The Way Home

Living Backwards: 1 Peter and the Believer’s Hope

Posted on January 23, 2025 by salooper57

Watch or read this introduction to 1 Peter, focused on the believer’s hope. There is encouragement here for every follower of Jesus.

Approximate viewing time: 26 minutes.

Karen and I once watched a Star Trek: Voyager episode in which one of the principal characters awakes to find herself a wrinkled, dying woman, surrounded by a loving family she does not know. She has no memory of a past that led up to this moment. She is a woman without a past, only a present; and in that present, she is dying.

She loses consciousness and when she comes to, she is still an old woman but not as old or as ill. She has gotten younger. This happens repeatedly throughout the show and, each time she regains consciousness, she is younger than she was before. Near the end of the show, she is a child. On this backwards tour through time, she discovers more about her family, herself, and the reason this strange thing is happening to her.

Unlike the rest of the crew, she knows what the future holds, but she does not know what the past held. For the crew, the future is the great unknown. For her, it’s the past. She guides her actions by what she knows of the future; they guide theirs by what they know of the past.

I tell you this story because we are about to begin a delightful exploration of 1 Peter and I want to illustrate a biblical truth that is central to that great letter. The better, richer, fuller life God intends for his people is predicated on a knowledge of the past and the future. Jesus’s people have inside information on both.

To the degree we misunderstand our past – and all of us misunderstand our past to greater or lesser degrees – we cannot be wise in the present. And without a grasp on our future, we cannot be secure. Understanding our past gives us wisdom. Understanding our future gives us confidence.

Many people are imprisoned by their past. The abuse they suffered, the sorrows they endured, and the rejection they experienced have chained them to the kind of person they are but don’t want to be. Others are chained to the past not by its sorrows but by its successes. They’re afraid to let go and become the person God is calling them to be. The first group is filled with regrets. The second is emptied of hope.

For Christians it is different—or it should be. Their past, whether pleasant or tragic, was transformed when they were united to Jesus Christ by faith. In that miraculous moment, their story was fused to his story and what happened to him became more important to their lives than anything that has ever happened to them. Anything.

Not only that, their future was bonded to his future. If you are a Christian – and I’m not talking about the nominal Christian who has a vague belief in God and a positive opinion of Jesus, but about a person who has committed his/her life to God in the belief that Jesus is the savior of the world and the Lord of all – the most important thing in your life happened in someone else’s life. It happened to Jesus. His story is your story. His past is your past, and his future is your future. Once you grasp that, it will change your present.

Our union with Christ is a foundational truth for the New Testament writers. When you were joined to Christ by faith, his past became yours. Because this is true, you can say with the Apostle Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20). His future became your future: when he comes into his inheritance, you will come into yours (Romans 8:17). Not only is his past your past and his future your future, you can begin to experience his present as your present. Paul did. He could say, “For me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). Again, this is not true of in-name-only Christians; it is true of those who are united to Christ through faith.

Peter’s letter is based on what God has done for us by uniting us to Jesus. His life is the fountain from which our lives spring. The Christian cannot really know himself in the present apart from knowing Christ in his past and his future.

In the past, Christ redeemed us and opened a new way of life to us (1 Peter 1:18). He bore our sins so that we could die to sin and live to righteousness (2:24). He died to bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18).

That is the past. It is writ large on the pages of Peter’s letter, but the future also plays a big role—so big that Peter mentions it on every page of his letter. Now, let me ask you: does the future occupy so large a place in your thinking? If it does not, you will be handicapped in your discipleship to Jesus. And this is true regardless of your age, whether you are 90 or 16.

When I was 16, I was a newish believer. I had been reading the Bible for a while, but I didn’t know much about it. The preaching at our church was not the most inspiring or enlightening. I was just muddling along the best I could. But I believed in Jesus and understood that my future was all wrapped up in him.

I was willing to endure – or rather, I willed to endure – so that I could experience the future God had for me. Many were the times I said to God, “Whatever it takes” (and by “whatever” I meant the worst things a teenager could imagine), “I want to be all that you can make me.” Do you see what was happening? The future was altering my present. Rather than living out of past hurts and losses, I was choosing to live into my future. You could say I was living backwards. That’s a skill that every believer needs to master.

Peter mentions the future throughout the letter. In chapter 1, he tells us that grace will be given to God’s faithful people when (1:13) Jesus Christ is revealed. This is grace that is going to transform us! In chapter 2 he speaks of the day when God will visit us (2:12). In chapter 4, he hammers home the idea that a day is coming when God will judge the world (4:5). That is not a bad thing, but neither is it an optional thing. Also in chapter 4, he points to the end of all things, which, he says, is already near (4:7), and he tells us that we will be overjoyed when the glory of Christ is revealed (4:13). In chapter 5, we read that those who are faithful in their service to him are going to share in his glory (5:1). They will receive a crown of glory when Christ appears (5:4). The body of the letter ends with Peter encouraging his readers with the reminder that God has called them to his eternal glory (5:10).

It also opens on that note. Let me read for us verses 1-4: “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To God’s elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you…”

“…he has given us new birth into a living hope…” A living hope. People around us are afflicted with hopelessness. They have given up on their dreams, their jobs, their government, even their church. They have lost hope for their marriages and their children. But the living hope that is ours doesn’t die. Dr. Johnson was wrong, at least when it comes to Jesus’s people, when he said, “Men live in hope, die in despair.” The new birth allows people to live in hope and die in hope. We don’t despair. Even if our bodies die, our hope does not.

The word translated “has given us new birth” or, better, “has begotten us” (as the King James has it), refers to the conception of new life. The translation, “new birth,” suggests to us the delivery of a baby that has reached full-term but, strictly speaking, the word Peter uses refers to life in utero. Earth is a womb. This is our gestation period, the time of our development. The time of our delivery – or to use the biblical term, our deliverance – is in the glorious future God has planned for us. When Christ returns, we will be delivered.

(Just an aside here. I’ve had people say to me that they want no part of any God who refuses to let people into heaven. How, they ask, can a just – not to mention a decent – God keep someone out of heaven for eternity based on the sins committed during their brief lifetime? But these people misunderstand. Past sins won’t keep people out of heaven. If they did, there would be hope for any of us, for we have all sinned. But thank God, “Christ died for our sins and not only ours, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2).)

If people don’t get into heaven, it’s not because they have sinned. It’s because they have not been begotten again with the kind of life that is capable of existing in the age to come, the life that comes through a connection to Jesus Christ.

God is like a heavenly obstetrician. If a baby comes out of the womb of this age with any life at all, he will help that child enter the larger world and be happy and healthy. But if the child comes out of the womb of this age with no life – tragic as that is (and it is break-your-heart tragic) – God will not put it in the nursery with the other babies. It would do the stillborn child no good and the living ones a disservice.)

Note that this new birth is “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…” It is because we are united with Christ in his past – his death and resurrection – that we will be united with him in his future glory. The difference between hope and hopelessness is an empty tomb.

This new life we received when we trusted in Christ comes with hope already installed, like a computer comes with software pre-installed. Peter says that we are begotten into a living hope. Hope is part of the new life’s programming (if you will). It is hopeful in good times and bad, when the body is healthy and when it hurts, in youth and in extreme old age. Hope is inherent in this new life.

The old life – the one that Adam installed in our race – is not like that. Hopelessness is at its core. If I understand this distinction, I will know what to do when I lose hope because I will know what’s happened: I have slipped back into the old hope-deprived life, which Jesus’s people are instructed to decisively put off (Ephesians 4:22).

But how easy it is to slip back into that old life and try to live out of its strengths rather than Christ’s! I’ve done it too many times. When I realize that is what has happened, I must put off that old person once again and live out of the new by trusting in Christ.

We are begotten into hope and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. Perish, spoil, or fade are descriptors of this age in the history of the world—but not of the next. This life is a lesson in how to lose. We lose our stuff: it rusts, its luster dims, it fails. We lose our friends: they move, they change, they die. Our own energy, mental acuity, and hearing eventually perish, spoil, and fade, and then we lose ourselves. The heart slows, brainwaves flatten, and the body perishes.

But those who have received the new birth have an inheritance that will never perish, spoil, or fade. The life energy they now have compared to the life energy they will experience in the age to come is like that of a nine-volt battery compared to a nuclear power plant. We who belong to Christ are destined (this is verse 8) for “joy inexpressible that is full of glory.” St. Augustine said that the “rapture of the saved soul will flow over into the resurrection body.” In that day, we will “drink joy from the fountain of joy” (C.S. Lewis).

Were Darwinian evolutionary theory the whole story and life on earth evolved from a single-cell organism to the advanced beings we are today over untold ages, that change would be dwarfed by the change that will happen instantaneously in the lives of the faithful when the resurrection takes place. No wonder St. Peter tells us to set our hopes fully on the grace to be given us when Jesus Christ is revealed (1:13). That’s what we’re waiting for!

If you have connected to Jesus through faith, all the most important things in your life didn’t happen in your life but in his life, which you now share. So much is this the case that the apostle can say, “Christ … is your life” (Colossians 3:4). His death is your death: He bore our sins in his own body so that we might die to sins (2:24). And his resurrection means you will be raised: “… the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus” (2 Cor. 4:14). Of course he will: we’re connected.

