No Vacancy: A Halloween Message

Posted on October 31, 2021 by salooper57
Viewing Time: Approximate 25 minutes

Enjoy this timely message. The central text is Matthew 12:43-45: “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. 44 Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. 45 Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”

Posted in Bible, Peace with God, Sermons | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

A Halloween Lesson on The Giving God

Posted on October 30, 2021 by salooper57
Photo by Toni Cuenca on Pexels.com

Halloween began as a Christian holiday, the eve of the Feast of All Saints (or “All Hallows”) Day, on which the church celebrates and thanks God for her saints. Halloween was long ago given over to ghouls, goblins, and devils. More recently big business has haunted it—Americans are expected to spend over ten billion dollars on Halloween this year. Perhaps I shouldn’t draw too fine a line between ghouls and big business.

But Halloween is the eve and vigil of a Christian holy day, and it once helped me learn an important Christian truth. I was probably nine or ten-years-old. For the first and last time, I went trick-or-treating on the east side – the nice side – of our city. My cousin was from the east side, which is where the more affluent folks lived.

I don’t remember how long we’d been at it when we came to the house of an older woman. When she opened the door, we shouted, “Trick or Treat!” and held out our bags. She looked us over for a long time and somehow deduced that I was not from the neighborhood. “You don’t live in this neighborhood!” she said to me. Then she preceded to lecture me on the etiquette of Trick-or-Treat and told me I belonged in my own neighborhood, not in hers.

After all that, I didn’t expect to get anything. But once she had reproached and lectured me, she reached into her bag and took out two pennies, one for my cousin and one for me. That was the last time I ever went Trick-or-Treating on the east side. I had learned my lesson. I was never again going to ask those people for anything.

All of us have experienced similar situations. We ask a parent for something, and they give us what we ask for, but not until they lecture us on being more responsible, tell us to keep our room clean, and remind us of how much worse they had it when they were our age.

You go to your boss for needed supplies and she okays them, but only after she lectures you on the realities of the department budget. You ask a friend for forgiveness and are told you are forgiven, but that doesn’t stop the person from giving you an unabridged list of all the wrongs you’ve ever done. You take your purchase back to the store for a refund and, a half-hour, three clerks, and one manager later, get your refund, but are informed they didn’t have to give it to you because you didn’t have a receipt and were warned that next time you wouldn’t get one.

I once assumed that God was like the old east side woman I met on Halloween: he doesn’t really want to give us anything. He needs to be coaxed into it and, even then, will only help after he lets us know how disappointed he is in us. But that is not the God of the Bible, the God to whom Jesus introduces us. He is – as a literal translation of James 1:5 puts it– “the giving God.”

This is the God Jesus knew. He is a giver. He loves to give, and he gives because he loves. He so loved that he gave. He knows what people need before they ask, and he is ready to give when they ask. If you know how to give good gifts, Jesus once said to people, “how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11). He is the God who “graciously” – not grudgingly – will “give us all things” (Romans 8:32). He is the Father who is “pleased to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12: 32). This is good news about God!

Returning to the letter from St. James, this God gives generously to all people. The word modern translations render “generously” can also mean “simply.” In other words, God does not give with ulterior motives.  He does not give in order to get. He doesn’t give so that he can later say, “You owe me one.” He gives to people because he loves them.

(First published by Gannett.)

Posted in Bible, Theology | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Wide Angle: The Speaking God

Posted on October 29, 2021 by salooper57

It is hard for us to grasp how God’s word, his communicated thought, can bring matter into being and manipulate it into whatever shape he chooses. But consider a simple analogy: God’s realm covers the vast universe, but you have a realm, too. It extends through your body. All you need to do is think, “Raise right hand” and your hand raises. Your word – whether spoken or merely thought – has incredible power in your realm! You don’t know how your hand raises; it just does. In your small realm, you have absolute power.2

Similarly, as your hand responds to you, the universe responds to God. He needs only intend something, and it happens. “He spoke,” wrote the psalmist, “and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.”3 The author of Hebrews tells us that he sustains “all things by his powerful word.”4 God created, and rules, and redeems by his word.

Just as any artist’s work tells us something about the artist, God’s creation tells us something about him. That is why King David could write, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”5 As with any other artist, we can learn something about him just by looking at his art. If you look at the twisted paintings of Picasso, you will be able to guess some truth about his character. It might not surprise you to learn that Picasso once said, “Every time I change wives, I should bury the last one. That way I’d be rid of them . . .” Though Picasso claimed that God was dead, he was also heard repeating the words, “I am God, I am God.”6 The art reveals the artist.

