in turmoil and for the bumbling father to make a difference. That makes room for Big Brothers and Big Sisters. That makes room for foster care. That makes room for nieces and nephews who need another perspective in order to answer the pull toward the Father’s business.

That makes room for Jesus, who lives in and through the lives of those willing to be a mother to anyone who needs one at the moment.

A Way Out

A Way Out

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

The title to this morning’s sermon raises an interesting point. It is always easier to get into something than to get out. The title is lifted out of the 13^th v. of 1 Corinthians 10 and was put that way, I suspect, because the writer wanted to convey the idea that because you are plagued by temptation, you are not necessarily TRAPPED by temptation. You are not in BONDAGE to temptation, even though you can’t shake it entirely.

A “way out” suggests an open door. I have had the experience of trying to get out of something once I have gotten into it a number of times in my life. I will get an idea, go for it and, when it has run its course, try and get out. It is like putting toothpaste back into the tube.

I have a cousin who is a very popular Maine artist – gets tens of thousands of dollars a painting. He spent time in industry as an engineer and a product manager for two large corporations. His take on getting out of something you’ve gotten into is a chapter out of the addictive system – “they give you enough room to wiggle around, but don’t try and pull out!”

We get into marriages we shouldn’t get into. We get into relationships where discretion would have been the better part of valor. Becoming an alcoholic is a whole lot easier than recovery. We work for people or companies that we dislike intensely, and we stay for too long.

Christians are not immune by any means. Becoming a Christian is easy enough, once you have hit bottom. You don’t become a Christian out of some logical thinking process. Logical thinking offers no room for a broken heart and a contrite spirit. David tells us that it is a broken heart and a contrite spirit that is honored by God. Logic doesn’t get you there.

But once you come to the realization that your sin has broken you, reaching for a liferaft is an easy step if the HS is there to call you into fellowship with God through Jesus Christ. For the Christian, that liferaft is Jesus.

Again, though, praise God, you can’t get out of the Kingdom once you are in. That is the one condition that you can’t escape, no matter how hard you may want to from time to time. The oldtimers didn’t call the HS the Hound of Heaven for nothing. If you are truly born again by the Spirit of God, you cannot go back into the womb of the world without being dragged back. That is true, even though you may be tempted to do so.

A common mistake for new believers to make is to assume that now that they have climbed onto the liferaft Jesus, it will be clear sailing into port. So they set sail, looking for other drowning people, forgetting that it was a broken heart and a contrite spirit that turned their lives around and booked their passage on the lifeboat Jesus. They want to persuade others to jump aboard on the basis of logic, forgetting the role of the HS in convicting of sin. It may APPEAR to be working, but it doesn’t work.

Logic brings weeds and junk into the church, and those who have booked passage by the grace of God alone can’t tell the difference anymore because they have institutionalized their faith – have joined the crowd. Try getting out of that one! It can’t happen without a crash. I suspect that is why God permits church splits. The only way He can get His people out is to blow them out with a stick of dynamite.

I recall how relatively easy it was to get this church going. It was full for the first couple of years. Then we had that split, and it felt like we were going to crash and burn. But what happened was quite the opposite.

God had other plans. There has been spiritual growth here for all of us that never would have happened in that world of strawberry festivals and parades. I tell people that we have a quarter of our congregation, twice the money, 1/10 the aggravation and 10 times the spirit. Go figure!

I think Paul, in this letter to the Christians at Corinth, had in mind this matter of the difficulty of getting out of something once you have gotten in. Remember that Paul had been a Pharisee and had and had followed the way of self-righteousness by preserving the institution. He was convinced it was the right thing to do. Temptation had blossomed into dominion for Saul, and it felt natural to him. His mission was to save God’s religion by destroying the believers in the Son of God. He was bent on obliterating the New Way because he was certain that that was what God would want him to do.

That is a perfect example of the difference being tempted and being under the DOMINION of temptation. And it is the difference between the believer and the non-believer in Jesus Christ.

