John 16:24 [NLTse]

¹⁶ “In a little while you won’t see Me anymore. But a little while after that, you will see Me again.”

¹⁷ Some of the disciples asked each other, “What does He mean when He says, ‘In a little while you won’t see Me, but then you will see Me,’ and ‘I am going to the Father’? ¹⁸ And what does He mean by ‘a little while’? We don’t understand.”

¹⁹ Jesus realized they wanted to ask Him about it, so He said, “Are you asking yourselves what I meant? I said in a little while you won’t see Me, but a little while after that you will see Me again. ²⁰ I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn over what is going to happen to Me, but the world will rejoice. You will grieve, but your grief will suddenly turn to wonderful joy. ²¹ It will be like a woman suffering the pains of labor. When her child is born, her anguish gives way to joy because she has brought a new baby into the world. ²² So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again; then you will rejoice, and no one can rob you of that joy. ²³ At that time you won’t need to ask Me for anything. I tell you the truth, you will ask the Father directly, and He will grant your request because you use My name. ²⁴ You haven’t done this before. Ask, using My name, and you will receive, and you will have abundant joy.

Sermon

Does anyone remember the TV show M*A*S*H? Channel 3 on Basic Cable is called “Me TV” and it runs old TV shows all day and night long. One of those old shows is M*A*S*H and my kids have really come to enjoy it.

Some people journal or keep a diary, but the lead character of M*A*S*H, a surgeon named Hawkeye Pierce, writes to his dad. The show never shows you the letters he writes, but you get to know all about them because you hear Hawkeye’s voiceover speaking what he’s writing as the camera shows him scribbling words on a pad. Watching the show as a Christian the scenes of Hawkeye’s letter-writing always give me the sense of listening in on someone’s prayers.

“Dear Dad…” and then he writes to his dad about what happened in the operating room that day and what’s going on with his tent-mates and about this or that prank he and Trapper or BJ pulled. He writes to his dad about things he’s proud he did and things he’s feeling ashamed of. He writes about different things they need around their mobile army surgical hospital, or the amazing provision of things they’ve received…

I bring it up to us this morning because the elders have called our church to fast the Wednesdays of Lent from after dinner Wednesday nights right up to dinnertime Thursday nights. And prayer and fasting always go together, yet I know that many Christian people struggle in the practice of prayer. So I mention this scene for you of army doctor writing letters to his dad as a picture of prayer…

In our reading from John’s gospel Jesus is trying to prepare His disciples for His death and resurrection. He says to them, “In a little while you won’t see Me anymore. But a little while after that, you will see Me again.” But the disciples don’t get it.

Jesus tells them that what’s about to happen will be so horrible that they’ll cry and grieve for Him, but that His enemies will celebrate. But He goes on to say that their sadness and grief will suddenly become rejoicing and celebration the same way a mother’s anguish and suffering turns into wonder and joy once her baby is born.

And then Jesus says that after that has happened – after their mourning has turned into rejoicing – that they will no longer ask Him to ask the Father for what they need because they will then be able to ask the Father directly, and that God will answer their request because they use Jesus’ name.

Note how Jesus says, “You haven’t done this before,” that is, they’ve never asked God for anything using Jesus’ name. So Jesus says, “Ask, using My name, and you will receive, and you will have abundant joy.”

Notice a couple of things with me here in the Lord Jesus’ words. First, notice that Jesus doesn’t talk about prayer here, He talks about asking God for things. And I raise that up to us because I know of too many Christian people who ask others for things all day long but who don’t have confidence that they know how to pray.

Throw away the word “prayer” if you must. Never use it again, if you don’t want to. Tell Him how great He is, instead. Tell Him you’re sorry for all you’ve done to hurt Him and others, instead. Thank Him! And ask Him for what you need and what those around you need. “Prayer” is just an old English word for asking. So let’s stop using it if it gets in the way of us talking to our Daddy. Let’s tell Him we love Him and ask His forgiveness and share how we’re grateful and seek Him for help, instead.

A second thing I was hoping we’d get from Jesus’ words is what He’s saying about asking our Abba for things in Jesus’ name.

In John 16:24 Jesus was speaking to His disciples the night before His crucifixion. Notice that He didn’t tell them they had never asked for anything in prayer before. No. He said they had never asked God for anything in His name. And it gets me thinking how many times we all, likely, asked God for things before we were Christians, before we committed ourselves to Jesus’ life. We probably especially tried praying when we were in trouble. But we weren’t “in Jesus” then: We weren’t committed to Him; we hadn’t put our trust in Him; we weren’t asking from the assurance of knowing we belonged to Him; let alone, we never asked in His authority or in the certainty we were asking from a fully restored relationship with God on account of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.

Before we became Christians we didn’t ask with any of these things in mind. We were just crying out. Maybe we’d seen others pray or maybe we’d heard about prayer, so we gave it a shot. Anything to get what we wanted or thought we needed at that time.

But the Lord reminds His disciples that once He’s gone away and then returned again – once He’s died and then come back from the dead again – things will be different. With the punishment for their sins paid for they would be able to approach the Father directly. They would have to approach Him in Jesus’ name because it was Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross that opened up the Way, but they would be able to approach the Father directly, and have the same kind of confidence in the Father giving to them all that they asked Him for that Jesus Himself had.

1 John 3:22 adds that we can be confident of Jesus giving us what we ask when we do what pleases Him. So we can’t be out there doing whatever we want to do and expecting God to move Heaven and Earth to give us what we’ve asked Him for. We need leave our sins behind us and live in a way that, when He does give us what we’ve asked for that, those around us will know that God was the One Who provided for us and give Him the credit.

According to Matthew 7:7-8, we are to keep on asking God for what we want, seeking God for what we want, and knocking on Heaven’s door for what we want. Faithful praying is keeping at it. And when we’ve kept at it then we will receive, then we will find, and then we will have it all opened to us.

John 15:7 tells us that Jesus’ words need to be in us to have God answer our prayers, and that’s because 1 John 5:14-15 says we must ask for what will please God to expect Him to answer us. And, of course, how can we know what Jesus wants in order to ask Him for it without His Word in us?

Jeremiah 33:3 whets our prayer-whistles to remind us that God not only gives us what we ask when we pray but also reveals things we could not otherwise know. And Ephesians 3:20 reminds us that our Abba can and often does so much more than we could ever think to ask Him for or even imagine. And in Matthew 7:9-11 Jesus makes sure we know that God only gives good gifts to His children.

[Ask the congregation] Which get me wanting to ask you, “What do you think God would do if you asked Him for something He knew would be bad for you?” [Wait for answers.]

[Ask the congregation] “What do you think God would do if you asked Him for something but He knew it would be better for you to receive it at a later time?” [Wait for answers.]

One last thing the Lord Jesus makes clear to us in His words through John is that talking with God results in joy! Seeing God provide for us and respond to what we’ve talked with Him about and enjoy His fellowship and the confidence of His caring about us and listening to us creates joy in our hearts.

All of this is our inheritance in Christ! No one else has provided such a Way to the Almighty’s heart as Jesus Christ has done for those who love Him, have repented of their sins, and walk in His ways. This joy, this peace, this confidence, this power are all ours for the living and enjoying in Jesus.

One last thing: As a man sharing a house with a wife and a daughter who have long, beautiful hair, our home is filled with hairbrushes filled with hair, hair that I spend too much time pulling out of hairbrushes I’d like to use and throwing those gobs of hair into toilets or trashcans.

Well, Satan may try to have us doubt the effectiveness of talking to God and asking Him for anything at all. He may whisper, “You don’t think God is really personally interested in you, do you? He’s far away, and concerned about more important things. Surely you don’t think He’ll hear your prayers – much less answer them?”

But Matthew 10:29-31 reminds us that you and I – God’s children on account of Christ – that even the most insignificant things in our lives – our hairs! – are known and counted and kept an eye on by God. This isn’t true for everyone on the Earth. Nope. Just us. So precious. So prized. God’s beloved; His chosen ones! What I throw into the toilet or trash so precious and beloved to God because they are the hairs of those He gave His Son for, those He gave His life for; His beloved, His bride…

Trusting we are so important to Him we can be sure He cares and listens and will answer us when we talk with Him in prayer.

Father: Help each one here talk to You in the conversation of the loving, caring Father You are…

Psalm 68:1-6 [NLTse]

For the choir director: A song. A psalm of David.

¹ Rise up, O God, and scatter Your enemies. Let those who hate God run for their lives. ² Blow them away like smoke. Melt them like wax in a fire. Let the wicked perish in the presence of God. ³ But let the godly rejoice. Let them be glad in God’s presence. Let them be filled with joy. ⁴ Sing praises to God and to His name! Sing loud praises to Him Who rides the clouds. His name is the Lord—rejoice in His presence!

⁵ Father to the fatherless, defender of widows—this is God, Whose dwelling is holy. ⁶ God places the lonely in families; He sets the prisoners free and gives them joy. But He makes the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.

The Acts of the Apostles 2:42-47 [NLTse]

⁴² All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer.

