2 Corinthians 4 To Find Renewal and Hope

This is Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth. Their relationship with each other hasn’t been easy; Paul’s had to hold them accountable in his first letter for some pretty hard things, yet you can hear in this letter Paul’s love for them. He begins this letter by sharing how his suffering, and he’s gone through a ton of suffering, is so that they can find hope and comfort in their own suffering, knowing that he really does understand what they’re going through. This is life wisdom, when you’re hurting, the person who can help you the most is the person who has gone through similar struggles and hurt. In addiction support groups, your sponsor or mentor is someone who’s been addicted just like you are. They get it. 

Our renewed relationship with God is important to Paul. Paul talks about how Moses wore a veil over his face because being in God’s presence made his face shine so brightly, that it hurt the people to look at him. God met face to face with Moses on Mount Sinai, renewing his relationship with his people, leading them into freedom and a new life of hope and restoration with him. This helps us understand what Paul is talking about in our passage this morning, when he mentions that “even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” God’s glory is being revealed in Jesus and the church, but now Satan is blinding the minds of unbelievers so they can’t see who Jesus is as their Lord and saviour.

Paul leads into chapter 4 with this verse, “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” Paul’s talking about how we reflect Jesus’ glory and are being transformed into Jesus’ likeness, becoming more like him with his glory shining brighter in us. This glory comes from the Holy Spirit that now lives in us. This echoes Paul’s first letter to this church where he reminds them that they are God’s temple now, 1 Corinthians 3:16, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?” It’s important to read the Bible listening for echoes to other books of the Bible, or even within the same book of the Bible, to help you get a deeper insight into what the author is saying. It also reassures us that we are understanding what the Bible is saying.

This light of the gospel, this light of Jesus shining in us, the light that shines out of darkness, is found in jars of clay. It echoes back to creation when God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, creating light in the darkness to bring about the conditions for life. The Bible’s creation story goes on to reminds us how God forms us out of the dirt of the ground, like a potter molds clay, and gives us life by breathing his Spirit into Adam. Life and light flow from God and Jesus into us. We’re the shining height of God’s creation, created in his image.

Paul goes to the image of potter and clay, saying that we have this treasure, the gospel of Jesus in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. Because of sin, we have a tendency to make God and Jesus smaller, making ourselves more important, which leads to brokenness and evil gaining a strong foothold in the world and our lives. Our jars of clay are covered with cracks and chips from life from being hard-pressed, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down. Hard-pressed refers to the process of pressing olives for their oil. Wikipedia tells us, traditional olive-presses consisted large millstones used to grind the olives and their pits into a pulp. One stone could weigh up to 400 kilos. The upper milling-stone was turned by a donkey or ox pulling a wooden beam attached to the stone. Then the pulp was collected, kneaded, and then placed in woven baskets stacked one on top of the other. A large stone weight was then placed on top to release the oil from the pulp.

Being hard-pressed can bring out the precious oil in us, but it doesn’t come easily. Perplexed is about not understanding why we’re going through hard stuff while others seem to float comfortably through life; everything they do succeeds while no matter how hard we work or how faithful we are; all we get is hard times. Yet in the hard times we learn deeper trust in God, we grow closer to God, and we learn life wisdom. We know what persecuted is, even though most of us have never experienced it. Yet in persecution we understand better what Jesus went through for us, we understand the power of sin and the amazing grace of God’s glory and presence in our lives in the holy Spirit who comforts us, protects our hearts, and guides us back to Jesus. Struck down reminds us that there are always people who want to see us fail and will work against us, but the Holy Spirit picks us up and gives us the strength and hope we need to move forward. This echoes back to the beginning of the letter where Paul shares how he’s suffered, but recognizes that God is using his cracks and chips in life to bless them.

It’s through the cracks and chips in the clay jars of our lives that the light of Jesus shines through powerfully, creating beautiful patterns of grace and hope for the world to see. This is why Paul tells us of his own struggles at the beginning of this letter. Desmond Tutu, with his daughter Mpho, wrote The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and the World. Tutu tells some of the brutal stories from apartheid and how, through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, perpetrators could tell their stories and victims were able to offer forgiveness. The forgiveness came from knowing Jesus and how Jesus understands the heavy and hard cost of forgiveness. In the Gospel of John, Jesus shows Thomas his scars and invites him to place his hand in the hole in his side. Jesus carries the scars of his suffering for us in his resurrected body do we can be reassured that Jesus knows our suffering and is able to give us new life. It takes deep honesty to tell your story and name the hurt, only then does granting forgiveness becomes possible and you can move forward to renew or release the relationship in which you experienced the hurt. We find the strength and courage to forgive because we walk together as the church; helping each other learn how to forgive; offering encouragement and strength when we’re called to forgive.

I think of the Amish community in Pennsylvania; a gunman killed a number of their children and the families reached out to the gunman’s mother to comfort her as they forgave her son. The light of Jesus burned brightly through their cracks and brokenness for the world to see. They brought hope to many people who were struggling to forgive others in their own circumstances. Many who work hard in non-profits could be working in their own businesses and receiving all kinds of accolades, but instead work quietly among the neediest and least people because their faith tells them this is more important. Their faithfulness often comes from having experienced brokenness and cracks in their life or loved one’s lives. Their light shines brightly. You all have stories of people who have sacrificed to help others, people who have suffered and turned that suffering into blessing others; the light of Jesus shines brightly through their cracks and chips creating beauty out of suffering. Tell the stories!