Do you see what this means? We have always thought that the most important thing about us – the determining factor – is that we are tall or short, ugly, or pretty, smart, or dull, married or divorced, wealthy or poor; that our dad left when we were kids, and our mom remarried an abusive guy, or we were in an accident that left us impaired. But what is far more important to us is Jesus. Through Jesus, God has changed everything. And through Jesus, God is changing us!

The Apostle Peter not only wrote about what hope can do for us; he demonstrated it. He had known for a long time that he wasn’t going to die a natural death. By the time he wrote his second letter, he knew he didn’t have long on this earth. But he also knew that his life was so connected to Jesus’s that death wasn’t going to hurt him. He was eager for the day of God. He was looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth – one that is perfect (2 Peter 3:13). The fact that he was going to die soon didn’t depress him because Jesus was his life and Jesus’s future was his future.

We are bound misunderstand ourselves if we think of ourselves apart from Jesus, and that will affect our relationships, our peace of mind, and everything about us. We won’t know why we are here. We won’t know what we are supposed to be doing. We won’t know what will content and fulfill us. Hope will come and go, but mostly go.

We’ll never find ourselves in ourselves because our life isn’t there; it is his with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). That’s where we should look. Friends tell us to trust ourselves. Jesus tells us to trust God. Motivational speakers tell us to “dig deep,” but we’ll never find all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge there, no matter how deep we dig (Colossians 2:3). We will find them in Christ. Jesus was so right: It is only when we lose ourselves – whether we think ourselves ugly or pretty, smart or stupid, victim or hero – that we find ourselves. We find ourselves in Jesus—more alive, more loving, more joyful than we ever dared hope.

One thing remains to be said: the hopeful life, the life of wisdom, knowledge, and joy, is rarely an easy one. Hopeful, joyous St. Peter was persecuted and eventually crucified. He knew (1:6) that we would “suffer grief in all kinds of trials.” That doesn’t make hope less important but more, just as an anchor becomes more important in turbulent waters. Such trials test and purify our precious, priceless faith and prepare us for praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed (1:7-8). Each time our faith stands the test of such trials, our hope becomes stronger until it is finally unbreakable.

All this – so beautiful, so hopeful, so glorious – is because of Jesus, our life, our living hope.

Posted in Bible, Sermons, Spiritual life, Theology | Tagged 1 Peter 1:13, 1 Peter 1:18, 1 Peter 3:18, 1 Peter 4:5, 1 Peter 5:10, Christian hope, Ephesians 4:22, Galatians 2:20, How can a good God keep people out of heaven?, Lewis: "drink joy from the fountain of joy", living hope 1 Peter 1:3, Romans 8:17, Star Trek: Voyager, the Christian's inheritance, union with Christ | Leave a comment

Decisions, Decisions (The Role of Choice in Spiritual Formation)

Posted on January 18, 2025 by salooper57

Decisions, Decisions: The Role of Decision in Spiritual Formation

Occasionally I hear someone say something like this: “I thought I was a Christian at the time. It wasn’t until later that I realized I wasn’t.” Some people don’t know they’re not Christians until they choose not to be. Other people don’t know they’re not Christian until they choose to be. I have known people of both sorts.

Usually, this kind of thing happens because somewhere along the line the person has tacitly accepted the claims Jesus made about himself or at least the teaching of the Church about Jesus. He or she has received biblical information in a context where most of the people present believed it, and simply fell in with them. It was natural to assume what others – maybe parents or grandparents or friends – took for granted.

Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com

The person had information – not always very accurate information – and assumed that being in possession of that information made him or her a Christian. But information alone, and even the insight that information brings, cannot in itself make a person a Christian. There must also be a decision.

In last week’s article, I wrote that spiritual growth follows a path of insight, decision, and implementation. I examined the role that insight plays: where it comes from, how it can be delayed, and what we must do with it. Now it is necessary to think further about how the choices we make impact our progress in spiritual formation.

The prophet Joel cries out, “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision!” (Joel 3:14). That’s pretty much where we live – in the valley of decision. God has so ordered things that any advance in the spiritual life requires us to make a decision.

But this needs to be put in context. If you research the subject of choice and decision-making in the Bible, you will find that a great deal of what the biblical writers said on the subject refers to choices that God makes. We assume it’s all about us, that our choice is all that matters, but that is not the case. His choices precede ours in time and importance. Yet his choices do not render ours void. Just the opposite: his choices make ours possible and even necessary.

There is no spiritual growth apart from choice. That’s the way God designed it. He has endowed us with astonishing dignity: our decisions mean something; they make a real difference. As does our failure to decide.

We see the importance of decision-making again and again in the Bible. It starts in the Garden, where Adam and Eve have a choice to make. God knows they will need to make a decision if they are ever to grow as people. Apart from decision, there is no growth. And we know that their future (and ours) hinges on the decision they make.

In Deuteronomy 30, the importance of choice is highlighted in a big way. Moses stands before the people of God – already God’s people because of the choice he made – and tells them they have a choice to make too: “This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life…” (Exodus 30:19). God does not say, “It doesn’t matter what you choose. I’m going to do what I’m going to do.” Rather he says, “Your decision is a matter of life and death.”

Throughout the Bible we see these two interdependent truths: God makes decisions and we make decisions. His decisions do not render ours pointless; they render them indispensable. And so, throughout the Scriptures we find the call to decision: “…choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15); “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him! If Baal is God, follow him!” (1 Kings 18:21). We are presented with choices: “You cannot serve God and money,” (Matthew 6:24). And the most important decision of all: “What shall I do … with Jesus who is called Christ?” (Matthew 27:22)

(Next week, will look at a famous biblical example of tough decision-making.)

Posted in Bible, Christianity, Faith, Spiritual life, Theology | Tagged 1 Kings 18 Elijah and Baal, Cannot serve God and money, Exodus 30 now choose life, Joel 3:4 The valley of decision, Joshua 24:15 Choose you this day, role of decision in spiritual growth, what the Bible says about choice | Leave a comment

The Big Picture (John 1:1-14)

Posted on January 14, 2025 by salooper57

Our family has a game called Cranium that is filled with brainteasers, including one called Zooma, where the object is to identify everyday objects from an extremely close-up photograph. When you look at a close-up of a flower petal magnified fifty time, it is really hard to tell what you are looking at.

When it comes to the Christmas story, we can zoom in so tightly on certain events that we miss the big picture. We get so close to Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, and the Magi that we can’t see anything beyond them.

So, today, we are going to zoom out to a much wider angle. Instead of magnifying parts of the story, we are going to try to get a panoramic view of the whole. It’s not that the birth of the Child isn’t beautiful and instructive—it is. But a big problem with Christmas in America is that we insist on keeping Christ in the manger. We don’t want him to grow up. We are touched by a baby wrapped in swaddling and lying in a manger, but we would rather not be tapped by the Lord of heaven and earth to do his will. That is a different story. We prefer the one that keeps the baby tucked quietly in a manger.

I say, “That is a different story,” but it’s not. It is the same story. If you pan out from the Baby in the manger you will find the Savior on the cross. The Christmas Child that people are so ready to adore is also the Man that people were so ready to crucify. The manger and the cross are different chapters in the same story.

Today, we are going to attach our widest-angle lens. We are panning way out, beyond Bethlehem, even beyond Calvary. We are telescoping through time to the very beginning. Today we will see worlds bursting into being, and suns exploding with light. We’ll see Creation, with its immensity of space and its unplumbed depths of time, form; and it is dizzying.

And yet it is still the same story. We see the one who already was before the worlds began; we see the one who was born a helpless baby to a homeless family; we see the one who died the horrible death of the condemned. And he is the same person. He is there in the Beginning. He is there in the manger. He is there on the cross. But he is not, by the mercy of God, still there in the tomb. He is on the throne, and the story continues.

We are in John chapter 1. Before we drill down into this passage, I want to make a couple of preparatory remarks. First, this is a remarkably important passage. Whenever someone asks my opinion of a new Bible version, I look first at the opening verses of John 1. They are the touchstone of a translation’s integrity.

Second, this is a theologically rich and complex passage. It is profound and sublime, and my expository skills cannot do it justice. When I preach this passage, I know that I am out of my depth. I’m afraid we may all feel out of our depth this morning, but I won’t leave us floundering. We’ll get back to solid ground.

Third, it is good to keep in mind that John used great care in choosing words that would communicate to two very different cultures. There is no question that he is speaking to the Jewish world of Law and prophets. The text betrays Semitic sentence structures and makes numerous allusions to Old Testament themes. John, for example, intended his opening line to remind Jewish readers of the first book of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Bible’s very first words read: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

But John’s choice of terminology is also meant to evoke ideas familiar to Greek readers. For example, he uses the term “The Word” three times in the first verse and then again in the fourteenth verse. It is a term that even then was rich in history and brimming with meaning. It was used by the philosopher Heraclitus almost six centuries earlier, to describe the wisdom that steers the worlds.^[1] Then the Stoic philosophers took it up and used it to denote the Divine Reason that is behind the existence of all things. Like John, they taught that something called The Word brought creation into being. A Greek reader would recognize these terms and feel right at home in the prologue to this Gospel.