⁴³ A deep sense of awe came over them all, and the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders. ⁴⁴ And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. ⁴⁵ They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. ⁴⁶ They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity— ⁴⁷ all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.

Sermon

When you became a follower of Jesus Christ, something very exciting happened! You became a part of a family. As we just read, Psalm 68 sings, “Father to the fatherless, defender of widows—this is God, Whose dwelling is holy. God places the lonely in families; He sets the prisoners free and gives them joy.” The “family” that Psalm 68 sings that the Lord puts us into is not our flesh and blood families, although being a part of our flesh and blood families can be a great gift and blessing from God, too.) No. The Lord adopts us and gives us a new life as a part of His very Own family. And this family – His family – includes all those who love and have put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. God calls His family “the called out ones” – called out from those who make up the rest of the people of the earth. And another name for “called out ones” is the Church.

Who here realizes you are a sinner and that you can’t save yourself from the penalty your sins deserve? [Raise hand.] Okay. Raise your hand again if you believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God and has paid the penalty your sins deserve for you? Okay. All of you who raised your hands both times need to know that the very fact that you believe such things – receiving Jesus Christ and living in Him by faith – these facts make each and every one of you a part of God’s family! Let me make it absolutely clear: Membership in God’s family is automatic when you repent and believe the good news about Jesus.

Now, although there is ultimately only one worldwide family, it has always been local churches (like ours) that have provided a very personal context for Christians to live out our family-relationship together. And the Bible calls our family-relationships fellowship.

As you may already know, the Bible’s word “fellowship” comes from the Greek word koinonia which means to contribute; to partner and participate; to share. So, although the Bible points out many ways that Christians should, and must, relate to each other, all those ways fundamentally describe ways in which we are to contribute to one another’s lives, the ways in which we are to partner with and participate in one another’s lives, and the ways in which we are to share in one another’s lives.

So, although membership in God’s family is automatic according to our faith, fellowship – the ways we relate and partner and share each other’s lives – must be developed and practiced.

God’s Word speaks of three basic reasons why God has brought us into His family and into fellowship with one another: Spiritual motivation; spiritual support; and, love. Let’s start with spiritual motivation.

Hebrews 3:13 says, “You must warn each other every day… so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God.” “You must…” Hebrews says. So to experience the very best of what God has for us we should be experiencing the spiritual motivation that comes from fellowshipping with God’s family – fellow Christians – every day! Hebrews 10:24-25 says, “Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another…” So even the early church was prone to fall away from fellowship, tempted to live out their faith on their own. But we are called to “not neglect our meeting together.” We need fellowship! We need the spiritual motivation that comes from our warning each other when we fellowship. We need the spiritual motivation toward acts of love and good works that come when we fellowship. And we need the spiritual motivation that comes from encouraging each other when we fellowship.

Another aspect of the spiritual motivation God has for us in Christian fellowship comes from the reality concerning the types of people we hang around with. It is common sense that the people we spend the most time with are going to be those who influence us the most. God wants you to make sure that you’re drawing your closest and most meaningful friendships from those who have a heart for God. 1 Corinthians 15:33 says, “Don’t be fooled… ‘bad company corrupts good character.’” And Psalm 1:1-2 says, “Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand around with sinners, or join in with mockers. But they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night.”

Fellowship with other Christians provides the spiritual motivation and a positive environment for growing closer to Christ.

Of course, we benefit from the spiritual support that comes from fellowshipping with each other, too. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 says, “All praise to God… the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.” And 1 Thessalonians 5:11 says, “Build up one another…”

Think about your latest hardship or crisis… What made it bearable? Was it receiving a phone call or a visit for prayer from fellow-Christians at just the right time? Was it brothers and sisters bringing over food or giving you a ride? Was it people from church sharing some money or a shoulder to cry on? Or was it one of a million other ways that God’s family cries out to the Lord for us or reminds us of His promises or lets us know by their caring and presence that in Christ we are truly never, ever alone?

The practice of fellowship guarantees that no one in the church body will ever have to shoulder the weight of the Christian life alone.

All of this, of course, is wrapped together in the bonds of love. Everything that takes place in true Christian fellowship is brought about by love. John 13:34-35 says, “I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are My disciples.” And 1 John 4:11; 5:1 says, “Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other… Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has become a child of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves His children, too.”

So God’s love for us – the same love that has brought us into His family – works in us to love our fellow believers, as well. Now that doesn’t mean we always have to like every other Christian we meet. But for the sake of Christ we must surrender to the Spirit’s compulsion to love them: To serve them; to help them; to share what we have with them; to never say anything evil about them; to support them and help them to grow and succeed; to bless and never curse… It is this kind of love for one another that Jesus says will lead the world to believe that Jesus is indeed God’s Son, because even best friends and flesh and blood family members don’t love each other that well!

We need to fellowship. We were made for Christian fellowship! John D. Rockefeller, after experiencing all that his riches and fame could bring him, said, “There is nothing in this world that can compare with the Christian fellowship; nothing that can satisfy but Christ.”

To receive the very best things God has for us we must practice Christian fellowship. We must! Stop settling for less than Jesus’ best!

So stay after Worship today for conversation and connection over a cup of coffee or some juice. Or if you just can’t, then come Wednesday nights to the Soup & Prayer. Invite each other over for coffee or a meal. (Those of you who enjoy cooking and entertaining were especially made to practice this kind of fellowship.) Come Sunday mornings to the Sunday School classes. Parents, bring your kids. Don’t deny them God’s best just because they are tired or because they say they don’t like anybody in their class. Fellowship isn’t about liking or being entertained. Fellowship is about practicing love, and sharing our gifts and abilities, and helping one another with the motivation and support each of us needs to live for Christ.

Let’s not miss God’s best!

1 John 5:1-12 [NLTse]

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has become a child of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves His children, too. ² We know we love God’s children if we love God and obey His commandments. ³ Loving God means keeping His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome. ⁴ For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith. ⁵ And who can win this battle against the world? Only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God.

⁶ And Jesus Christ was revealed as God’s Son by His baptism in water and by shedding His blood on the cross—not by water only, but by water and blood. And the Spirit, Who is truth, confirms it with His testimony. ⁷ So we have these three witnesses— ⁸ the Spirit, the water, and the blood—and all three agree. ⁹ Since we believe human testimony, surely we can believe the greater testimony that comes from God. And God has testified about His Son. ¹⁰ All who believe in the Son of God know in their hearts that this testimony is true. Those who don’t believe this are actually calling God a liar because they don’t believe what God has testified about His Son.

¹¹ And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. ¹² Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life.

¹³ I have written this to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know you have eternal life.

Sermon

I went and sat with Evelyn Ruff last night in her room at Karen Ann Quinlan’s hospice home over on the other side of Newton. She was in her last moments, or perhaps her last days. Only God knows… She was not conscious while I was there, that I know of. So I held her hand, stroked her forehead, read Scripture, prayed, and sang.

It was such a blessing to sit with her. Evy has lived such a faithful life; overcome much hardship and many trials; and yet all of it with such hope and trust in Christ, at least as I’ve been near watching her these past 18 years. As I sat there saying “goodbye” and entrusting her into the Lord Jesus’ care I was so grateful for her life in Christ. I was so grateful for the confidence I had (because I’d seen the way she lived by faith), and so I could read God’s promises and entrust her to Him so assuredly.

Now, we can never be absolutely sure of another’s saving faith, of course. The Reverend Billy Graham has given the world so much evidence of the genuineness of his faith, and yet, even so, we can only truly speak the promises of God and be consoled by the promises of God with hope when it comes to the salvation of other people. After all, we can only see the outside. God alone knows the heart.

But we can know and be assured of our own saving faith. We can know the sincerity of our own love and our own commitment and our own faith and trust in God’s Word and work for us on the cross of Christ. More than that, God wants us to know and be assured! And yet many Christians don’t allow themselves the benefit of such confidence.

In 1654 a Puritan named Thomas Brooks wrote, “Assurance is the believer’s ark where he sits, Noah-like, quiet and still in the midst of all distractions and destructions, commotions and confusions… [However] most Christians live between fears and hopes, and hang, as it were, between Heaven and #@!*. Sometimes they hope that their state is good, at other times they fear that their state is bad: now they hope that all is well, and that it shall go well with them for ever; [then] they fear that they shall perish by the hand of such a corruption, or by the prevalency of such or such a temptation… They are like a ship in a storm, tossed here and there.” (Brooks, Heaven on Earth, p. 11)

Many followers of Jesus Christ who are seeking to be more confident in their identity as new creations and children of God look in the wrong places. They tend to seek the assurance of their salvation in the things God is doing in their lives, or in their spiritual growth, or in the good works and obedience to God’s Word that is evident in their Christian walk. And while these things are important evidence of our new lives in Christ, God-lovers should not base our confidence on them. Rather, we should find our foundation and assurance in the truth of God’s Word. We should have confident trust that we are in Christ and that Christ is in us based on the promises God has declared, not because of our subjective experiences.