The light of Jesus shines through us because we are his. We have the death of Jesus in us, the death of our sin through the cross, and we have the life of Jesus in us, renewing us, giving us new life. When your life is filled with brokenness, when the cracks feel too big, Jesus takes those cracks and fills them in, renewing us, even if the scars are still there. The cracks point to hope because we belong to Jesus. As Big Daddy Weave sings, “Jesus makes all things new again,” this is the message we speak and live out in the church together.

Our new life in Jesus leads us into speaking of our hope, “It is written: “I believed; therefore, I have spoken.” Since we have that same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself. All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.” The Holy Spirit points us to Jesus and calls us to speak to the hope and life we have in Jesus so that more people can discover that same hope.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Colossians 3:12-17 To Grow and Mature in Your Faith

A friend of mine always told me that growing older just happens, but growing up is optional. We always applied it to ourselves as guys, making a joke that as guys we never really grew up, relying on our wives to do the growing up for us. Jesus encourages us to have a child-like faith, but he really doesn’t want us to remain children in our faith; there’s a difference in having a child-like faith that trusts deeply in God and Jesus, that obeys out of love and trust, and a faith that’s just childish, lazy, and can’t be bothered growing up and becoming mature, able to invest in and teach others about the good new of Jesus.

The writer of the letter of Hebrews talks about this. Hebrews 5:12–14, ^“In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” Paul’s frustrated by a group of people in the church in Corinth who are not growing in their faith, “Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly.” Paul is watching them and he’s frustrated that they are still holding so tightly onto the ways and values of the world instead of embracing the bigger picture of the world found in Jesus.

What does a mature follower of Jesus look like to you? Council was working on this just before Covid and we needed to do a whole of changing and adapting really quick, but we will be returning to finish that work this fall and winter. But you don’t need to wait for us to figure all this stuff out, in your mail-slots and on the welcome desk you will find a personal faith plan for you to reflect on, pray over, and then create for yourselves a faith plan to help you grow in your relationship with God and our church family over the next year by focusing on specific areas of growth in your faith life. Our prayer is that you will share this plan with your elder or pastor to help us in our work of leading Bethel to grow deeper in faith, life, and into our community.

Our passage this morning is found in a part of Paul’s letter to the church in the city of Colossae where he’s encouraging them on how to live, focused on Jesus, where their minds and hearts are oriented on Jesus’ teachings, loves, and values. Paul’s looking back at who they used to be and is now challenging them to be different, to become mature followers of Jesus by putting on Jesus like a new set of clothes. These clothes will help the world to see that they are God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, and living this out for the world to see.

If you’re looking for what a mature follower of Jesus looks like, this is a good place to start. Paul calls us to wear compassion, humility, gentleness, and patience as we live with each other. They say that the clothes make a person. Well, they do give us an image of what we want others to think about who we are, it gives them a glimpse of who we want to be or are. Growing up, I wanted to be an astronaut, or a cowboy, or a detective. My brothers and I made a space helmet, we had cowboy hats and toy guns when we played cowboys, and I remember getting a tin badge one Christmas so I could be a detective. The clothes showed everyone who we were as we played. I have a church robe that I used to wear in the church in Montreal and it showed people that I’m a pastor, now I wear this wooden cross on Sundays instead.

Is being mature always easy? No. Life and people can be hard and cruel, people’s skin has become a lot thinner over the past couple of years. What people in our church and community need and are searching for, are people who are working hard at living compassionate, gentle lives with a spirit of humility; not claiming to know everything about every topic that comes up, but who are patient and kind. In our last pastoral elders meeting, we were talking about needing affirmation and living with compassion for others. This isn’t always easy though, I know there have been times in the past while when I haven’t been as compassionate, gentle, kind or patient as I could have been. My skin too has become thin in some areas and I need to keep turning to Jesus to keep growing in these areas of my heart too.

Growing in these areas of our life and character helps us to bear with each other when stress and conflict happen, and they do happen in every relationship and in every group of people. The more mature we become in our faith and life, the more it drives us to practice forgiveness. Relationships become more precious and important and forgiveness builds strong community and fellowship. It helps us walk through hard times together. As we grow in compassion, kindness, gentleness, and patience, the more we grow in forgiveness. But the reverse is true too, the more we practice forgiveness, the more we grow in compassion, kindness, gentleness and patience.

Forgiveness and grace are strong indicators of a faith that’s growing and maturing. It shows we’re becoming more rooted in Jesus who shows us the strength and power of forgiveness on the cross where he accepts the dying thief’s plea to remember him when Jesus comes into this kingdom, and even more powerfully when Jesus asks God to forgive all the people who have hurt him and put him on the cross. Jesus goes to the cross and takes the punishment for our sin on himself out of his love for us, a love he pours into us through the Holy Spirit, a love that calls for us to pour it out in forgiveness and grace, in compassion and patience to others.

Love is what connects all these virtues that lead to a mature faith. Love of God and neighbour, a love that compels us to share God’s love and the good news of Jesus with our neighbours, co-workers, fellow students and even family as our love wants them to know Jesus and accept him. Love, forgiveness, grace, peace and humility are all amazing virtues, and when they’re lived out together as a church family, it creates a vibrant, energetic church family filled with mature followers of Jesus joyfully sharing the good news of Jesus everywhere they go, living in fellowship together well, encouraging and building each other up naturally, and completely oriented on Jesus. This leads to living lives shaped by gratitude and thankfulness. This is what mature looks like.

