A Relationship And A Destiny - Part 2

 

And so…for me…my first prolonged exposure to the church was a rigid system of dos and don’ts.  The church had a culture that based acceptance and righteousness on performance, performing for God and performing for the church.  Since a young person with a beard was out of character with that particular church culture, Mattie asked me to give her a call.  What did that have to do with Jesus?  What did that have to do with a relationship and a destiny?

               I’m looking forward to reading Yancey’s book because I can truly say that I survived the church – as the word is commonly understood – and came to know Jesus. Which is why I love to say that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not about a religion but a relationship.

               Now during the past 2 – 3 weeks we’ve been looking at some areas of Biblical prophecy, we’ve looked at a few patterns of history and of prophecy and we’ve spent some time in Revelation chapters 13 and 14.  All too often when Christians look at history, contemporary events, or Biblical prophecy, they look through negative lenses, defeatist lenses.  They live life with a defeatist attitude, or at best, with what I call a maintenance attitude.  In other words, they just try to keep things no worse than they already are.

               Yesterday I was watching a college football game, the University of Florida was playing Louisiana State University and the game was being played at Louisiana State.  Now I love to watch the Florida Gators because their coach, Steve Spurrier, has a wide-open offense and when he steps onto the field he is there to win.  LSU has a fine football team, but as the first half ended the score was Florida 27 – LSU 9.  The LSU coach was being interviewed at halftime and his comment was, “We’ve got to change our attitude.  We can’t win this game unless we change our attitude.”

               The LSU team was not displaying an aggressive attitude on the football field.  They were capable of better play, but better play was only going to come from better attitude.  If they thought they were going to lose then they were going to lose, the Florida Gators were going to have them for lunch.  And in fact they had them for breakfast, lunch and dinner - the final score was 44 – 15 and it would have been worse had not the starting quarterback for Florida sat out the 4^th quarter.

               God has got better things for His people than losing the game of life.  God has got better things for us as a church than a maintenance mentality.  He has better things for you than a maintenance mentality.  He has better things for you than a defeatist mentality.  A person who isn’t going forwards is going backwards, a church that isn’t going forwards is going backwards. 

God doesn’t go backwards, there is no imagery in the Bible that indicates that God goes backwards or that a relationship with Jesus Christ has a reverse gear to it.  God hasn’t called His people to live life in reverse or in neutral, but to have the gearshift engaged and the wheels going forward.  God has called us individually and collectively into a relationship and a destiny.

               God is not interested in what it takes to just “get by.”  God doesn’t just “get by.”  God doesn’t want us to just “get by.”  Do you want your children to just “get by” in school?  Do you want your adult children to just “get by” on their jobs?  What kind of parent has the attitude, “I hope my little Johnny fails at that project,” or “I hope my Susie never gets a job promotion,” or “I hope my son Ted forgets his lines in the school play”?  What kind of parent is like that?  Yet, we seem to think that God is like that…that He just wants us to “get by” in life, to just make it by the skin of our teeth.

               We think God is like a billionaire that requires his children to eat out of restaurant garbage cans in city alleys.  We think God wants us walking around life being proverbial bag men and women, scrounging for whatever we need to just “get by” on a daily basis.  We pat ourselves and each other on the back if we can make the same church budget this year as we did last year.  We pat ourselves on the back if we don’t lose anything in life, we don’t even think about winning anything.  God however…when He called us into a relationship with Jesus Christ…also called us to a destiny in that relationship.

               A football team that goes on the field with the goal not of winning, but of simply not losing, will lose just about every time…in fact…they might as well not show up…because if they have lost the game in their hearts and minds they have lost the game on the field.

               There are people who are afraid of losing…and there are people who are afraid of winning.  There are those who are afraid of success, afraid of accomplishing their goals, afraid of accomplishing God’s purpose for their lives.  And those people make sure that at some point in the football game of life that they throw an interception or fumble the ball – to ensure that they won’t win.  For every person who doesn’t do something because of the fear of failure there’s a person who doesn’t do something because of the fear of success.

to be continued...

A Relationship And A Destiny - Part 1

 

A relationship and a destiny

This was the fourth Sunday after 9/11. I didn’t want our people living in fear, or in worldly reaction to the events around us, I wanted us living as the daughters and sons of the Living God, I wanted us fulfilling our destiny in Jesus Christ.

 

October 7, 2001, A Relationship and a Destiny; Romans 8:12 – 30.

Robert Withers, Becket, MA

 

              Let me tell you about a book I haven’t read yet.  A friend recommended it last week and I’m going to purchase it this week and read it as soon as it arrives.  It’s by a fine author, Phillip Yancey. I’ve never read anything by Yancey that I didn’t like and I’m looking forward to this new release of his.  My friend, Mike Daily, a pastor in Virginia, told Vickie and me that this is an outstanding book.  Now remember, that Michael is a pastor, and this is important, because what do you think Yancey is talking about surviving?  He’s talking about surviving the church and coming into a relationship with Jesus Christ.  The title of the book is “Soul Survivor – How My Faith Survived the Church,” that’s s-o-u-l, not s-o-l-e.

               Yancey shares his experience as a young believer in a church that said all the right things on Sunday, used the right language, sang the right songs, probably dressed a certain way, probably shook hands a certain way, but when they went out the doors of the building on Sunday their semblance of Christianity, if it can be called that, came to an end.  One of the thrusts of Yancey’s book is that in spite of the church – using the word “church” as many people commonly understand it – that in spite of the church, Phillip Yancey came to know Jesus Christ…Yancey is a soul s-o-u-l survivor.  He moved from a religion to a relationship with a destiny.

               I can relate to Yancey’s experience.  I recall as a teenager who wanted to learn about Jesus, going to meet a pastor of the denomination in which I was baptized and leaving my meeting with him thoroughly disillusioned.  He didn’t talk to me about Jesus at all.  He talked to me about the ceremonies of the church and gave me a church handbook explaining all the symbols and liturgy of the denomination…but it didn’t tell me about Jesus, it didn’t tell me about a relationship and a destiny.

I recall two and one – half years ago, visiting my Dad after a major stroke, my heart breaking for my Dad, heavy for my Dad, weighed down by concern that my Dad was going to leave this life without knowing Jesus Christ, weighed down by concern that my Dad was going into eternity without God in Christ.  I stopped at a church to find someone who would care for my Dad spiritually, and as the pastor of this church and I went into a private room…with tears running down my face…the pastor looked at me and began talking about church polity, church government, comparing his denomination’s way of governing with the congregational system.  And I thought to myself, "I can’t believe I’m hearing this.  I can’t believe he’s talking to me about church government issues with my heart breaking and with my Dad critically ill.”  What did church government have to do with Jesus?  What did it have to do with my Dad knowing Jesus?  What did it have to do with my Dad having a relationship and a destiny?

               I recall being on a youth retreat as a 16-year-old and people asking me what I thought about issues of dress and hair styles.  What did issues of dress and hairstyles have to do with Jesus?

               I remember returning to the church where I first heard a clear Gospel presentation.  I had been gone from the town for a few months and during that time I grew my first beard.  There was an older couple in that church that had been kind to me when I first began attending there, I had great affection for them, it was good to be cared for by an older couple.  As I left the church building that Sunday the woman, Mattie, asked me to call them on Monday.  I thought, “Great, maybe they want to get together.  I’d love to see them since I’ve been gone for a few months.”  When I called on Monday I heard Mattie say the words, “Robert, why don’t you shave and get rid of that beard?”  What did having a beard have to do with Jesus?  What did having a beard have to do with a relationship and a destiny?

               Much of my early life had had a fair degree of uncertainty in it, that doesn’t make me any different from many of us here this morning, many of us have known uncertainty in our lives, including our lives as children.  Some of us have moved times without number, some of us have never known whether a parent was coming home a particular night, and if so, in what condition that parent would be in when he or she arrived.  Many of us experienced peer rejection as a child, adolescent or young adult.  Many of us couldn’t seem to measure up to someone’s expectations, whether a parent’s, a peer group’s, a teacher’s, a coach’s, or even our own expectations.

               I’m no different than many of us here this morning.  In my case because I wanted to be loved and included in a family group I wanted to learn about the church and to learn what the church wanted from me.  I wanted to fit in.

to be continued...

Image Is Everything - Conclusion

 

            What does this construction look like?  Consider the following quotations:

 

“We deplore efforts to… seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, and to look outside nature for salvation.

 

“The time has come for widespread recognition of the radical changes in religious beliefs throughout the modern world. The time is past for mere revision of traditional attitudes. Science and economic change have disrupted the old beliefs. Religions the world over are under the necessity of coming to terms with new conditions created by a vastly increased knowledge and experience. In every field of human activity, the vital movement is now in the direction of candid and explicit humanism.

 

“Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values.

 

“It follows that there will be no uniquely religious emotions and attitudes of the kind hitherto associated with belief in the supernatural.

 

“Man will learn to face the crises of life in terms of his knowledge of their naturalness and probability. Reasonable and manly attitudes will be fostered by education and supported by custom. We assume that humanism will take the path of social and mental hygiene and discourage sentimental and unreal hopes and wishful thinking.”

 

The above quotations are from the Humanist Manifesto, written in the 1930’s and signed and endorsed by many religious, political, philosophical, scientific and educational leaders.  In fact, one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto was John Dewey of Columbia University, whose educational beliefs permeate our public education system and of our universities.

 

          Who is at the center of the above quotations?  Man is.  We are the center of it all.  To those who scoff at the book of Genesis, can’t you read the writing on the wall?  Don’t you see that the above quotations from the Humanist Manifesto are exactly the line of thought presented by the serpent to Eve?  The idea that there can be true self-knowledge without God is not a product of the Enlightenment, it is not a product of what we might call “modern thinking,” it is a product of the dragon.

 

          Whose image do we worship?

 

          A true Lamb and a false lamb.  An image of God and an image of man.  A Lamb to be followed and a beast to be followed.

 

          If the patterns of our minds and hearts were placed on the overhead for us to see, what image would appear?  The image of man or the image of God?  The mark of the beast or the name of the Lamb and our Father God?  The worship of Jesus Christ or the worship of ourselves?

 

          We are called not to a religion but a relationship, a relationship with Jesus Christ that results in the restoration of the image of God within us.  Paul writes:

 

>RO 12:1 “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

 

 The word that we translate “transformed” in this verse is the word we use for what happens when a caterpillar is transformed into a butterfly, it is the word “metamorphous.”  When we follow the Lamb wherever He goes, when we are obedient to Jesus Christ, when we enter into a relationship with Him and live where He lives on Mt. Zion, we experience the restoration of the image of God within us and the patterns and images of this world begin to fall away in our hearts and minds and they are replaced by the image of God in Christ.

 

          As our minds are renewed we are metamorphosed, transformed, into the image of God, we are lifted out of the deep well with the slippery sides of self-absorption into a relationship where the name of the Lamb and of His Father are written on our minds.  Now in the Scriptures names speak to us of natures, and so the nature of God in Christ is restored to our hearts and minds. Paul writes to the Corinthians:

 

          2 Cor. 3:17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

 

          And he further writes to the Ephesians:

 

          EPH 4:22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

 

          What would our archeological study conclude?  That image worship and sacrifice ceased with modern man?  Or that modern man has simply internalized his image worship and his sacrifices?  That modern man still offers his fellow citizens, offers himself and offers his children on the altar of the god of self-exaltation, self-gratification, self-fulfillment and self-worship?  Would it conclude that man has taken the number 666 and written it on his mind, his heart, his religion, his education, his science, his philosophy, his economy, his government?

 

          But of course, the more important question, the most important question for us is, “Whose image do we bear?  The image of self or the image of God?” “Whose nature lives within us?  The nature of fractured and rebellious man or the nature of the Lamb?” “Who do we worship?  Do we worship self, and by extension the dragon and beast?  Or do we worship our Creator God and the Lamb who has borne our sins, given His life for us and who has conquered death?”

 

          Yes, image is everything.  Who have you given your life to?  Whose image do you bear?

 

          Whose image is transforming you this morning?