How can you be assured you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ? Consider 1 John 5:11–13 from our reading this morning: “And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life. I have written this to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know you have eternal life.” If you you’ve trusted in Jesus and are following Jesus and have entrusted yourself to Jesus, you have Him, and you have life. Not temporary life. Not 10 or 40 or 70 or 90 years of life, but eternal life. God’s message to you and me in the Bible promises it. And God never lies.

Don’t get me wrong. You can be saved and doubt it. You can go to Heaven in a fog, not knowing for sure that you’re really going to get there, but that’s certainly not the best way to enjoy the trip!

And, of course, all of us as Christians have times when doubt makes us question if our faith is true and if our relationship with Jesus is real. For some, those times are but fleeting moments that come and go; for some, such doubts are nagging and ingrained and last a long time; for others, they seem like a way of life.

On the other hand, some people have assurance who shouldn’t. Jesus said, “Not everyone who calls out to Me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of My Father in Heaven will enter. On Judgment Day many will say to Me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in Your name and cast out demons in Your name and performed many miracles in Your name.’ But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from Me, you who break God’s laws.’” (Matthew 7:21-23). Many people are deceived about their salvation which is why the apostle Paul said, “Examine yourselves to see if your faith is genuine. Test yourselves.” (2 Corinthians 13:5).

There seem to be several common reasons why Christian people doubt their place in God’s family. Some people lack assurance because they can’t accept God’s forgiveness. They are ruled by their emotions and feel they are too bad to be forgiven. Their identity as “bad” is still bigger to them than Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. And yet, as someone wrote: “Manasseh is saved. O despairing souls, the arms of mercy are open to receive a Manasseh, a monster, a devil incarnate; he caused that gospel prophet Isaiah to be sawed in the midst with a saw… He turned aside from the Lord to commit idolatry, and caused his sons to pass through the fire, and dealt with familiar spirits, and made the streets of Jerusalem to overflow with innocent blood…

“The soul of Mary Magdalene was full of devils; and yet Christ cast them out, and made her heart His house… Why dost thou then say there is no hope for thee, O despairing soul?

“Paul was full of rage against Christ and His people, and full of blasphemy and impiety, and yet behold, Paul is a chosen vessel, Paul is caught up into the Heaven, and he is filled with the gifts and graces of the Holy [Spirit]… Why should thou then say there is for thee no help, O despairing soul! … The apostle tells you of some monstrous miscreants that were unrighteous, fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, abusers of themselves with mankind, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners; and yet these monsters of mankind, through the infinite goodness and free grace of God, are washed from the filth and guilt of their sins, and justified by the righteousness of Christ, and sanctified by the Spirit of Christ, and decked and adorned with the precious graces of Christ… Why then, O despairing soul, shouldst thou fear that thy unworthiness and unfitness for mercy will so stop and turn the stream of mercy, as that thou must perish eternally for want of one drop of special grace and mercy?” (Heaven on Earth, pp. 93-94)

You must realize that God knew you were a sinner, which is why He sent Jesus Christ into the world to completely pay the price for your sins: Past, present, and future. God Himself said, “I—yes, I alone—will blot out your sins for My own sake and will never think of them again.” (Isaiah 43:25). What you can’t forget, God has chosen not to remember!

Of course, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead proves that His work on the cross brought about an eternal salvation. Jesus said He was God and rose from the dead to prove it! He said He came to accomplish the work of salvation, and God raised Him from the dead to show He was successful!

A young convert once said, “If anyone is ever to be kept out of Heaven for my sins, it will have to be Jesus, for He took them all upon Himself and made Himself responsible for them. But He is in Heaven already, never to be turned out, so now I know that I am secure.” (Ironside, p. 75)

Many Christians can be tempted to doubt God’s love for and adoption of them because of their personal struggles and the bad things they are having to endure. And yet Romans 5 says, “Since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us … and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory. We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because He has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with His love.” (vv. 1-5). Our trials are not to make us discouraged or doubt. We are to let them produce hope and assurance in us as we draw near to Christ through them!

“Dear brothers and sisters,” says James, “when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.” (1:2-4) Rather than causing us to doubt, the trials of life are to prove God’s love and power in us on our behalf.

Lastly, it’s been rightly said that high levels of assurance cannot be enjoyed by those who persist in low levels of obedience. To live in sin is to live in doubt. Preacher Charles Spurgeon talks about what he’s experienced in his own life:

“Whenever I feel that I have sinned and desire to overcome that sin for the future, the devil at the same time comes to me and whispers, ‘How can you be a pardoned person and accepted with God while you still sin in this way?’ If I listen to this I drop into despondency, and if I continued in that state I should fall into despair, and should commit sin more frequently than before; but God’s grace comes in and says to my soul, ‘Thou hast sinned; but did not Christ come to save sinners? Thou art not saved because thou art righteous; for Christ died for the ungodly.’ And my faith says, ‘Though I have sinned, I have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and though I am guilty yet by grace I am saved and I am a child of God still.’ And what then? Why the tears begin to flow and I say, ‘How could I ever sin against my God who has been so good to me? Now I will overcome that sin,’ and I get strong to fight with sin through the conviction that I am God’s child.”

Jesus Himself assures those who believe in Him: “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of My hand. My Father, Who has given them to Me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand” (John 10:28–29). Yes, you should see the evidence of the Holy Spirit in your life drawing you to Jesus, helping you understand His Word, growing to be more loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled as God’s Spirit transforms your life. But the bedrock for our assurance are God’s promises – made to you and to me, if we trust them – across His Word.

Mark 1:40-45 [NLTse]

³⁵ Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray. ³⁶ Later Simon and the others went out to find Him. ³⁷ When they found Him, they said, “Everyone is looking for You.”

³⁸ But Jesus replied, “We must go on to other towns as well, and I will preach to them, too. That is why I came.” ³⁹ So He traveled throughout the region of Galilee, preaching in the synagogues and casting out demons.

⁴⁰ A man with leprosy came and knelt in front of Jesus, begging to be healed. “If You are willing, You can heal me and make me clean,” he said.

⁴¹ Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out and touched him. “I am willing,” He said. “Be healed!” ⁴² Instantly the leprosy disappeared, and the man was healed. ⁴³ Then Jesus sent him on his way with a stern warning: ⁴⁴ “Don’t tell anyone about this. Instead, go to the priest and let him examine you. Take along the offering required in the law of Moses for those who have been healed of leprosy. This will be a public testimony that you have been cleansed.”

⁴⁵ But the man went and spread the word, proclaiming to everyone what had happened. As a result, large crowds soon surrounded Jesus, and He couldn’t publicly enter a town anywhere. He had to stay out in the secluded places, but people from everywhere kept coming to Him.

Sermon

The leper knelt before Jesus, close enough that the Lord only had to “reach out” to touch him. Now, the Old Testament Law declared leper’s unclean, which meant that if you had leprosy you were not allowed to be near or live near other Jews, nor were you allowed to attend synagogue or worship at the Temple. When lepers did come into town or need to be near other Jews they were required to stay at a distance from the clean Jews around them shouting, “Unclean!” as a warning, and so that others wouldn’t be contaminated by them and be declared unclean, too. And yet we have this leper brazenly march right up to within arm’s reach of Jesus! (And, of course, getting so close to Jesus meant getting that close to Jesus’ disciples and to all the crowds that so often flocked around Him, too.)

I can picture in my minds’ eye the disciples and crowds around Jesus gasping, shrieking, drawing back, and clawing and climbing overtop of each other in order to get away from the leper, his uncleanness, the possibility that they might be declared unclean on account of contact with him, and worse still, perhaps become infected by him with the dreaded leprosy themselves!.

And yet Jesus doesn’t seem to have moved.

And so, there, kneeling at Jesus’ feet, the leper said to Him, “If You are willing You can heal me.” Do you hear the complete faith in Jesus’ power that is in that statement? What’s at question is not Jesus’ power and authority. The leper is questioning Jesus’ heart. “I know You can heal me, Jesus. I just don’t if You’re want to.”

Of course, Jesus’ response to the leper is both a healing and a miracle: Every trace of the man’s leprosy disappears, and it happens instantly! (I speak of this as a healing and a miracle because there is another record we have of Jesus healing lepers where the healing came about more naturally – little bit by little bit as systems were restored and functions were regained. So it seems to be a miracle, as well, when the restoration occurs instantly, like it does here.)

So, what about us?

With the leper in mind, how boldly do you come to Jesus? We can come to Him in prayer; we can come to Him by asking the elders to pray for us; we can come to Him by constantly sharing our needs with those around us, asking for prayer in our groups or Bible studies, asking to be kept on the Prayer List, coming forward for prayer at the end of Worship week after week… But do we? Is our faith enough that we’re willing to cause a stir, willing to make a commotion, willing to shock those around us, and, perhaps, even willing to offend those around us in order to seek Jesus for our needs? Because Jesus shows us this morning that even if everyone else is offended by our boldness, He is not!