On the Road to Damascus, God had to literally hit Paul over the head with a baseball bat to get him out of that addictive environment he was in. He became blind and broken. The only way out was over the wall in the middle of the night. It was a lot easier to get into that mess than to get out. All he needed was credentials to get in. What he needed to get out was humiliation and defeat.

In the course of building up the search engine base for the CPI website, I have been doing a lot of writing lately. I have to do a blog or two a day, and we post at least 600 words a day. There are places where you can get those words out to the general public and get hits on your website, which is the objective.

I recalled this week that some 15 years ago I had written a book that was about divorce recovery. It was called, “Beyond Failure: Abundant Life after Divorce.” I never did anything with it but was able to dig out some floppy discs that were written on a Microsoft platform that was long ago extinct. I managed to extract the words all run together.

This book is about the process of getting out of a marriage once you have been divorced. That may sound strange, but those here who have been divorced, like I have, know exactly what I mean by that. There is, I suspect, nothing tougher than that assignment. I have counseled divorced people who are still emotionally back there, while the old boy has gone blithely on to greener pastures. Getting in was easy. Getting out emotionally takes some people decades.

I had the book edited by a divorced woman in Austin, TX who had been a pastor’s wife. She had been divorced something like 12 – 15 years and was still back there. Her comment to me was, “I wish I had had this book back then. It would have made a huge difference.” I tried to tell her that it was never too late, but she had gotten into another system of living as a victim. She would have to get out of that in order to get out of the emotional attachment to someone who hardly remembered her name anymore. “Breaking up is so very hard to do!” So is getting out once you have broken up.

Paul offers a way out that is available only to the person who trusts God completely. His example is getting out of temptation.

We are plagued with temptation – every one of us. There is something deep inside us that we stumble over every so often, reminding us that we are not as disciplined as we should like to think.

Temptations cover the landscape. They come in all sorts of sizes, shapes and forms. They are triggered by all kinds of circumstances. I have my own temptations to deal with, just as do you. They are extremely complex issues. What triggers them, few of us will ever understand. But we may be offered a way out of them without necessarily becoming immune from them. That is the angle, we need, is it not? When Paul suggests that there is a way out, he may not be suggesting deliverance. He may be pointing us, not to the times we fall into temptation, but to the big time gaps in between. He may be pointing us to the fact that, while we continue to be plagued by temptation, we no longer are slaves to it, even though we fall off the wagon every now and then.

There is suggestion here that Paul may be telling us that God uses the fires of temptation to refine us, while all the time it is His purpose to deliver us: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

What is insidious about temptation is that it keeps cropping up and spoiling our comfort zones. Worse still, is that we get caught when we find ourselves in some addictive environment that requires a devotion that we ought to be reserving for God.

v.12: So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! 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 may be able to bear it.

If we read this carefully, we are taken with how it speaks to our needs. First, temptation is likely to come to that person who thinks that he is ABOVE temptation – has conquered it. We all get that way from time to time. We become confident and sure or ourselves for a day or two. If I were to make a guess, it would seem that God wants us to live in HIS light and not our own. The minute you think that you are immune from temptation, be careful; that you don’t fall.

Just when we think that we have conquered some sin in our life and are squared away, we fall off the wagon. God wants us to remain in a state of dependence on Him. To think that we stand is to decide that WE have it all under control. What that says to me is that so long as we rest in Him, there is protection. But once we congratulate ourselves that we have it licked, bang – up pops the Devil.

What we learn from that is that there are things in our lives that make us proud and vulnerable to temptation. Find out what those things are and stay away from them. Perhaps, then, God allows us to fall in order to bring us back. If that is so, then we ought to reflect more on the times that we have been temptation free and thank God for those times – focus on the times of victory rather than the times of defeat.

It is to our peril that we should be clueless about temptation – its reality and its power over us. But it is also to our peril that we feel a self-confident presumption that we can overcome temptation by force of the will. As anyone in AA will be quick to tell you, will power doesn’t work. If it did, there would be no AA. A person who is afraid he will fall will take heed and protect himself. But a person who thinks he stands seldom will take heed. Up jumps the Devil! We become seduced by our own desires.