But it takes hard work. It means digging into the Bible regularly, letting the message of Jesus soak deep into us, shaping us into who God has created us to be. Mature followers of Jesus live in an atmosphere of worship and praise, constantly open to learning from the Bible in relationship with the Holy Spirit, holding each other accountable, even loving someone deeply enough to tell them when they’re wrong, and walking with them as you follow Jesus together to care for the church, his bride, and growing deeper together.

This may seem easy, but it’s really hard. So many of us find it hard to be told we’re wrong. It can easily lead to anger and bitterness. It’s hard to confess we were wrong, to reflect on what happened and was said, confessing and repenting and working for reconciliation. But when this happens, we know that we’re becoming more mature in our faith, and in our relationship with God and each other. Maturity means we take off our pretend childish clothes and put on the clothes and responsibility of adulthood in the faith. Instead of demanding to be fed, we take on the responsibility of helping to feed others by being a faith guide for them to help them see Jesus in their lives and grow into maturity. One thing I’ve learned from mentors and from mentoring, you know we’re getting more mature when it becomes easier to say, “I’m sorry” and focus on responsibilities over rights.

The Bible and our faith are always Jesus focused and lived out as “we.” Maturity looks like caring about the “we” of the body of Christ over “me.” Maturity looks like serving, sacrifice, doing all we can to build up the body of Christ, working towards peace and unity within the church, because our love for others and God has settled deep in our hearts and lives.

Psalm 136 To Give Thanks: a Thanksgiving Day reflection

 

Today we’re spending some extra time in church to stop and tell God, “Thank you!” Today is Thanksgiving, a day when all Canadians are called to stop and give thanks for what we have. For followers of Jesus, we turn to God to give thanks, knowing that everything we have comes from God. It’s easy to think that we’ve earned what we have, that our hard work has gotten us to where we are at in life, but the reality is that there are always others who have worked harder than we have, are smarter than we are, have more skills and talents than we do, and yet we still have more. God, for his reasons, has blessed us with what we have, no matter how much or how little, and we’re called to be thankful.

But there’s so much more to be thankful for than simply stuff. Psalm 136 is a psalm that simply rings out in thankfulness, repeating over and over again, “His love endures forever,” reminding us of the reason of our gratitude, a refrain of praise that, by the end of the psalm, is firmly planted deeply inside our hearts and minds. We give thanks to God for he is good and his love endures forever. This first verse sets the tone for the rest of the psalm. The word for good in Hebrew is ‘tov’ and means morally good, desirable, pleasant, kind, and merry. Think of a person you know who is kind, happy, morally good, and friendly and you have a tiny glimpse of what God is like. This is someone that most people are attracted to, someone that you want to know and have in your life. This is why sharing your faith doesn’t need to be scary, because Jesus is someone that most people want to know, want to have in their life.

Our God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, there’s no one greater than God, no one who can do more, or love more than God. God’s great love is especially shown in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for our sin. Imagine what Jesus took on himself, all the sin and brokenness of the world, just because he loves you so much that he wants to be with you for eternity. His love endures forever! The God who made the heavens and the earth, the artist who created all the flowers, the night skies, the seascapes and landscapes, all the beauty and wonder in the world, loves you enough to die for you because he wants you to be with him forever.

God saves his people out of slavery and oppression. The psalmist is referring to the time Israel spent as slaves in Egypt and the oppression they faced there under their Egyptian slave masters. God hears his people’s cries and he responds. God still hears the cries of those who are slaves and oppressed, whether it’s young girls and women enslaved for their bodies in our country, or slaves in other countries around the world, and he still responds and calls us to be his presence in working for freedom for the slaves in the world. God can save you from the things you have found yourselves a slave to, he can save you from the brokenness in your hearts and lives, he can restore you again. Through Jesus’ death on the cross and the gift of the Holy Spirit, we’re saved from our slavery to sin, to addiction, or to the lies of Satan that keep telling us that we’re not worthy to be saved or loved. Psalm 136 reminds us that God’s love endures forever, his love for you never comes to an end and his love can free us, renew us and restore us.

God protects his people. The psalmist here talks about how God protected his people during the time right after God led them out of slavery from the nations around them who wanted to destroy the Israelites. As God led them out of slavery, God guided them, showing his people where to go and when to go, even dividing the Red Sea so they could get through the sea on dry ground, and then protecting his people by swallowing up Pharoah and his army in the water when he closed the path through the sea back up over them.

God has given us his Holy Spirit to protect us from our sin, addictions, anxiety, and all the other things that can break us and hurt us by reminding us of everything that Jesus taught, by praying for us when we’re unable to pray and talk with God. When we feel that we are being attacked by fear, worry, anxiety, and more, God doesn’t leave us to fend for ourselves, but, as Jesus promised his disciples, he will never abandon us or leave us alone. The Holy Spirit is not only God with us, but is God in us because his love endures forever, and he will protect us. And when we fall, when life gets hard and feels like we’re alone and forgotten, when we’re at our weakest, Jesus is there.