And when we do come, do we trust that Jesus can heal us? I guess when I think of the many Christian people I’ve interacted with over time I think that most Christian people do think that God can heal them. So maybe a better question for you would be: Do you trust that Jesus wants to heal you? Do I trust that Jesus wants to heal me? …

[Go to the Table and unwrap the bread and uncover the trays…]

Now let’s put ourselves in the place of Jesus’ disciples and those crowds. When we hear about someone with a great need, or when someone with a great need comes to us – perhaps, even, a scary need – do we gasp and shriek, or draw back and turn away (even if that turning away is only in our hearts)? Do such needs make us feel afraid or inadequate or powerless or guilty or perhaps some other such feeling that closes us down inside and gets us wanting nothing more than for our interaction with the needy person to end? … That’s how it seems the disciples and the crowds responded. But Jesus stuck.

Do we trust Him in such circumstances? Do we follow Jesus and do what we know He would do? That is, do we stay near to listen with a willing heart, willing to be used by God as He leads and provides?

I saw both of these played out during the Men’s Saturday Morning Bible Study yesterday. As we were getting ready to pray for each other at the very end of our time, one of the guys shared this Herculean need – a monstrous, impossible, overwhelming need! He laid it out there humbly, and in every aching detail. And we were all moved. The guy was crying and several of the rest of us got crying, too… And we prayed, and then we prayed some more. And as our prayer ended one of the guys stepped out of the room with the fella who had shared the need… and he helped him. Now, to the best of my knowledge his help didn’t completely meet the guy’s need, but it was huge, God-inspired help.

The man boldly shared his predicament with us all, and humbled himself, and took responsibility for this and that that were a part of it. And he demonstrated, as he shared with us, that he knew God could handle his troubles if God wanted to! And the Lord showed the guy that He could help and that He did, indeed, want to. We didn’t recognize it, but that guy had arrived at the Study a leper, but according to His faith, and because the One He put his faith in wants to help, he walked away cleansed and healed!

How bold are you to ask for what you believe you need from God? How persistent in your prayers are you and in asking for prayer are you?

On the other hand, how trusting are you to believe that He-Who’s-in-you is greater than he-who-is-in-the-world? That is, do you trust God even when confronted with overwhelming needs or monstrous, herculean situations?

Are you willing to keep seeking God’s promises – your Christian-inheritance – as aggressively as you need to until your Abba satisfies you?

Are you willing to offer yourself to be the answers to others’ needs and prayers: Listening, praying, and responding as God’s Spirit leads?

Where have you been falling short in asking?

Where have you been falling short in giving?

Father, we want to be like Jesus. Make it so…

Matthew 6:5-18 [NLTse]

⁵ “When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get. ⁶ But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, Who sees everything, will reward you.

⁷ “When you pray, don’t babble on and on as people of other religions do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again. ⁸ Don’t be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask Him! ⁹ Pray like this:

Our Father in Heaven, may Your name be kept holy. ¹⁰ May Your Kingdom come soon. May Your will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven. ¹¹ Give us today the food we need, ¹² and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us. ¹³ And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.

¹⁴ “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. ¹⁵ But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.

¹⁶ “And when you fast, don’t make it obvious, as the hypocrites do, for they try to look miserable and disheveled so people will admire them for their fasting. I tell you the truth, that is the only reward they will ever get. ¹⁷ But when you fast, comb your hair and wash your face. ¹⁸ Then no one will notice that you are fasting, except your Father, Who knows what you do in private. And your Father, Who sees everything, will reward you.

Sermon

Last week I shared that the Holy Spirit has directed our elders to call us to fast together as a church. We will celebrate seven one-day fasts across the Wednesdays of Lent. So, beginning Ash Wednesday, February 18^th, we will meet every Wednesday evening at 6:30pm for a soup dinner together in Fellowship Hall. Following that meal we’ll move to the Sanctuary for a time of prayer and praise. And then our fasting will begin: Water only until dinnertime that Thursday night when we will break our fasts with dinner in our various homes.

As a part of reading through and meditating on Isaiah 58:1-14 last week I called us all to adopt one new practice across the weeks of Lent that would have us love God more and one new practice that would have us love those around us more. (And we talked about how that could require us giving up some things, too, so that we’d have the time to do these new things.)

Has anyone accepted the call? Anyone here committed to love God and those around us more across Lent in some ways you’d be willing to share with us?

…

This morning, in preparation for our fast, I’d like to talk about the practice of fasting, some of the dos and don’ts, to help us as we get ready to start.

To start, let’s look at these words from the Lord Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount where our role model for living by faith says, “When you fast…” Now, notice that He doesn’t say, “If you fast…” and that He doesn’t say, “This if how I fast, but, of course, you can stop doing this after I ascend to Heaven…” No, our Savior says, “When you fast…”

Then in Acts 13 we read how the prophets and teachers of the church in Antioch fasted and worshiped as a part of discerning whom the Lord was sending from them out into the mission field. So we know that Christians continued to fast as the church spread out from Jerusalem.

And we can read in The Didache – a Christian discipleship manual from the second century – how during the 100s AD believers fasted every Wednesday and Friday as a part of their life in Christ. So, fasting was a part of Jewish discipleship before Jesus and continued to be a part of Christian discipleship once Jesus had come.

So, because some of you may have heard different preachings or teachings that fasting is not a part of the Christian life today, we can plainly see that that’s not the case: Jesus taught His disciples how to fast; the apostles and early Christians fasted; and even into the first generations of Christians Jesus’ followers continued fasting.

Now, the elders have called us to a fairly simple fast. We will only be giving up two meals: Breakfast and lunch across the Thursdays of Lent (as well as any snacks, of course). In their place we will all be drinking water and taking the time we would have spent in food preparation and meal times praying, praising God, and reading the Word.

Consider praying outloud and in a kneeling position. Try spending some time spread out on your face before God, as well. These types of body positions may help us nurture more humble attitudes as we pray.

Now, it’s true that the elders have called us to this fast, but we still believe that the Holy Spirit has specific reasons for each of you to participate in it, too. So, in preparation for this fast, we want each of you to ask our Father in Heaven why He wants you to be fasting: What specific spiritual reasons and purposes does He have in His mind for you during this fast? Does the Lord want to break the power of anger in your life as the result of this fast? Or perhaps your spiritual need is to be freed from unforgiveness or worry, or perhaps there are other problems in your life that are overwhelming you, maybe even driving you to despair! Whatever the issues you are facing, ask the Lord to make them clear to you, and trust that He has called you to this fast as a part of breaking you from them.

As a part of all this, get a journal. Whether a wire-bound notebook or a three-ring binder, or, perhaps like me, you’ll use some sort of a journal or notebook app on your phone, tablet, or computer. Write there the reasons, as specific as you can be, as to why you believe God has called you to this fast. You can also include there any prayer requests that you want to keep asking our Father for across the fast. And you can write down your prayers there, and any devotional thoughts or spiritual insights the Lord may be teaching you. You’ll find keeping all these things in your journal helpful as the fast continues, but also in the future when you want to reflect back on what God taught and how He stretched you during this time.

If you have a medical condition or are on any medications, please talk with a doctor who is familiar with fasting before joining us. A two meal fast is not very challenging to our health or systems, but better safe than sorry.

Be prepared ahead of time that headaches and feeling irritable often accompany fasts, especially if you are a big coffee or caffeinated drink person. But don’t let that intimdate you, and don’t let your fasting be an excuse to give in to irritable attitudes or behaviors!

Of course, be prepared that even people with good intentions may try to keep you from fasting or may encourage you to break your fast early. Expect it, and be ready with a kind, yet firm, response.

With last week’s reading from Isaiah 58 in mind, remember that there are many benefits from fasting. 1) The Lord will set us free from slavery to self and our sinful nature, loosening the bonds of wickedness and undoing the bands of the yoke. 2) He will bring us freedom from oppression. 3) He will transform us into givers. 4) He will give us the desire and abilities to meet and minister to people’s needs. 5) He will allow us to see ourselves as we really are. 6) God will give us spiritual insight and influence. 7) Recovery and healing of various kinds may happen in our lives. 8) Righteousness will precede us and God’s glory will be our protection and rear guard. 9) God will answer our prayers. 10) God will manifest His presence with us. 11) He will adjust our attitudes, 12) and continually guide us. 13) He will fulfill our desires in the midst of harsh and adverse situations. 14) He will give us strength and energy. 15) He will make us fruitful, 16) and like living water that never runs dry. 17) And He will give us more faith.

Don’t we all want to grow in these ways? And God wants us to grow in these ways. And His way includes prayer and fasting.

Review the benefits of a godly fast that we found last week going through Isaiah 58 (Ronnie Floyd’s list from pg. 212) in the hopes of inspiring some of the undecided in the congregation to join the fast…

Introduction

During last October’s Congregational Meeting Ron Syme suggested that we spend a day together fasting as a congregation. The Elders considered the idea at our October meeting and believed the Lord was indeed calling us to a congregational fast, but not for 2014. So at our recent January Meeting we considered the idea of fasting again, and we agreed that the Lord is calling our entire church to seven Wednesdays of prayer and fasting across the upcoming weeks of Lent.