Look at verse 1: “In the beginning was the Word.” John intentionally did not say, “From the beginning was the Word,” but “In the beginning.” He was also careful in the verb tense he chose: the imperfect tense, which is far less common than the aorist, present, and prefect tenses. It conveys this idea: “In the beginning, the Word already was.”^[2] John’s wording is intended to prevent us from doing just what some groups have done: Suggest that this Word was a created thing. John is telling us that the word predated Creation. The Word was already there in the beginning.

John wants his reader to understand how important this Word is: “The Word,” he writes, “was with God.” His choice of terms is, once again, intentional and precise. He uses the Greek word, pros, which is very dynamic. It intimates a face-to-face relationship. If in Greek I wanted to say, “I brought the book with me,” I would use the preposition para, which would suggest proximity, not relationship. But if I wanted to say, “Our sons are with us for the holidays,” I would use the word John chose. It connotes relationship.

At this point, both Jewish and Greek readers could nod in agreement. The Word was “in beginning” and it was “with God.” They could buy that. But the next phrase upsets the apple cart for both Jews and Greeks. “And the Word was God.”

It is important to remember the author of these words was fiercely monotheistic. He believed in one God, and one God only. Monotheism was the fundamental tenet of John’s faith. It was the foundation of Jewish belief, and yet John applies the term God to the One he calls the Word.^[3]

Now the same group that says that the Word was a created being has trouble with this part of the verse, too. They say, “Wait a minute. The Greek says, ‘The Word was a god,’ not ‘the Word was God.’” They will tell you that the article in Greek is missing from the noun “God,” making it indefinite.

What they won’t tell you is that in New Testament Greek the article is routinely missing when a definite noun precedes the verb, as it does here. It is called “Coleman’s Rule.” They are trying to make the Bible fit their theology, not their theology fit the Bible. John is saying that this Word relates to God (which implies some kind of distinction) but also that the Word is God (which speaks of unity).

If you’re treading water right now, or are sinking into the depths of sleep, here is a lifeline to sum up the first part of our text. There is a being John calls “the Word” that has always been with God. And though John can speak of the Word being with God, he can also say the Word was God.

In verse 3, he goes further: “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” The word made here has the idea of something “coming into being.” Everything that came into being, came into being through the Word. It is a tenet of Jewish belief that God himself is the Creator of the world. Here we read that the Word that was with God, that is God, that is God’s Word, brought everything that exists into being.

If I am clever, I can entertain people when I speak. If I am accurate, I can convey information. If I am pedantic (like this morning), I can put people to sleep. But when God speaks the Word, life comes into being. When he speaks, suns blaze and planets twirl, and oceans swarm with creatures; dinosaurs romp, birds sing, and dogs howl at the moon. When he speaks, people think and laugh and love. My word, your word, is a poor, thin, anemic thing. His Word is robust and teems with life. When he speaks, the dead spring to life and things that are not come into being.

The one that John has been calling The Word is the source of life in the universe: “In him,” verse 4, “was life, and that life was the light of men.” The life that comes from the Word gives direction, purpose, understanding – it is light – the light we so desperately need to make sense of the world and of ourselves. That light, John writes in verse 5, “shines.” Notice the change of tense here. It is intentional. Every verb before verse five points to the past. But in verse 5 we learn that the life-giving Word is still shining. It shines even now.

Verses 6 through 8 are a parenthesis introducing John the Baptist. In verse 9, the author comes back to the light that emanates from The Word. That light was coming, he says, into the world. Not just shining on the world, as the Divine Reason might, guiding humanity from afar; it was coming into the world.

Now look at verse 10: “He” – that is, the Word, the true Light, the being that was with God and was God, through whom all things came to be – “was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.”

Perhaps it is not surprising that the world did not recognize him – the world is a big place. But he came, verse 11, to that which was his own, and even his own did not receive him. The words, “that which was his own” are sometimes used idiomatically to refer to one’s home. For example, when Jesus was hanging on the cross, he gave the care of his mother over to the apostle John who, we read, “From that time… took her into his home.”^[4] The words, “his home” are exactly the words we have here in verse 11. “He came to his home, but even the folks at home did not receive him.”

The word receive is an important one. John uses it again in chapter 14, where Jesus says, “I will come again and take you to be with me, that you also may be where I am.” Or, literally, “I will come again and receive you unto myself.”

If you were a first-time reader of this Gospel living in the first century, you might think, “Hang on a minute. The Word, this being that was with God at the beginning, that was God, through whom everything that exists came into being, supposedly came into the world and people did not recognize it or accept it. When did this Word come into the world? How did it come into the world?”

Our first century reader might not know, but we do. John is talking about Christmas. About the birth of a Baby. For the remarkable news is that the WORD of God, that is God and with God is also God with us. “The Word,” verse 14, “became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

The WORD, the Divine Reason, the Creative Power, the Source of life, the Light of men became flesh! The word translated, “made his dwelling” is literally, “he tented” among us. John chose this unusual word to evoke a memory among Jewish readers. The word he uses is the Greek word for Tabernacle; the Tabernacle was where Israel worshiped God for centuries. The Tabernacle housed the holy place and the Holy of Holies, where God revealed himself to his people. At that time, when people wanted to meet God, they went to the Tabernacle. But now that the Word has become flesh and tabernacled among us, if we want to meet God, we must go to the Word, in whom God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell (Colossians 1:19).

But has anyone ever seen the Word, the Creative power of the universe, the expression of the mind of God, the Fountain of life, and the light of men? Yes, they have. Outcast shepherds saw him. Pagan astronomers saw him. Well, has anyone heard this Word? Oh, yes. His mother for one, and more than a few others. What did he say? What wisdom did he offer? What mysterious words of power did he speak? Well, he didn’t exactly say anything at first. He cried. Cried like a baby. The Word that brought all things into being cried because he was hungry. The Word, the Divine Reason that steers the planets and stars, cried because he needed his diaper changed. Here is the wonder of Christmas. Look at it and be awed: “The WORD became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

The eternal, omnipotent, creating, sustaining Word is now a human: Jesus of Nazareth. Ancient Jewish teachers – the kind of people who might have read John’s gospel when it was first written – vigorously argued with the Gentiles that humans never can and never will become God. With that, we agree. But it never occurred to them that God might become human! And not just human, but a baby, a crying, hungry, helpless baby!

Did you notice the connections between our passage and the Christmas narratives in the other Gospels? Both have a light that shines and gives guidance to men. Here, in verse 10, people who should have known their Creator failed to recognize him. In the Christmas story, the scholars who knew all about the prophecies concerning the Messiah did not know him when he came.

In verse 11, his own did not receive him. In the Christmas story, Joseph brings his new bride to Bethlehem, where his extended family lived. By custom, they should have welcomed their wayfaring cousin into their homes and, under normal circumstances, they would have done so. But they did not receive Joseph because his bride carried this Child. His own received him not.

Yet there were some who received him. There was his Mother, Joseph, an old man named Simeon, and an old woman named Anna. There were outcast shepherds and foreign astronomers. Not everyone refused to receive him. Verse 12, “Yet to all who received him…”

Now let’s wind this up. John says that “To all who received him, to those who believed in his name (that is, who trusted in him, had confidence in him), he gave the right to become children of God.” A few moments ago, I mentioned that John uses the Greek word for receive again in chapter 14. There, Jesus says, “Trust in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms – if it were not so I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you, and if I go, I will come again to receive you to myself.”

If we refuse to receive Jesus – if we will not take him to be with us in our homes, our hearts, and our lives – it is sheer presumption to expect Jesus to receive us into his Father’s house. If we don’t want to be with him for a short time here, what makes us think that we would want to be with him for an eternity there? This bears thoughtful reflection.

This morning, we have been looking at Jesus’s story through a wide-angle lens. Perhaps we need to use that same lens to look at our own stories. We spend our brief time on life’s stage in close-ups: today’s needs, yesterday’s hurts, tomorrow’s requirements. But if we were to pan out, we would see the parents and grandparents and ancestors who came before us and shaped our lives. We would see the children and grandchildren who come after us, over whose lives we will have profound impact. We would see our births and, if we dared, our deaths. We would see moments we have enjoyed and moment we have regretted. We would see times when we responded to God as he spoke through Bible, conscience, or preacher. We would also see times we ignored God. We would see ourselves, beyond death, standing before God the Judge, face to ineffable face.

Just as you can only see Christ aright by panning out, from before the cradle to beyond the grave, so you can only see yourself aright by panning out. This is you: God’s creation, belonging to him, redeemed by him and for him, and responsible to him. From that wide angle, can you see yourself in the past receiving the Word made flesh, Jesus, the Son of God? If not, what about in the present? Will you take Jesus as your Lord and Savior today?