We’re reminded that God provides. He remembers us in our low estate and frees us from our enemies. He gives food to every creature because his love endures forever. Today is Thanksgiving, a day where many of us will eat an extra special or large meal with our family and loved ones. We often measure our thankfulness by how much food is on our tables and in our freezers, and sometimes we believe that the more we have, the more God loves us, but we need to hear this verse a little more clearly, “he gives food to every creature.” God’s love endures forever, but is also too big to keep only for only his people, but his love extends to every creature. Often God provides through us and the wealth and abundance he has given to us to share.

As followers of Jesus, as children of God, we’re called to live lives of thankfulness and gratitude. Ann Voskamp writes, “Practicing gratitude means being thankful, counting your blessings, noticing simple pleasures, and acknowledging everything that you receive. It is learning to live as if everything were a miracle and being aware on a continuous basis of how much we’ve been given. Living a life of gratitude does not mean that life is perfect. It also does not mean that we live in denial of the burdens that we carry or somehow rise above the challenges that we face by choosing blissful ignorance. Rather, it is simply affirming that there is good to be found in our lives even in the midst of chaos and difficulty. It shifts our focus from what life lacks to the abundance that God has given us.”

Ann Voskamp also shares some of the benefits that come from living with a sense of gratitude and keeping a gratitude list, writing down 3 things every day you are thankful for. These are based on different studies, “It’s habits that can imprison you and it’s habits that can free you. But when thanks to God becomes a habit — so joy in God becomes your life. And with this habit of keeping a gratitude list?  You:

1. Have a relative absence of stress and depression. (Woods et al., 2008)

2. Make progress towards important personal goals (Emmons and McCullough, 2003)

3. Report higher levels of determination and energy (Emmons and McCullough, 2003)

4. Feel closer in their relationships and desire to build stronger relationships (Algoe and Haidt, 2009)

5. Increase your happiness by 25% — (Who wouldn’t want a quarter more happiness!) (McCullough et al., 2002)”

Faith and thankfulness go hand in hand and impact our daily lives, which is why we show up here on Thanksgiving, not just because the government gives us a day off, but because God’s love endures forever, it flows into us, out of us, and into the world, and back to God himself. Go from here with hearts filled with thankfulness and gratitude and may it flow into the lives of those around you.

Colossians 3:1-4 To Reorient Ourselves on Jesus

 

It’s amazing how much information is thrown at us each day, not all of it good, healthy, or true. Because many of us are online each day, we’re susceptible to all the stuff coming at us. To make things worse, Google and other online platforms have developed algorithms to send us only stuff that we’re already sympathetic to seeing or hearing; we call this living in an “echo chamber.” As I read and see the online comments, it seems as if many people have lost the ability to think well with a Christian worldview. While working onboard ship in the naval reserve, we were taught how to navigate by the stars, just in case our ship lost power and our electronic compass went down. We oriented ourselves in the northern hemisphere on the North Star, and in the southern hemisphere on the Southern Cross. This helped us figure out where we were and how to get where we needed to go. As Christians, we orient our lives on Jesus.

Part of what Paul is doing here in this letter is speaking into a heresy that’s creeping into the church at that time that says Jesus is less than fully divine, less than fully God. In Colossians 1:19, Paul reminds us, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,” and in Colossians 2:9, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.” Paul emphasizes that Jesus is not simply a man raised to be with God in heaven, but Jesus is fully God as he is fully human. This is why we can place our complete faith in Jesus and orient our entire life on him.

This heresy that Jesus is not fully God is still found in a number of faith groups loosely connected to Christianity today. These faiths believe in Jesus, but make him less than fully God. They make us more and Jesus less. Whenever you hear someone putting more faith in themselves and less in Jesus, you know that they’re drifting away from Jesus and Scripture. This is why Sundays when we get together to worship and praise God, pray together, and dig into the Bible is so valuable because we’re reminded of who Jesus really is instead of who we make Jesus out to be to suit what we want to believe.

This is why we’re asking ourselves the question “Why Church?” We need the church community to help us each week to reorient ourselves on Jesus. Paul calls us, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” Set our hearts on things above; make sure that the things you love most, make sure that the things your hearts desire more than anything else are heaven focused, are Jesus focused. Set your minds on things above; make sure that your thoughts and beliefs are rooted in Scripture and Jesus rather than the things of this world. This is why our worship services are grounded in Scripture, this is why we take a good part of each worship service to reflect on what God has revealed about himself and the world in the Bible.

Our passage flows out of Colossians 2:20–23, “Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.” Paul’s talking about how some leaders are basing our salvation on doing or not doing certain things. Doing certain things and not doing other things may seem to make us wise, but Paul points us straight to Jesus instead; to how we have died to those ways of thinking and believing and find our identity and value in Jesus and through Jesus. We don’t change in order to earn our salvation; we’re changed because of our relationship with Jesus.

This whole idea of reorienting ourselves, on turning our minds and hearts back to Jesus is found in many places in the Bible. Paul, in Romans 12:1–2, calls us to renew our minds, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform 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.” This is about giving our complete selves to God, body, mind, heart and souls to be shaped by him.

Peter comes at this same thought a little differently, 1 Peter 1:13, “Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming.” Peter calls us to set our hope on the grace that’s coming at Jesus’ return. Our hope is strong and confident because we’re God’s chosen people being built into a spiritual house with Jesus as our cornerstone. The very foundation of who we are as a church and as individuals is Jesus Christ. Paul and Peter both keep focusing us on how we should live and love; talking about how our daily lives are supposed to be oriented on God and Jesus, shaped by Jesus’ teaching and life, by Jesus’ great sacrifice on the cross for our sin.