For those of us not familiar with the season of Lent: Lent is the forty days (not including Sundays) leading up to Easter. It has its origins in the ideas of spring and the lengthening of daylight hours. (Which is where Lent gets the name “Lent” from, lengthening.) And its forty day period is linked to an ancient church practice of Christians fasting across the forty hours leading up to Easter sunrise, celebrated as the hours the Lord Jesus spent in the land of the dead: From His death on the cross Friday afternoon through to His resurrection appearance Easter Sunday morning.

This year Lent begins Wednesday, February 18^th – with what’s come to be called “Ash Wednesday”. So, we’ll begin our days of fasting that Wednesday, February 18^th, with a soup supper here at the church beginning at 6:30pm. We’ll enjoy some soup together, and enjoy each other for a bit before going upstairs to the Sanctuary for a short Service of ashes and prayer, and then our fast will begin – just water – from after that simple soup-meal throughout the rest of Wednesday night, Thursday morning and afternoon, and we’ll all break the fast with our own dinners in our own homes Thursday evening. We’ll continue to have soup meals and prayer times at 6:30pm on the Wednesdays that follow: February 25^th, March 4^th, March 11^th, March 18^th, March 24^th, and April 1^st, breaking our last Wednesday, April 1^st fast with our Maundy Thursday Church-Family Seder/Supper.

I’m going to preach and teach more about the actual practice of fasting next Sunday as some of us may be quite familiar with fasting and others of us might not be. So, I’ll take us step-by-step through the Scriptures about fasting and the practice of fasting next week. But this week I believe the Lord wants us to look at the whole upcoming season of Lent that’s now just a couple of weeks away, and how the Holy Spirit might be calling us to use the opportunity of this special church-season to develop more Christ-like qualities and character in us…

Isaiah 58:1-14 [NLTse]

58 “Shout with the voice of a trumpet blast. Shout aloud! Don’t be timid. Tell My people Israel of their sins! ² Yet they act so pious! They come to the Temple every day and seem delighted to learn all about Me. They act like a righteous nation that would never abandon the laws of its God. They ask Me to take action on their behalf, pretending they want to be near Me. ³ We have fasted before You!’ they say. ‘Why aren’t You impressed? We have been very hard on ourselves, and You don’t even notice it!’

“I will tell you why!” I respond. “It’s because you are fasting to please yourselves. Even while you fast, you keep oppressing your workers. ⁴ What good is fasting when you keep on fighting and quarreling? This kind of fasting will never get you anywhere with Me. ⁵ You humble yourselves by going through the motions of penance, bowing your heads like reeds bending in the wind. You dress in burlap and cover yourselves with ashes. Is this what you call fasting? Do you really think this will please the Lord?

⁶ “No, this is the kind of fasting I want: Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. ⁷ Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help.

⁸ “Then your salvation will come like the dawn, and your wounds will quickly heal. Your godliness will lead you forward, and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind. ⁹ Then when you call, the Lord will answer. ‘Yes, I am here,’ He will quickly reply.

“Remove the heavy yoke of oppression. Stop pointing your finger and spreading vicious rumors! ¹⁰ Feed the hungry, and help those in trouble. Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you will be as bright as noon. ¹¹ The Lord will guide you continually, giving you water when you are dry and restoring your strength. You will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring. ¹² Some of you will rebuild the deserted ruins of your cities. Then you will be known as a rebuilder of walls and a restorer of homes.

¹³ “Keep the Sabbath day holy. Don’t pursue your own interests on that day, but enjoy the Sabbath and speak of it with delight as the Lord’s holy day. Honor the Sabbath in everything you do on that day, and don’t follow your own desires or talk idly. ¹⁴ Then the Lord will be your delight. I will give you great honor and satisfy you with the inheritance I promised to your ancestor Jacob. I, the Lord, have spoken!”

Sermon

The forty days of Lent have traditionally been a season of spiritual renewal among Christians. I don’t know what it is about us human beings, but it seems that we oftentimes need a little “extra help” to get focused and motivated to draw nearer to Christ. That “extra help” sometimes takes the form of a Christian retreat or conference, and we come back home so fired up we’re ready to start making some changes! God’s “extra help” is sometimes a moving Bible study or sermon or Worship service, or even reading a book or watching a show or movie that inspires us to begin putting into practice what the Lord wants to see going on in our lives.

Too often “extra help” comes in the form of hardship or disappointment or tragedy: When fear or discomfort or heartache “wakes us up” out of our hard hearts and old ways to consider the claims of Christianity, or to commit ourselves to deeper and greater surrender and service and praise. Of course, “extra help” can simply be a special day of the year – like New Year’s and its resolutions – or a special season in our lives – like when we’ve committed to accomplish a certain goal by this age or that birthday.

Lent’s been like that for many Christians over the years: A forty-day season of “extra help”, providing Jesus’ people with a focused time frame in which to begin growing more and more like Him in different areas of their lives.

I love this passage from the prophet Isaiah because our Father makes absolutely clear that it is when we serve others for Him that He then serves us. I know that many Christians have been tempted to “coast” in our faith because Jesus has promised to “be with us always”, so we can just enjoy that, right? And because the Holy Spirit continues to show us all the different ways that God’s with us, so we don’t have to do anything, right? And yet it was to believers, to those who trusted and followed Him that Jesus said, “Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and He will give you everything you need.” (Matthew 6:33) It was to God’s people that Jeremiah said, “If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.” (Jeremiah 29:13) And it was to those early Christians that the author of Hebrews wrote: “It is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to Him must believe that God exists and that He rewards those who sincerely seek Him.” (11:6)

The Christian life is always “onward and upward”, as C.S. Lewis described it in The Last Battle. The Christian life is always about engaging the Lord in refreshed and deeper ways. (And when I say “deeper” I’m not talking about magical or mystical ways, I’m talking about us giving Him more and more of ourselves, surrendering more and more of ourselves, taking more and more thoughts captive for Him until every thought is captive to His glory! The Christian life is about always pursuing Christ, and keeping our first love for Him supple and new and vital! At the very same time, since the Scriptures have taught us, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, Whom we cannot see?” (1 John 4:20)

Which brings us back to our morning’s reading, because the prophet asks us, “Do you want to experience and enjoy God’s blessings in your life? Do you want to be someone who’s known for bearing Christ’s light and His healing and His righteousness? Do you want to know His protection, and be certain our Father will always answer your prayers? Then you must have nothing to do with crushing or ruining others; you must have nothing to do with accusing or slandering others. You must use your money to feed the hungry and to satisfy the needs of those who are weak in the world. Only then will His light shine from you in the darkness. Only then will those dark, confusing, and crushing times in your life become as bright as though it were ‘high noon’, having clear direction and a light and joyful heart. Then the Lord will always guide you, will always satisfy your needs, and will always give you whatever strength your circumstances demand. Then your life will be abundant, lush, and productive for the Lord, and your life will be a blessing and a refreshing to others. That which has been torn down in your life will be rebuilt (even from generations ago!). If you keep the Sabbath, doing only what God wants done, delighting in it, honoring it and having others honor it, then you will find your joy in the Lord, and then you will live above the troubles going on around you, and you’ll receive the fullness of all that God has promised. The yokes, the chains, the brokenness that has enslaved you and bound you and kept you down will then be untied and broken, and on account of God’s power at work in your life, that which is enslaving and binding and keeping others down around you will then be untied and broken, as well!

…

So this Lent, put into practice in your life at least one new way of loving God more. That might include reading the Bible daily, if you are not doing so now. Begin tithing, if you’re not doing so. Strengthen your daily prayer life, or begin praying with your roommate or spouse or family. Commit to never miss Worship, if you’re not as regular as you could be. Join a Bible study or Sunday School class, if you’re not already a part of such things.

But don’t just add these things to your already busy schedule. Put God first! If you simply add Him, likely it will only be a matter of time before He just doesn’t fit anymore. No, put Him and His things first, and look at what else in your life may need to go to make room for your Maker, your Savior, the One Who is life and has life for you still that you have not yet even tasted.

“How is God calling you to love Him more?” Whatever the answer, make plans for living into that as Lent draws near. Make a list. Make a plan for “seeking the Kingdom of God and living righteously above all else.” Be ready, come Ash Wednesday. If you don’t have any ideas, ask Him in prayer. And when some random idea pops into your head, bounce it off me, one of the elders, or a trusted Christian friend, and if it’s of the Lord, trust that the Holy Spirit has answered your prayer and then live into it!

Likewise this Lent, put into practice in your life at least one new way of loving those around you more. How is God calling you to love your friends, your family members, your co-workers, your neighbors more? Is He leading you to find a prayer-partner and establishing a regular, weekly prayer time together? Is He stirring you to start inviting different friends and neighbors to Worship? You’ve got a couple weeks to be asking our Father and to better understand, that is, if you don’t already know how He’s wanting you to be about this. Then commit to begin living these ways during Lent.

One of the great things about Lent is that because it begins on a Wednesday night, you start off with three days – Thursday, Friday, Saturday – to begin your new practices, and then you get a break, since Sundays are not a part of Lent. It’s a great time to begin new things and to let go of old things! Then, after those first three days and then the Sunday break, you then have six days with the new practice or habit or commitment, and then another Sunday break. Then six more days, and then another Sunday break. And on and on across Lent. By our Father’s grace, when Lent is over and Easter Sunday arrives, we’re all ready to continue the new practices He’s begun in us all the rest of our days!