^[1] Leon Morris, Expository Reflections on the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Baker)

^[2] Cf. Barclay’s translation

^[3] Morris, Leon. The Gospel According to John, The new International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s, 1971. p. 78)

^[4] John 19:26

Posted in Bible, Christianity, Christmas, Sermons, Theology | Tagged incarnation, Is Jesus God?, John 1:1, John 1:11, John 1:14, John 1:4, Prologue to the Gospel of John, receive Jesus, theology, What the Bible is about, Word became flesh | Leave a comment

The Path to Spiritual Growth: Insight, Decision, and Implementation

Posted on January 11, 2025 by salooper57

Spiritual growth occurs at the nexus of insight, decision and implementation. We are tempted to think that a person with spiritual insight is special, but that is simply untrue. God gives light and we look. That’s all that insight requires. Yet, even that is difficult if we have trained ourselves not to look. Some people, according to John’s Gospel, prefer to stay in the dark.

Even if we don’t choose darkness, we might like the half-light best. It offers enough light to make our way but not enough to reveal our sins. When God does send light, our gut reaction may be to head for cover, but it is essential that we stay in the light, allow our eyes to adjust to it, and see what it shows us.

When God begins working in our lives (and that’s not really a good way to put it, since he was working on our behalf before we were born), we often don’t recognize what is happening; our eyes have not yet adjusted to the light. But God continues working and waiting for the day when we are capable – when we are big enough, when there is finally enough of us – to respond.

One day when I was 12-years-old, I was playing football in our side yard with boys from around the neighborhood. As the game was winding down, one of the guys ran to the store across the street. He came back moments later with candy he stole off the shelf. This bold exploit elevated him to stardom in our group, and he dared all the rest of us to go to the store and steal something, like he did. Anyone who didn’t do it, would be labeled a coward.

Most of the guys headed across the street, but I just stood there, thinking. That moment did not feel the least bit spiritual, but I could see that what they were doing was wrong. It was a mean thing to do to the old couple who owned the store, whom I’d known all my life. That was the extent of my insight. Nothing profound, but true nonetheless. And I made a decision based on that insight: I chose not to go along with the guys, though I knew it would diminish my standing among the group.

Looking back, I believe that decision and the insight that preceded it were important to my entire spiritual development. God was at work, shining light into the life of a 12-year-old boy, though I certainly didn’t know it then. In heaven, we will be aware of many such times – personal and profound – each a fresh occasion for giving thanks to our Father for working in our lives even when we didn’t know it or appreciate it.

When God shined light on the Pharisee Saul (Acts 9:1-19), he knew it; it knocked him off his feet (or perhaps, his mule). But this was not the first time God has shined light on the obstinate Pharisee. Saul was there when light shone from the martyr Stephen, when “his face was like that of an angel.” Saul had seen Stephen ask God to forgive the men – Saul was one of them – who were killing him.

I suspect Saul could not get away from what he saw. It stuck with him, entering his thoughts unbidden, invading his dreams. Insight was coming, bringing with it a moment of decision—a moment Saul did not want to face.

Saul kept pushing forward, but the ground was slipping from under him. I suspect that his heart faltered from time to time, but the forward motion of his fear and anger carried him on. He was being goaded in a direction he didn’t want to go, and he stubbornly kicked against the goads (Acts 26:14). Saul was running from the God he proudly claimed to serve.

The thing about running from God is that he’s everywhere. When you think you’re running from him, you’re really running to him. There is only one place you can be safe from Him, a place he designed as a refuge for those who refuse the light and hate the Light-Giver. Jesus called it “the outer darkness.” It is the only place you can be safe from God. Ironically, it is the only place you can be safe from salvation. It is not, however, a place where you can be safe from yourself and your sins.

Saul’s flight from the light brought him to the Light-Giver. He came, unwillingly it seems, face to face with the insight he had tried so hard to avoid. It was preceded, as insight always is, by revelation. The revelation that came to Saul on the Damascus Road was this: Jesus is Lord.

I can imagine something in Saul’s head saying, “No. Not that. Not … Jesus.” And then, deeper down, “Oh, I knew it.” This was revelation, not insight. Revelation has to do with what is; insight has to do with what it means. The revelation is God’s part. The insight is Saul’s—and ours.

Saul spent the next three days helpless and blind, with nothing to do but think. The man that wouldn’t stop running could not walk out of the house without help. Unable to see out, he was forced to see in. He reviewed his life – his work, his success, and his reputation – in the light of the revelation that Jesus is Lord, and he saw what that meant. This was his insight, and he later wrote about it in Philippians 3.

When the revelation that Jesus is Lord comes to us, it is just as much a miracle as it was when it came to Saul. Like him, we will either dare to look at what that means or we will turn toward darkness. This revelation (that Jesus is Lord), and the insight that follows, has the power to change us into the people we were always meant to be.

But revelation, even when coupled with insight, was not enough to change the Pharisee Saul into the Apostle Paul, nor is it enough to change me into the joyful and glorious man God had in mind when he made me. Insight must be followed by decision, and decision by implementation. Where these three exist together, spiritual change and growth will be abundant.

Posted in Bible, Christianity, Spiritual life | Tagged Acts 26:14, Acts 9:1-19, How people grow spiritually, John 3:19-21, outer darkness scripture, Paul's conversion, Philippians 3::1-10 | Leave a comment

Star Trek: The Voyage of the Magi Caravan

Posted on January 6, 2025 by salooper57

For Epiphany

We could title the text just read for us, Star Trek: The Prequel. This is the voyage of the Magi caravan. Its extended mission was to travel to the land of the Jews, honor and reverence that people’s newly-born king, and then return to star-base Babylon.

The magi (or wise men in the King James) were a tribal group from modern-day Iran and Iraq. The Persian King Cyrus conquered their tribe, and when they mounted a coup against his grandson Darius, their political ambitions were crushed. The magi show up on the pages of history half a millennium before Christ, and some scholars see references to magi in much older documents. In the fifth century B.C., the Greek historian Herodotus described the magi as a Persian tribe with priestly duties. Apparently, their role was similar to that of the tribe of Levi in Israel.

The magi appear in the New Testament in our text, and individual Magians (or magicians, which is our English way of saying it) appear twice in Acts. There are also passages in the Old Testament that point to the magi. In the prophet Jeremiah there is a reference to the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem that seems to refer to the chief of the magi. Then later, in the book of Daniel, there are numerous passages that refer to wise men, at least some of whom may have been magi. These wise men were probably Zoroastrian priests who specialized in studying the stars and making astrologically-based predictions. Very complete charts of the movements of the planets and stars were kept in Babylon from at least the 8^th century B.C.

Interestingly, after Daniel won the favor of the Babylonian king in the sixth century, he was given a position of authority over (guess who?) the magi. Daniel 2:48 says that he was placed in charge of all Babylon’s wise men. Daniel 4:9 calls him the chief of the magicians. Daniel 5:11 says that “King Nebuchadnezzar … appointed [Daniel] chief of the magicians, enchanters, astrologers and diviners.”

Do you see what this means? Hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, God used the disaster of the fall of Jerusalem and the exile of its citizens to bring a young Jewish man to the attention of a Babylonian king, who placed him in authority over of all his wise men and astrologers (his magi).

Daniel served for many years as the chief of the wise men. It is possible that he instructed them in the words of the God of Israel? Did he teach them the ancient prophecy that “A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel” (Numbers 24:17)? Did he tell them that “From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens’” (Daniel 9:25).

If he did (as I think likely), the magi in our text may have seen the star because they were looking for it, and they might have been looking for it since the time of Daniel. And, interestingly, when the first century rolled around, it seems like they weren’t the only ones looking. The first century Roman historian Suetonius writes that “There had spread over all the Orient and old and established belief, that it was fated at that time for men coming from Judea to rule the world.” Another first century historian, Tacitus, writes that “there was a firm persuasion… that at this very time the East would grow powerful, and rulers from Judea would acquire universal power.” The seed of that firm persuasion and established belief may have been planted by Daniel almost six hundred years earlier among the magi in Babylon.

We cannot know for sure, but it would be just like God to set his plan in motion dozens of generations before it was to come to fruition. I say dozens, but that doesn’t go far enough. The star the Magi saw must have been part of God’s plan from the beginning of time. Remember the magi had been watching the stars for centuries and had kept very careful star charts and astronomical records. That’s what they were doing when they saw something in the sky that astonished and excited them, something they took to be the birth announcement of the king who was to come out of Judea.

No one knows for sure what the Magi saw, but that hasn’t stopped people from guessing. One theory is that they interpreted the alignment of Saturn (which was thought to have a special relationship with Israel) and Jupiter, the king of the planets, as proof that Israel’s king had been born. A recent scholar believes they saw a comet because one was seen in the sky around the time of Jesus’s birth. He believes that it first became visible in the constellation Virgo (the Virgin), and that’s what convinced the Magi that a king had been born. He’s plugged his calculations into a star chart and found that the comet would have moved from east to south in just such a way as described in Matthew.

Whichever is true, or if something else is true, think about the brilliance of God. He can create an astrological phenomenon at the beginning of time, if he chooses, so that in the fullness of time, it could lead a caravan of seekers to Bethlehem and introduce them to his Son.