The other thing that I notice is that our temptations are not special. We are not permitted to make excuses for ourselves: “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man.” We cannot delude ourselves into thinking that our temptations are unique; special; peculiar to US. It is a common thing to think that we cannot help yielding to temptation – that it is impossible to me to resist MY temptation.

It seems to be a universal tendency to think that people who are in different circumstances than ours, whose background is different or whose surroundings are different, do not have strong temptations. But the reality is that, while all of us are tempted differently, our temptations are just common occurrences. The temptations that you and I face, though they be different from each other, are just garden variety, common temptations that have no excuse other than our innate love of sin and self.

Notice that Paul is talking about temptations that SEIZE us. That is a pretty strong word – seize. Christ teaches us that the New Way erases the line between temptation and YIELDING to temptation. lust becomes adultery, and hate becomes murder. There is no difference between the desire and the carrying out of that desire. That is a novel thought, is it not? Because common, garden-variety temptations SEIZE us, we are already on the slippery slope. When we entertain the desire, we can’t congratulate ourselves because we didn’t succumb to the desire. In fact, we did succumb by entertaining the desire.

Finally, we have that last part of v. 12 – “And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will provide a way out so that you may be able to bear it."

Consider the possibility that God is not in the business of keeping us from slipping on a banana peel. Consider that He is not keeping score of how many times this year you drank too much, or gambled, or ate too much chocolate, or gossiped, or lied, or cheated, or hated your brother – whatever you may see as your secret stumblingblock. Consider, instead, that God has already provided a way out.

Look back over your life, if you can do it without becoming ill at certain points. Can you not look back and see how, when God’s providence brought you into temptation, He also provided a way out? Somewhere, somehow, a door opens, and we escape. If I look back on my own life and its crises – and I’ve had a number of them – I marvel at the escape hatches that God has opened for me.

In some inexplicable way, God is controlling even those forces of EVIL that swirl around us, so that even our temptations sometimes counteract one another. This tells me that although I may be inclined to think that I haven’t gotten anywhere in the Christian life because I still entertain temptation, God opens escape hatches. We call that “luck,” but Paul calls it Providence.

The fact is that many of you, and certainly I, would not be here this morning if God had not found a way out of our temptations. We are not lucky; we are loved; we are forgiven; we are redeemed.

“Happy is the man,” says the Apostle James, “that ENDURES temptation. For when he has stood the test, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to them that love him.” Endures temptation! Doesn’t let temptation destroy his confidence in Christ!

“Standing the test of temptation” is to know that, while God may not REMOVE the temptation, He HAS promised that He will make a way out. I would bet that there is not a person in this room this morning who would not say with me, “How in the world did I get here?” God provided a way out!

James goes on: “Therefore, my brothers, count it all joy when you fall into temptations.” If we trust God’s providential help and His gracious Spirit, we can see how temptation may be the means of making us BETTER. Those temptations that get us down when we go back to them were the very thing that God used to bring us to this point in our lives and in our walk with Him. Once we grasp this concept, instead of going into a funk because we fell, we can thank God and rejoice and learn to trust Him more.

Can you imaging falling off the wagon and thanking God for the temptation? Or, can you imagine even THINKING about going off the wagon and instead of congratulating ourselves because we didn’t, thanking God for His help? Falling off the wagon is not the same thing as deciding to become a slave to pleasure. While the temptation may seize us, it doesn’t CONTROL us or dominate us. While the temptation may be as sinful as its fulfillment, God is in the gaps, between the temptation and a life of LIVING for that temptation. We tend to think that He is in the gaps BETWEEN temptation and succumbing. But no! God is in the gaps between temptation and its ability to have DOMINION over us.

James goes on: “Let patience have a perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. If any person lacks wisdom (wisdom to find the way out of temptation; wisdom to see the meanings of temptation and gain from its lessons) let him ask of God, who gives to all men liberally, and condemns not, and it shall be given to him.”