What can we learn about God from looking at his art – at Creation? We can learn that his wisdom is fathomless and his power unimaginable (Job 28:23–27; Proverbs 3:19). We can get a feel for his glory (Psalm 19:1). We can deduce his love for humans (Psalm 8:3–9). We can get a sense of how deeply he cares for his creation (Isaiah 40:12ff). We can learn that when he does something, he does it well and he does it right. After the refrain, “He said. . . and it was so,” we find repeated the line: “It was good,” “It was good,” and “It was very good.”

Let me give you an example from creation that covers all the truths in the paragraph above: that God cares for us, that he gets it right, that he possesses unimaginable power, and that he is really, really, smart. All the matter God created is composed of four elemental forces – gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force. Those four forces are the material universe; they combine in an endless variety of ways to form everything we see. You – at least the physical part of you – are a complex arrangement of the four forces. So is the chair you are sitting in. So is the 70,000 light-year-wide Eagle Nebula.

Now consider the wisdom and power of God. The respective strengths of the four forces have to be precisely balanced for life to exist. For illustration purposes, we can assign a baseline figure for the strength of each of these forces. The weakest of the forces, gravity, is the most familiar to us. We will assign it a relative strength of 1. The next strongest of the four forces is the weak nuclear force. It holds neutrons together in an atom. To it we assign a relative strength of 1,034. It is that many times stronger than gravity. Then we come to electromagnetism, which is a thousand times stronger than the weak nuclear force. Finally we come to the strong nuclear force, which is a hundred times stronger still, and holds protons together. So, we have gravity, which holds the planets in place, then, at a thousand times stronger, the weak nuclear force, which holds neutrons together. Then there is electromagnetism, which holds your phone or computer together (not to mention you) as you read this. And finally, there is the strong nuclear force, which is a hundred million times stronger than gravity.

The precise balance that exists between the strengths of these forces is crucial to the existence of the universe. If God had made the strength of gravity evenslightly different, a tiny fraction stronger or weaker, stars, planets and people wouldn’t exist. If the weak nuclear force was different by the smallest percentage, the universe would be composed entirely of hydrogen. If electromagnetism was weaker or stronger, chemical bonds could not form; there would be no life as we know it. And we know of at least 25 other perfect balances in creation – ratios that had to be extraordinarily fine-tuned for life to exist. No wonder the great astronomer Fred Hoyle, an atheist himself, said the universe looks suspiciously like a put-up job. And God spoke all this into perfect balance as easily as you think, “Raise my hand,” and it is raised.7

(If you think this will encourage someone, please share it!)

   2 For more on this, see Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy (San Francisco: Harper Book, 1998)

   3 Psalm 33:9

   4 Hebrews 1:3

   5 Psalm 19:1

   6 Os Guiness, The Call (Nashville: Word, 1998)

   7 See Charles Edward White, “God by the Numbers,” Christianity Today (March 2006). See also, Paul Davies, The Accidental Universe (Cambridge University Press)

Posted in Bible, Theology, Wide Angle | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Wide Angle: Creator

Posted on October 28, 2021 by salooper57
Photo by Daian Gan on Pexels.com

God is not merely a creator; he is the Creator. This is a major theme in the Scriptures. Over sixty times, God is either said to have created or is referred to as the Creator. The biblical writers clearly thought that God’s role as creator should be kept in mind. He is sculptor, painter and composer, and the universe is his block of marble, his canvas, and his staff paper.

His “Creation Symphony” is the archetype for every form of musical expression, from Bach to Dylan to Justin Bieber. Every composer since has merely drawn from his material. Every composition since has been a “Variation on a Theme.” He made birds and streams sing, waves and waterfalls crash. The wind croons; the oceans roar; the leaves on a billion trees dance, and all his creatures keep time to the music.

God is the most daring, most imaginative artist in the universe. He has filled the seas with creatures of every shape and size and brilliant color. He paints his birds and fish and sunsets with hues so vivid and lines so bold that our most avant garde painters seem tame by comparison.