And consider this too. When God spoke about his Son to these magi from the east, he did it in a way that they could understand. He used the language of astral ascensions and declinations. God knows how to communicate; he speaks to people in their own language. He comes to us where we are, in ways we can understand.

The magi saw the star in its rising, and they were as excited as modern scientists were when they found proof for the existence of the Higgs boson particle. They wanted to follow their research and see the child born king with their own eyes. But in that day (as in this), following the research required funding and, perhaps, permission from the authorities. It would have taken time to assemble a team, put together a caravan and raise the money necessary to skirt 1700 miles of desert. When the magi had worked out all the details, they set out for Jerusalem.

Why Jerusalem? Because it was the capital city of Judea. King Herod had a palace there, and they naturally assumed that the newborn king would be the son of the reigning king. But this was – quite literally – a fatal mistake. They came to Jerusalem (in a caravan big enough to attract lots of attention) and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?” Or, literally, “Where is the born king of the Jews?”

Even the way they phrased the question drew attention – and concern. The reigning King, Herod, was not a “born king”; he was made king by the Roman Senate after leading a successful military campaign on their behalf. He wasn’t even Jewish – at least his ancestry was half-Idumean. He was always afraid that someone would take his throne. He was so paranoid he had his own wife, his mother-in-law and three of his sons executed at various times because he thought they might be planning a coup.

When Herod heard that there was a born king in his dominion, a shock like lightning must have gone through him. Even then, he didn’t lose his composure or his cunning. He called the magi to him secretly and questioned them closely about the time when they first saw the star. It’s clear he was planning to do to this new king what he had done to his own sons, but he was careful not to let the magi know it. He needed the location of his rival, who could be anywhere. Herod didn’t know the Scriptures – he had no use for them – but he knew who did.

So, he called together the chief priests and teachers of the law and asked them where the Davidic king of prophecy was to be born. They didn’t have to think twice. They knew right away what the Bible said. “In Bethlehem, the city of David,” they said. For Micah the prophet had written, “But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.”

So, Herod sent the Magi to Bethlehem and ordered them to make a careful search – he didn’t want any mistakes. With long-practiced duplicity, he said, “Once you’ve found him, let me know where he is, because I must go and reverence him too.”

They set off for Bethlehem in the evening or early nighttime. It was only a few miles, and they hoped to conclude their search before the night was over. And that’s when they saw their “star” (or comet, or whatever it was). It seems that they hadn’t seen it for a while. Perhaps the skies had been cloudy, or the star (or comet) had been hidden from sight by the sun’s glare or the moon’s obstruction, and only became visible again as they approached Bethlehem. When they saw it, they were overjoyed.

When the magi arrived in Jerusalem, they expected to find the city celebrating. They expected pomp and ceremony. They didn’t know what to expect in Bethlehem. They found a little house where a simple tradesman lived with his young wife and small child.

The magi opened their gifts – gold, frankincense and myrrh – and paid reverence to the Child. Did they understand that this Child was Daniel’s anointed one? Did they realize that this was the one whose goings forth were from of old, and on whose shoulders the future of the world would rest? We don’t know how much they understood – perhaps more than we give them credit for – but whatever they understood, give them credit for this: they acted on what they knew.

Others who knew far more did far less. Remember that Herod called the chief priests and the teachers of the law together to ask them the birthplace of the long-awaited Messiah. And those scholars knew the answer. They also knew (with the rest of Jerusalem) that a caravan of magi had come. They knew that the magi believed that Israel’s king, who’s coming had been prophesied in their Scriptures and whose reign had been anticipated for generations, had been born. They even knew where the long-awaited king’s birth was prophesied to take place.

And yet, while the magi (pagans from another land who worshiped other gods) traveled hundreds and hundreds of miles to greet Israel’s king, these religious leaders and scholars didn’t bother to travel 6 miles. Someone has said that taking Jesus for granted is not the sin of pagans but of religious folk and Bible teachers.[1]

Verse 11 says, “On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh.” The scene must have been surreal. A caravan outside their door, foreign men in strange attire, speaking in unfamiliar accents. Joseph and Mary, alarmed, not knowing what to expect; the magi, surprised, and wondering what a king was doing in a place like this; and the neighbors, gossiping about it all for weeks. Then, in an oddly dreamlike moment, these strange men in their strange clothes got down on their knees before the young child, presented him gifts of great value, and worshiped him.

Those gifts would prove enormously helpful. When the Magi did not return to Herod with the exact location of the born king, the paranoid king sent his troops to kill every male child in the vicinity. Critics have accused Matthew of making this part up for dramatic effect, but it is entirely consistent with what we know of Herod. When his young brother-in-law was becoming too popular, he had a mysterious “drowning accident.” It happened in a shallow pool. After some of his officials were accused of misconduct, Herod had them beaten to death, only to find out later that the accusations were false. He ordered one of his sons executed just five days before his own death. When it became clear to him that his death was imminent, he dispatched troops to round up seventy of Jerusalem’s best-loved citizens, had them taken to the hippodrome and held there. He ordered his troops to execute every last one of them at the moment of his death because, he said, he wanted there to be tears, and he knew no one would cry for him. A man like that would not balk at killing a few (or even many) children in and around Bethlehem.

Let’s think about what this passage has to say to us today. First, it makes clear that we can never tell how people will respond to the news about Jesus. In our text, the people we would expect to receive him (the chief priests and teachers of the law) ignored him. The people we would expect to ignore him (pagan astrologers from the other side of the desert) crossed barren lands at great cost to find and worship him.

And don’t miss the fact that God sent the message of his Son to people who worshiped other gods, believed in astrology, and practiced a religion we think mistaken. God, in other words, is a missionary. I’ve had people say to me, “We shouldn’t be spending so much money overseas when the need here is just as great.” There is no denying the need is great, but we already have a missionary presence here – you and me. Many people here, like the chief priests and teachers of the law, really aren’t interested in hearing about Jesus, while some people there are dying to know him.

A few years ago, I heard a former member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and a one-time assassin for Yasser Arafat, share his story. When someone told him that he could know God and find forgiveness in Jesus, it caught this terrorist completely off-guard. A man you would never expect to show interest, gave his life to Christ and was transformed. That’s why we go to the ends of the earth. And it’s also why we should tell people in our own backyard (family members, friends and even enemies) about Jesus. You never know who will respond to the Good News.

Our text also shows us that God loves people who hold beliefs that are different than ours. We’ve just endured another terrorist attack from a Muslim extremist. When this has happened previously, there has been an outbreak of retaliatory violence against Muslims. God hates such acts. A person can do violence to a Muslim in the name of hatred and fear, but never in the name of Jesus Christ. Putting an end to Muslims is not our goal, despite what a prominent (and repulsive) Christian leader said a few years ago. Putting a savior before them is.

People who belong to other religions are not the enemy. Abraham did not treat his Canaanite neighbors as enemies. King David was closely allied with the king of Tyre, even though he belonged to a different religion. God sent Jonah to rescue the people of Nineveh, though they did not acknowledge him. When Paul went to Ephesus, the world center of Artemis worship, he didn’t see its citizens as enemies but as people loved and desired by God. Our enemies are not people who belong to other religions, but the rulers, authorities, and powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 6:12). We mustn’t forget that.

Our text also warns us of the danger of taking Christ for granted, as the chief priests and teachers of the law did. Matthew has a particular interest in those two groups: he mentions them each more than twenty times. This is the first time he links them together – when they are living next door to Christ the king but don’t bother to acknowledge him. They exposit the Scriptures about him, but they don’t act on them.

The last time Matthew links the chief priests and teacher of the law together is – can you guess? – when they were conspiring (Herod-like) to get rid of Jesus. Taking anyone for granted – parent, spouse, child, even, and especially, the Christ of God – is the soil in which hostility and rejection grow. This generation of chief priests and teachers of the law took the Messiah for granted. The next took him to the cross. If we take Jesus for granted, and I’m afraid millions of professing Christians have, what will our children do?

Finally, this text calls us to wonder at the grace of God and be awed by it. I said earlier that God knows how to speak our language. In Star Trek lingo, he has a universal translator. (Or, more accurately, he is a universal translator.) He spoke, for example, to magi in the language of the stars. But the greatest example of God speaking our language is this: the divine Word became flesh, lived among us and translated God for us. He helped us comprehend grace and truth. He made visible the invisible God. And he did it in a way we could understand. He spoke our language. And it was all because “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in his should not perish but have everlasting life.” Let us respond to the love of God.

[1] Craig Keener, op. cit.

Posted in Bible, Christianity, Sermons, Theology | Tagged Christianity, Christmas, Epiphany, Herod the Great, Jesus, Magi, What was the star of Bethlehem? | Leave a comment

The World Is Too Much in Us

Posted on January 4, 2025 by salooper57

“The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” William Wordsworth wrote that in 1802. By “world” I assume he meant something similar to what St. John had in mind when he exhorted his readers not to love the world – a world comprised of the “lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.”

If Wordsworth thought the world was intrusive at the turn of the 19^th century, what would he (or St. John) say now in this time of continuous advertisements, outsized corporate ambitions, and persuasive social media influencers? It impinges on us every waking hour. It screams for our attention and, if we ignore it even for a moment, warns us of the danger of missing out.

It is not only the social world that presses on us. The physical world does too, all day, every day. One can think of human beings – empiricists do it all the time – as astonishingly complex sensors, recording inputs through touch, hearing, taste, sight, and smell. Additionally, the entire human body – and not just its sense organs – maintains a nearly constant sense of where it is in relation to its surroundings. This is the sixth sense, known as proprioception. To be human is to process millions of data points daily through our sensory inputs.

So, how can we, being human, have any attention left over for spiritual pursuits? How can we hear God speak in “a still, small voice” when our ears are being assaulted by the washing machine, the baby’s cries, and the incessant dinging of text alerts?

After writing a book on hearing God and developing a conversational relationship with him, Dallas Willard said in the epilogue, “I am still painfully aware of the one great barrier that might hinder some people’s efforts to make such a life their own. That barrier is what Henry Churchill King many years ago called ‘the seeming unreality of the spiritual life.’ We could equally well speak of it as ‘the overwhelming presence of the visible world.’”

Willard goes on to say that the “visible world daily bludgeons us with its things and events… Few people arise in the morning as hungry for God as they are for cornflakes or toast and eggs.” The visible world “bludgeons us,” while the spiritual world “whispers at us ever so gently.”

The terms “visible world” and “spiritual world” are not strictly biblical, but the idea is close to what St. Paul had in mind when he said, “…we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen,” and then, a few paragraphs later, adds, “We walk by faith, not by sight.”

The conflict between faith and sight is one of resource sharing. When my computer’s direct memory access controller competes with the express root port for the same memory address, something is going to lose out. Something similar happens when my ability to hear God’s voice and my addiction to the Legion voice of media compete for my limited attention: one will lose out.

Most of our resources are gobbled up by the visible, noisy world. It is simply more demanding than the spiritual world. It “is too much with us” for us to ignore it—Goliath to the spiritual world’s David.

Then why, if God wants us to be spiritual, does he allow this confounded inequality? But this question is misleading. It is not that God wants us to be spiritual; we already are. He wants us to “walk by the Spirit,” and that will not happen because the spiritual world becomes more intrusive but because we have made the choice to trust him and to listen for his “still, small voice.”

As Willard reminds us, “[N]either God nor the human mind and heart are visible. It is so with all truly personal reality. ‘No one has ever seen the Father,’ Jesus reminds us. And while you know more about your own mind and heart than you could ever say, little to none of it was learned through sensory perception. God and the self accordingly meet in the invisible world because they are invisible by nature.”

But meeting in the invisible world remains a choice, a choice based on faith: confidence that God is there and wants to meet with us. Another way of saying that is, “that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

I think Wordsworth was wrong. The world is not too much with us. We are too much with the world, and that will only change if we choose it.

Posted in Bible, Christianity, Faith, Spiritual life, Theology | Tagged Becoming more spiritual, Dallas Willard, hearing God speak, John 1:18, sensitivity to God, still small voice, William Wordsworth's "The World Is Too Much with Us" | Leave a comment

Hebrews 10:5-10 (Fourth Sunday in Advent)

Posted on January 3, 2025 by salooper57

Excerpts:

Some years ago, Queen Elizabeth visited the U. S. She brought with her four thousand pounds of luggage, including two outfits for every occasion, a mourning outfit in case someone died, forty pints of plasma, and white kid‑leather toilet seat covers. She brought along her own hairdresser, two valets, and a score of other attendants.^[1] How different was the royal visit to Bethlehem. When the King of glory came the ancient gates were not raised; the doors were not opened. Even Motel 6 didn’t keep the lights on. He had no royal attendants. He did not bring pints of plasma. Quite the contrary: he came to donate blood.

The King of Glory did not come to earth so that he could lie in a manger. Bethlehem is momentous and mind-boggling, but it is only phase one in God’s plan to rescue humanity from ruin. Bethlehem leads to Calvary, Calvary to the empty tomb, and the empty tomb to the life-changing, humanity-transforming Spirit. God’s plan is comprehensive. He has thought of everything.

I said a moment ago that people in Israel were already deeply religious. But the Son of God did not undergo incarnation – bilaminar disc formation, cell mass differentiation, organogenesis, and nine month’s internment in a womb – to make people religious. He didn’t die on a cross to make you religious; he died to make you good – that is, strong, loving, joyful, faithful.

After Thanksgiving, many people go to their garage or shed and take out their nativity scenes and set them up in their front yards. They put up cows and sheep, wise men and shepherds, Mary and Joseph, and then they take the newspaper wrapping off the Baby Jesus and place him in a plastic manger. When the season ends, they swaddle baby Jesus in newspaper again and bury him in the back of the shed until the next holiday season comes ’round.

Some of us do the same kind of thing. We love the baby Jesus. We get excited about him every Christmas, sing songs about him, listen to sermons about him. But when the holiday season is over, we wrap him up and bury him in the back of our minds until next year. It’s the American way to do Christmas.

Christ did not come to Bethlehem to sleep in a manger. He came to offer God his love and obedience, even to the point of death. But he did not offer this life of love and obedience so that we wouldn’t have to—that is the “we’re off the hook” theory of the atonement. He lived a perfect life, died a sacrificial death, rose from the dead, and was exalted to God’s right hand so that he might give the Spirit that was in him to us. Because of what he has done at Bethlehem’s stable, Calvary’s cross, Jerusalem’s empty tomb, and heaven’s throne, we, too, can say, “Here I am … I have come to do your will, O God.”

^[1] Philip Yancy, The Jesus I Never Knew (Zondervan, 1995)

Posted in Advent, Bible, Christmas, Sermons, Theology | Tagged 2 Corinthians 8:9, Aesop's Donkey Fable, Fourth Sunday in Advent, Hebrews 10:5-10, Hosea 6:6, Isaiah 1:13, Micah 6:7, Psalm 40:6-8 | Leave a comment

Hope! I Need Somebody (Hope! Not Just Anybody)

Posted on December 28, 2024 by salooper57

I was once searching for a title for a sermon on Colossians 1. Having grown up in the sixties, I naturally thought of song-inspired titles: “Hope Me, I Think I’m Falling”; “With a Little Hope from My Friend”; and “I Can’t Hope Myself,” (which is both solidly biblical and delightfully Motown). But I settled on, “Hope! I Need Somebody.”

The beginning of the new year finds many of us short on hope. We blame the state of society, or government corruption, or our spouse’s unwillingness to change for tearing a hole in us and draining our souls of hope. But these things did not make the holes through which our hope is leaking; they only exposed them.

Years ago, after officiating at the funerals of numerous – far too many – victims of suicide, I realized that people don’t kill themselves because their lives are so hard. They kill themselves because they have lost hope. Hope really is a lifesaver.

Of course, not all hopeless people take their own lives. Many people hold down jobs, drive their kids to school, go to the movies, plan vacations – they carry on normal lives. But all the while hopelessness stalks them like a wild animal. They can feel its presence, especially when they’re tired, especially when they are still.

And so, they try never to be still. They go, go, go. They shop, buy things they don’t need, go to places they don’t care about, take pictures they’ll never look at, get addicted to pain killers (or porn or booze), all because they can’t stand to be still. They sense that if they stop, hopelessness will pounce.

Distraction is one of the chief symptoms of hopelessness, and we have made it into an art form. Or perhaps a science. If you don’t have hope, you’ll need a shot of distraction, the way a type-one diabetic needs a shot of insulin. The more dependent a person is on distraction, the more serious his or her hope deficiency.

Hopelessness is a disease of the soul. Distractions treat the symptoms pretty effectively at first, but it requires higher and higher doses to keep it in check, for hopelessness becomes distraction-resistant. A diagnostic test for hopelessness is this: how long can you go without seeking distraction—skimming your news feed, checking your phone, doomscrolling Tik-Tok videos or, if you’re older, binge-watching episodes of MASH.

Can hope be renewed? Before that question can be addressed, it is necessary to think about what hope is. Hope is the confident expectation of a preferred future. That differentiates it from a wish, which is merely a desire (albeit sometimes an overpowering desire) for a preferred future.

A wish can be also distinguished from hope in another way: a wish proceeds from us but hope comes to us. We cannot find hope by “digging deep,” since hope is not sourced in us. Hope comes from believing in something outside ourselves.

Hope may not seem possible in our situation. When we look down the tunnel, there is no light at the end. We see no end. We cannot even think of a way for things to get better.

Here’s a suggestion: Stop staring down the tunnel and try looking up to heaven instead. That’s where your hope will come from—from God. The Psalmist knew this. “Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.” We can see no light at the end of the tunnel. God brings the light with him.

Years ago, I met Scott, who was in the last stages of ALS. When I went to visit him at his home, I found an emaciated young man who was nearly paralyzed by the disease. Even his vocal cords were beginning to lose function.

I sat in a chair by his bed and we talked. Scott told me that he had become a Christian two months earlier. We talked about that and other things and, after a while, I asked him if he was afraid of dying.