In Paul’s letter to the church in Colossae, you can hear that Jesus’ return is on his mind as he encourages the people to keep focused on Jesus and to keep focused on how they live with God and each other so that they look like Jesus. Just before our passage this morning, Paul has a number of warnings for them, reminding them that their identity is not in what we do, but about who we are connected to, Jesus Christ, our head. In chapter 2:19, Paul talks about those who get focused on the wrong things instead of staying focused on Jesus, “They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.” Professor Sandra Polaski writes, “the text reminds us that life in Christ is a unity with Christ that involves the focus of our whole beings on what is “above,” that is, the things of God.” This is what Paul is getting at when he uses this body image of Jesus and us, the church; he uses a crazy picture of a body that has lost connection with the head, making it paralyzed.

Sundays, we come together to worship and reorient and reconnect our minds and hearts back to our head, who is Jesus, and away from the things that have consumed so much of our thoughts and effort during the week. We get reconnected to the power that gives us strength and clarity about who we are. It’s not always easy because we bring our whole selves into church on Sunday, and often find it hard to separate from our fears and worries that have lived with us through the week and may even have disconnected us from Jesus. This can paralyze us because of all the messages being thrown at us, the anger, the divisiveness, the craziness that is presented as truth which so many people are often ready to believe. In this chaos, it’s no wonder that people are asking what’s really true and who we really are.

Over the past 18 months especially, I have embraced Jesus’ invitation to come to him. Matthew 11:28–30 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Jesus offers us rest in a safe environment, but he also offers us a way to walk through life by taking his yoke on ourselves. A rabbi’s teachings were often called his yoke, and his students would be encouraged to wear his teachings. Jesus is telling us to allow his teaching to shape our souls, our life and even how we see and understand the world around us. This is another way of encouraging us to reorient our hearts and lives on Jesus, and the promise is that it will help us walk through life with knowledge on how to live, know what to believe by comparing it to Jesus’ teaching and life, and know who we are supposed to be as followers of Jesus and children of God.

 

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 Encourage and Build Each Other Up

“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up,” is one of my favourite verses. Yet I will admit that there are many times when I fail to live up to it. The world is filled with too many harsh words, too many angry criticisms, too many careless words, too much putting people down that creates a lot of hurt people, a lot of people walking through life doubting themselves and their worth. We need to be reminded of Proverbs 15:1, “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” There’s a huge need for more people like Barnabas, whose name means “Son of encouragement.” Barnabas helped Paul become the apostle he was. He encouraged Paul, stood by Paul when others were afraid of Paul, accompanied Paul on his first missionary journeys to provide support, and Barnabas built Paul up as a brother in Jesus.

Paul’s writing to the church in Thessalonica. Paul visited Thessalonica on his second missionary journey. Paul preached in the city’s synagogue for at least three weeks, and because of his ministry, a church was born. When Paul faced persecution at the hands of a mob, he fled to Berea, but the Thessalonians forced him to leave there also. You can find the story in Acts 17. This church experienced persecution regularly, and one of Paul’s reasons for writing is to encourage them, to give them strength. One of the ways he does this is by reminding them that Jesus is coming back again to claim this world as his own.

The chapter before our passage is all about the return of Jesus. Amy Peeler writes, “this letter is written in anticipation of Jesus’ return, “This eager anticipation translates into another reason that calls forth Paul’s praise: the Thessalonians correctly discern the times and seasons. They know that the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night.” Amy Peeler goes on, “Dionysus, the god of wine, was worshipped in Thessalonica, and his nighttime celebrations had the reputation of being frenzied, ecstatic, orgiastic events. The Thessalonians, being called from the worship of dead idols to serve the living God, no longer should participate in such events. Instead of being unclothed they are to put on the specific clothing readying them for battle.”

Paul reminds them that they’re people of the day, people of the light who shine the light of Jesus into the world. Paul calls them to be sober instead of drunk like the followers of Dionysus, the god of wine. Paul encourages them to put on armour to protect their hearts and minds from the influences and persecution around them; the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet of the hope of salvation.

We’re called to protect our minds and hearts, and Paul points us to the three great protectors: faith, hope, and love. Karoline Lewis writes, “As Paul nears the end of the letter he returns to the triad with which he started — faith, love, and hope. The triad recast in the imagery of armor suggests that possessing faith, love, and hope is not without its challenges. Indeed, this is how they are introduced at the beginning of the letter — work of faith, labor of love, and steadfastness of hope. Faith, love, and hope need to be lifted up and built up as marks of the community.” When faith, hope and love settle deep in our hearts, encouragement and building others up becomes more natural and automatic, part of our character.

With our hearts and minds protected, we’re able to live with confidence and hope in Jesus. “For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him.” Some of the Thessalonians were worried that if they die before Jesus returns, they’ll miss out on the kingdom of heaven. Paul reassures them that Jesus is Lord of life and death and died so that we can experience new life through his resurrection; we will not miss out on this new life even if we experience death here, so go through life with confidence and hope. Encouragement is much more than saying “great job,” or “hang in there, things will get better;” the best encouragement is reminding us who Jesus is and how we’re so closely connected to him that not even death can separate us from him.