On my shelf is a book titled, “Galaxies,” by the science writer, Timothy Ferris. It includes photos taken from observatories around the world, and they are stunning. There is the Horsehead Nebula, draped like a king’s charger in royal reddish-purple, raring up at the stars forever. The Orion nebula looks as if it exploded a moment ago, when our heads were turned. Then there is the reddish orange Eagle Nebula, blazing like an astronomical forest fire, and measuring 70 light years in diameter. Since one light year is approximately 6 trillion miles, the Eagle Nebula measures about 420 trillion miles from side to side. God paints on a big canvas. Our own average-sized galaxy is bigger yet, and it is only one of an estimated 350 billion such galaxies in the universe. That is a big, big canvas.

The first verse of the Bible tells us that in the beginning, God created (that word is always and only used of God) the heavens and the earth, and he created it, the author of Hebrews tells us, simply by commanding it to be. We see this again and again in the first chapter of Genesis. Like a leitmotif in a symphony, the words “And God said” repeat, with the subsequent refrain, “and it was so.”

Verse 3: “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” Verse 6: “And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.’” Verse 7: “And it was so.” Verse 9: “And God said, ‘Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.’ And it was so.” God did not paint Orion’s fireworks with a brush, but with a word. He creates by speaking.

That is a theme we see repeated in the Scriptures: God’s word is powerful. He creates photons and fish and birds and rivers and mountains and suns and nebulae and galaxies just by speaking them into being. When he speaks, things happen. His word – the expression of his thought – brings worlds into being. He “calls things that are not as though they were.”1

The whole of creation is his realm, and his entire realm responds to his voice, and it does not matter whether we are talking about our home (this solar system) or our neighborhood (the spiral arm of our galaxy) or our town (the Milky Way) or the furthest reaches of the universe. God speaks, and it is so.

     1 Romans 4:17

Posted in Bible, Theology | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Bible as Panorama

Posted on October 27, 2021 by salooper57

I have a picture from 1917 or ’18 of my grandfather’s army company. It is one of those panoramic pictures that a photographer took in numerous shots and then seamlessly joined together. Because of the way the picture was taken, it was possible for a man on one end of that long row of soldiers to sprint to the other end and have his picture taken a second time. So, in some of these old photos, you will find the same soldier on both ends of the same row at what seems like the same time! I suppose it would be possible to find the same soldier in one of these panoramic pictures on both ends and in the middle.

It is like that when we take a panoramic look at the Scriptures. We look in the beginning, at the creation, and then we turn our gaze to the end, to the judgment, and beyond. And at both the beginning and the end, we find the same figure. We look in the middle, and there he is again! And there, and there! Wherever we look, we find Jesus Christ. He is “the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.”

God’s story is as seamless as one of those old panoramic pictures, and everywhere we look we find him. Sometimes we get the idea that God’s story has been interrupted, started and stopped, or that the theme has occasionally changed. It is not so. It is one story from beginning to end. God is both the author and the actor. The Bible is, in that sense, autobiographical. It is the story of what God has done and is doing to right what has been wronged in his creation. It is the story of his love and faithfulness or, as the Scripture often puts it, his righteousness.

When I first came into possession of the panoramic picture of Company A (or whichever company it was), I went over it with a magnifying glass, trying to pick out my grandfather. Often, we do something similar with the biblical story. We focus on one detail, to the exclusion of everything else.

Now that is not wrong; in fact it is a good thing. Every detail deserves our scrutiny and rewards our effort. But sometimes it is necessary to back up and scan the whole picture, to get a wide-angle view.

On the plains of Peru there is a network of strange lines made by the ancient people, the Nazea. Some of these lines cover as many as ten square miles. For years archeologists assumed that the lines were what remained of ancient irrigation ditches.

Then in 1939, Dr. Paul Kosok of Long Island University, discovered what they really were. He flew over those plains and, from an aerial view he could see that the ancient lines that seemed so random at ground level were in fact enormous drawings – like pictographs – of birds and animals and insects.

Just so, from one perspective, the stories of the Bible seem detached and unrelated. But as we survey them from a wider angle, we suddenly see how one line leads to another to form one great picture of God’s redemptive purpose – from Genesis to the Revelation. And while there are many great men and women in the Bible, we discover that there really is only one protagonist, the lead actor throughout, and that is the Lord God himself. A wide angle view of the Bible can help us see with greater clarity (or, perhaps, see for the first time) what God is up to, and how we fit into it.

Posted in Bible, Theology | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Restorer of Lost Things

Posted on October 24, 2021 by salooper57
Viewing time: 29 minutes

Know someone who might benefit from this message of hope? Share it! (You’ll find the share buttons below.)