He told me something – and it was hard for him to talk, so I had to listen closely – that I have never forgotten. He told me that the last two months, since he had come to faith in Christ, had been the two best months of his life. I looked at him in wonder. Here was a man from whom everything had been taken. His former life was gone. His world was a bed. His body was a prison. And the last two months had been the best two months of his life?

How was that possible? What had happened? The God of hope had come and put hope in his soul.

If Scott could have hope, so can we. But hope comes from God, not from government, not from material acquisitions, not even from some wished-for event. So, it is to God that we must look for hope. When we do, we will find that “hope does not disappoint us.”

Posted in Bible, Christianity, Faith, Spiritual life, Theology | Tagged ALS, distractions, Hope in the new year, Psalm 62:5, Romans 5:5, shopping addiction | 2 Comments

The Visited Planet

Posted on December 21, 2024 by salooper57

Ours is a visited planet. Our little world, situated as it is in a lower-middle class solar system, circling a mediocre star on the outskirts of a commonplace galaxy, has little to commend it. If the entire planet exploded in a fiery conflagration that could be seen from the sun, some 93 million miles away, it would attract no more attention in the universe than a gunshot in a ghetto.

And yet ours is the visited planet. The Wonderful Counselor himself, the Mighty God, has come down our dead-end street and stopped at our place. And he came in the most extraordinary way: He was “made flesh” in the Virgin’s womb.

That he came is remarkable. How he came no sage could ever have imagined. But why he came – that is the profoundest mystery.

People seem to think that God’s great and glorious Son came to earth to establish a religion. But that is “too small a thing.” The Eternal one was not straight-jacketed by time, the infinite one did not wear the shackles of space in order to make us a little more religious, or so that we would attend church two out of every four Sundays. He visited our planet in order to save people, or so the angel declared.

That he is savior is the good news of great joy. We often get this confused. We think that the good news is peace on earth, good will to men. But peace is a consequence of the good news, not its content. The angel told the shepherds, “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people: “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.”

The good news was that a savior had been born. Normally when we hear the word savior, we think of one person who rescues another (or others) from a desperate situation. The new coach saves the football program from disaster. The CEO saves the corporation from bankruptcy. The Coast Guard saves the boater from drowning.

If we were to make a list of the things from which we need to be saved, sin would probably not be at the top. If it made the list at all, it would come somewhere after hair loss and high cholesterol.

But we, at least most of us, are not in a desperate situation. So, a savior has been born to us; what difference does it make? Will he save us from irrelevancy? Or insolvency? Or lunacy?

To answer that question, we have to turn to another of the Christmas narratives; this one in Matthew’s gospel. There an angel appears to Joseph, who had resolved to leave his fiancé, Mary, after hearing the shocking news that she was pregnant. But the angel assured Joseph that Mary had not been unfaithful to him. No, the Baby in her womb was miraculously conceived. Joseph’s fiancé was carrying the child of promise, the long-awaited deliverer. He was to be named Jesus (which means, “Yahweh saves”) because he would save his people from – from what? Boredom? Illiteracy? Hardship? No – he would save his people from their sins.

I suspect most people experience a letdown upon hearing those words. If we were to make a list of the things from which we need to be saved, sin would probably not be at the top. If it made the list at all, it would come somewhere after hair loss and high cholesterol. Even Joseph may have experienced a momentary disappointment. He was expecting a Messiah who would save people from their enemies and from the armies that occupied their homeland, not from their sins.

Why do we need a savior from sin? That is the fundamental question. According to the theologian Millard Erickson, sin is an inner force, an inherent condition, a controlling power. It is a disease that has been passed down through every member of the human family. It manifests in a variety of symptoms – some more apparent than others – but whatever the symptoms, the outcome is always death. Thus, St. Paul says, “The wages of sin is death.”

There are also more immediate consequences. Restlessness is one. The prophet speaks of those who are “like the tossing sea; for its waters cannot rest.” Another consequence is guilt – the kindthat our own efforts cannot absolve. Sin also brings trouble on us and our children, leaving us weary and sorrowful.

Even more disturbing is the self-propagating nature of sin. Sin begets sin; it fosters evil. The 100,000+ deaths that have occurred in current armed conflicts in places like Ukraine, Palestine, Myanmar, Sudan, Nigeria, and elsewhere are not occurring in a vacuum. Sin layered upon sin has resulted in hatred and malice and, inevitably, death.

We don’t have to go to Kiev to see the results of sin. We can look in our own homes, where sin results in anger, unkindness, and division – division from people and, more ominously, from God.

Now go back to Bethlehem. Here lies the Baby over whom so much fuss is made. He is about 19 inches long and weighs about six pounds. How can this helpless baby save his people from their sins?

We look in the manger and see a baby wrapped up like a mummy to ward off the cold. God sees the Bridge between heaven and earth—Jacob’s ladder, if you will, by which heaven descends to earth in order to carry humanity back with it. He is like every other baby ever born: he is fully human. He is unlike any other baby ever born; he is fully God. He is the bridge between humanity and God, the doorway to eternal life. In Bethlehem that first Christmas, by the very nature of what this Child was, the long work of salvation had begun.

Posted in Advent, Bible, Peace with God, Theology | Tagged Advent, Christmas in the Bible, incarnation, Luke 2:1-13, meaning of name Jesus, Millard Erikson, Save his people from their sins | Leave a comment

Mary Knew Who (No, it’s not a Dr. Seuss Story)

Posted on December 19, 2024 by salooper57

Orville and Wilbur Wright somehow persevered through one failure after another in their attempts to get their new flying machine off the ground. If you’ve ever sat on an airport terminal floor with thousands of other people waiting for flights to resume, you may have wished they hadn’t. But they did. On December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville achieved the first successful manned flight in a heavier-than-air vehicle. After some very public failures, it was their moment of triumph. The brothers were so excited that they ran to the nearest Western Union office and wired their sister Katherine, “We did it [stop]. We have actually flown in the air 120 feet [stop]. Will be home for Christmas [stop].”

Katherine was elated. She showed the telegram to the newspaper editor, who read the message and was impressed. His story appeared in the next edition. It was headlined, “Orville and Wilbur Wright Will Be Home for Christmas.”

Like that editor, we can miss the point, especially when Christmas is involved. This Advent Season, we want to look at the point of it all – what Christmas is really about – and we are going to begin with the first scene in the Christmas story, which takes place nine months before Bethlehem and its overcrowded “inn.” We are going back to what the Church calls “the Annunciation” – the day when Mary was told that she would give birth to God’s Son, the Messiah.

Look at verse 26: “In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee.” Luke was writing to Gentile readers for whom the name Nazareth would mean nothing. Nazareth was a little town, undistinguished by association with any great men or women, and few Gentiles would have ever heard of it, so he informs his readers that it was located in Galilee.

God sent the angel Gabriel to a young woman who was engaged to a descendent of King David, a man named Joseph. There are some important words to note in the 27^th verse. First the word, virgin. Any reader familiar with the Old Testament would immediately recognize an allusion to the messianic prophecy of Isaiah: “This will be a sign unto you: the virgin shall conceive, and shall bear a son, and he will be called Immanuel.”[1]

Bible scholars point out that the Hebrew word in Isaiah 7 can signify any young, unmarried woman, and not just a virgin. That is true enough, but that that is what Luke intended to convey is beyond doubt. Look at Mary’s question in verse 34, “How can this be,” (that is, “How can I have a child?”), “since I am a virgin?” Though the NIV uses the word “virgin” to translate both verses, a literal rendering of verse 34 runs, “How can this be, since I know not a man?” To know in this context is an ancient euphemism for having sexual relations. Mary was a virgin.

The other word to look at in verse 27 is the one the NIV translated, “pledged”. It is a perfect tense verb meaning to betroth. In Jewish culture, a betrothal or engagement was as binding as marriage. If a man wanted to end an engagement, he didn’t just ask for his ring back. He had to file divorce papers! We know from St. Matthew that this was just what Joseph had decided to do, because he believed Mary had been unfaithful to him. She told him she was pregnant, and he knew it wasn’t his baby.

Apparently, the meeting between the angel and Mary took place indoors, because verse 28 says (literally), “And entering to her he [the angel] said…” Do you remember what happened when this same angel Gabriel entered the temple to deliver a message to the priest Zechariah? The text says Zechariah was “startled and afraid.” Mary doesn’t seem to be either. While she was “troubled,” it was by the angel’s words rather than his presence. This was an altogether extraordinary young woman.

“The angel went to her” (v. 28) “and said, ‘Greetings, you who are highly favored!’” The Douay-Rheims Version, following the Latin Vulgate, translates, “Hail, full of grace!” which is, of course, the language of the “Hail Mary” prayer. But the idea here is not that Mary is so full of grace that she is able to dispense it to others, but that she herself is graced by God—is highly favored. Even contemporary Catholic versions translate it that way.

Verse 29: “Mary was greatly troubled (or “very perplexed,” as in the NASB) at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.” Mary was troubled and wondered what… Now, that’s beginning to sound like the rest of us. We are frequently troubled by what: What is going to happen? What does this mean? What am I supposed to do? Apparently, the mother of our Lord, blessed among women (as Elizabeth calls her in verse 42), also wondered about these things.