Of course, our congregational fast will be a part of what we’ll all be doing across Lent. But it is your elders hope that this fast will work together with however else the Lord is calling us to “seek Him wholeheartedly”, and that the result will be loving God more and more, with Lent’s help, and loving our neighbor’s more and more, with Lent’s help.

(And let us know if you can provide a big pot of soup for our different dinners across the Wednesday night’s of Lent. When enough people help it gets to be a lot of delicious fun!)

Over the next couple of weeks I hope different ones of you will share your lenten plans for drawing nearer to Jesus and for showing those around us Jesus’ love…

1 Corinthians 6:12-20 [NLTse]
ELDER: ¹² You say,
PASTOR: “I am allowed to do anything”—
ELDER: but not everything is good for you. And even though
PASTOR: “I am allowed to do anything,”
ELDER: I must not become a slave to anything. ¹³ You say,
PASTOR: “Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food.”
ELDER: (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies. ¹⁴ And God will raise us from the dead by His power, just as He raised our Lord from the dead.
ELDER: ¹⁵ Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ? Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! ¹⁶ And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, “The two are united into one.” ¹⁷ But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.
ELDER: ¹⁸ Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. ¹⁹ Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, ²⁰ for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.

Sermon
Last week we talked about sex, and we’re going to talk about sex this week, as well. I am going to be talking about sex respectfully and appropriately for each and every age-level here in this Sanctuary. I am saying this ahead of time in case you, parents, want your children to hear about sex from you before hearing about it from me and want to take them out for the sermon. However, I hope you will let them stay, because your children are already hearing about sex at school or from friends, and on TV, and in the music they listen to, and from the movies they watch, …

Just the other day a group of Christian teens, after hearing a speaker talk about the blessings of abstinence and sexual purity, were heard saying that they had never heard anyone at church talk about sex or sexual immorality or God’s desire that we save ourselves for our wives or husbands. (Many of you adults, I know, may be thinking, “Good! Church isn’t the place to be talking about sex anyway.”) Except then those teens went on to talk about all the different sexual experiences they’d already had at their young age… We need to talk about sex in church. Sex is God’s idea! And it is a beautiful thing to talk about when talked about respectfully and appropriately, and when talked about in the context of husband and wife enjoying God’s gift of their sexuality together within the relationship of life-long marriage.

So, moms and dads or guardians or chaperones, take your kids out if you feel you must, but I hope you will let your kids stay…

As I’ve already said, sex was God’s idea: His sacred wedding-gift to husbands and wives when we get married. When people express their sexuality outside of marriage they abuse and misuse the gift. Premarital sex, pornography, affairs, homosexual relations are all outside these boundaries. They all abuse the gift…

Last week we talked about some of the arguments people use to rationalize their sexual activity outside of marriage: Saying things like, “It’s not wrong if we love each other;” or saying, “Times have changed, and what was wrong in biblical times is no longer considered sin;” “We’re married in God’s eyes,” you can sometimes hear people say; and, “Even if I am doing these things, I can still have a good relationship with God because He understands.” We showed how these are all just lies so that we can get our way and do what we want, and that living in such ways denies the cross and keeps us in slavery to sin.

This week is “Part 2” of that message. So what’s still to be said?

People often want to know how far they can go before something is truly considered “sex”. Even Christians who know that we live by grace and by the spirit of the Law often want to argue what the letter of the Law allows us to do or not to do. Which, of course, is exactly the problem: Since Adam and Eve in the very beginning, men and women have treated God like He’s an enemy, keeping us from fun, keeping us from thrills, His commandments keeping us from the abundant life that we hear about in music, read about in books, and see on the TV and hit movies around us.
[Move the sticky to myself.] But the truth is that God’s the good guy. He’s been the hero – the only true hero – since the very beginning.

Ever heard the term “casual sex”? Ever heard the term “recreational sex”? You can hear these expressions all over in American culture and across many modern societies. But there’s no such thing. There is no such thing as casual sex because the depth of intimacy involved in sexual activity makes the participants a part of each other. Genesis says, and the Lord Jesus affirms it in the Gospels, “The two are united into one.” (Genesis 2:24 and Mark 10:8)

There is something unique about the sexual expression of human beings that binds us to our partners: Binds us physically, binds us emotionally and mentally, and binds us spiritually, as well. So much so that Paul can write, “Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, ‘The two are united into one’?” (vv. 15-16) Do you see all the connections? How sex “joins us” to the other, and how sex makes us “a part” of the other and makes us “one body” with the other. And for Christians, it affects Christ because it is a physical, mental/emotional, and spiritual joining, as well.

As you can imagine, or perhaps you’ve already asked this question yourself, “Then how far can Christians go? Is it okay if Christian couples only touch each other sexually or only kiss each other in sexual ways?” (I’m using respectful and appropriate language here, please understand what I’m referring to.)

Let me use the example of a sticky note.
If we take a sticky note and attach it to something, it will adhere. If we remove it, it will leave behind a small amount of residue; the longer it remains, the more residue is left behind. If we take that note and stick it to several places repeatedly, it will leave residue everywhere we stick it, and it will eventually lose its ability to adhere to anything. This is much like what happens to people when they engage in “casual” sex, or when someone has several boyfriends or girlfriends that they have been sexual with. Each time we leave a sexual relationship, we leave a part of ourselves behind and take something from the one we’ve been with. The longer the relationship has gone on, the more we leave behind and the more we lose of ourselves. As we go from partner to partner, we continue to lose a tiny bit of ourselves each time, and we continue to take a tiny bit of them each time, and eventually we may lose our ability to form a lasting sexual relationship at all. The sexual act is so strong and so intimate that we cannot enter into it casually, no matter how easy it might seem.

So when we ask, “How far can we go?” I think we’re asking the wrong question. “How far can we go?” is asking, “How much of me is it okay to give another?” “How much of me is it okay to leave behind?” And, “How much of another – and of how many others – is it okay for me to bring into my future marriage?”

And when we look at it that way – that is, when we look at it God’s way, the One Who thought up sex and gave it to us in the first place – we can see that the more we abstain-from before marriage, the more we will have to share exclusively with our husband or our wife when – by God’s grace – we finally get married. And the more special and unique our relationship in that marriage can become.

My friends, keep it to holding hands; keep it to hugging; keep it to modest kissing before marriage. Complete abstinence is God’s only policy when it comes to sex before marriage. He’s our hero. He’s the good guy. And His ways and commandments are good.

So many married couples have so many troubles that are all because they stepped over this precious boundary that God has set around sex. It may seem difficult while you are unmarried. But once you are married you will be happy that you did.

Now, for those who have crossed over that line, for those who have already misused God’s beautiful gift of sex, don’t despair. Yes, there will be consequences for your actions. Perhaps there already have been. Sin has consequences that we need to be willing to accept and live with, even as God’s children. But there is no sin beyond the reach of the cross of Christ. No Christian needs to live under the condemnation and judgment of wicked things we’ve done or sinful acts we regret. “If we confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness!” (1 John 1:9)

You may have noticed that in the paragraphs just before our morning’s reading Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God. Some of you were once like that,” Paul wrote to them. “But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (6:9-11)
When we confess our sins, Jesus Christ is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all wickedness! Sin is gone. A new creation has come!

Even so, the Lord has much more for you and for me than even the majesty and glory of His forgiveness. God restores! The prophet Joel writes, “The Lord says, ‘I will give you back what you lost to the swarming locusts, the hopping locusts, the stripping locusts, and the cutting locusts… Once again you will have all the food you want, and you will praise the Lord your God, Who does these miracles for you.  Never again will My people be disgraced. Then you will know that I am among My people Israel, that I am the Lord your God, and there is no other…

“‘Then, after doing all those things, I will pour out My Spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions. In those days I will pour out My Spirit even on servants—men and women alike… Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’” (2:25-32)
?
Sex outside of life-long marriage between a man and a woman is a locust that eats away at our sense of self, self-esteem, our trust and faith, and our ability to bind ourselves to another as we were created to do. But our hero – our Father – restores! And He renews us, He replenishes us, the Holy Spirit replaces what’s been lost of our souls as we walk with Jesus each day.

1 Corinthians 6:12-20 [NLTse]

ELDER: ¹² You say,

PASTOR: “I am allowed to do anything”—

ELDER: but not everything is good for you. And even though

PASTOR: “I am allowed to do anything,”

ELDER: I must not become a slave to anything. ¹³ You say,

PASTOR: “Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food.”

ELDER: (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies. ¹⁴ And God will raise us from the dead by His power, just as He raised our Lord from the dead.

ELDER: ¹⁵ Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ? Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! ¹⁶ And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, “The two are united into one.” ¹⁷ But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.

ELDER: ¹⁸ Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. ¹⁹ Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, ²⁰ for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.

Sermon

Once upon a time there was a small rural community, so small, in fact, that the only church in town was a little Presbyterian church whose pastor also had to double-up as the local barber to make ends meet.