What does encouragement and building each other up look like? It starts by paying attention to what’s going on in each other’s lives, what others are facing, what sort of challenges and stresses are happening in their lives. This means being genuinely interested in each other and that takes time; time together, time talking with each other, time walking alongside each other, and time spent sharing life together. This is what church looks like, or at least I pray it does.

The word encourage in Greek is parakaleo and means to urge, to implore, or exhort. When I hear these words, I hear passion and concern, a desire for the other person to experience hope and strength, a new way of seeing Jesus at work in their life. The verb to build up in Greek is oikodomeo and it can be translated as strengthen, edify, benefit, or restore. This is about helping people see how Jesus is working in their lives, showing them that they’re part of a church family and not walking through life alone. Encouraging and building up each other is as much about building up and strengthening the faith of others as it is about our emotions. When you encourage and build someone up in their faith, you’re building them up emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

We all need encouragement, we all need someone to build us up in those times when we’ve been knocked down, when we feel we’ve failed and our sense of self-worth is gone. In my last church, the financial situation became so tight that they could no longer afford a full-time pastor and I was encouraged to find a new church position. I felt like a failure, like I had failed the church and my family. I had doubts about my calling and doubts about my abilities as a pastor. The chair of council sensed that hurt and dropped by the church and sat down and talked about the people’s lives I had been able to touch in the 3 ½ years there, the people who had been given hope, comfort, and peace in Jesus through my presence there. She was a Barnabas to me, a voice of encouragement.

Encouragement doesn’t always sound like words; it can look like a side hug when you notice someone who seems to be feeling down. It looks like sitting down with someone after they messed up something and helping them learn from what had happened and to try again. It’s a reminder that Jesus doesn’t condemn us for failing, that he gives us what we need to keep going. It looks like being excited to see someone you haven’t seen for a while. Being an encourager comes out of our character. Philippians 2 reminds us, "In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!" It’s about caring about others so much you’re willing to be a humble servant, wanting to bless them and help them be who God's created them to be.

Imagine a church filled with people always looking for ways to encourage and build each other up to be who God has created them to be? Can you imagine the sense of community and fellowship, the strength between the people, the witness they would be to the community of the power of Jesus to change our lives, the glimpse of the kingdom of heaven they would be? Real encouragement comes out of knowing Jesus and what he’s done for us, knowing that in our brokenness, Jesus accepts us and loves us. But Jesus loves us too much to allow us to stay like we are and he gives us the Holy Spirit so that we might be transformed more into who God has created us to be through unconditional forgiveness, grace, healing and acceptance into the family of God. Encouragement feels like acceptance and hope. This is why inviting someone to join you in your walk with Jesus is so important, because you're showing that person acceptance.

In the end it's all about God. By encouraging and building others up, the people God brings into our lives get a glimpse of the kingdom of God; they experience a little of who God is and his love and commitment for them. Our encouragement rests in knowing that Jesus is coming back, that whatever we’re going through, it won’t last forever. Here you will find the encouragement you need and will be encouraged to build each other. It all leads to praising God.

 

 

Acts 2:36-47 Fellowship Connects Us

 

This morning we’re beginning a new series based on the question, “Why Church” or even “Why bother with Church?” Now I will admit that I’m a little biased because I strongly believe that the local church is the hope of the world, as Bill Hybels said, because our message is one of good news and hope for everyone in Jesus, as Peter talks about in our passage this morning, especially for those who have questions about the meaning and purpose of life, for those who wrestle with inner struggles, and for those who see injustice and wonder if there is any hope for justice and righteousness in our time. I admit that I have wrestled myself with the question “Why Church” at times, often when I’ve experienced hurt or rejection, or when I hear the stories of hurt, abuse, or rejection in the church. Yet I always come back to believing that the greatest answers to life are best explored and found in strong local churches that focus on being one together in Jesus as they work at imitating Jesus.

The first thing I think about when I ask “Why Church” is connection; a place to find fellowship. Fellowship is a churchy word. When you turn a dictionary to find out what fellowship is, you find answers like, “a community of interest, activity, feeling, or experience,” or “companionship” from the Merrian-Webster dictionary, while Dictionary.com defines fellowship as “a friendly relationship; companionship,” and “a community of interest, feeling, etc,” or as “communion, as between members of the same church.” At its heart, fellowship is about relationships, often around common interests or beliefs. This is why the word is so often used in churches and encouraged as a way to create closeness and unity. God is a God of fellowship, three persons who live in fellowship with each other in eternity, in unity and sharing the same goals for creation.

In the past 20 years, I can’t think of a time when an emphasis on fellowship within the church, never mind the broader community, is more needed. Church isn’t always easy; just think about how God created the church. God poured out the Holy Spirit on the Jews who have gathered from all over the Roman Empire and Africa to celebrate the feast of Pentecost. These Jews believe in Yahweh and the temple feasts and rituals, but were very different in the languages they spoke, in the cultures they embraced and lived in, and even in how they interpreted Jewish Scripture. They definitely didn’t always get along, or even understand each other; there were major differences between them. The only way they were able to get along was because there were only 7 festivals a year and most Jews only made it to one or two a year, so their time together was often short and limited. Later on, God really messes with them when he calls Gentiles into the mix, something so unorthodox, it blew some peoples’ minds. How can people so different from each other experience fellowship?

It’s that powerful connection with each other through fellowship that made the early church so strong, a fellowship that focused on who they are through Jesus and what he has accomplished for them on the cross, and in what they have together in Jesus rather than their differences. Peter keeps pointing to Jesus as the foundation of this new community being created by God. “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.” Peter calls them “to repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Peter is telling them that their hope, their salvation is rooted in Jesus and their response to Jesus’ willing death on the cross to bring reconciliation between God and humanity is to repent and be baptized, to be baptized as the sign and seal from God of their new identity as followers of Jesus and restored children of God. The guarantee of this change in their identity is the gift of the Holy Spirit who is given to those who accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.

Fellowship is rooted in Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We see this is the people’s response, three thousand people are baptized that day! Can you imagine what that looked like! The apostles heading down to the river and the people lining up to be baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and coming up experiencing the joy of belonging to God, and embracing those around them who are experiencing the same thing. There’s a joining together, a fellowship that begins here that goes deep. Can you hear the conversations going on, “Let’s get together to learn more about Jesus,” or “Let’s get together to praise God for his goodness and grace to us, let’s pray together that others in our families and among our friends can experience Jesus’ forgiveness and grace!” It’s the presence of the Holy Spirit in their hearts that brings them together in spite of their many differences, because in the most important part of their lives is a commitment to Jesus. Fellowship in spite of differences, fellowship because the focus is on what Jesus has done and is doing in their lives, drawing them together. This is the context we need to understand verses 42-47 in; Jesus is at work through his Spirit!

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common.” When you experience deep fellowship centered on Jesus, when you spend worship time, learning time, vulnerable praying time together, you start to get to really know each other and start to deeply care more about each other. It’s much easier to be generous and live sacrificially when you are living life deeply with each other. Fellowship is about being with each other regularly; learning together, worshipping together, eating and living life together. This creates relationships and friendships that can become lifelong blessings. This is what starts happening with this new community that’s growing and founded on Jesus.

All the things that separated them before become less important as their unity in Jesus becomes the glue that binds them together. What a message for us today in a time where which political party or philosophy we follow, our beliefs on whether vaccines and masks, and more separate us, creating all kinds of bitterness, anxiety, leadership crises, and loss of fellowship. We can always find excuses to separate ourselves from each other, but the Bible keeps pointing us to Jesus where we find unity, a common purpose found in sharing the gospel news, support and encouragement, and even healing, within the fellowship of believers. More and more I’m realizing the power of Paul’s words to the Galatian church, Galatians 3:26–28, “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” As followers of Jesus, we can put to the side all the things that divide us if we make our relationship with Jesus front and center together.

From there comes the fellowship part; learning about God together, the sharing of meals together, the time spent in each other’s homes and discovering who they really are, serving each other, caring for each other, and sharing the good news together. The Christian faith and fellowship are always other focused, leading us to place others above ourselves, learning to live sacrificially. Philippians 2:3–4 have really guided how I think about leadership and being more like Jesus, these are verses that a good friend and mentor told to write on my heart as a pastor, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” When we embrace these verses, fellowship grows deep and wide as we place our fellowship and unity in Jesus first.

These are some of the things that first drew people to the church; they saw a fellowship that was beyond anything they had ever seen, a fellowship that crossed all the barriers that too often keep us apart. Pamela Lewis describes the life in the Acts 2 church, “From these who were first baptized, flows all that we must know about the Christian life, which is meant to be lived in fellowship. In fellowship there is sharing in the same Lord, sharing life’s joys and sorrows, sharing the same guide for living, and sharing what God has given us in Jesus Christ. May we do these things gladly.” David Fitch connects this fellowship to God’s mission strategy, that when we “nurture a community in the redeemed life of Christ and Mission (including conversions) will follow.”

May our fellowship make us a strong witness to our community to the power of Jesus to overcome the things that divide and brings peace and hope out of chaos.

 

 

Revelation 3:14-22 To the Church in Laodicea

 

Jesus’ letter to the church in Laodicea is one of the more well-known letters in Revelation. We loved this one growing up because it talks about vomiting people up, images that most young boys, and some girls, find fascinating. The church in Laodicea is told to smarten up otherwise Jesus is going to vomit them out because they’re lukewarm. Uggh!

How does a church get so lukewarm that Jesus talks about vomiting them out because they taste horrible? It’s easy when you’ve been in a relationship for a long time to take the other person for granted. It’s not that you love them less, but you stop showing it, you allow other things to take your attention away from them, and you slowly drift apart, allowing your love to grow less hot. This creates lukewarm relationships, even with God. Laodicea was wealthy, but was destroyed in 62 AD by a powerful earthquake. The people of Laodicea completely rebuilt the city without a single drachma from the government. Their wealth came from the excellent wool that their black sheep produced; wool deeply coveted by the wealthiest Romans. This led to a sense of self-satisfaction and pride that resulted in a lukewarm spirituality.

Jesus tells the angel, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” This is about their deeds, the things they do, that has gotten Jesus’ attention in a bad way. Their deeds are neither hot nor cold, they don’t help anyone or make any difference. As the letter is being read in the church, the people could see the city of Hierapolis in the distance where there were famous hot springs used to soothe sore bodies and ease the aches and pains of growing older. Down the road the other way is the city of Colossae, known for its clear cold fresh water. This water was refreshing and energizing. Laodicea received its water from Hierapolis through an aqueduct and by the time the water reached the city, it was lukewarm and minerals clouded the water, giving it a foul taste. It had to be run through purifiers before it was fit to drink. Jesus is saying they taste like foul water.

When you can take care of yourself and don’t need help from anyone else, it becomes easy to think that we don’t need God. Hosea faced that attitude hundreds of years earlier, “Ephraim boasts, “I am very rich; I have become wealthy. With all my wealth they will not find in me any iniquity or sin.” It’s easy to believe that because you’re a good person, you don’t really have any need to be forgiven; what have you really done wrong? You mostly keep the law, so you’re fine. Life’s good, so let’s enjoy what we have since it’s been given to us by God. If I do something wrong, I’ll just give a little more at church and it’ll be fine again. You do just enough to figure you’re still good with Jesus.

Jesus has a sarcastic streak in him that he uses to grab their attention. “You say, I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.” Jesus calls us to “buy gold refined in the fire, so we can be rich; and white clothes to wear, so we can cover our shameful nakedness; and salve to put on our eyes so we can see.” Jesus is poking at them. The call to wear white robes that symbolize righteousness in contrast to their black wool, the eye salve that the medical school in Laodicea was famous for refers to their spiritual blindness, the gold is spiritual wealth that has passed through the refiner’s fire. This spiritual wealth is the life knowledge that comes from living through hard times when you find yourself searching for what’s really true, for who you can really count on. For us, that’s Jesus who is the way, the truth and the life. Jesus uses suffering to strengthen our faith, to draw us closer to him, and help us see the world through his eyes. The Old Testament calls us to be refined like the gold, to have the dross, the mess in our hearts and lives burned off, often this comes through suffering that refocuses us back to God, stripping away all the things we relied on, the things we had made into idols. Jesus died on the cross to purify us from our sin, just as the Laodiceans purified their water to make it clear again.

So many people live with disappointment, with lost dreams and hopes, living with relationships that could hold so much more. For many different reasons, we’ve learned to live with less hope and no longer strive to live for more meaning. Life hasn’t turned out the way we had hoped or planned and we live with regrets and disappointments. When someone asks us how we’re doing, we say we’re doing fine. We do lukewarm because all we see is our own needs and wants.

We’ve learned to hide our struggles and hurts really well from each other. A good friend who’s an actor once told me, “The church is filled with hypocrites.” I leapt to the church’s defense, but he stopped me and said, “All I meant was that most people come to church wearing masks, in Greek theatre, an actor wearing a mask is called a hypocrite because he’s not who he appears to be.” We wear masks is because we’re afraid people won’t accept us for who we really are; that they might look at us differently and judge us because we’re not doing as well as we could be. We wear masks to avoid examining our true beliefs, our true feelings, so we bury them deep inside us where we hope they will disappear if we ignore them long enough. We accept lukewarm and convince ourselves that this is good enough.

This is the church in Laodicea. On the outside they look good. They meet their budget, they help out when asked, they show up for worship on Sundays, but it’s not coming from a place of following Jesus, but from a place of self-sufficiency. They believe they don’t really need Jesus. They don’t recognize their need for Jesus, their need for healing from their sin. They believe they can handle everything themselves just fine. They do the faith things, but with a lukewarm heart, going through the motions, doing what’s expected, but not engaging deeply into God’s plan for their lives and the life of the church. They don’t want to do the hard work of examining their hearts and souls, of going for more: for deeper together, for inner peace, for freedom from fear, instead settling for wealth and getting by.

How do you change lukewarm? Jesus tells us, “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.” These letters to the churches are a call to respond to Jesus and repent of our self-centeredness. When Jesus calls us to be earnest, he’s calling us to be enthusiastic, to regain our excitement in Jesus, to open the door to your life that Jesus is knocking at. This means getting up from your comfortable chair, putting aside that bowl of chips, and responding to Jesus’ voice to open the door of your heart and life so Jesus can come in and eat with you.

Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Paul sees all of life as lived through and for God. Romans 12:1 says, "I urge you ... to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God." This offering takes place in our everyday ordinary life. In the same way, Colossians 3:17 says, "And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus." Be hot and offer the soothing healing that Jesus came to bring to those God has placed in your life. Many people are looking for healing in their lives, in their hearts and souls that only Jesus can give them, but they’re unable to experience the soothing healing of Jesus until someone, you, invites them to meet Jesus.

Be cold and bring refreshment to your own life and the lives of your friends, co-workers, fellow students by inviting them to meet Jesus who can rejuvenate their lives again. Show them a fresh perspective on the craziness we’re living in and through right now by helping them see God’s in control and working his plans out for the salvation of the world. Help them see, instead of a wilderness of COVID 19, masks, vaccine passports, and infighting, show them a God who brings overflowing cups of refreshing life-giving water we can offer to others. Don’t settle for less than the full life Jesus came to give you; don’t settle for lukewarm. Grab the life of meaning and purpose God offers, a life focused on drawing others to God, inviting them to join us in walking the Jesus path of service and grace.

Everything we have is a gift to use to grow the influence of Jesus into our community, to care for those needing a hand up, and to use our gifts and talents to help our community flourish. These are the good works prepared in advance for us to do. A community of Jesus followers investing in others and inviting them to join us in following Jesus changes hearts, changes lukewarm into hot and cold, bringing healing, hope, refreshment and energy; giving us a glimpse of the coming kingdom of heaven that renews our passion for Jesus again. “Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”