Posted in Bible, relationships, Sermons, Spiritual life | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Panorama: The Bible’s Big Picture

Posted on October 23, 2021 by salooper57

I have a very old suitcase in a closet upstairs. It has not latched for generations; its hardware is broken and rusted, its leather cover torn and dried. I keep it because it came from my parents and because it is stuffed with pictures. 

In one of those photos, taken around 1902, I see my grandfather, my dad’s dad. He is about thirteen-years-old, I would guess, and is sitting on a horse. In another, I find my mother at about twenty-three, posing in front of a palm tree in Florida in a skimpy (for 1950) bathing suit, with a man I don’t recognize. Then there are pictures of my brother and me in our infancy and childhood.  In addition, there are many pictures of people I have never met and whose names I don’t know.  The photos are in no discernable order.  Some are from more than a hundred years ago, some are more recent. 

Every once in a while, I will go to that suitcase and begin pulling out pictures. I pause for a while over the ones that portray people I recognize (or think I do) and pass quickly over the ones I do not know.

Many people come to the Bible the way I go to that suitcase.  They rummage through it, looking for anything interesting or anyone they might recognize. They see no order in it, no connecting links. They treat the Bible like a jumble of unrelated snapshots – one theological, one moral, another liturgical. But the Bible is much more like an enormous panoramic photo than it is like my suitcase. It gives us a unified picture of God as he pursues his purposes in the world.

Craig Brian Larson always kept coffee table books on a stand on his desk at work. For a while he had “America’s Spectacular National Parks” displayed.  He kept it open to a breathtaking photo of the Grand Tetons.  The picture stretched from the page on the left to the page on the right.  After a few days he noticed that the right-hand page was doubled over.  It was extra long and folded in half.  In other words, he had been looking at only part of the picture.  It opened up another sixteen inches to reveal a magnificent mountain landscape he had not yet seen.

When we explore the Scriptures with a wide-angle lens, we discover that the Bible – from Genesis to Revelation – tells the same story.  Its pages unfold to reveal various aspects of an enormous panorama, too large to take in at a single setting … or a hundred settings. Whenever we open the book and turn the pages, we find that the picture extends further than we had imagined, from Creation to New Creation, from the Beginning to an Ending that never ends.

It is the picture of the compassionate and gracious God, who is slow to anger but abounds in love. The focal point of the picture – the place where the panorama comes together and makes sense – is on a hill outside Jerusalem. Somehow, when we look there, when we look into the face of Christ, we see the gracious God (who is otherwise too grand to take in) and his loving purpose for the world he has made.

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. (2 Cor. 4:6)

Posted in Bible, Theology | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Mission Trips? Go For Those Who Stay

Posted on October 20, 2021 by salooper57

I am just back from the Baja Peninsula. Not Cabo, or Mazatlán, or Acapulco, but Tijuana. We did not go to soak up the sun on a stretch of white sand beach or to get in a few rounds of golf on a Riviera Maya course. We went to work.

We went to Tijuana, a city of over 2 million people, to work with Spectrum Ministries in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. We were not the experts from America coming to rescue the Mexican people. We were not experts at all. We were pastors and computer programmers, stay at home moms, and loading dock workers.

We did not go to tell the Mexicans who work for Spectrum what to do. We went to be told by them what needed to be done. They were the experts; we were the laborers. Whether we were building a house, visiting an orphanage, or passing out clothing and food, we did it under the direction of the Mexicans who live and work there.

Some of us had worked with Spectrum previously. Most of us, including me, were rookies who did not know what to expect. On our first day, within minutes of arriving at the Spectrum dorm, we were off to a remote neighborhood to pour a concrete foundation.

Readers may assume they know what pouring a foundation in a neighborhood entails but, if they have not done so in Tijuana, they are probably mistaken. The neighborhood lay on the side of a steep, grassless hill on the outskirts of the city. The approach to the neighborhood is on a deeply rutted dirt road that is in places unthinkably steep.

We parked about twenty feet above the postage-stamp sized lot and unbolted – I do not mean unhitched, since we didn’t have a hitch – the portable cement mixer Spectrum owns. We needed to get this heavy mixer down a steep, five-foot incline and had to dig out a spot so that it could sit somewhat level.