Comforting words, are they not? Troubles are a part of life – even the life of the Christian. A pain-free life is not something that we should seek or for which we should ask God. We are told that “who the Lord loves, He disciplines.” It is a law of nature that we will be tempted. But ask for yourselves that you may have the grace to help watch and strive against temptation – grace to trample it underfoot; grace to conquer it, and grace to avoid condemning ourselves because of it.

For God gives to all men liberally and does not condemn. If God does not condemn us, what right do we have to condemn ourselves?

January 27, 2007

Don’t Sweat the Giants!

Joshua 14:6-15, 13-17

There is a lot for us in this Scripture on the exchange between Joshua and Caleb. There is particularly a lot for us in our day when the people of God seem to have lost their nerve. The words of Caleb ring out through history, “Give me the mountain! If the Lord is with me, I will drive them out!”

We hear much today about the strength and power of America. We hear much today about how, if we don’t kill our enemies “over there,” they will kill us “over here” – kill or be killed. We hear much today about WE – WE – WE. We hear little about the power and sovereignty of God.

Those of us who truly believe in the power and sovereignty of God are often loath to permit that power and sovereignty to direct our actions. In short, we are cowards, hiding behind our weaknesses rather than going forward in God’s strength.

I had breakfast yesterday morning with Jim Webster, who was the treasurer for Barbara Merrill’s gubernatorial campaign. Jim came to breakfast with his hands all imbedded with black oil stains. He works for his brother, Charlie, in the heating business. After our breakfast, he was going to have to go crawl under a house and thaw out the pipes that had frozen in the night.

But Jim has a passion for life. He wants to get involved with CPI but at some level where he can continue his hands-on work with the poor in such areas as helping them with housing problems. There was something about meeting with Jim that made my soul soar.

What a novel idea – putting our faith to work in directly helping others. Jim has been frustrated by the experience in his church because there are too many people whose idea of help is to write a check, not that money is not a good thing to have when you need it. But being able to write a check can also be an inhibition to charity.

On the other hand, hands-on help is something every one of us can do, no matter how old or how young we may be. I was convicted, as I listened to Jim talk, that I criticize the Christian Right because it has transferred its faith from God to Caesar – or, in this case, America. It wants to create America in the image of God so it can act spontaneously whenever it wishes – it will not have to wait for God or His timing.

On the other hand, I have to ask myself, “What are we who claim belief in the sovereignty of God doing to relieve the suffering and pain of others around us? What is OUR hands-on ministry?

Practicing the social gospel is not what I am referring to here. Feel-good charity is not what the Kingdom of God is about. What the Kingdom of God is about is the people of God living as though they don’t sweat the giants. No financial statement; no excuse of age; no level of poverty; no lack of time ought to be our excuse for being willing to go forward in the strength of our God.

God has given us every thing that we have asked of Him over these past 13 years. Nothing we have needed has He held back from us. Even today, God sustains and nourishes this little ministry way beyond our capacity. This very church has been brought to life through the prayers and faith of many of you who are here this morning, and of others who are not.

There was no pent-up need for this church when we were crawling around underneath, putting up heat vents and attaching the old post office to the side. There was no pent-up demand when Tom Oliver and I negotiated for purchase of 1 ¼ acres of land from NE Forestry Foundation so we could meet the code – the first time they had ever done anything like that.

Your God did something for you that has never been done here since Isaac Case in 1793.

We faced the giants in the power of the sovereign Lord, and we won. We must now be asking God, “What giants can we fight tomorrow so that we can take possession of the land flowing with milk and honey – the Kingdom?” “What obstacles can we overcome now, Lord, that can help us as a church participate in the grand plan for your holy church?”

Are we content now to kick back and rest on the budget? The budget was never a problem in the past. Are we too few to do much of anything? We were a lot fewer back before we got started. Are we too OLD to get the job done – too pooped to participate, so to speak? Caleb was 85 when he conquered the cities of Hebron. He was not a man of extraordinary faith – anymore than are you and I.

Caleb was a man of faith in an extraordinary God.

There is a big difference, isn’t there? Jesus told us that the Kingdom of God requires only a little faith – the size of a mustard seed. It is our view of God that keeps us from applying that little faith. In a nutshell – or in a mustard seed – our God is too small.

We’re going to take a look at this guy, Caleb this morning.

There is an old chorus that the kids used to sing, a line of which says, “The others saw the giants, but Caleb saw the Lord.”

The 13^th chapter of the Book of Numbers has the account of the 12 spies going into the Promised land. Moses had led them for 40 years in the wilderness; he sends them in to do some scouting. They come back with a load of grapes, pomegranates and figs – proof that the land did indeed flow with milk and honey.

“You were right, Moses,” they said. The land DOES flow with mild and honey. See; here is the proof! BUT… It was that BUT that sealed the fate of the people of Israel for the next 40 years. “That’s a great idea, BUT…” I’d like to do that, BUT… This could be done, BUT… That’s the point at which your BUT gets in the way of your faith!

Where had they been that they should bring their butts back with their buts?

They had been to Hebron! They had gone up into the hill country, where there were fortified cities, and sat down with the very Anakites that Caleb, at age 85, is ready to march against. “Give ME the mountain, Joshua! If God is with me, I will drive them out.” Implied is, if God is Not with me, I want to know it right now. Because if He is NOT with me, He is a liar.

“Everything’s great in there, Moses. Everything is just the way God told you it was. BUT…we can’t go in there. The people who live there are giants, and their cities are large and well fortified.” “Your God is too small, Moses!” “The giants are too big!”

Joshua and Caleb presented the other view – “If God be for us, who can be against us?”

They had experienced the miraculous delivery from Egypt. They had been there when God rolled back the Red Sea, and they crossed over on dry land. They had seen the earthquakes and lightening and the presence of God on Mt. Sinai. They had read the stone tablets that God, Himself, had written. They had followed the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. And God had fed them with manna from heaven.

But that same God could not overcome the giants. The people believed the 1-0 spies because it was more comfortable to believe THEM than is was to plunge into the unknown.

That is like us, is it not? God bails us out when we are in trouble, but He is not powerful and sovereign enough for us when things are going relatively smoothly.

There is one thing here that we need to take into consideration. No matter how smoothly things are going, there is one thing that is happening – we are all getting older. This story, however, defies the law of gravity.

The reason this land was being parceled out to the 10 tribes was that it was time for Joshua to die. Chapter 13 begins with, “When Joshua was old and well advanced in years, the Lord said to him, ‘You are very old, and there are still very large areas of land to be taken over.’”

Now you may think that Joshua was whoosing out. But it is clear that he had led these people way into his elderly years. He had not retired, or kicked back, or reduced his work load. He waited until he got instructions from the Lord before planning for his replacement. Joshua saw age as no limitation on his duty to God. God lets him off the hook when it is God’s time – not when he was eligible for social security.

Along comes Caleb. There was some choice land near the sea of Gallilee. Caleb certainly was entitled to a place on the shore, where it was flat, and the view was great. He could live out the rest of his life fishing off the dock and sitting in the square with the other old men. But God’s promise to Caleb that he would have an inheritance had not yet been fulfilled.

He opts to take, as his inheritance, the highest mountain in the region – about 20 miles south of what is now Jerusalem. The city is at the top of that mountain and well fortified. At 85, Caleb still wants to experience the power and glory of God. So he takes the toughest piece of land and the toughest job – the very land that held the giants. He does this trusting in God to deliver it into his hands.

Caleb comes to Joshua who, by that time, is rather distant in the food chain. Joshua is trying to assign inheritances by tribe. Caleb brings the elders of the tribe of Judah for witnesses and challenges Joshua to follow through on Moses’ promise:

“You know what the Lord said to Moses…about you and me. I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land. And I brought back to him a report according to my convictions, but my brothers, who went up with me, made the hearts of the people melt with fear. I, however, followed the Lord my God wholeheartedly. So on that day, Moses swore to me, “The land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance, because you have followed the Lord wholeheartedly…Now give me the mountain that the Lord promised me that day.”

All 12 spies brought back a report according to their convictions, I suspect. The difference is that Caleb followed the Lord his God wholeheartedly. There is the distinction. We have 10 spies reporting according to their convictions, and we have 2 spies reporting according to theirs. Ten are driven by practicalities and reason; the other two are driven by a wholehearted desire to follow God.

Ten were practical and reasonable. Two were faithful. Because of their allegiances, the two reports were totally at odds. But here is where practical and reasonable led the people of Israel.

Their hearts melted with fear – fear fed by the unknown and by failure to worship God as sovereign Lord.

The generation of those who opted for practicality and reason died in the desert.

The inheritance did not fall on those in the Exodus from Egypt but on their children and grandchildren.

The 10 spies who were practical and reasonable are totally obscure in redemptive history. Only Joshua and Caleb are known to us.

What happened to Joshua and Caleb? They lived to be the only two of the original tribe to go into the Promised Land. They were vital right up to the end of their lives. What they accomplished was not dependent on their age or vitality. It was dependent on the power of the God they followed wholeheartedly. They were victorious, and they were rewarded for their Godly perspectives.

I see that as a great example to you and me. Are there too many giants in our lives – in the life of this church? Are we content to be reasonable and practical to a fault, expecting that the cautious approach is the best way to go?

The Church of Jesus Christ is being practical and reasonable, while the world is dying for Godly leadership of the kind that trusts in a sovereign God.

Everything we have done here at the NMMH Church has been successful. We have done here what has never been done in its history. At times, we have followed God wholeheartedly. At times, we have been practical and reasonable.

The giants we face are really not giants at all – they are mere challenges easily defeated by a God whom we follow wholeheartedly. Age is no barrier. Finances are no barrier. Talent is no barrier. Time is no barrier.

There are things that I should like for us to accomplish together – like an active web presence, a more focused music program, a youth ministry, a ministry to our elderly and to those in prison. Most importantly, I should like for you to bring your creative ideas to me so that we can work them through together.

It would appear from the message this morning that God not only promises good things to those who follow Him wholeheartedly, He gives to them long life, vitality, vision and great blessings.

That’s what I want for my life, and I know that is what most of you want for your lives. This is not about accomplishing things. This is about a walk with God that moves from the cautious to the wholehearted. This is not about expectations and committees and meetings. This is about ideas from the heart of those who follow Him wholeheartedly.

That’s what I want. If that’s what YOU want, all we have to do is follow His leading and see where it goes.

“Give me this mountain. If the Lord is with me, I shall drive them out of the land.” Not bad for an 85 year old guy!

Reunion at Pentecost

Reunion at Pentecost

Genesis 11:1-9

Acts 2:1-13

The history of Pentecost goes back to the time of the Exodus when God’s servant, Moses, led the Israelites out of Egypt. It was at that point that certain holy days began to be required as part of their worship regimen.

The first holy day was the commemoration of the night before they left Egypt. They were to observe annually the Feast of the Passover to remember how the Angel of Death passed over those with the blood of a lamb sprinkled on their doorframes.

One of the blessings of the Christian church is that we share in the Eucharist together. By remembering together the death and resurrection of Jesus, we are bound by tradition, as were the children of Israel.

Fifty days into their journey across the Red Sea and into the wilderness, they arrived at Mount Sinai. There God gave them the law through Moses. They were then commanded to observe this pivotal event every 50^th day after the Feast of the Passover as God’s stamp of covenantal blessing on the children of Israel.

The new feast was called “Feast of Pentecost,” which in the Greek actually means “50^th day.”

Following the Resurrection of Jesus, the disciples had scattered. Jesus had to round them up more than once. He had to impress upon them that, while His mission had been completed, theirs was just beginning. He appeared to several of them through a locked door. He called to them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat and prepared a meal of fish for them on the shore.

We read in the first chapter of the Book of Acts that the disciples were assembled together with Jesus on the Mount of Olives. They were perhaps wondering what was going to happen from there. They were perhaps concerned that the security they had felt just a few days before the crucifixion when Jesus was triumphantly received in Jerusalem had evaporated. Now, Jesus is telling them that they are not to leave Jerusalem but are to wait for the gift the Father had promised – the baptism of the HS.