There was a man in that small community who had invested wisely and was enjoying his newfound comfort. The man got out of bed one day to go through his daily routine, looked into the mirror as he was about to shave and decided, “I make enough money now. I don’t have to shave myself. I’ll go down to the barber and let him shave me from now on.” So he did.

The man walked into the barber shop and found that the preacher/barber was out calling on some shut-ins. However, the pastor’s wife, a pleasant woman named Grace, was there and told the man, “I usually do the shaves anyway. Sit down and I’ll take care of you.” So she shaved him. When he asked, “How much do I owe you?” she replied, “$25.”

Now, the man thought that was somewhat expensive and he got thinking that he might only be able to get a shave every other day. But, he gave Grace the $25 and went on his way.

The next day, he woke up and found his face to be just as smooth as the day before. “No need for a shave today,” he thought, rather pleased, and began feeling better about such a very expensive shave. The next day he awoke once again to find his face just as smooth as the day before. “Wow!” he thought. “That’s amazing,” as he normally would need to shave daily to keep his clean-shaven business look.

Day 3 he woke up and his face was still as smooth as the minute after the pastor’s wife had finished. Now, somewhat perplexed, the man went down to the barber shop to find out what was going on. This particular day the pastor was in and the man asked him why his face was as smooth as it was the first day it was shaven. The kind old pastor gently replied, “Friend, you were shaved by Grace. And once shaved, always shaved…”

The grace God has shown us in Jesus Christ is truly amazing. There is nothing His grace has not, does not, and will not save us from, forgive us of, and cleanse us from! So amazing is God’s grace that in the early years of the Church some teachers and preachers from Rome wrote to the apostle Paul asking him if it was okay for Christians to keep on sinning. It seemed to these leaders that Christians’ continuing to sin would put God’s forgiving-grace on display for more and more of the people around them to see and be attracted to.

Paul responded, writing, “Should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of His wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?” (6:1-2)

Likewise, the majesty and enormity of God’s grace led the Christians in Corinth (in our reading this morning) to write to Paul, “[We are] allowed to do anything!” Yes, Paul replied, but remember, “not everything is good for you.” “[We are] allowed to do anything!” they declared. But Paul warned them: Beware that your freedom doesn’t lead you back into slavery.

The letter of 1 Corinthians is filled with Paul rebuking and correcting the Corinthian Christians  for thinking themselves better than others in the church because of who had converted and baptized them, ? because they were suing their fellow Christians in court, ? because they had twisted the meaning of the Lord’s Supper and made it into a mockery, ? because they had spiritualized the resurrection of the dead, not believing that Jesus would bodily-return someday, ? and not knowing that believers would, when Jesus returned, be given new, resurrected bodies to enjoy the Lord with and to live with Him in forever…

But across this letter so filled with rebukes and corrections, Paul spoke most strongly about the Corinthians’ misunderstandings concerning sex.

Before I go on I want to let you parents know that I am going to be preaching about sex today. I am going to be talking about sex respectfully and appropriately for each and every age-level here in this Sanctuary. I want you to know this ahead of time in case you want your children to hear about sex from you before hearing about it from me. However, I hope you will let them stay, because your children are already hearing about sex at school, or from friends, and on TV, and in the music they listen to, and from the movies they watch, etc…

Just the other day a group of Christian teens, after hearing a speaker talk about the blessings of abstinence and sexual purity, were heard saying that they had never heard anyone at church talk with them about sexual immorality and God’s desire that we save ourselves before, and then they went on to talk about all the different experiences they’d already had at their young age.

So, take your kids out if you feel you must, but I hope you know you can trust me to be respectful and appropriate in all I’m about to say…

The culture we live in today is a lot like the culture in which the Corinthian Christians lived to whom Paul was writing. In the verses just prior to our reading this morning Paul mentions the greed of Corinth, the casual sex and affairs being had in the public eye, the variety of faiths being practiced all around them, legalized prostitution, the drinking and drugging and partying going on, the acceptance of homosexuality, and the pervasiveness of dishonesty and abusive relationships. It’s like reading one of our newspapers!

And Paul writes, “I know you’ve heard that on account of God’s grace that we Christians can do anything we like. But,” he says, “remember, not everything is good for you. Remember, sometimes the things we give ourselves to take us and keep us and lock us up.” And as he wrote to those in Galatia, “Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure you stay free… Don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature.” (Galatians 5:1, 13) Of course, Paul focuses on sexual immorality as the chief among such snares.

In the New Testament, the word most often translated “sexual immorality” is porneia. (It’s where we get the word “pornography” from.) Porneia is also sometimes translated “fornication”, “unchastity”, or just “immorality” in general. It speaks of any type of sexual expression outside the boundaries of marriage between one man and one woman for life.

As we’ve just read, 1 Corinthians 6:18 says, “Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body.” Our bodies, as Christians, are the “temple of the Holy Spirit” Paul goes on to say. (vv. 19-20) Many of the practices of the other faiths being lived out around the Corinthians often involved perverse and immoral sexual acts taking place during their worship services. And Paul is telling us that when we Christians use our physical bodies for immoral purposes, we are imitating these other faiths and we are polluting our bodies – God’s holy temple – with behaviors He calls “detestable”!

Sex is God’s idea. And the Bible makes clear that sex was created to be enjoyed between one man and one woman who are in a covenant-marriage until one of them dies. Human sexuality is God’s sacred wedding-gift to humanity. Any expression of it outside of God’s boundaries abuses and misuses the gift. Premarital sex, pornography, affairs, homosexual relations are all outside these boundaries; all abuse the gift…

Even so, as I’m sure you could in Corinth, you can hear all sorts of arguments, excuses, and rationalizations across our society against abstinence, chastity, sexual-purity, and life-long marital faithfulness. One of the most prevalent, I think, is: It’s not wrong if we love each other.

Which sounds nice, except the Lord makes no distinction in His Word between “loving” and “unloving” sexual relations. The only distinction He makes is between married and unmarried people. Sex within marriage is a part of the blessing God has given husbands and wives (Genesis 1:28), while sex outside of marriage is always spoken of negatively and is always committed outside His blessing and favor.

You can also hear some people claim that, Times have changed, and what was wrong in biblical times is no longer considered sin. And yet most of the passages condemning the different forms of sexual immorality also include such evils as greed, stealing, drunkenness, cheating, etc… We don’t have any problem understanding these other things as still being sin. No. And sexual immorality is still sin, too.

Have you ever heard someone tell you, We’re married in God’s eyes? What they are saying is that the God Who created and calls us to be proudly, publicly, and joyously married, has taken back that command so that they can do something that apart from it He Himself has always called “sin”. No, God established marriage to be one man and one woman publicly-declared to be united for life. (Mark 10:6-9) His eyes see immorality for what it is, regardless of how cleverly we might try to “redefine” it.

Of course, you can hear all manner of Christians who are living in these ways say, I can still have a good relationship with God because He understands. But the Bible shows us that we only fool ourselves when we think that we can stubbornly choose sin and God doesn’t care. In his first letter John writes, “We can be sure that we know Him if we obey His commandments. If someone claims, ‘I know God,’ but doesn’t obey God’s commandments, that person is a liar and is not living in the truth.” (2:3-4)

As Christians, we are to live a purified life because we have been made holy through the exchange of our sin for the righteousness of Christ on the cross; we have been made completely new creations in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:17-21) Our old natures, with all their impurities – sexual and otherwise – have died and now the lives we live we live by faith in Jesus Christ Who died for us! (Galatians 2:20) To practice any form of sexual immorality is to deny all that, and is to keep on living like our old selves and as slaves to sin. And yes, “we are allowed to do anything,” but not if anything leads us into becoming slaves, not ever again. It is through abstinence, chastity, sexual-purity, and life-long marital faithfulness that we honor God with our bodies. (1 Corinthians 6:18-20)

God’s rules, along with His acts of discipline, demonstrate His love for us. Following what He says can only help us during our time on earth. By maintaining sexual purity before marriage we avoid emotional entanglements that can negatively affect our future relationships and marriage. And keeping ourselves from sexual immorality guards our hearts, and our minds, and our bodies so that we can experience the unreserved love for our mates that is also one of God’s sacred gifts to marriage: A love which is surpassed only by God’s immeasurable love for us!

Introduction
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper: Protestant Christians practice only these two Sacraments, what we believe to be “visible signs of God’s invisible grace”. Roman Catholics, however, practice seven Sacraments: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, but also Confirmation, Penance, Anointing of the Sick, Ordination, and Marriage. We Protestants don’t believe these others to be Sacraments because we believe the Sacraments are for every Christian and the Bible doesn’t tell everyone to get married, and because the Bible doesn’t call each and every Christian to ordination. We don’t believe Confirmation is a Sacrament because Confirmation is so directly connected to Baptism, so much so that for all those not baptized as infants, Confirmation is an integral part of their Baptism ceremony. Likewise, Penance is intimately connected with the Lord’s Supper as the mercy and reconciling benefits of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross are ministered and renewed to believers through each serving of the bread and the cup.
So as we gather today to ordain and install men and women among us to the offices of elder and deacon we are not participating in a Sacrament but we are setting men and women apart to those special roles and services in the Body of Christ to which God has called them and – by the Holy Spirit – has empowered them to fulfill.