We then added many five-gallon buckets of sand and of gravel, along with bags of cement. When mixing was completed, we tipped the mixer so that the cement ran down an improvised trough across another fifteen feet of steep hillside and into one or other of two wheelbarrows that waited below. We did this hour after hour, while those working below shoveled the cement into the forms that had been prepared.

Three days later, we returned to build the house, which is sixteen feet long by twelve feet wide. We got to meet the young, single mom for whom the house was being built, but were glad to know the Spectrum staff had developed a relationship with her and her relatives. They will see her regularly, for they come to this neighborhood every few weeks.

For more information on Spectrum Ministries, go to https://www.spectrumministries.org/

One day, between laying the foundation and building the house, we went to a local orphanage, where we were assigned to various work crews. Some of us cleaned floors while others made minor repairs. Yet others of us went up on the roof to seal seams. When these tasks were completed, we played with the children, who are hungry for attention.

Some people who go on trips like this come home deeply burdened over the poverty they have witnessed. But poverty, like wealth, is relative. The people we met in Tijuana, some living in stark conditions, do not think of themselves as impoverished and are not looking to be rescued by white saviors from the north.

What are they looking for? I gave that a lot of thought and have concluded that they are looking for the same things we all desire: acceptance, reassurance, and love. We offered these things during the week we were there, but Spectrum does so week after week. More importantly, they tell people about the God who has demonstrated his love and acceptance through Christ.

I have come to think that “mission trips” are expensive failures for those who go to provide temporary relief. But when those who go support and enhance the work of those who stay, who week after week demonstrate the love of God, such trips can be an enduring success.

(First published by Gannett.)

Posted in Mission, Worldview and Culture | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Pray About Everything

Posted on October 20, 2021 by salooper57

A sermon on Philippians 4:6-7 by Kevin Looper.

Viewing Time: 24 minutes (approximate).
Posted in Bible, Prayer, Sermons, Spiritual life | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

I Shall Be Made Thy Music

Posted on October 17, 2021 by salooper57

A few years ago, and for a few years in a row, it seemed like the song, “I Can Only Imagine” played at nearly every funeral I officiated. It is a good song, but I think a slight change of wording might be in order and would certainly make it more biblical. Instead of, “I can only imagine,” I suggest, “I can’t even imagine.” “I can’t even imagine what it will be like when I walk by your side. I can’t even imagine what my eyes will see when your face is before me. I can’t even imagine.”

St. Paul wrote: “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, and human mind has not imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.” Jesus said to Nicodemus, “If you don’t believe when I talk to you about things on earth, how can you possibly believe if I talk to you about things in heaven?” St. John wrote, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known.”

We have heard only a little – and comprehended even less – of the wild, wonderful, beautiful things in heaven. There are angels and cherubim and seraphim – and, if the books of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation give us any light on the subject – creatures that would set our hair on end.

And then there is the music. What might it be to hear the morning stars singing together? What glory, what rapture must there be at the sound of angels singing, joined by God’s holy people, and even inanimate creation bursting into praise? Tears of joy must be streaming down J.S. Bach’s face

Forget the haloed saint reclining on a cloud, playing some mournful harp. The music in heaven will delight and renew us because its rhythm is the one that resonates in our hearts and brains—and in every molecule of creation. Our hearts beat to it already, but on the day we join Christ, something more will happen. It can’t really be put into words, but it is what John Donne had in mind when he wrote, “Since I am coming to that holy room where, with Thy choir of saints forevermore, I shall be made Thy music.” We will get in. We will be united with that thing we have always loved.

But all the rapturing, beautiful, soul-transporting music of heaven will hush and become a background harmony at the ravishing sound of his voice. To hear the voice that sets angels trembling with delight, that spoke worlds into being, the voice that said, “Let there be light”; and there was light; to hear that voice say, “Well done, faithful servant. Enter into the joy of the Lord,” will be nothing short of new creation.

We haven’t seen anything yet, but we will see something soon. By the mercy of God and only by the grace of Christ, we shall see friends shining like the sun in the kingdom of our Father. We will see the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. We will see thousands and thousands of angels in joyful assembly. It will be enough to take our breath away.

Then we will see the Face that will make us new. One look, and we will be transformed with a weight of glory far beyond all comparison. In that moment we will know why we were made, why all things were made, and we will know that the making was good—was very good. Then there will be no more mourning, of crying, pain and the One seated on the throne will say with unbridled joy: “Behold, I make all things new.”

Posted in Bible, Theology | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment