Searching for the Gate of Heaven

Posted on December 7, 2024 by salooper57

Your doorbell rings. You open the door and find two strangers handing out pamphlets. They ask if you know whether you will go to heaven when you die. You know where this is heading, but you go with it and say, “How can I know I am going to heaven?”

Depending on the religious tradition, they will tell you how you can know, or tell you that no one can know. If they are from an Evangelical Christian tradition, they will tell you that if you believe in Jesus, you can know that you are going to heaven, and they might use (or misuse) 1 John 5:12-13 to support their claim.

Gate of Heaven, Pura Luhur Lempuyang, Bali (Wiki Media Commons) Photo by Mehmet Kalcay on Pexels.com

It’s interesting that people today want to know how they can get into heaven. In earlier ages, people were very interested in where they could get into heaven. The idea that there is a portal – or portals – into heaven is very old.

Even today, there are numerous places on the planet that are reputed to be gateways into heaven. In China, for example, there is the Tianmen Mountain, with its enormous opening that appears to lead into the heavens. There is a Hindu temple in Bali that features the picturesque “Gates of Heaven.” Tourists travel from around the globe just to see it.

The ziggurat mentioned in Genesis 11, known as the Tower of Babel, was likely constructed to be a gate of heaven. The idea that humans could advance upon God, could enter his space unbidden, is a powerful idea. Those who control the gate of heaven can control humanity—just think of the churches and religious leaders who have appointed themselves the gatekeepers of heaven. No wonder God intervened to put an end to the construction project.

Later in Genesis, the patriarch Jacob has left home in a hurry. He has deceived his father, infuriated his brother, and worn out his welcome. He is on his way to visit relatives in Paddan-Aram, about 450 miles to the northeast. After traveling about fifty miles, he makes camp near the ancient town of Luz.

Jacob finds a flat rock to use as a pillow, and as he sleeps, he has a vivid dream. (If I slept on a pillow like that, I suspect I would have dreams too.) In his dream, he sees a ladder (or better, a staircase) reaching into heaven. On those stairs are angels ascending and descending, and from the top of the stairs God speaks to him.

When Jacob awoke, it was with a sense of awe. He said to himself, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it. This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” He had stumbled on a portal into the heavenlies. He set up a marker for himself, and named the place Beth-El – “House of God.”

Humanity has always been fascinated with the idea that there are gateways on earth that lead into heaven. That fascination showed up again in the 1990s, and the results were tragic. Marshall Applewhite left his post as a music teacher at the University of St. Thomas in Houston and then met Bonnie Nettles, a nurse who was deeply interested in the occult. The two of them launched a religious movement that became known as “Heaven’s Gate.”

Early on, Applewhite and Nettles taught that people could transform themselves into immortal, extraterrestrial life forms by practicing a kind of asceticism. They described this transformation as the next step in evolution. Applewhite and Nettles represented themselves as the bodily vehicles of extraterrestrial beings with superhuman knowledge.

After Nettles died of cancer, Applewhite shifted his teaching. Instead of ascending to the next level of evolution through asceticism, they would ascend via a spacecraft. The Gate of Heaven was to be the Starship Enterprise—or something like it. Of course, only those who were following Applewhite’s lead would be qualified for transport.

When the Hale-Bopp comet came near to earth in the mid-1990s, Applewhite claimed that a UFO hidden in the comet’s tale was coming to take away his followers. He revised that teaching later, saying that only the spirits of his followers would be able to ascend, and so it would be necessary for everyone in the group to free themselves from their bodies, i.e., commit suicide. The group posted the following message on their website just prior to the mass suicide: “Hale-Bopp brings closure to Heaven’s Gate … our 22 years of classroom here on planet Earth is finally coming to conclusion… We are happily prepared to leave ‘this world’ and go…”

Jesus also used the language of heaven’s gate. He did not suggest the gate into heaven was fixed locally at places like Beth-El or Tianmen Mountain. He presented himself as the gate of heaven (or better, the gate into life). “I am the gate,” he says in John 10:9; “whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief” – think of Marshall Applewhite – “comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

In language intended to evoke Jacob’s experience at the “gate of heaven,” Jesus told the disciple Nathaniel, “I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

Today, people talk about how to get into heaven. The ancients talked about where to get into heaven. But there is a better question than “How?” and “Where?” We should be asking, “Who?” Who can lead us into life? Who can bring us to God?

Jesus is the one who grants access into God’s grace (Romans 5:1). The Greek word for “access” is “prosagōgē.” The prosagōgāse was the powerful official who had authority to grant men and women access to the king. The Bible presents Jesus as the prosagōgāse. He is the “door into life,” the true “gate” of heaven, the one who suffered “that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18; Hebrews 10:19-21).

The Gate of Heaven is not a place, like the temple at Pura Luhur Lempuyang in Bali. It is not a thing, like Marshall Applewhite’s hidden UFO. It is a person.

Jesus answered, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (1 John 14:6)

Posted in Bible, Christianity, Faith, Peace with God, Spiritual life, Theology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What Are We Doing When We Worship?

Posted on December 5, 2024 by salooper57
Photo by Luis Quintero on Pexels.com

Imagine that you are driving through northern Minnesota on state route 53 when you see a sign for an antique shop. You love antique shops, plus you’ve been driving for hours, and you need a break. So, you pull into the parking lot, go in, and explore. At some point, it dawns on you that this antique shop with its stained-glass windows was once a church building, a place consecrated for the worship of God. You almost feel like you should take off your hat and lower your voice. You are in a place of worship and didn’t even know it.

The patriarch Jacob had a similar experience. He discovered that the place he set up camp was a portal between heaven and earth. These are his words: “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it … this is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:16-17).

Earth, as we saw that last week, was created to be a temple, but like Jacob and my antique shopper, we may not realize where we are. That’s understandable: the temple courts have been defaced by eons of sin, and the temple itself has been repurposed by humans for their own use. We can spend 80 or 90 years here and never wake up to the fact that we live in a temple.

Humans have repurposed the temple, but they cannot repurpose themselves. Because we were made by an all-glorious, all-loving, all-powerful God, we will always have the impulse to worship. We can decline to worship God, but we cannot decline to worship. If we won’t worship God, we will worship something else, usually one of the fashionable idols of the day. Only the worship of the true God can free us from us from the worship of false ones.

We will always be worshipers, but the damage caused by sin has bent our worship away from the joyful and good Creator. When by grace we repent and believe on Jesus, that starts to change. A revolution begins in our life, and we are brought slowly back into orbit around our God. Until that happens, we will worship what should be sacrificed and sacrifice the One who should be worshiped. That is what happened on Calvary. That is what has been happening ever since sin entered the world.

Before we get into the meat of this – how we can worship God – let me sum up what we’ve just seen. Humans are inveterate worshipers; they cannot help themselves. But when sin collided with humanity like an asteroid striking the earth, the impact knocked our worship out of it proper orbit. We see that in the pervasive worship of celebrities but even more in the ruinous worship of the self. Only in Christ can our worship be redirected toward its true object: the Living God.

There are five assumptions which act as pillars or supports for what I am going to say today. These kinds of assumptions are present in every sermon, like 2x4s behind drywall. Or, to change the image, they are like the bones in a body. You usually can’t see them, but neither can you live without them. Occasionally it becomes necessary to X-Ray them, and that is what we are going to do now.

Here are the five assumptions:

  1. Without real, joyful, from-the-heart worship, no one can live the beautiful life God intends.
  2. Worship is not instruction – even biblical instruction – directed to the worshiper, but expressions of admiration, love, and submission directed to God from the worshiper.
  3. Worship always involves performance, but it is not an entertainment.
  4. Christians worship God when they express the reverence he deserves and the submission they intend through appropriate means: songs, hymns, prayers, confessions, declarations, offerings (and other building blocks of worship).
  5. Worship that does not include sacrifice, is not Christian worship.

Without real, joyful, from-the-heart worship, humans will not live the beautiful life God intends. A Christian who doesn’t worship God is like a computer that doesn’t compute, a boat that doesn’t float, a phone that doesn’t make calls. Of course, it is possible to repurpose the computer as a doorstop, the boat as a flowerpot, and the phone as a coaster, but they were made for something more—and so were we.

We cannot thrive when we’re not worshiping God, but when we are, other things start falling into place. Decisions we once agonized over almost make themselves. Trials become easier to endure with faith. Relationships are set in order. We are nearer, or more continually near, to joy than ever before.

But when we are not worshiping God, decisions paralyze us, trials defeat us, relationships get crazy, and discouragement dogs our every step. You will never be fulfilled until you are a worshiper – and not just on Sunday mornings, but every day of the week. And the truth is if you’re not worshiping on Tuesday and Saturday, you’re probably not worshiping on Sunday either. Some people think of church as if it were a spiritual or emotional filling station. I’m running low, so I’d better go to church, or I won’t make it through the week. But that makes it all about me, which makes worship impossible.

But what is worship? To understand what it is, we need to understand what it is not. Worship is not a sermon (not even a biblical one). It is not music or readings or prayers coming from the platform to the worshiper. Those things are important, but they are not worship, which involves admiration, love and submission coming from the worshiper to God.

This may be the hardest thing for us to grasp. Our consumer culture leads us to believe that we go to church for a worship experience. But do you see what that does? It puts the focus on us, and makes worship impossible. Worship ceases to be something we do – a verb – and becomes something we experience – a noun. Then we think we’ve worshiped if we have had a certain kind of experience and that we have not worshiped if we haven’t.

The experience we’re looking for is usually an emotional one – tears welling in our eyes, shivers running down our spines – and that becomes the measure of our worship. But we can have tears and shivers without having worshiped. And we can worship without tears and shivers. Those may be the marks of a successful performance at the theater, but not in the sanctuary of God. It’s not that they are bad – they are not; they are good and welcome – but we mustn’t mistake them for worship.

In the 1990s, there was a popular worship music label that carried the tagline, “Experience the Presence of God.” I never read that without being annoyed. A whole generation of Christians were led to think of the presence of God as a chill down their spines. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the children of that generation have left the church en masse. We must understand this: worship is something you do. So, if you come to church and don’t do anything, you haven’t worshiped. At best, you’ve been instructed and entertained. But even the best instruction or the most glorious entertainment is not a replacement for worship.

That brings us to our third assumption. Worship involves performance, but it is not an entertainment. Americans entertain themselves to death—or at least to debt. A few years ago, MarketWatch estimated that Americans spend about 100 billion dollars annually on sports alone. A decade ago, the average American was spending approximately ten percent of their income – which sounds suspiciously like a tithe – on entertainment. Now, I am not objecting to that. I am merely pointing out that entertainment is a priority for us, and so it is easy for us to think of worship as one more form of entertainment. It is not.

It does, however, involve performance. The musicians and singers perform, but they are not entertainers. More importantly (we need to grasp this), they are not the only performers in a worship service—or at least they’d better not be.

We’ve got the wrong idea if we think the musicians and singers are the performers, and we are the audience. The musicians and singers support the performers – that’s us. We’re on stage, they’re our band, and God is the audience—an audience of one. A worship service isn’t a flop because church members didn’t like it; it’s a flop if God didn’t like it.

The Bible makes this clear. God is the one who receives or rejects worship. He either receives it as a “sweet-smelling aroma” or rejects it as a stench in his nostrils. That metaphor was first used in Genesis 8, when Noah and his family worshiped God in the aftermath of the flood. We find it again in Exodus, in Leviticus (which is all about acceptable worship to God), Numbers, Ezra, and even in the New Testament. Paul writes that “Christ has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma” (Eph. 5:2).

The point here is that God is the receiver of worship, not the congregation. We are the performers of worship. But that raises a question: what is it that we are performing? Are we worshiping when we sing? What about when we pray? Listen to a sermon? Put something in the plate?

Those questions introduce our next assumption: Christians worship God when they express the reverence he deserves and the submission they intend through the means they possess. Those means include songs, hymns, prayers, confessions, declarations, offerings (and other building blocks of worship). In different cultures, those building blocks of worship will be different, but they will be used for the same purpose.

Notice that worship is not something that is happening inside of you, like thinking or meditating. Thinking and meditating are good, but they are not worship. Worship doesn’t stay inside us; it moves from us to God. In worship we express to God the reverence he deserves and the submission we intend. Now worship is not the only thing that happens when we gather: we also gather to love each other, to be discipled in the Scriptures, to be encouraged, to find out what is going on, and to serve. But worship doesn’t happen at all if we don’t express to God the reverence he deserves and the submission we intend. Some people, I have no doubt, have gone to church for years and have yet to worship once.

Singing can be a part of worship. We can sing a hymn, for example – a song that praises God for what he has done and extols his character for doing it. Prayer can also be a part: prayer rehearses God’s power, rests on his love, and addresses him as Lord. The offering acknowledges to God that he is worthy of all that we have and all that we are.

So, if we sing, pray, and put something in the plate, have we worshiped? Not necessarily. It is not the act of singing or of placing money in the plate but the act of reverencing God and submitting to him that is worship. The hymns, the prayers, the offerings, the declarations of Scripture are helps in doing that but not a substitute for it.

Think of these worship components – prayers, confessions, scripture readings, offerings, songs – as stones, which we can use to build an altar, as Noah did in Genesis 8. Of course, we can also use them to build a monument to ourselves, as Absalom did in 2 Samuel 18 (and, frankly, that happens in “worship services” all the time). Or we can hurl them at someone else, as people did in Acts 7, when they stoned Stephen. The stones are just stones. What we do with them is what counts.

When we gather to worship, we take these various components – think of them as stones – and we build them into an altar. That requires intention. Worship doesn’t just happen; we do it.

Before a worship gathering, people like Elijah, Hannah, and Vicky gather the stones so that we, individually and as a group, can build them into an altar on which to offer worship to God. Building altars is a big deal in Scripture. Nearly all the great Old Testament characters – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Samuel, David, Elijah, and others – built altars. The Scripture gives directions on how – and how not – to build them. The Lord’s people were not to build their altars the way that people who worshiped other gods did.

In Exodus 20, the chapter that contains the Ten Commandments, God says: “If you use stones to build my altar, use only natural, uncut stones. Do not shape the stones with a tool, for that would make the altar unfit for holy use” (Ex. 20:25 NLT). The Israelites were to use the stones that were available to them. Likewise, we need to learn to use what is available to us in our gatherings – the songs, the prayers, the offering, the scripture declarations, the communion meal – to build an altar on which we can make an offering to God.

The more mature we become, the better we are at using what we have rather than complaining about what we don’t have. That doesn’t mean that our leaders aren’t responsible to gather good quality stones for the altar we build. It does mean that once they have been gathered, we need to use them the best we can.

So, let’s say we’ve been building an altar with the songs, hymns, and prayers that were provided for us today. What is this altar used for? What sacrifices do we offer on it? We offer the sacrifice of praise (Hebrews 13:15)—and praise can be a costly sacrifice. I suspect our praise is never more pleasing to God than when we don’t feel like offering it. When life is hard, and we are tired, and we wish things were different. When we then praise God for what he has done and for who he is, that is a pleasing sacrifice.

Thanksgiving is another sacrifice, according to Psalm 116:17 (“I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving.”) Thanking God can also be costly. We can learn to offer thanksgiving even when we don’t feel like it, and then it is all the sweeter.

However, when the congregation builds the altar, there is always a principle offering placed on it. The people who built the altar climb onto it and offer themselves. This is how Bill Mounce translates Romans 12:1: “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God—this is a reasonable act of worship for you” (Mounce). The climax of a worship service is always the presentation of one’s body as a living sacrifice. If that doesn’t occur, worship has miscarried.

Notice that Paul does not say, “Present your spiritual life to God,” as if the climax of worship is to do something spiritual … in church … on Sunday. You don’t have a spiritual life that is distinct from the rest of you. You are a spiritual being – an embodied spiritual being. When you have built an altar through prayers, tithes, Scripture readings and praise, you climb up on it and offer yourself – your whole self – to God. The acceptable sacrifice is you.

Notice too that you are to be a living sacrifice, a sacrifice that keeps on giving because it keeps on living. This is the highest and holiest sacrifice – the kind that Christ himself gave. You see, he did not offer himself up only at Calvary. The cross was the culmination of a life of sacrifice. The God who so loved that he gave his only Son to the world has an only Son who so loved that he gave himself to the Father. He was a living sacrifice from the very beginning.

God does not want our songs and prayer and offerings as a substitute for our lives. When people tried to do just that in Bible times, he told them: “I cannot bear your evil assemblies … They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.” (Isaiah 1:13-14). He wants us, not just our rituals.

Today we have built an altar out of the stones of confession, prayer, song, and offering. Perhaps you would have liked to use different stones. That’s okay. Tell me or Elijah if you know a good stone to use. But that is, frankly, not all that important. The important thing is that, week after week, you use that altar to offer yourself as a living sacrifice to God. Let’s do that now.

Posted in Church, Church Life, Faith, Sermons, Spiritual life, Theology | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Grateful People Know These Two Things About God

Posted on November 30, 2024 by salooper57
Photo by Gu00fcl Iu015fu0131k on Pexels.com

A grateful Christian is a walking advertisement for the life that Jesus offers. The person “overflowing with thankfulness,” as Paul describes it, is the best publicity there is for the truth. He or she is a principal selling point for the Christian way of life. The grateful person honors God and brings him glory. The Psalmist says, “I will praise God’s name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving.” Thanksgiving glorifies God. The thanksgiving of God’s people, St. Paul says, “overflow[s] to the glory of God.”

Gratitude is also a thermometer of an individual’s spiritual health. Where gratitude is low, spiritual health cannot be high. Where gratitude is absent, courageous faith is missing. When gratitude is not present, the glory for accomplishments inevitably rests with gifted people, not with the gracious God.

A life “overflowing with thankfulness” not only glorifies God and pleases him, it opens the door to new opportunities—opportunities that an ungrateful person will never see. “He who sacrifices thank offerings honors me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God.” The grateful person sees God at work in his life, sees the “salvation of God” with his own eyes. The ungrateful person does not.

This, of course, makes the grateful person more grateful and the ungrateful person more of an ingrate. Newton’s first law of motion has a spiritual counterpart: In the absence of a net force, a spirit in motion remains in motion indefinitely along the same line. Just so, a grateful person will continue to be grateful, and will grow more grateful; an ungrateful person will grow more ungrateful—apart from a net force.

But gratefully, we are not apart from such a force. There is an outside influence at work in us, calling us to become a people known for their gratitude. But how? Do we have a part in this? Is there something we must do to become grateful people?

It is easy for us to get ahead of ourselves. Our first concern is not with what we must do, but with what we must know. Grateful people know two fundamental truths about God. They have not only grasped these truths; these truths have grasped them.

The first of these truths is that God is strong: An ungrateful spirit testifies against us that our God is too small. He is not the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac. He is not the “great and terrible” God of Israel. He is not the God who “is in heaven, who does whatever pleases him:”

The other of these truths is that God is loving; he pursues the good of his people at all times. Ingratitude testifies that our God is not the one who so loved the world that he gave; not the awesome, loving God of Calvary. These two fundamental truths about God – that he is strong and loving, great and good – must become part of the fabric of our thinking if we are to be thankful people.

These are truths the Israelites rehearsed again and again. The theme of Psalm 136 is that God is strong, and the psalmist hits the high notes of that theme again and again. But the refrain of that same Psalm is that God is loving. Twenty-six times, as if to drill the truth into our minds, we hear the refrain, “his love endures forever.”

In Psalm 62, God’s strength and love are brought together: “One thing God has spoken, two things I have heard: that you, O Lord, are strong, and that you, O Lord, are loving.”

You may think: “I already know that. God is strong. God is loving. Everybody knows that.” But our worry and our ingratitude testify that it has not gone from doctrine to practice, from head to heart. 

How can we move this knowledge from head to heart? One thing we can do is immerse ourselves in Scripture that magnifies God’s greatness and his goodness, his power and his love. So, for example, we could read Romans 8:28-39 every day for two weeks. When we’ve done that, we might want to read Isaiah 40-66 and jot down all the characteristics of God we find there, whether explicit or implicit. These truths will help wash out some of the false beliefs we have about God that linger in our minds.

A second step is to agree with God about what is good for us. Apart from such an agreement, gratitude will often be impossible. Conformation to the image of his Son is what God calls good. If that is also the good we have chosen, we can be grateful regardless of what is going on in our lives, for this is the good to which God makes all things work (see Romans 8:28-29).

One more thing: we can practice thanking God. We can be intentional about it. Intentional gratitude is something that mental health professionals recommend and that many people try. But if our thinking is not being changed, or if we are committed to a different “good” than the one God knows we need, we will not practice for long.

Addendum

My wife, who reads my column before it posts, said to me, “There are other Scripture you could cite to show that God is loving.” I agreed, but added that there are so many of them that my small article would become a book. A few minutes later, she said, “What about Psalm 103?”

sts, said to me, “There are other Scripture you could cite to show that God is loving.” I agreed, but added that there are so many of them that my small article would become a book. A few minutes later, she said, “What about Psalm 103?”

Psalm 103 is wonderful, and it includes what amount to the credal confession of the Old Testament: “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.” This statement can be found in Psalms 86 and 145, in Exodus, Numbers, Nehemiah, Joel, and Jonah. The gist of this confession can be found in hundreds of other passages in the Old and New Testament.

It also needs to be found in our hearts and minds.

Psalm 103 is wonderful, and it includes what amount to the credal confession of the Old Testament: “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.” This statement can be found in Psalms 86 and 145, in Exodus, Numbers, Nehemiah, Joel, and Jonah. The gist of this confession can be found in hundreds of other passages in the Old and New Testament.

It also needs to be found in our hearts and minds.

Posted in Christianity, Faith, Spiritual life, Theology | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Created to Worship

Posted on November 28, 2024 by salooper57

(This sermon was preached at California Road Missionary Church on November 3, 2024. The following two weeks look at other aspects of worship.)

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (Ephesians 2:14-22)

We’re going to surface into that passage in a few minutes, but first we’re going to do a deep dive into the biblical story, and we’ll start by thinking about “The Fall.” Do you know the expression? Theologians call the sin of Adam and what resulted from it, “The Fall.”

Our mental image of “The Fall” might be of a slip at the bottom of the basement stairs. That kind of fall can be pretty debilitating, but with a little rest, and maybe some physical therapy, will be fine. And if not, we can always see the surgeon.

But when we think of the Fall of Adam (“Adam” means “human”), don’t think of grandma on the basement steps. Think of Humpty Dumpty’s great fall. Or, better yet, think of Brad Guy. Brad is an Australian man who got a surprise on his 21st birthday. He was a big-time thrill-seeker, so his parents gifted him with a fourteen-thousand-foot skydiving experience. Since this was his first time, he went tandem with a veteran instructor. Brad was all geeked to try it.

They jumped out of the airplane and went hurtling towards earth. At 4,000 feet, when the instructor deployed the chute, Brad heard him swear. When you are falling from a height of over two miles at a speed of 120 miles per hour that is not what you want to hear. The primary chute tore when it opened, and sent the skydivers into a dizzying spiral. Brad asked the instructor, “Are we going to die?” and he answered, “I don’t know.”

Then the instructor pulled the chord on the back-up chute, but it got tangled in the primary chute, and the two men continued their wild spiral towards the earth. They landed in a shallow pond or swamp. The instructor hit the ground first, Brad landed on top of him, and, miraculously, both of them survived. But they were horribly broken up, and the mental anguish of the experience was almost unbearable.

When you think of The Fall of humanity, don’t think of grandma on the basement steps. Think of Brad at 14,000 feet.

The Fall of Adam shattered us. It broke our relationship with God and with each other. It damaged our ability to think. Our mind and will and emotions are all out of order. Humanity suffers a kind of spiritual PTSD to this day. If you think there might be something wrong with you, you are not mistaken. You are suffering from “The Fall.”

And it’s not just us who suffer. It is all of creation. If, when you watch the news or hear about natural or human-instigated disasters, and you think, “It’s not supposed to be this way,” you’re right. When man fell, he not only shattered himself; he broke the world. It’s damaged. It’s under a curse.

Maybe you’re thinking, “But that’s not fair! Why should so much hardship should result from one man’s mistake?” But what the humans did was not a mistake. It was a rebellion. That’s why C. S. Lewis said, “Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.”[1]

The Fall disordered the world God had so carefully ordered. You remember the story: On the first day of creation, God made light, separated it from darkness, and called the light “day” and the darkness “night.” And he saw that it was good.

On the second day, he separated the waters below from those above, and he called the expanse above sky. On the third day he divided the waters below by causing dry ground to appear. He named the dry ground “land” (or earth) and the waters “sea.” And just as on day one, he saw that it was good. Then he made vegetation – seed bearing plants that would reproduce. And that was good. It was a well-ordered world.

On the fourth day he placed lights in the sky – the sun, moon and stars. In so doing he gave us seasons, months and years. And he saw that was good.

On the fifth day, he filled the sea with creatures and the sky with birds. And he saw it was good. He blessed the sea creatures and the birds to reproduce and fill the earth.

On the sixth day he made land creatures of all kinds: cattle and sheep and horses and monkeys and snakes and giraffes and squirrels and dogs – every kind of creature you can think of; and God saw that was good. Then he made a human. And when he did that, he said, “It is very good.”

Then on the seventh day God rested.

When we ready this story, we tend to ask questions that would never have occurred to its first readers. We think of Genesis 1 as a defense of a six-day, supernatural creation. But the author wasn’t trying to prove a supernatural creation—he didn’t need to. When Genesis was written, no one doubted that the universe was divinely created.

The question was not, “Did a God create the world?” It was, “Which god created the world?” The Egyptians credited several of their gods. The Babylonians thought Apsu and Tiamat brought the earth into being. Just around the Mediterranean, there were plenty of Creation stories and plenty of gods to choose from. But Genesis claims that Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, created the world.

Before we go on, let’s pause to consider the word translated “created.” It always and only takes God as its subject. This word never refers to the creative act of any human. God stands alone as the Creator. We should also note that this word, which is used rather often in Scripture, is elsewhere never used of creating matter. Rather, it is used in regard to function. It has the idea of getting things up and running.

Now before you jump to the conclusion that God didn’t create matter – that it was already here and he just arranged it – you need to remember that other passages of Scripture, like Colossians 1 and Hebrews 1, teach that he did. He made everything. But Genesis is more interested in what he made everything for. In Genesis 1, God is getting his world up and running for a purpose. What is that purpose?

If you were a Jew reading Genesis in ancient times, you would notice something we often miss. You would say to yourself, “Oh, I see what’s going on here. The Creator God is making himself a temple.”

In ancient times, when a temple was completed, there would be seven days of dedication. So, when Solomon built the first temple, we read that he and all Israel “celebrated it before the LORD our God for seven days and seven days more” (1 Kings 8:65). They were so excited they celebrated a second seven-day dedication. In other ancient Near Eastern literature, we find the same seven-day period for temple dedication. That’s why an early reader coming to this passage would say, “Ah, the God is setting up a temple.”

And when he came to chapter 2, verse 15, and read that Adam was to work the garden and take care of it, his hypothesis would have been confirmed. Without exception, when those two verbs are used together in the Old Testament, they mean “to serve and to guard,” and are used most frequently of the priests who serve God in his temple, and guard it from any unclean thing that might enter. This is temple language.

When Genesis 2 tells us that God finished all the work he had been doing and on the seventh day rested, we need to realize he wasn’t taking a nap. He was taking his place – his place in the temple he had built. Eden was its holy of holies, where the humans met and worshiped their Creator. God’s plan was to extend his temple until it filled the whole earth. And the humans were to be his priests.

But the humans were not satisfied with being priests; they wanted to be gods. Do you remember the temptation to which they succumbed? “Eat of the fruit…and you will be like God” (Genesis 3:5). The humans who were made to worship chose rather to be worshiped. They imagined they could take God’s temple as their own; no longer his servants but his peers; perhaps even, his rivals. It was with the words “You will be like God” ringing in their ears that they ate the fruit. They did not make a mistake; they launched a rebellion.

And that rebellion resulted in a fall – a Brad Guy-fall-from-the-sky, crash-and-burn fall. Humanity survived, but we are not the same. The fall shattered the image of God in us. Instead of being his worshipers, we became self-worshipers. The temple (that we call earth) became a place of thorns and thistles, of water shortages and air pollution and hurricanes and tornados. The happy place where humans met God became the tragic place where humanity lost itself.

But here is the good news. God did not give up on his plan. The day will yet come when people will know and communicate with God. “The earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD,” as the prophets declared (Isaiah 11:9; Habakkuk 2:14). “No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” (Jeremiah 31:34). God did not give up on his plan. He still hasn’t.

But how would God make it happen? That is the story of the Bible. After the Fall, God intended to establish a new covenant with humankind. Under that covenant, God would return humans to their rightful place – “they will be [God’s] people,” not his peers nor his rivals. And God would take his rightful place – “and [God] will be their God” (Jeremiah 31:33).

But a covenant must be ratified before it can take effect. And to ratify a covenant there must be a sacrifice. Do you remember what Jesus said on the eve of the crucifixion: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” (Luke 22:20). The plan to lift us up after The Fall, to restore the divine image in us, to reestablish fellowship between humans and God, and make the world once again into a temple has hinged on Jesus from the very beginning. He lifts up the fallen, restores the broken, reconciles the alienated, and becomes the mediator between God and humans. Through him the whole earth will again be God’s temple. Jesus is the key.

And that brings us to our text in Ephesians 2. “The Fall” not only resulted in the alienation of humans from God but in the alienation of humans from each other. But through his death, and as a sign of his power, Christ brought the most divided people – Jews and Gentiles – together and reconciled both to God. Now look at verse 18: “For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.”

Access to the Father by the Spirit—that’s temple/worship language. Do you see what’s happening? Through Jesus the restoration God promised has begun. Through what he’s done and who he is, humans can again meet with God. What the first Adam threw away the second Adam (Jesus) has recovered.

The first Adam made us a race of usurpers; the second Adam (verse 19) makes us God’s people and members of his household. The first Adam made us sinners. The second Adam makes us saints. Because of the first Adam we were lost; because of the second we are found. Jesus is the Restorer of lost things.

There’s a wonderful scene at the end of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Sam, the simple hero of the story, awakes from a coma-like state to find that all the horror of death and destruction is past. The rebellion and the myriad evils that accompanied it are over. To his amazement, he finds his dear friends alive and well, and he says, “Is everything sad going to come untrue? What has happened to the world?”  

Once we see what God has done and is doing through Jesus, we might ask the same question. “Is everything sad going to come untrue?” And the answer is yes. The rebellion will be put down, the lowly will be raised up, and our Humpty-Dumpty lives will be put back together again. Creation itself will be healed of its deep wounds.

Most of that is future, but the people of Jesus are a sign in the present, pointing to that future, especially as we overcome the alienating barriers of race and ethnicity in the church (Eph. 2:14-17). We are more than a sign. We are a construction project (v. 20), being “…built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone…”

But being built into what? That’s the question. What is this great purpose God has in mind for us? Well, go back to creation and ask what God was doing then. He was building a temple in which he and humans could meet and know each other and be known by each other. That purpose has not changed. God is still building a temple. Not a temple of dead stone but of living people. Verse 21: “In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.”

God’s plan is for us to be the entryway into his presence. In ancient times, inquirers went to Solomon’s temple to encounter God. Now they come to us (or we go to them). What a privilege! What a responsibility! This is why Paul tells the Corinthians, “…we are the temple of the living God,” and then citing Isaiah 52 and Ezekiel 20 adds: “…As God has said: ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.’ Therefore, ‘Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.’” (2 Corinthians 6:16-17). That is temple talk.

He goes on: “Since we have these promises…” (that we will be his temple and he will live among us), “let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.” (2 Corinthians 7:1). The idea is that a temple must be pure for the god to indwell it, and we are the Lord’s temple. God intends to reveal himself through us to our neighbor, our family member, the server at the restaurant, and the mechanic at the garage. You and I individually and, even more importantly, you and I corporately, are to become the meeting place between God and people. We, verse 22, “are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”

And listen: the day is coming when the project will be completed, the dedication will be held, and “Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple…” (Malachi 3:1). People wrongly refer to that coming as “the end”; it is just the beginning.

Many things happen in a temple, but chief among them is worship. To belong to Christ is to be a worshiper. Worship shapes us. Worship heals us. Worship makes us whole.

When we do not worship God, we fall where Adam fell – into self-worship, fear and alienation. Worship is not something we go to; it is something we do – and can learn to do – all the time. Learning to worship is to a Christian what learning to fly is to a bird. Too many Christians never leave the nest because they never learn to worship. Next week we are going to get practical about the act of worship. If worship is crucial to our wellbeing, and to the world around us, then we need to learn everything we can that will help us be better worshipers – and what we learn might surprise us.

Blessing/Sending

Brothers and sisters, go into the world in the name of our great High Priest Jesus. Worship the LORD with gladness. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.

[1] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 1952/2001), 56.

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A Poster Child for the Jesus-Way of Life

Posted on November 23, 2024 by salooper57

In 2017, the Nivea Corporation released an ad for their Black and White Deodorant. It featured a woman with long, brown hair, wearing a white robe. She is sitting on a bed with her back to the camera, looking out a window. At the bottom of the ad is the slogan, White Is Purity.

The ad was meant to promote Nivea’s deodorant – it keeps white shirts white – but consumers recoiled at what seemed to be a blatant promotion of white supremacy. Making things worse, the campaign launched in the Middle East. It wasn’t long before angry responses alerted Nivea to the ugly mistake they had made. They quickly cancelled the ad campaign before it was released in any other markets.

It is doubtful that Nivea intended to make a racist statement, but they were certainly tone deaf. Neither its corporate execs nor their advertising agency realized how the public would take the White Is Purity motto. Nivea was surprised by the outcry and was forced to issue an apology. It was a public relations nightmare.

Sometimes, it seems like the church is a public relations nightmare—and by “church” I mean those of us who belong to Jesus Christ. We are God’s ad campaign, intended to promote King Jesus to people all around the globe. In the words of the Apostle Peter, our mission statement is to “declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

Everything Christians do and say reflects on Jesus and on his Father. We are all influencers. The Christian is a poster child for Jesus’s way of life.

Maybe that’s a role we’d rather not fill. When Charles Barclay was playing basketball, he told the world that he was not a role model. It made a good commercial but it was still nonsense. The only way Barclay could cease being a role model was to leave basketball; the only way for a Christian to escape the responsibility of representing Jesus Christ is to renounce him. The question is not whether, but how, we will represent Jesus.

The danger is that we might, like Nivea’s ad agency, inadvertently send the wrong message. That has certainly been happening. In the recent U.S. election, the message went out that Jesus’s people are primarily driven by fear. Christians from the left of the political spectrum were motivated by their fear that democracy would cease. Christians on the right of that same spectrum acted on their fear that morality would collapse. On both ends of the spectrum, there were Christians acting like they expected our savior to come from Washington rather than heaven.

The election is over. The fear remains. Is that really the best way to advertise for the glorious, wise, all-powerful King of Heaven?

Christians are a walking, breathing ad campaign for Jesus Christ. We will lead people to think well of him, or badly; to look to him with expectation or to ignore him as irrelevant. We will be the primary source of information that many people will have about Jesus. They will notice whether we are happy or sad, kind or harsh, loving or selfish, fearful or confident; and that information will influence their openness to Christ.

They will also notice if we are thankful, for gratitude plays an important role in God’s ad campaign. It flounders and falls – it crashes like Nivea’s White Is Purity debacle – when Christians come off as ungrateful. A person’s opinion of God may be based on whether the professing Christians he knows are grateful, appreciative people or churlish complainers. Perhaps this is one reason the Bible has so much to say about thankfulness and why it so often links our gratitude to God’s glory. It also explains the biblical writers’ frequent denunciations of grumbling and complaining.

We have all known the chronic complainer. Almost every word on their lips and every look on their face is tinged with resentment. People have let them down. Life isn’t fair. The future is bleak. When such a person presents the gospel (or some form of it), their hearers can only assume that the life Jesus offers is a poor investment. No wonder St. Paul warned the Philippians to “Do everything without complaining or arguing so that you may become blameless and pure…as you hold out the word of life…” However, when a person “overflowing with thanksgiving” (Colossians 2:7) holds “out the word of life,” people are far more likely to respond positively. A grateful person is a powerful incentive to look into Jesus. He or she is a poster child for the Jesus way of life.

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He Is Able (Ephesians 3:20-21)

Posted on November 22, 2024 by salooper57

(Ephesians 3:20-21) Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

*******************

Eight weeks ago, we began looking into the Apostle Paul’s great prayers for the church. We have had a master of prayer – Paul himself – explain why he prayed for the church, what he prayed, and what he expected to result from his prayer. We’ve learned a lot, yet our in-depth study of these remarkable prayers will be a waste if it doesn’t inspire us to pray.

If we’ve learned anything, it is that God expects us to pray for the church, including California Road Missionary Church. I hope we’ve learned that praying for the church is crucial. So, after five months of sermons on prayer, and a two-month special focus on praying for the church, I have to ask: are we praying for the church? Have you prayed for California Road this week? Have you used what you’ve learned to pray for our church family and for Jesus’s larger church?

I’ve met people who believe in God but don’t believe in prayer. It is obvious they don’t believe in prayer: they don’t pray. They assume God is going to do what he is going to do, whether they pray or not. For them, prayer is at most a matter of adjusting our own attitudes and expectations.

But I don’t believe that and, more importantly, neither did the Apostle Paul. I agree with Henry Emerson Fosdick, who said: “Now if God has left some things contingent on man’s thinking and working, why may he not have left some things contingent on man’s praying? The testimony of the great souls is a clear affirmative to this: some things never without thinking; some things never without working; some things never without praying! Prayer is one of the three forms of man’s cooperation with God.”

I’ve met other people who pray, but only when they can’t think of anything else to do. For them, prayer is a parachute: they wouldn’t think of using it unless the plane was going down. The idea of cooperating with God in what he’s doing has never occurred to them.  But God has made room in his creation for us to be involved with him in ways that make a difference, and chief among those ways is prayer.

If we pray, some good things will happen that would not happen if we didn’t pray. Some bad things won’t happen that would have happened if we hadn’t prayed. St. Paul expected his prayers for the church to make a difference beyond changing his own attitude and raising his expectations. So do I? Do you?

The purpose of this series was not to stuff more information into our heads but to send us to our knees with some inspired prayers in our mouths. The church of Jesus – including Cal Road – is of enormous importance in God’s plans for the world and for our lives and we should be praying for it. If we do, some things will happen here that would not otherwise happen, and some things will not happen here that otherwise would.

For example: remember Paul’s prayer for the Colossian Church. He prayed that God would give them the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. They needed that knowledge to live a life worthy of the Lord and to please him in every way. We need that knowledge as much as, and for the same reasons, they did. Our worship committee and worship team are making decisions about what happens here on Sunday mornings; they need the knowledge of God’s will. The nominating committee is reaching out to potential leaders, and those potential leaders need the knowledge of God’s will. The ministry committee is considering new opportunities. We can help by asking God to give our church the knowledge of his will.

When we ask God for such knowledge, and he answers, there are four enormously valuable outcomes. The first is fruitfulness in the church’s work. Think of that. We are always working –children’s ministry, Manna ministry, lawn and maintenance, and on and on. To some degree, the fruitfulness of all that work will hinge on knowing God’s will. The difference between fruitful work and meaningless drudgery lies, in part, with our prayers.

The knowledge of God’s will not only make us fruitful; it makes us strong. Strong people, according to Paul, can endure. They can be patient. They can remain joyful. Weak people are not joyful people.

There are people at Cal Road who are going through trials. Some may be on the verge of giving up. They need strength to endure. Paul prayed for that. So should we.

Weak people won’t endure. Marriages will end. Church members will leave. Sunday School teachers will give up. Deacons will find something easier to do. If we don’t pray, we are not doing our part to help each other.

Watchman Nee put it this way: “Our prayers lay the track down on which God’s power can come. Like a mighty locomotive, his power is irresistible, but it cannot reach us without rails.”

In the prayer in Ephesians 1, Paul asked God to give the Ephesians a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. Have you and I prayed that prayer for Cal Road? Or Bethany Missionary Church, First Baptist, for the Nazarenes, and for our friends in other fellowships? What a difference it makes when the pastor gets up to preach if God has given the church a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. Being able to receive revelation, to gain wisdom concerning what God is like, what he can do, and what he wants, changes everything.

The prayer we have been looking at in Ephesians 3, the prayer for strength to know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ—how important that is in the midst of a general election. Do we know that “nothing can separate us from the love of Christ”? Whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris or Tim Matteson is elected president, nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. Grasping Christ’s love increases our courage, deepens our compassion, and causes us stand out against the darkness of our society the way stars stand out against the darkness of the night sky (Philippians 2:15).

In one sense, it’s not our prayers that make the difference; it’s the God to whom we pray who makes the difference. He is able to do things that we cannot imagine, things that have never even crossed our minds. His power is beyond comprehension. Our best-case scenarios, highest ambitions, and wildest dreams don’t come close to the reality of what God is capable of doing.

In Ephesians 3:20, Paul calls God (literally) “The one who is able.” Sometimes we talk about people that way: “She is a very able leader.” With God, we take that to another level.

“Able” translates a participle, the verbal form of the noun “power.” To be able is to have the power needed to accomplish something. The God to whom Paul has been praying has the power to accomplish everything he chooses to do. His power is limitless, his ability boundless.

The New Testament speaks of God as “the one who is able” in two other places: Romans 16 and Jude 24. In the Romans passage, God is able to establish you – that is, to make you strong; to keep you stable and secure. We are wobbly – both physically and spiritually – but God is able to make us stand firm.

In Jude 24, God is the one who is able to keep you from stumbling. I have seen Christians stumble and fall – into sin, and despair, and unbelief. We should pray to the God who is able to keep us from stumbling.

Jude goes on: “and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy.” How can that be? We are not without fault, but we are often without “joy,” certainly without “great joy.” Sometimes we are downright miserable. It seems impossible that we should stand before a perfect God without fault and with great joy. We can’t imagine it.

Precisely. Go back to our text: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine…” We don’t see any way for things to work out, but we see a hundred ways for them to go wrong – a thousand if we keep looking. We rack our brains, but we cannot think of a way through. We’re not asking for much. All we want is for things to be okay.

But God wants more than just okay. He is planning for perfect, planning for great joy. He is able (as Harold Hoener literally translated it) “to do beyond everything, very far in excess of that which we ask or think.”[1]

You want God to get you out of a tough spot. He’s planning on getting you into heaven. You want to avoid embarrassment. God is planning on bringing glory down on your head. You want your kid to be okay. He wants your kid to be amazing. And he is able to do all those things. He is “the One who is able.”

You say, “But how? How is he going to do these things?” I don’t know. But then, there are so many things I don’t know. And it is not just me. No one knew – neither human nor angel – how God would present us without fault and with great joy, nor could anyone imagine the instrument he would use to accomplish this: a Roman cross. No eye saw it, no ear heard it, no mind conceived it – except God’s. He is able to do what we are not even able to imagine!

His ability is very far in excess of anything we can ask or think. Listen to the words of St. Thomas Aquinas: “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” The first step is faith—but not in God’s great power. We begin by trusting his great love, revealed in the Christ of the cross.

Vance Havner put it this way: “…we miss so much because we live on the low level of the natural, the ordinary, the explainable. We leave no room for God to do the exceeding abundant thing above all that we can ask or think.”[2]

Look at verse 20 again: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine…” This extraordinary power is not merely potential energy – God could do this if he wanted to – it is kinetic energy. It is already at work within us, or “among us,” as the Greek could be translated. That power is currently at work in our church, among our people, and even in our inner persons. And prayer connects us to the power.

Karen and I were in Germany last year at this time. The places we stayed had plenty of electrical power at 230 volts, but our devices – computers, phone chargers, hair dryers – weren’t equipped with the right kind of connector to access that power. Christians who don’t pray are in a similar position. The power is there, but they are unable to access it. Prayer is the connector that plugs us into that power.  

Philip Yancy said: “Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn’t act the way we want God to, and why I don’t act the way God wants me to. Prayer is the precise point where those themes converge.”[3] It is not only the point where they converge; in countless lives, it has been the point where those themes unite to become a single story of beauty and power.

And glory. Look at verse 21: “to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Some scholars have argued that Paul could not possibly have written this because of the word order. They say that he never would have put the church before Christ Jesus. But this is to overlook the context. Paul has just written that God intends the church to be the showpiece of his unsearchable wisdom (Ephesians 3:10). He has put the church on display for the great spiritual powers to see. So, of course Paul desires God’s glory to be seen in the church.

Besides that, in Paul’s mind (though, perhaps, not in the minds of some scholars) the church is not – and can never be – divorced from Jesus. They are a package deal. People in our day often try to divide the church from Jesus. They say things like, “I believe in Jesus. I just don’t believe in the church. Organized religion is a sham.” Such a person’s experience of Jesus will always be profoundly limited for Jesus is united to his church and expresses himself through it. Yes, the church is unfinished and no one who loves the church (least of all, Jesus), is blind to its faults. Nevertheless, it is in the church that people experience Jesus’s love, and it is in the church that glory comes to God.

Even in times like this. More than ever, we must pray (Colossians 1:9-12) for the church to have the knowledge of God’s will. There is an opportunity in this moment for the church to serve God in the world and we mustn’t miss it. The world is ablaze, and our leaders are pouring gasoline on the fire. Israel is at war with its neighbors. Russia is at war with its neighbor. The U.S. is engaged in an ideological war with itself. But in these dark times, the church can shine to the glory of God. But we must keep asking God to give us the knowledge of his will.

We must also pray (Ephesians 1:17-19) for the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that we may grasp the glorious hope before us and the extraordinary value of the people nest to us – God’s chosen inheritance in the saints. And we must (Ephesians 3:14-21) pray for power – we’re going to need it – so God can fill us, his church, with all his fullness.

Will you pray? Will you pray earnestly, regularly, and confidently for God to give us the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding? Will you pray for our church to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will so that we can please him in every way? Will you pray for us to know the love of Christ at Cal Road church?

I am asking you to commit to praying for our church, Cal Road, at least once a week. Will you make that commitment? And will you use these great prayers – Philippians 1:9-11; Colossians 1:9-12; Ephesians 1:14-23; and Ephesians 3:14-21 – to inform your requests?

I close with the words of the great 19th century preacher Charles Spurgeon. Using a church bell high in the belfry as a metaphor for prayer, he said this: “Prayer pulls the rope below and the great bell rings above in the ears of God. Some scarcely stir the bell, for they pray so languidly. Others give but an occasional pluck at the rope. But he who wins with heaven is the [one] who grasps the rope boldly and pulls continuously, with all his might.”

Let us win with heaven. Let’s pull together and let’s pull hard. Amen.

Blessing/Sending

Go in joy, people of God, for He can do immeasurably more than all we ask or even imagine, according to His power that is working in us. May He be glorified in His Church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever! Amen.

[1] Harold Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary, © 2002. Baker Books

[2] Vance Havner in the Vance Havner Quote Book. Christianity Today, Vol. 36, no. 14.

[3] Philip Yancey, Prayer (Zondervan, 2006)

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Sealed with a Quark: Creation and Its Mysteries

Posted on November 16, 2024 by salooper57
Photo by JESHOOTS.com on Pexels.com

“The earth takes shape like clay under a seal; its features stand out like those of a garment” (Job 38:14)

The line above comes from YHWH’s speech to Job near the end of the Book of Job. The analogy is well chosen. In ancient (or, for that matter, modern) times a seal signified ownership. It displayed authority. It also protected what was hidden behind the seal. Each of these characteristics of a seal expresses some truth about God’s relationship to the earth.

For example, “the earth is YHWH’s” (Ps. 24:1); he owns it. Establishing his ownership of earth is one reason we have the story of creation in Genesis 1 and 2. When Genesis was written, no one doubted that the earth and the heavens were supernaturally created. The question was not, “Did God make all this?” It was, “Which god made all this?” The answer, as Genesis makes clear, is that YHWH made it. And if he made it, it is his. Hence the image of the seal.

A seal also displayed authority. So, on our currency one finds the seal of the United States Federal Reserve System. That seal validates the currency under the authority of the Fed. Likewise, the seal in Job 38:14 indicates that YHWH has authority over the earth. He gets the final say.

Official seals were also used to hide the content of a letter and to protect it. What lay behind the seal was a mystery, and only those authorized to do so dared to open the seal and uncover the mystery. This, it seems to me, is an apt metaphor for the earth, for creation conceals God’s remarkable power and infinite wisdom.

Our scientists have not been able to open the seal and reveal the secrets of God’s creation, but they have held the envelope up to the light and have seen vaguely the marvelous things that lie inside. Scientific inquiry is a noble task and a valuable work—a service to humanity and, I believe, to God. Yet the principal discovery science has made is that there is more to discover than we ever dreamed. We are just beginning to know how little we know.

The seal of creation hides remarkable mysteries. Science has allowed us to hold the envelope up to the light and dimly see the mysteries within. Physicists have not been able to untangle the mysteries – they do not see them clearly enough for that – but they have been able to marvel at them.

For example, physicists have begun to see the remarkably precise fine-tuning of creation. This is, perhaps, nowhere more evident than in the expansion rate of the universe. The average density of the universe is astonishingly close to the critical density. Were it otherwise, even in the smallest degree, the universe would have either collapsed or expanded so rapidly that there would be no suns and planets.

The expansion rate is also influenced by the cancellation rate of the cosmological constant. Scientists debate how this works – it is a mystery. Some, who have given up the debate, say: “Just accept it and move on; there is no sense in asking questions.” But the fact remains: the cancellation rate of the cosmological constant is exactly right to maintain the expansion of the universe at its perfect rate. And by exactly right, I mean right to more than one part in 1050. This almost unthinkable precision is mindboggling.

The mass of a neutrino is 5 X 10-35 kg. Compared to other known particles, this is tiny. Yet, according to the physicist Paul Davies, there are so many neutrinos in the universe that their accumulated mass could outweigh all the stars. Davies says that if the neutrino’s mass was any different – say 5 X 10-34 kg – the expansion rate of the universe could be completely changed. This imperceptible difference would result in a contracting universe! The seal of creation hides mysteries galore.

Also hidden behind the seal is the uncanny balance between electromagnetism and gravity. The tiniest shift in this balance would result in a universe comprised entirely of red dwarves or blue giants, which would probably mean no life.

And there certainly would not be life – as we know it anyway – if carbon and oxygen were not created in just the right amounts: not too much, not too little, and perfectly in balance.

Then there is the ratio between neutrons and protons, which is dependent on their respective masses. If the neutron mass were 0.998 of its actual value, there would be no atoms at all. That ratio is fine tuned to an unthinkably small fraction. It is the difference between the “weight” of one quark and another.

These mysteries serve as a seal. “Its features stand out” clearly enough to see that there has been design. Yet Paul Davies, the physicist and wonderful science writer whose book The Accidental Universe first made me aware of these remarkable evidences of design, did not conclude that the universe was created by the transcendent (and imminent) God revealed in the Bible. Instead, he leaned (the last I knew) toward the idea that man evolves to a place where he is able to manipulate matter on a quantum level, gain transcendence over time, and as some kind of god himself go back and fine tune all these “coincidences.”

I’m sure I have grossly understated the complexity of Dr. Davies’ view. My point is simply that acknowledging the God of the Bible as the creator (which may require less faith than Davies’ view – where is Occam when you need him?) still requires faith. Perhaps the day will come when “faith shall be sight,” but we cannot now see behind the seal. We can, however, trust the one who put it there.

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God Wants to Empower You (Ephesians 3:14-17)

Posted on November 14, 2024 by salooper57

Below are excerpts from this sermon, preached on October 20, 2024.

I suspect – and know this is true of me – that most of us pray because we are aware of a need, of discomfort, or of danger—and that’s good. When we are unaware of such things, we don’t think to pray. That’s not good.

That we don’t think to pray when things are going well exposes a shallow understanding of prayer and probably a false belief: that God left us here to muddle through and keep ourselves intact in the process. When that becomes more than we can manage, then it’s time to pray.

But do you see what this reveals about our view of God? We think he’s like the butler in Wodehouse’s Jeeves novels – the smartest, most capable person around – who (for some reason) has nothing better to do than to get us out of scrapes and make us comfortable. But to think that is to misconstrue our purpose here and God’s, his role and ours.

The Apostle Paul doesn’t think of God as if he were “our Jeeves in heaven.” It’s not that he doesn’t want us to pray about our needs—he tells us to do just that: to present our requests to God (Philippians 4:6). But most of Paul’s prayers in the Bible don’t come out of a sense of discomfort or fear or even need. They come out of an eagerness to serve God in what he is doing. That’s different than an eagerness for God to serve us in what we’re doing.

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The principal request in this prayer is for God to give – Paul knows that God is a giver – the Ephesians strengthening power. He asks him to do this “out of his glorious riches” or, better, “according to his glorious riches.” Paul is not asking God to deplete his riches by giving some of them to the Ephesians. He is asking the Father – the infinitely wealthy, incomparably generous God – to give in a way that is consistent with his famous largesse.

But Paul is not asking the Father to give these Christians money. He’s asking him to give them power; to strengthen them. Did you realize that God wants to empower you? He wants you to be strong and capable. Your strength is vital to God’s purpose.

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Our culture talks a lot about empowering people: women, children, minorities, workers, gays, the transgendered, and, lately, even white men (although it’s usually white men who talk about empowering white men.) Our society has a thing about power: it worships it. Don’t worship power. If you worship power, you’ll be the kind of person who will try to use God. But if you worship God, you’ll be the kind of person who can be trusted with power and will use it wisely.

When our culture empowers a person or a group of people, it divides them from other people. That’s how cultural power works: it raises some up and forces others down. God’s power is not like that. It doesn’t divide. It unites. God’s power does not enable people to get their way. It enables them to walk with others in God’s way. God’s power does not provoke resentment; it generates love. Let this sink in: God wants to empower you. God, said C. S. Lewis, “seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye.”[1] He empowers us.

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I’ve met parents who do not empower their children, even when they are twenty or thirty years old. I could almost believe they preferred their children to remain weak so they could control them. God is not that kind of parent. He wants his children to become strong.

There is an important reason for that. Look at verses 16 and 17, where Paul answers the why question: “that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being …” Why? So, you can be independent? That’s not it. So you can be tough? Not exactly. No, he strengthens you with power (verse 17): “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.”

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…the principal request of this prayer: that God will give these Ephesians power to become strong so that Christ can dwell in their hearts through faith. The word the ESV translates as “dwell” is used of a person settling down somewhere. For example, it is used of Jesus moving to Capernaum and making his home there. When we pray this prayer for someone, we’re praying that God will do what is necessary in that person so that Christ can settle in and make himself at home in his or her heart – the command center.

Why do people need to be strengthened for that to happen? Because genuine conversion is like a spiritual earthquake. Christ is bigger than your heart. If he comes to dwell in you, you will need to be renovated. Walls will be knocked out, the structure reinforced.

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A moment ago, I used the word “conversion” in regard to this project. Many people think of conversion as an instantaneous thing: I wasn’t a Christian. I was converted. Now I am a Christian. But that’s not the way it works. A heavenly course change may take only a moment, but an earthly saint takes a lifetime.

Conversion is a process that begins even before Christ comes to live in us. It begins with the Spirit’s work to prepare our hearts and minds. Then, when we say “yes” to God, the Spirit begins changing us on the inside. That’s what is in mind verse 16, where Paul prays for the Ephesians to be “strengthened with power through his Spirit in [their] inner being” – the inside man. Conversion continues throughout a person’s life on earth (and at least until the resurrection). That is why believers in Jesus keep growing, changing, and – if you won’t misunderstand me – getting “bigger.”

The process itself can be uncomfortable. Knocking out our carefully constructed walls can be painful. Raising the ceiling can be scary. The tools God uses to do that are sharp and disruptive. (But no one ever said that being a Christian is for wimps.)

That’s why God’s inside man or woman needs to be strengthened with power. Paul asked God to give that power to the Ephesians and we should ask God to give that power to us. We’re going to need it!

[1] 1 C.S. Lewis, The World’s Last Night and Other Essays (New York: Harcourt, Harvest Books), pp 8-9

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Jesus, Don’t You Care?

Posted on November 9, 2024 by salooper57

In 1901, a Methodist Episcopal minister named Frank Graeff partnered with the composer J. Lincoln Hall to produce a gospel song titled, Does Jesus Care? In the first stanza, Graeff wondered: “Does Jesus care when my heart is pained too deeply for mirth or song, as the burdens press, and the cares distress, and the way grows weary and long?”

I’ve met people, some who identified as Christians and some who had stopped doing so, who have wondered the same thing. Graeff’s answer was: “I know He cares. His heart is touched with my grief.” Other people I have known were not so sure.

We might think ourselves too spiritually mature to ask such questions. Perhaps so. But when the unthinkable happens – I’m remembering the great-grandparents who had to raise their daughter’s infant grandson when a semi slammed into her car and killed her – we might find we are not as advanced as we thought we were.

There are people in the Bible who couldn’t help but wonder if God had forgotten them, if Jesus cared about them. In what is arguably the Bible’s gloomiest psalm, Psalm 88, the friendless, sick, and deeply depressed poet says, “I cry to you for help, O Lord …Why, O Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me?”

Job went further. Instead of wondering if God cared about him, he accused God of hurting him. “I loathe my own life,” he said, and placed the blame for his misery on God. He confronts God in prayer: “Does it please you to oppress me?”

In the New Testament, Luke 10 presents a very homey scene. Jesus is staying with Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary. The three of them would become fast friends. Jesus’s disciples are there too, and while Jesus talks with them, Mary sits and listens. This irritates her (probably) older sister Martha, who is working like crazy, trying to get everything ready for dinner. Her sister isn’t lifting a finger to help her.

When she’s had enough, she interrupts Jesus. Luke writes: “Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

Note the telltale words, don’t you care. Perhaps Jesus only cares about important things like orthodoxy, mission, and world evangelism. Perhaps he does not really care when “the burdens press and the cares distress.”

Martha wondered if Jesus cared whether she wore herself out on domestic duties. Perhaps she was not important enough to warrant his concern.

In a very different setting, the apostles wondered the same thing. They were in a boat, in the midst of a terrific windstorm. (The word St. Mark uses to describe it could be translated as “tempest” or “hurricane.”) The experienced fisherman were straining at the oars, adjusting the sail, and toiling furiously as if their lives depended on it. All the while, Jesus was asleep on a cushion in the stern of the boat.

They woke him, probably by shouting. What did they shout? Again, those telltale words: “Don’t you care that we’re going to die?”

There is something in us that is not quite sure that he does.

During the Korean War, a young soldier named Richard (later, Brennan) Manning was sitting in a foxhole talking with his childhood friend, Ray Brennan. Suddenly, a live grenade came flying into the trench. Ray looked at Manning, smiled, dropped the chocolate bar he was eating, and threw himself on the grenade. He was killed, but Manning was saved (though it seems he suffered some serious PTSD).

When he was back home, Manning went to visit Ray’s mother, whom he had known for most of his life. They drank tea and talked about Ray and about old times, late into the night. Then a troubled Manning asked Ray’s mother, “Do you think Ray loved me?”

Ray’s mother rose from the couch, stood in front of Manning, and shook her finger in his face. She shouted at him, “What more could he have done for you?”

When we are wondering if Jesus cares, his Father could say the same thing to us that Ray’s mother said to Brennan Manning. “What more could he have done for you? He died for you!”

But he is doing more for us. He not only died for us; he lives for us – “he ever lives to make intercession for you.” Even in our Psalm 88 moments, when we feel like darkness is our only friend, Jesus intercedes for us. He knows how to help, and he is ready and able to do so (Hebrews 4:14-16). He does care.

Sometimes, we need to be reminded of that. Consider this a reminder.

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The Christian’s Duty to Pray for the Next President

Posted on November 2, 2024 by salooper57

In 2008, I wrote a newspaper column about the Christian’s responsibility to pray for President-elect Barack Obama. I knew that some of my readers were disappointed that Mr. Obama had been elected. Nevertheless, whether his election was a source of delight or dismay, I made it clear to Christian readers that it was incumbent upon them to pray for him.

A few years later, I was back at it, this time urging Christians to pray for Donald Trump. In 2020, I was playing the same tune, only this time it was for President-elect Joe Biden.

By 2020, I had written what amounts to the same column for every new president elected during the previous four elections. It occurred to me that long-time readers might grow bored with this and not even bother reading the column. So, I came up with a juicy title: “What Should Christians Do about President Biden?” The answer, of course, was that Christians should pray for him.

The title was a mistake. I got a lot of angry mail, mostly from people who didn’t bother to read the article and assumed that I was writing to criticize Mr. Biden and raise hostility toward him. All of those articles elicited negative comments, but the column about President Biden stirred up a hornet’s nest.

And here I am again, writing the same column, telling Christians it is their duty to pray for the president. But for the first time, I am writing the article before election day. I have no idea who will win. The race is neck and neck. But whether we have a President-elect Harris or President-elect Trump makes no difference. Christians are commanded to pray for their leader.

I can anticipate the response of some of my readers: “Donald Trump is not my leader!” “Kamala Harris will never be my leader!”

Sorry, that reply doesn’t cut it. St. Paul urged Christians “…first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone—for kings and all those in authority…” He wrote this to his coworker, the man he had mentored, St. Timothy. He did not urge prayer for nice kings but not others, but “for all those in authority.”

“But,” a determined critic might respond, “Kamala Harris, who defies biblical morality by promoting transgenderism and abortion, was not in authority then.” Or “Paul did not have in mind an arrogant, high-handed leader like Donald Trump, who poses an existential threat to democracy.”

I admit that Rome was not led by a Kamala Harris or a Donald Trump, but it was led by Nero Claudius Caesar, whose moral failures included matricide, murder, and marital unfaithfulness. Nero threatened his political rivals, intent on “eliminating the ills of the previous regime.” And he initiated a propaganda campaign against Christians which led to their deaths in staggering numbers, including both Sts. Paul and Peter.

And yet Paul, writing from prison, urged Christians to pray for all those in authority, including the king. But how does one pray for a leader whose character is flawed or whose policies are harmful? Should one pray for God to give them a short life and take them to judgment quickly?

There is a better way to pray. We can ask God to give the next president a “discerning heart to govern … and to distinguish between right and wrong,” as King Solomon prayed for himself. We can pray for “discernment in administering justice” – a prayer that pleased God – so that we may live “peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.”

We should pray for blessing for the next president, whoever that turns out to be. We should ask God to grant our future president discernment and wisdom. There is, however, another side to this. We may also pray the scriptural prayers of lament and protest – Psalm 10 is an example – that have a bearing on politics. As Christopher J. H. Wright put it, “I see no contradiction in both praying for our rulers and yet also praying against them.”

Whatever our prayers, they must rise above the plane of politics. Politics and politicians are not the most important thing. Whoever our next president is, and perhaps despite who our next president is, God’s kingdom will advance, Christ’s authority will triumph, and his people will be safe in God’s hands. If we believe this, we will be able to obey the biblical mandate and pray for our next president, whoever that may be.

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