Becoming a People of the Word

BECOMING A PEOPLE OF THE WORD

 

The great British preacher, Charles Spurgeon, was testing the acoustics in a new building erected for his congregation. In his best annunciation he spoke into the empty hall, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” To test the acoustics again, he repeated the phrase. This was in the 19^th century without the benefit of a sound system. But he was not as alone as he thought. Two laborers were working up in the superstructure of the cathedral, unchurched men who did not follow Christ. One of the men was convicted on the spot when he heard those words, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” 

            I believe this is the power of the Word of God to change people’s lives. Reading the Bible will transform your life. Hearing the words of the Bible spoken will speak to your heart. 

            From our Vision Statement under “Radically Following Jesus,” is written: “We envision a community of believers becoming a people who read and understand the Bible, becoming as a result a people of the Word. We will read the Bible through the lens of Jesus Christ, grasping his Lordship, Sonship, and salvation throughout the Old and New Testaments.” 

            In short, when we adopted this vision statement as a community of believers, we promised to become a people of the Word of God. To that end, we are embarking on a year of becoming a people of the Word. Our primary way of doing that is through using Immerse in our Life Groups.

            Our text today emphasizes our conviction that the Bible transforms the life of the Christian making him or her equipped to handle life’s challenges. Let’s briefly unpack this. 

            Paul told Timothy, “All Scripture is breathed out by God…” (16a) or is “God-breathed.” Think of God breathing out versus inhalation. If you speak while breathing in, it’s not natural and a little difficult Your larynx was designed by God to respond to air moving up out of your lungs (A-B-C-D inhaling and exhaling examples). Scripture is God breathing out. We can say that the Bible is God talking – it is the voice of God. 

            All of Scripture is a product of the breath of God. The Spirit moved in the writers’ personalities, contexts, histories, and crises to speak what God wanted to convey to his people. Peter commented on this when he wrote, “…you must realize that no prophecy in Scripture ever came from the prophet’s own understanding, or from human initiative. No, these prophets were moved by the Holy Spirit, and they spoke from God,” (2 Peter 1:20 NLT). 

            The word “fairy tale” kept clanging in my head this week. I had read a post online of a person responding to the Bible as a just a bunch of fairy tales. As if Hans Christian Andersen had written his ugly duckling story for the Bible. It was a hostile response. And I kept thinking, “Is that what the world thinks of the Bible?” When people think that way it gives you pause, “Do I believe the Bible? If I believe the Bible, do I take it seriously?” 

            Peter’s inspired statement in his second letter tells us that the Bible writers were not writing from their imaginations, nor were they inventing clever stories. These are NOT fairy tales, but revelations of God’s working in the midst of human history, most notably through Jesus Christ, his own Son. 

            What’s most remarkable about Paul and Peter’s statements is that they are talking about the OT. The New Testament had not been written and collected yet. The OT, which many Christians find difficult to read, was the Bible for the new church in Acts. All the books, from Genesis to Revelation, are God’s breath. Not all books are equally important; not all are equally inspired (Esther vs. John). But the Holy Spirit had a purpose in prompting men and women to write what they wrote. 

            What does the Bible do for you? Paul told Timothy that it is “…profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” (16b). A good way to remember the gist of this verse is this: 

·      Teaching – tells you what is right.

·      Reproof – tells you what is not right.

·      Correction – tells you how to get right.

·      Training in Righteousness – tells you how to stay right. 

            Many people today think that the Bible is not relevant to today’s issues. Some think it is the job of the preacher to make the Bible relevant, but the truth is more that the job of the preacher is to keep from making the Bible irrelevant. It is already relevant. We must handle it correctly. 

            A Wycliffe Bible translator in a remote village in Papua New Guinea reported how when they translated the opening chapters of Genesis for the natives, their attitude toward women changed overnight. They had not realized or understood that women had been specially formed out of the side of the man. Without even this concept developed, these people immediately grasped the ideas of equality between the sexes and adjusted their behavior. They heard the Word. They believed the Word. They changed.

            If the Bible is not relevant for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in what God tells us is right living, then why, during the Stalin era in Soviet Russia, were the Soviets so afraid of the Bible? They jailed people for reading it. They knew that this book had the power to change lives. 

            What does the Bible do to you? Paul concludes his thought, “…that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work,” (17). That’s an interesting word, “complete.” It carries the meaning of “entirely suited” or “able to meet all demands.” If you don’t believe the Bible is useful and relevant, you will be an incomplete Christian. That means, you will not be able to meet life’s challenges with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the wisdom of Christ, or the power of God. 

            What are you facing? What challenges? What responsibilities? What burdens? What sacrifices are you called to make? The Scriptures enable us to face all of life’s challenges by comprehensively preparing us for every good work – for whatever God asks us to do. 

 

            Today, in English alone, there are more than 900 translations or paraphrases of the New Testament in whole or in part. And to think that only 500 years ago there was only one basic translation – Latin! And only the priests and the wealthy could read Latin. The Bible was not in every home. The Bible was not available to every person. Most Bibles were chained to the pulpit. 

            But men like Martin Luther, John Wycliffe, and William Tyndale believed that the Bible should be available to every person in their own language. The church at the time prohibited translating the Bible into the common language. But they persisted, some died, and we have the Bible – God’s words – in our homes, even on our phones. We have no idea how miraculous that is! 

            This is the year for RFC to become a people of the Word. Our challenge is to read the Bible with fresh eyes. Nothing has a greater impact on the spiritual growth of the church than when people read the Bible. If we could do one thing to help people grow in spiritual maturity and in their relationship with Christ, it would be to help our people get into the Word of God and to reflect on it as it pertains to life. 

            Let’s read together God’s Words! Let’s hear together God’s voice!

 

                                                            AMEN?

Waiting

WAITING

 

Isaiah 40:31 “…they who wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” 

 

Waiting.

 

Waiting can be painful and frustrating. We don’t like to wait. Our cars which are supposed to speed up our lives, end up rushing us to a place where we have to wait. Either we end up waiting in our cars, or we rush to appointments and wait to be called in. 

            There are three stages to waiting:

First, as your car slows to a stop, your brain begins to reel as your progress is impeded. Alarms go off – you need to do something, anything to make the waiting more bearable. Grab your phone and check messages? Play with the radio? 

 

Second, you may begin to think of the cause of this slow-down. An accident? A big truck backing into a shipping lane? Congestion? Construction? Not that it really helps to know.

 

Third, as you wait longer, your mind moves to anger and blame. How did the driver ahead of you even get a license? They don’t know what they are doing. And why are there only two seasons in MB – winter and construction? Argh – you just want to get home. 

 

We don’t like to wait.

Waiting translates into doing nothing in our minds. Going nowhere. Wasting time. 

We have it burned into our psyches that we must “do something” because “doing nothing” is laziness. Waiting is counterintuitive to productivity. 

 

Yet the Bible is full of times of waiting. God or his prophets tell people to wait. Wait for the Lord. Wait for God to move. Wait for God’s answer. 

·      When God tells Abraham and Sarah that they will have a child, they need to wait for God’s timing.

·      On Mount Sinai, while Moses is receiving the Law, the people wait down below.

·      While the Israelites are captives in Babylon, they are waiting for their release. 

·      A Messiah is promised but the people have to wait 400 years before he appears in a backwater town like Nazareth. 

 

Waiting seems to be a big part of how God works with people.

 

In Acts 1:4, Jesus’ last words to his disciples before he ascended to the Father were “wait for the promise.” What the verse says in entirety is, “And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, ‘you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” 

 

What do you do when you wait though? 

What we find in Acts 2 is a story of the apostles busily acting instead of waiting. They are commanded to wait. And they do. For a while. After Jesus goes to the Father, they wait. They pray. Praying is part of waiting – prayer is waiting. The church in its essence is a people waiting together, waiting, and praying. Telling stories of Jesus and waiting. 

 

Peter gets itchy waiting. He can’t sit still and wait. To cope with the restlessness of waiting, he does some administration. That’s what the church has done for centuries when it feels the burden of waiting – we distract ourselves with meetings and plans and projects and politics.     

            Peter tells the group that they need to find a replacement for Judas Iscariot – he’s dead. What better way to wait than to do some housekeeping. They go “Vegas” on this decision and cast lots for the replacement who ends up being Matthias.

            After this, we never hear of Matthias again. 

            The disciples were supposed to wait, not administrate. Like a pregnant woman in her last trimester, when waiting is hardest, she feels like doing something (nesting). 

            The casting of lots, rolling the dice, does not get them in trouble with God, but their action doesn’t lead anywhere. God is gracious with people when they fail to wait:

·      When Abraham tries to force the promise with Hagar…

·      When the people form a golden calf because Moses is MIA…

·      When the Jews’ hearts are distracted by idols in the OT…

It’s the act of the apostles that chooses Matthias. He’s chosen before the Spirit arrives. In Acts 9, with no apostles present to do this act of admin, we’re told of God’s own action of choosing. God elects the 12^th apostle not by rolling the dice but through an amazing encounter with words and visions. On the road to Damascus, a zealous Pharisee named Saul (Paul) is knocked to the ground and addressed by Jesus. That’s God acting. That’s the Spirit choosing. 

 

Waiting is hard. But we don’t have to do church admin while we wait. It’s not a waste of time. It’s a time of prayer and worship. We are in a period of waiting as the church, waiting for God to move, waiting for God to act in history. While we wait, we pray. While we wait, we tell the stories of Jesus, his life, his death, his resurrection. The church is birthed and called to wait because it is always to be looking for the living Jesus Christ’s action in the world. For the church, waiting is the way of attentive looking. The church must wait because its only job is to witness to the living Jesus Christ, who is moving in the world. 

            We must wait for the Spirit to empower us to act.

 

What are you waiting for? Can you wait for God to move in your life? 

            When we take matters into our own hands, we may miss the really great thing God has been doing or is going to do.

            Wait upon the Lord, he will renew your strength. Wait for the Spirit to reveal his truth to you. Wait for his deliverance.

            Waiting is worth it when we know that a gracious and generous Lord has good things planned for us.

 

Inspired by and adapted from the book When Church Stops Working by Andrew Root. 

                                                AMEN

Spiritual Warfare

SPIRITUAL WARFARE:                                                         WHAT IT IS AND WHY IT MATTERS

 

Spiritual warfare! What does this expression bring to mind? Do you envision angels and demons locked in combat over unsuspecting humans? Do you think of demonic possession and exorcisms? Do we as Christians think of the conflicts of our day as some hint of spiritual interference?

            Frank Peretti wrote This Present Darkness 35 years ago, a novel about angels, demons, prayer, and spiritual warfare. In the story, angels and demons struggle for control over the citizens of a town. I recall reading how a pastor’s car wouldn’t start and he needed to get somewhere in a hurry. Unbeknownst to him, a demon had plunged his sword into the engine block of the pastor’s car. The pastor decided to pray over the engine and an angel came to battle the demon away. The car started. 

            As a young person, I found the message of these novels to be frightening. To think that demons are so involved in our lives – even our cars – that they are all around us. I have since come to the conclusion that Peretti was sensationalizing the subject, not maliciously, but without biblical basis. It was fiction. These books are no longer in my library. 

            This is not to say that spiritual warfare is not a real struggle in the Christian life. Demonic forces are at play in our lives. However, we need to move away from fictionalizing the struggle and focus on what is really happening in the spiritual realm. Where is the real battle taking place? 

            If we consider what Paul has shown us in the entirety of his letter to the Ephesians, we will understand that spiritual warfare is not about casting out demons per se, but about living for Jesus.           

As we consider spiritual warfare, what it is, and why it matters, I want to affirm its reality by saying this: Spiritual warfare is an ongoing reality that urges us to put on the character of Christ at all times. Indeed, this is what Ephesians 6:10-20 teaches.

 

1. Spiritual Conflict is a Real Thing

 

With the word, “Finally,” Paul brings to conclusion this amazing letter to the church at Ephesus. Paul has shown his readers that God is in the act of redeeming all things and bringing them back to unity under Christ. And to demonstrate this redeeming unity, God has chosen the church to express the new humanity. You and I, as God’s church, are the example to the watching world of what this new humanity looks like. 

            But there is a threat to the church. The devil, that ancient adversary of God’s people, does not want this project to succeed. The devil is going to throw everything at us. 

            This is why Paul commands the church to “be strong in the Lord and in the might of his strength.” The root word in Greek is “dunamis” or “power.” Paul has been teaching about God’s power throughout the letter. It is the same power that raised Christ from the dead and is now at work in us (1:19-20); it is the power that took an enemy of the cross like Paul and made him a preacher of the gospel (3:7); and it is the power that strengthens our inner being through the Holy Spirit (3:16, 20). 

            In and of ourselves we are too weak to fight this kind of battle. Paul knows that. But in Christ, be strong. Claim his victory on the cross; don’t rest on your own achievements or virtues. Be strong in the Lord. 

            I believe this is the theme Paul continues as he says, “Put on the whole armor of God…” This is the same expression Paul used in chapter 4 when he said that we are to “put off” the old self and “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness,” (4:24). 

In this way, we see that the armor is not simply God’s armor, but it is Christ himself that we put on. The new self is godliness. Think of the pieces of the “armor of God” as Paul describes them (don’t focus on the pieces but the virtues): 

·      Truth (Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life). 

·      Righteousness (Christ is our righteousness). 

·      Peace (we greet each other with the peace of Christ; Christ is our peace). 

·      Faith (Christ’s faithfulness before God has become our faithfulness; his obedience in place of ours). 

·      Salvation (Christ’s death and resurrection are our salvation). 

·      The Word (Christ is the Word). 

So, as we consider the pieces of armor that we are to “put on” we recognize that we are putting on Christ, like a garment, like armor. 

            This is the only way to stand in this battle. Victory has been won by God in Christ and the devil has been defeated. The task then, for you and me, is not to win the battle, but to stand. We are to maintain our position of victory by standing firm on the truth of Christ and his cross and what it means for us. To “stand” is to resist or stand against. “Stand” is used four times in this section and infers that retreat is not an option. We have the victory in Jesus, so standand resist the enemy. The battle belongs to the Lord.

            The battle imagery arouses a sense of intensity. This passage does not or should not invoke a sense of panic, but the reality that God and his goodness are opposed by evil and wickedness. As we have seen, there is also confidence conveyed to believers that we have nothing to fear in this battle. Fear is the tactic of the evil one, and Paul does not want Christians to fear this reality, but to be ready for it. 

 

2. Who we are fighting

 

We know who our enemy is, but in the midst of our daily challenges we forget the nature of our battle. That’s the way the devil likes it. 

            Paul challenged his readers to stand “against the schemes of the devil.” That word “scheme” suggests that the devil will not come at you head-on, but will use cunning and surprise. He will try to catch you unawares. He wants you to forget that you are in a battle, to lull you into complacency so that you scoff at spiritual warfare as a reality.         

            Talking with my seminary student some years ago, I discovered that we are in danger of this very thing. His dissertation theme focuses on demonic infestation (not possession, but the idea that demons fill a room). The natural inclination of most people is to judge this as superstitious nonsense, silly, not worth thinking about. As C.S. Lewis has been quoted frequently, the two schemes of the devil are to get people to think about him too much or not at all. 

            Now we don’t want to go looking for the devil behind every trouble or crisis. And we don’t want to use “the devil made me do it” as an excuse. But we do experience those moments where we get into an argument with a friend or a spouse and we don’t know why this issue is such a big deal. Churches have split over the color of carpets. Really? I think that underlying these surface issues are deeper issues that the devil likes to hide: unconfessed sin, selfishness, agendas. 

            This is why Paul reminds the Ephesians, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (6:12).  People are not the enemy; your spouse is not the enemy; your co-worker is not the enemy; Trudeau is not your enemy. 

            The wrestling is not Olympic style, but hand-to-hand combat, grabbing a wrist holding a dagger to keep it from plunging into your chest. We are face-to-face with evil. But do we recognize it? Those who persecute the church by informing on neighbors in China and Iran are not the enemy. Even those who shut down churches in Canada are not the enemy. The person who argues with you and curses you is not your enemy.

            Paul describes the enemy as NOT flesh and blood, but various levels of SPIRITUAL forces, dark powers. John Stott once said that if we hope to overcome them, we need to keep in mind that they have no moral principles, no honor, no feelings of compassion for humankind. They are unscrupulous and ruthless. They are devious. Satan masquerades as angel of light to fool believers into thinking they are following a right path (2 Cor. 11:14). To that end, we need to be discerning when we encounter conflict in our relationships and evaluate the true nature of our crises with people. 

 

3. Where is the Battle?

 

God has given us his armor to fight in this unusual battle. “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm,” (6:13).       

            Preachers have done a disservice to the armor of God when they try to explain why truth is a belt or salvation is a helmet. I don’t think that was Paul’s intention. Instead, the focus is on the combined virtues – the whole armor – and how Paul has referred to these virtues in the letter. 

            The armor is a metaphor for putting on Christ. The question we need to answer is: Where is the battle? According to the entirety of the letter to the Ephesians, Paul has neatly described many of the battlefields we will encounter. 

            Battlefield #1: My Mind! One of the targets of Satan and his demonic forces is the mind of the individual. Many of us struggle with who we are as Christians. We feel that we do not measure up, we don’t have enough faith, we are not serving enough, and we feel that we are inadequate as witnesses of Christ. The devil likes to play on these negative self-talk markers and drive us down in feelings of worthlessness. But in Paul’s opening words to the Ephesians, he tells us the truth about who we are in Christ. (READ 1:3-14): “he chose us…he predestined us…in him we have redemption…making known to us the mystery of his will…we have obtained an inheritance… were sealed.” 

            Battlefield #2: The Church! The church in Ephesus was divided by the Jewish and Gentile cultures. Paul taught them that the dividing wall of hostility between them was demolished in Christ and one new person had been established. In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, free or slave, male or female, rich or poor. 

            The devil wants to divide the church, and to rebuild the walls that separate the people of God’s church through ethnic issues, languages, and cultures. But in Eph. 2:14-18, we read how Christ has become our peace and has broken down all the walls that divide us. We are one body with Christ as our head. There ought not to be an outsider in the church of Christ who believes in Jesus. 

             Battlefield #3: Relationships! Between friends and co-workers, we find tensions over convictions and beliefs. Best friends can become adversaries when differences arise. Sometimes we don’t know where the conflict comes from, but we find ourselves at odds.  

            What do we do when the fight gets hot, and relationships are in serious danger of being broken. Paul invites us to remember our transformation in 4:32-5:1 “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.” Nothing says you understand your salvation more than when you forgive those who hurt you.

            Battlefield #4: Marriages! We have heard the popular culture reference “Women are from Venus; Men are from Mars.” It is true that men and women are different, think differently, process problems from uniquely gender-based standpoints. That’s where tensions arise. My wife and I were moving a heavy TV from upstairs to downstairs and found ourselves in conflict (mildly, but conflict). My thought was to pick it up and move it. She wanted to talk about it. Later, when we decided to move it again, a male friend helped me. I said, “Do you want to discuss how we do this?” (Ha ha). He said, “Duh, no, let’s just do this.” And we had no problems whatsoever. This illustrates how a little thing can become a big thing if we don’t stop to communicate as married couples. And if we don’t communicate, Satan takes the opportunity to emphasize the misunderstanding. It happens so easily. 

            Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:22-33 that the solution to our marital troubles begins with understanding in Christ what love is: to serve at great cost the other person. He says to husbands, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,” (25). When we see our calling in marriage is to serve each other, to think of the other before ourselves, it is then that we deal a great blow to the kingdom of this world, the realm of Satan. Love conquers when we remember that true love serves the other. 

            Battlefield #5: Parents and Children! The theme keeps repeating itself. Satan wants to create divisions between the various relationships in our lives. Our sweet babies grow up to be teenagers who strive to exercise their independence and to prove that their ways are innovative, new, and young. Parents get their backs up (pride is hurt) and we lose touch with our children, wondering what happened to our communication. 

            Paul urged the parents in this congregation not to provoke their children to anger. He also reminded the children to honor their parents since it also honors God. It is to their great benefit to do so, “that it may go well with you.” Life is more pleasant when we live in harmony and avoid creating regret. 

            Battlefield #6: Households (businesses)! I insert “businesses” here because the household codes of Paul’s day included servants and slaves and the work they did for the household. In a sense, this is business. How do we treat our workers? If we act as tyrants rather than benevolent benefactors, we create a culture of injustice and ultimately, bitterness. These relationships matter to God.

            Ephesians 6:5-9 exhorts servants to obey masters as if they were Christ. Rather than seeing “the boss” as the enemy (we struggle not against flesh and blood), we are to view him or her as the representative of Christ. Bosses are not exempt, urged not to threaten workers, but to remember that God is the master of both them and their workers. 

            These are the everyday battlefields we find ourselves engaged in as we fight this spiritual war. 

 

4. Our Most Effective Battle Posture

 

Posture in battle is important. You don’t stand with your hands hanging at your side and shoulders drooped in apathy. You stand with your hands filled with your shield and sword in an aggressive posture. 

            Remember the Karate Kid posture. I think it was called the Crane pose or something. It looked silly to tell the truth, but it worked (at least in the movies). When I was pastoring in Kleefeld, I would often pray in my office with the door open. Some days were intense and I would get on my knees. One time a lady walked by in the foyer and asked if I was okay. Like the Crane pose, our posture in prayer may seem odd even to Christians. But are we not supposed to pray all the time? 

            One of Satan’s schemes is to get us to rely on our own strength and confidence. This is why Paul appeals again to where we find our strength for spiritual warfare. He says that we are to pray “at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints…” 

            Notice the “all” challenge in the verse. Prayer is an ongoing activity. 

            Darryl Dash said, “The devil trembles when he sees the weakest Christian on his knees.” When we don’t pray, we are relying on our own power and have not put on the armor of God. However, when we recognize the reality of the fight we are in and we begin to pray, we find our strength in the Lord. We are fighting for the lives of those we love who are lost without Christ. We are fighting for our nation on our knees. We are not being idle when we pray; we are not wasting time. As the old Christian rock band Petra crooned, “Get on your knees and fight like a man.” Pray! 

So let us enjoin the conflict through prayer.

 

I like what Andrew Lincoln says about this passage. Lincoln reflected on the letter and wrote that for the writer of Ephesians, “the individual who engages in productive work or who speaks the truth or who loves his wife is successfully resisting and standing his ground in the fight against the powers,” (AL 445). In other words, by being human the way God intended us to be, we are engaging spiritual warfare. Christ is the supreme example of humanity, so to be like Christ is to stand against the inhuman-demonic forces. 

            What is spiritual warfare? 

            Spiritual warfare is not casting out demons, though at rare times it may require that response. It is not searching for demonic influences in society and culture. It certainly does not involve praying over your Dodge (nothing can help you there). 

            Spiritual warfare can be summed up very simply: Living for Jesus in a world that does not acknowledge the King of Kings. Or, to put it another way, living according to the values of Jesus – loving, forgiving, uniting with others in his name, loving your children, loving your wife or husband or family – in a world that teaches living for self, first. 

             

AMEN