Verse 30 is a restatement of the greeting in verse 28: “You have found favor with God.” We are liable to think that those who have favor with God will have an easy time in life, but it doesn’t really work that way. Having favor is not at all synonymous with being pampered. Those most favored by God are those from whom God expects most. Noah found favor with the Lord and was given a hundred years of labor. Mary, who is highly favored and is blessed among women, is promised a soul-piercing sword.

Now, look at the second part of the angel’s message. It answers the what question. Verse 31: “You will be with child and will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.” Now, we have the what: this young Jewish girl will conceive and bear a Son who will be a great and powerful king, and will be called the Son of the Most High.

That sounds wonderful, but there is a problem. There usually is. The problem is not with the content of the message, the what – that’s great – but with the fulfillment of the message, the how. “How can this be,” Mary asks (this is verse 34), “since I am a virgin?” Or, as it is in the Greek, “since I have do not know a man.” That is, “I’ve not had sex.” The “What” leads Mary to ask “How?” God’s favored people often find it so. The what can be so unexpected, so unmanageable, that they cannot get a handle on it. So, of course, they ask “How can this be?

The Lord says to Moses, “I am going to free my people from slavery in Egypt. So, you, Moses, go and do it.” That was the what, and it left Moses in shock. “How can a failure like me do this? How is anyone even going to believe me? How can I, of all people, go to Pharaoh?” When the Lord tells Samuel what – “It is time to anoint my new king” – Samuel says, “How can I anoint the king? When Saul hears about it, he will kill me.” To Nicodemus Jesus says, “Your only hope of even seeing the kingdom is to be born again.” That was the what. Nicodemus’s response: “How can this be?” Jesus says to Philip, “Feed this massive crowd.” Immediately, the good Philip’s mind asks, “How?” “Feeding this crowd would take eight month’s wages!”

But whenever God tells us what, he already knows how. And when he shares with us the how, we will find that it is His way, not ours. Who would ever have guessed that God would free Israel from Egypt the way he did, with an army of frogs, gnats, and locusts? Who would have thought that he would send his people to conquer Jericho with trumpets and ram’s horns, or use the farmer Gideon and his three hundred men to defeat an invading army? He does things his own way. Look at the answer to Mary’s how question, verse 35: “The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God’.” The how was something that no one would have guessed. The Virgin will conceive by the direct and miraculous intervention of God.

I wonder what Mary thought of that answer. We moderns have somehow got the idea that ancient people could believe in virgin births without much trouble. They were, after all, unenlightened, uncivilized, credulous innocents. But that is nonsense! Mary was no more likely to give credence to virgin births than you are. Nor was her fiancé, Joseph, who planned to call off the engagement when he heard about the pregnancy. I think Mary must have been expecting a different kind of answer, something like: “You’ll marry Joseph and you will soon bear him a child, and will live happily ever after, as befits the mother of a king”—a Hallmark movie ending. That’s what we would expect. It was not what God did. His way was completely unexpected.

The angel understands how hard this is to believe and helps Mary resolve her doubts. This is verse 36: “Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God.” The angel does not go into the technical aspects of miraculous conception, mitosis, and cell division. He knows that what Mary needs is not instruction, but assurance. Some of you older folks remember the song “It is no secret what God can do.” The second line is, “What He’s done for others, he’ll do for you.” That is how the angel encourages Mary to trust God. He says, “Are you worried that God cannot handle the how? Just look at what he did for Elizabeth! That was impossible, too, but what is impossible with people is a lead pipe cinch for God.”

That verse, verse 37, reads literally, “Because with God every word is not impossible” or, smoothing it into English, ” Nothing God says he will do is impossible for Him.” If God says it, he will do it.

Mary takes him at his word, which is the essence of faith. “I am the Lord’s servant,” she says. “May it be to me as you have said.” Here is a shining example of faith, a beautiful model of the submission that we also are called to offer to God. But when Mary said yes, do you think she had a clue about what she was getting herself into—the rumors, gossip, ostracism, and hostility? Instead of the beautiful wedding young girls dream about, a quick and private ceremony. Then compelled to relocate to a new community. And that was all in the first nine months. Unwelcome in Joseph’s hometown, alone at the birth of her son. And as if that were not enough, when things finally settled down, the family was again uprooted and forced to flee as refugees to Egypt. But even that does not touch on the great pain that faithful Simeon predicted would come: “And a sword will pierce your own soul, too.” Did Mary know what she was getting into when she said yes to God? Not a chance. Will we know what we are getting into when we say yes to God? Certainly not. But we don’t have to.

You see, Mary was able to take God at his word and yield to his will because she knew the answer to a more important question than what or how. She knew that answer to the question, Who? We get all frazzled with the what and how whenever we fail to ask, Who? Mary knew Who. Look at her famous song, called the Magnificat, which begins in verse 46 with “My soul praises the Lord,” or “My soul magnifies the Lord.” She knows who is at work in her life. He is the Lord. He is, verse 47, the savior. He is the one who, verse 48, is mindful of our state. (One thinks of David in Psalm 8:4: “What is man that thou art mindful of him or the son of man that Thou carest for him?”) Mary knows her God is deeply concerned about his people. What about you? Do you really believe that God cares for you? That he wants what is best for you? Or do you feel like you are on your own?

There is more. Mary’s God is not only mindful, He is masterful; he is the Mighty One, verse 49. He wants what is best for us – that goes to his character. And he is able to bring it about – that goes to his ability. He performs mighty deeds with his arm. He brings down rulers, verse 52. He is sovereign. Mary knew all this. Do you? If your God cannot do what he wants to do, if he is not strong enough to govern the universe or caring enough to govern your life, your God is too small. You must come to David’s conviction: “That you, O God, are strong, (you do what you want), and that you, O God, are loving (what you want is always our good).[2] You will never be able to take God at his word, you will keep stumbling over the what and the how, until, like Mary, you can answer the question, Who?

Now, there is one more question that can plague us and, unanswered, can keep us from the obedience of faith: The question, “Why?” Mary does not get deeply entangled in “Why?” because she knows Who. She gives the why question a brief answer in verse 55: “…to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers.” Why? Because he said so. He keeps his word. Why is not a big problem when you know Who.

But when you don’t know Who, Why can ground you into dust. Why, God, did you allow this to happen to me? Why did you let my wife suffer this illness? Why let the business I work for close down? Why make me the way you did? Why? Why? Why?

Glenn Chambers was a young man from New York who was planning on working with the Christian organization, Voice of the Andes. It had been his dream to serve God in the lives of South Americans through Christian Radio. He was on his way to fulfill that dream when the Avianca Airline flight he took from Miami to Quito crashed into a mountain outside Bogota. Glenn, the entire crew, and all the passengers were killed.

Before he left the Miami Airport earlier that day, Glenn decided to write his mom a note. He had no paper so he picked up a scrap of advertisement from the floor that had the word WHY printed in large letters across the front of it. He dashed off a quick note to his mom, stuck it in a mailbox, then got on the ill-fated plane.

A few days later, after she heard about the plane crash, an envelope with Glenn’s handwriting was delivered to Mrs. Chambers. She opened it to find the word WHY in large, bold print, staring up at her. The jarring echo of her own thoughts must have stunned her. But Mrs. Chambers did not get stuck on WHY because she understood WHO. The sovereign one who works out all things according to his plan – that’s Who. The Caring one who is concerned with our eternal well-being – that’s Who. The Mighty One who has the power to do whatever he chooses – that’s Who. He is too kind to do anything cruel and too wise to ever make a mistake, though he is too deep for shallow creatures like us to understand.[3]

But he is not too far to hear us, or too busy to come to our aid. He has come. And he did so by a route we could never have imagined: via the virgin’s womb. He has taken our humanity on – and into – himself. And he will allow nothing to separate us from God’s unending, unstoppable love.

[1] Isa. 7:14

[2] Ps. 62:11

[3] William Peterson, How to Be a Saint While Lying Flat on Your Back. Quoted in The Tardy Oxcart by Charles Swindoll. Nashville: Word Publishing, C 1998. Pp. 245-246

Posted in Advent, Bible, Christmas, Encouragement, Faith, Sermons, Theology | Tagged Angel visitant, Annunciation, First Sunday in Advent, Isaiah 7:14, Luke 1:26-38, Magnificat, My soul magnifies the Lord, Psalm 62:11, Psalm 8:4, virgin birth, Virgin Mary, Zechariah | Leave a comment

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The Way Home

Living Backwards: 1 Peter and the Believer’s Hope

Decisions, Decisions (The Role of Choice in Spiritual Formation)

The Big Picture (John 1:1-14)

The Path to Spiritual Growth: Insight, Decision, and Implementation

Star Trek: The Voyage of the Magi Caravan

The World Is Too Much in Us

Hebrews 10:5-10 (Fourth Sunday in Advent)

Hope! I Need Somebody (Hope! Not Just Anybody)

The Visited Planet

Mary Knew Who (No, it’s not a Dr. Seuss Story)

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