Having not the slightest clue as to the identity and mission of the HS, they were interested only in the fulfillment of what they had been taught. So they are again caught asking Jesus the same old question that they had asked days before His crucifixion, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

That was a question that, despite the fact that Jesus had been raised from the dead, His disciples seemed unable to leave behind. The things of the Kingdom of God were still not revealed to them. They were still stuck in the teachings of the church. They could not seem to break away from the idea of a physical kingdom in Jerusalem.

Never did it occur to the disciples that in a few short days three-thousand Jews would believe in Christ. In fact, there are many Evangelicals today who seem to have missed the message that the first converts to the Christian faith were Jews – lots of them. Millions more have become Christians in the two thousand years since.

Jesus answered their question in this way: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the HS comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Jesus was not confirming whether or not their expectations would be realized. He tells them, instead, that they will receive power through the HS. When that power came upon them, they immediately began teaching about the spiritual Kingdom of God. All thoughts of an earthly kingdom vanished when they witnessed the miraculous conversion of thousands of Jews.

Jesus had been taken up before their eyes and into a cloud that is commonly referred to as a “Shekinah” cloud – a cloud of glory, similar to the cloud that marked the presence of God with the children of Israel through their wilderness wanderings. This cloud was the affirmation of the godhead of Christ. He was received into God’s glory under the eyes of the faithful. And they were caught gazing up into the heavens, wondering what was going to happen next.

This king – this Messiah – to whom they had looked to sit on a throne in Jerusalem, was out of there. Instead, 2 men in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee, why do you stand there looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

They then did what they had been told to do – went back to Jerusalem, joined in constant prayer and waited.

They didn’t have long to wait. The Ascension of Jesus had taken place forty days from Passover. The Feast of the Pentecost would take place in ten days. It is very certain that the disciples did not make the connection between the coming of the Holy Spirit and the Feast of Pentecost. But there is a definite connection.

First, note that Jesus was crucified during the Feast of the Passover – or just before. Jesus, the unspotted lamb of God, was sacrificed as the final Passover lamb. Those who had His blood sprinkled over the doorposts of their hearts – those who believed – were spared the fate of death from their sin.

While Jews from every nation, tribe and tongue were descending on Jerusalem to celebrate deliverance from bondage in Egypt, the real sacrifice was happening outside the city gate and beyond their awareness. Passover had left Jerusalem and was being re-enacted at the city dump. Those who celebrated Passover at the temple were to witness a strange event. The temple veil that shielded the people from the Holy of Holies was torn in two.

Jesus’ death, then, was to begin a new, fulfilled Passover. Fifty days later, there would be a new celebration of Pentecost as the day that believers in Jesus Christ as Lord were to receive a new law written not on tablets of stone but on their hearts.

In this transition, we move from the cold, hard, unforgiving master of a written code to the love of God spread abroad through our hearts by His Holy Spirit. The new Passover in Christ was the beginning of perfection through His work of those who acknowledge that they could not please God.

You can see, then, how dangerous it is for modern Christians to treat the Bible as though it were a written code of conduct. The written law of God was composed of words that go no further than the page and do not enter the heart.

Notice the continuity between the two dispensations – law and grace. The age of Grace does not replace the law; it is the confirmation of the law – its fulfillment in Christ. “What do I want with your sacrifices and your rituals?” God asks of His people. The day of sacrifices and rituals ended with an overlap of fifty days. For the Christian, the final sacrifice had been made.

What the written law does for us is convict us. There seems to be an innate sense of God’s judgment hanging over the heads of human beings: “If I do not obey God’s commandments, He will punish me, casting me into Hell.” Our natures are conscious of obeying God unwillingly and against our desires. Those who live by the written law, however, soon become enemies of God because of the weight of their sin and their inability to stand before God and be acceptable to Him. Unaided by the Holy Spirit, we just give up and become hardened against God’s judgment – a form of inner rebellion.