Mark 1:1-11 [NLTse]
This is the Good News about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. It began ² just as the prophet Isaiah had written:
“Look, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, and he will prepare your way. ³ He is a voice shouting in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord’s coming! Clear the road for him!’”
⁴ This messenger was John the Baptist. He was in the wilderness and preached that people should be baptized to show that they had repented of their sins and turned to God to be forgiven. ⁵ All of Judea, including all the people of Jerusalem, went out to see and hear John. And when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. ⁶ His clothes were woven from coarse camel hair, and he wore a leather belt around his waist. For food he ate locusts and wild honey.
⁷ John announced: “Someone is coming soon who is greater than I am—so much greater that I’m not even worthy to stoop down like a slave and untie the straps of his sandals. ⁸ I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit!”
⁹ One day Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and John baptized him in the Jordan River. ¹⁰ As Jesus came up out of the water, he saw the heavens splitting apart and the Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove. ¹¹ And a voice from heaven said, “You are my dearly loved Son, and you bring me great joy.”

Baptism: Sprinkling in a font gives us a picture of washing; immersion in a tub or stream can convey the idea of death and new life. Either way we are stuck focusing on the physical dimension of these acts: Washing and cleansing, or dying and new life. And yet John the Baptist makes clear that his baptism – showing that we’ve repented of our sins and turned to God to be forgiven – is merely preparation for the Christian life. John made clear that Jesus’ baptism, baptism with the Holy Spirit, that’s the doorway into Christ.
It is too easy, I think, to be distracted by the physical aspects of baptism and think this to be a ritual of having our sins forgiven, but Jesus’ baptism shows us that what is truly happening here – because our sins have been forgiven – is the boundary between Heaven and earth is being torn open and the Holy Spirit coming upon us to pour into us God’s love and to pour into us God’s salvation, everything the Scriptures says are ours by faith.

Mark 15:33-41 [NLTse]
³³ At noon, darkness fell across the whole land until three o’clock. ³⁴ Then at three o’clock Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
³⁵ Some of the bystanders misunderstood and thought he was calling for the prophet Elijah. ³⁶ One of them ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, holding it up to him on a reed stick so he could drink. “Wait!” he said. “Let’s see whether Elijah comes to take him down!”
³⁷ Then Jesus uttered another loud cry and breathed his last. ³⁸ And the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.
³⁹ When the Roman officer who stood facing him saw how he had died, he exclaimed, “This man truly was the Son of God!”

Sermon
In the Jerusalem-Temple of Jesus’ day there were two rooms: The Sanctuary (also called the Holy Place) and the Most Holy Sanctuary (also called the Holy of Holies). The two rooms were partitioned off from each other by two massive curtains: Each 60 feet high and 30 feet wide, and each 4 inches thick. These two curtains together were spoken of as “the curtain” or “the veil” and kept those outside the Temple and those priests ministering in the Sanctuary room separated from and from seeing into the Holy of Holies, where God’s presence dwelt.

As with Baptism, it can be so easy for us to look at the physical aspects of the Lord’s Supper – speaking of the bread as the body of Jesus and of the cup as the blood of Jesus – and think we are going through a ritual to merely remind ourselves of Jesus’ sacrifice. But in His Word God tells us that Jesus’ sacrifice tore down the dividing curtain, tore apart that which separated us from God’s holy presence, opening us to an unhindered relationship with the Father!

The Lord likes to tear things apart for us. In Exodus the Lord tore open a pathway through the Red Sea. (14:21) In Isaiah (48:21) the Lord speaks of satisfying Israel’s thirst by tearing open a rock where water gushed out.

God is asking us to believe that He’s torn open the skies in our baptisms to equip each of us with power from Heaven. Likewise He”s asking us to believe that He’s torn open the dividing curtain so that now all who have faith to draw near have unhindered communion & fellowship with Him.

As you come forward to share in the Lord’s Supper later in our Worship, put your hand in the font-water and see the heavens splitting apart and the Holy Spirit descending upon you like a dove in your baptism. Hear the voice from Heaven saying, “You are my dearly beloved, and you bring me great joy.

What is it that separates you from God? Is it a habit or a practice that you just can’t or won’t give up? Do you not pray enough or read the Bible enough? Are you unworthy and you know you’re just not good enough? As you eat the bread, and as you drink the cup, know that the curtain has been torn away: Everything that could ever separate you from that holiest of places where Almighty God lives has been torn away. All that’s left is your entering and enjoying sweet friendship and fellowship – sweet communion – with Him.

(And after Worship, if you are not sure whether you have received the Holy Spirit or not, please come to the front to be anointed and prayed for by the elders gathered here.)

I love the way one part of the Bible fills us and completes other parts of the Bible!

This past week I was reading and studying Jeremiah 30-31 even as I was reading and studying this passage from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.

Jeremiah, in chapters 30-31, has been imprisoned in the kings courtyard – the federal penitentiary of their day. And if that weren’t bad enough, the Babylonian army is laying siege to Jerusalem around him! But God gives Jeremiah words of hope to share with the inhabitants of Jerusalem:

“Yes, the Babylonians will overcome the Jews; they will take Jerusalem, defeat the remnants of Judah’s army, and take all Judah away into captivity and slavery, But, “the Lord says, “A cry is heard in Ramah – deep anguish and bitter weeping, Rachel weeps for her children, refusing to be comforted – for her children are gone.’

“But now this is what the Lord says: “Do not weep any longer, for I will reward you, ‘ says the Lord. ‘Your children will come back to you from the distant land of the enemy. There is hope for your future, ‘says the Lord.”

Ramah was a village to the north of Jerusalem, and the place where a thousand years before the matriarch, Rachel, died giving birth to the youngest of Jacob’s twelve sons, Benjamin. During the siege of Jerusalem Ramah was being used as a detainment camp to hold and organize the men and women and boys and girls of Judah on their way to slavery and captivity in Babylon.

Ramah was the embodiment of Judah’s defeat and Rachel’s death – cries echoed in the cries of husband and wives as they were separated from each other and of fathers and mothers as they were torn from their kids. But God says, “Stop your weeping for I will reward you. Your children will come back to you from the distant land of the enemy. There is hope for your future,” says the Lord.

In the midst of their heartaches and heartbreaks and hopelessness God says, “Cut it out! This is not your lot! I have plans for you! There is hope for your future!” says the Lord. Which brings us to our reading from Ephesians 1 This morning, that says, “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.” And then Paul goes on to list those spiritual blessings: That is

God loved us

And God chose us (in Christ)

God chose us to be holy, set apart, different and

He chose us to be without fault, blameless, unaccusable of sin!*

He’s adopted us to be His sons and daughters along with giving us the legal benefits of being His family in Heaven!

He’s forgiven us our sins – forgiven us! Not holding on to them or holding them against us anymore! And

He’s revealed to us His will for uniting the entire physical and spiritual creation together under the lordship of Christ!
He’s spoken all that over us with the same creative authority that He spoke the heavens and the earth and all the cosmos and creation into being! That’s who we are in Christ! That’s how new we are in Christ!

*(We can be shown our sin; we can be convinced of our sin; we can even feel sadness and sorrow and repent of our sin. But we can never be accused or condemned of our sin. Not in Christ. Not ever again.)

And that’s how we’re called to live in Christ. Not according to our fears and worries and the uncertainties of our circumstances, but according to Christ, crucified, and risen from the dead!

ISIS, ebola, old age, evection, aimlessness, emptiness? Praise Him in the storm! Is He our Father? Can He save? Has He saved us before? Can He save us again? Do we trust Him? Enough to die? Enough to live, to live even in the face of such temptations and persecutions and opposition?

Does God love you? Has God chosen you? Has God chosen you to be different from those around you? Different because you live life His way? Has God made you to be unaccusable of sin? Unaccusable? Are you God’s sons, guys, men? Are you God’s daughters, gals, ladies? Has God forgiven you your sins? Completely forgiven you? Do you know, has God revealed to you, that it’s all for Christ: That you’re for Christ, that I’m for Christ, that we’re all for Christ, that Milford is for Christ, that  the Pocono’s are for Christ, that the United States is for Christ, that the nations are for Christ, that the earth is for Christ, that this galaxy is for Christ, that the universe is for Christ, do you know that, do you get that, has He revealed that to you? Then praise Him! Praise Him in the storm! Praise Him in the face of your hardship, struggles, and fear. Praise Him! He’s stronger, He can. He will. Praise Him! All praise to Him! When you praise your team, praise God, too. He’s more worthy. He’s a better bet! When you praise your spouse or your kids or your folks, praise Him, too! All praise to Him!

Enough defining ourselves and our moods by our circumstances. We are defined by our God! Enough being dominated and overrun by our enemies and opposition. God is our refuge and strength, our hope in Whom we’ve put our trust! There is hope for our future!

No matter our present, let’s live 2015 and beyond, like children and people of hope that we are!

Let us pray….