You might imagine these disciples, ten days after their Lord had left them, getting ready to celebrate Pentecost as the day that the God’s people had received the tablets of stone from Mt. Sinai. You might imagine that they had not yet begun the ceremonies but were on their way to the temple as were the Jews from every nation tribe and tongue.

Something was going to happen that had failed to happen at Passover. God was about to put His seal on the new covenant in the presence of the celebration of the old covenant. The Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem was about to re-enacted as a triumphant entry into the Kingdom of God.

It was 9:00 in the morning. We are told that there was a sound like the blowing of a hurricane that filled the whole house where they were staying. Tongues of fire came and sat upon the heads of these disciples of the crucified, risen Lord. They began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them – the tongues of thousands of Jews from all over the world.

We will go back, for a moment, to the scene at the Tower of Babel, where another failure of the written law had exacted its price.

It is after the flood. The descendents of Noah had begun to populate the earth, and some of them decided to build a city with a monument. They wanted to make a name for themselves, and one of the best ways of making a name for yourself is to have the tallest tower in the world. Call it the Empire State Building, if you wish – or the World Trade Center. They wanted to be the center of commerce and tourism so they would not have to wander from place to place. The outside world would come to them.

This city was to be located in the Tigris/Euphrates river valley, near where the Garden of Eden had been located and in modern Iraq.

We are told that everyone on the earth spoke the same language. They had in mind becoming the cultural center of the world. You would have thought that speaking the same language would have made it easier to live together, but apparently it simply made it easier to get into mischief.

God didn’t like this tower idea because it was done with the intent of celebrating human accomplishment. It reminds me of the tower that the Italian government tried to build for Mussolini. It was to be the tallest building in the world, and Mussolini would have his office at the top, suggesting that he would be a god. That tower ended in disaster as well.

What is key to this story is the Lord’s reaction to what was going on. “If with one language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.” So God confused their language so that they would be in conflict with each other.

Fast forward to the Feast of Pentecost. What God did that day though the Holy Spirit was to reverse what He had done at Babel. Here you have Jews from every known nation on earth listening to the apostles in their own tongues. From that day to this, even though Christians speak other languages, the one thing they share is the common language of faith. The only way that could happen would be through the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit that was poured out on the apostles that day.

The Spirit came pouring into their hearts, making them different people from what they were up to that point. Instead of thinking about what God was going to do next, they became loving men and women and willingly obeyed God. God became their tower of strength. The written law that had been so important to them 5 minutes before, suddenly came to life translated into spiritual law.

The Holy Spirit descends and fills the hearts of these disciples who are gathered together scared and full of sorrow, not knowing what was going to happen next if anything. He descends on them in tongues of fire and imparts to these poor, uneducated followers from Galilee the power and boldness to preach Christ fearlessly.

It was not the role of the Holy Spirit to write books and put laws into place. His role was to write God’s law and love on the hearts of men, creating new hearts so that we might be glad before God and desire to serve Him gladly.

It is not enough that Christ is preached throughout the world. The Word that is preached must be believed. The Holy Spirit must impress that preaching on the hearts of those listening.

What changes is this: the heart that believes has confidence in God’s love and does not fear being thrown into Hell for some infraction because of His wrath. The Holy Spirit has made the heart aware of God’s good will and graciousness toward us. The result is a desire to serve and please Him.

I will hasten to say that not all is accomplished at once. None of us is entirely perfect; this is a progressive process of being liberated from sin and terror. We are all affected by what disturbs others who may be so steeped in their sins as to be indifferent. The Holy Spirit is present within the believer to console us and strengthen us until His work is fully accomplished, which it never is.

The power of living the Christ life is to contend with the sins that we perceive that are in us as well as those that are not perceived. We are like sick persons in the hands of the Great Physician of our souls, never able to be free of weakness and faults.

Therein lies the hope. The Holy Spirit is given only to the anxious and distressed heart. The gift is too precious and noble for God to throw it away heedlessly. If you have the struggle with sin in your heart, it is because you have the Holy Spirit.

It is time to rejoice. You have passed over from death to life, even in the midst of your conflicts and doubts.

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