Warm sermon 5-22-2011

We have been talking about the search that we as Christians are to be engaged in for God’s heartbeat in every circumstance of our lives.  When we are active in our search for that, we are looking at the mundane, regular tasks of our day as well as the out-of the-ordinary occurances that we go through and we’re wanting to see just what God wants to reveal to us about Himself and about who we need to become.  His heartbeat also includes that idea that we should discover that He wants to deliver His message about salvation and living for Him and the joy that we have in Christ by the words that we say, and the attitudes and actions that we portray.  We also talked about the danger of staying cold in our search.  We will meet with the storms of this life at some point, and what will need to be thrown over for us to see the seas calmed and the howling winds subside?  How much better it would be if we would move from ‘cold’ to ‘warm’, and on to ‘hot’ in our search.  I want to remind you that for the one who hasn’t yet accepted Christ as his Savior, it isn’t correct for us to describe our need of Him as a search.  He is the One who seeks us out; according to Scripture we aren’t  searching for Him.

As we return to Jonah, we will note that Jonah is moving from ‘cold’ to ‘warm’ in the process by which He will find God’s heartbeat.  The essence of the place that he is in has to do with repentance.  Repentance is a 25-cent word that we don’t use very often, but the Bible does quite a bit.  It means to change our mind; to change direction.  Let’s look at three verses that will indicate that the Bible uses this word from its beginning to end to demonstrate what is needed in the process of turning to God from idols.  First is Ezekiel 18:30, where Israel is told to turn from idol worship and the negative and ungodly influences of surrounding nations  to God.  The prophets all said this repeatedly and in different ways to Israel.  Next is Matthew 3:2, where that guy that wore skins and ate curdled milk was announcing the arrival of Jesus.  “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”, he said.  John the Baptist wasn’t worthy to unlatch Jesus’ sandles, but he was making an important announcement.  Note that though ‘repent’ is the word John is using, faith is always what is required for anyone in the Bible’s scope to be saved.  Abraham needed to have faith, John the Baptist, and the Thessalonians who are described in the third example verse.  I Thess. 1:9 speaks of the Thessalonians turning “to God from idols” and this is of course a great desciption of repentance.

Within the idea of repentance is a three-fold process that will help us understand it even more clearly.  First, there is an acknowledgement of God and His way.  He is here and He has a plan and purpose.  Second, one needs to acknowledge that way is superior to our ways and plans.  And third, we have to step out in faith and actually change direction and travel in that way.  And so when we come to Jonah’s prayer in Jonah 2, we are able to see this repentance process play out in the verses.

 In Jonah 2:1,2 there is Jonah’s acknowledgement of God and His way.  He was there in the midst of Jonah’s predicament and He had a purpose for it.  In Jonah’s case, he was crying out in distress from a very difficult place.  Imagine the absolutely dense, palpable darknesss.  Smell the overpowering stench of being in the juices and slime of a whale’s belly.  Could it be that we must cry out from a place of distress, but that we need to cry out from anyplace that isn’t the  place we really ought to be?  that is , any place that isn’t ‘hot’ when it comes to finding God’s heartbeat.  Also, there is Jonah’s acknowledgement that God’s way is superior in vss. 3-6.  A phrase like “Yet I will look again to Your holy temple” shows that Jonah is realizing that God is the Force to be reckoned with.  He also admits that God brought his life up from the pit.  There is an additional point that is very sobering and not often talked about among Christians, and that is the idea of God’s discipline.  Jonah says that God “banished” him from His sight.  God does indeed allow things into our lives to refocus our attention and redirect our path.  Heb. 12:5 quotes Proverbs 3 in laying out the understanding that God disciplines as any good father would- out of love.  I know that some of you this morning are thinking of the mean and vindictive methods that were used possibly by your fathers in carrying out discipline.  But God does not discipline out of the heat of the moment, nor from a vengeful motive.  I have to say too that God is not unhappy to put us in a dependent and needy place.  He wants us to look up….And He does it because He loves us.  Finally, Jonah steps out in faith and prays in such a way that we can see He wants to go God’s way now.  In verse 9 is the wonderful sentiment: I will sing a song of thanksgiving.  I’ll make this sacrifice to You.  Jonah is squarely in the ‘warm’ zone now!  Even in the midst of an utter bottom-of-the-barrel situation, He is ready to be thankful.  Oh, that is an excellent mark of a maturing Believer.  When someone who is in an admittedly stinky situation can bare a thankful heart and see God’s hand and be grateful, we’re well on the way past ‘warm’ and moving quickly toward ‘hot’!

Ailin Graef controls a huge land empire and has recently become a millionaire.  Sort of.  She buys land, builds homes, and makes profits online and has earned 300 million Linden dollars.  That’s the currency used in her online game called Second Life.  This former Chinese language teacher and her avatar, Anshe Chung, have had some incredible success- made at least somewhat real by the fact that the Linden dollars are able to be exchanged into US dollars.  And now Ailyn is a  millionaire.

Don’t we want to be more than just a virtual success though?!  In this very modern world, you can play online mogul and declare yourself a millionaire.  But how real is that?  It certainly is an unorthodox and unfamiliar pinnacle to arrive at!!  We don’t want to be in danger of living a cyber reality of dodging God’s discipline or be content with a merely virtual accomplishment!! We don’t want to merely shape up so we can ship out of a circumstance that we are regretting.  We don’t want to create an alternative reality where we are stuck on warm because it’s good enough. Reality will still be there and we’ll have to face it at some point.  We want to go all the way to ‘hot’ in our search for God’s heartbeat.  Jonah is close to being ‘hot’ by displaying a thankful heart in a horrendous place.    God may have used His discipline to place us where we are now, and He may need to do it again.

Are we willing to change direction today?  To change our mind and follow after God?  Would we be willing to cry out from a place of distress OR simply from a place that we know is not where we should be?

The wonderful expression of Jonah’s thankful heart puts him in a great place.  But he is not ‘hot’ yet!  We are reminded in I Sam. 15 that Saul, after being told to completely destroy the enemy of Israel, decides instead to keep some choice animals, stuff, and people.  And so Samuel utters the famous phrase that to obey is better than sacrifice.  That action is what puts us in the ‘hot’ zone and pleases God fully!  And that phrase sets us up for Jonah’s arrival at ‘hot’ next week, and what we need to do to arrive there as well!

Cold sermon 5-15

Ever play that game when you were a kid; you know, the one where someone has hidden something and as you approach it, your friends are calling out ‘cold’, or ‘waarrmmm’, or ‘HOT’?

We’re going to spend the three remaining Sundays in May talking about ‘cold’, ‘warm’, and ‘hot’. And we’re going to look at the life of Jonah and how he exemplified these traits in his life as a prophet and in his journey to do God’s will.

The first thing I want to establish is that there is to be a search for us as Christians.  If you don’t yet know Christ as your Savior, that is where the journey must begin.  But for us Christians, we are to be on a search for the heartbeat of God in every circumstance of our lives.  We will be ‘cold’, ‘warm’, or ‘hot’ in that search.  I think it is evident to most of us that we are engaged in a search most all of the time.  It’s for contentment, fulfillment, a real Christian experience, or something undefined.  Sometimes we don’t realize we’re searching, but we are.

Jonah heard God’s Word but decided to stay ‘cold’ in his search for God’s heartbeat.  In Jonah 1:1-3, we see how God instructed and Jonah didn’t listen.  He decided that God’s way was not a critical place for him to travel in.  It was enough for Him that God was up there, and that He had a will and a way.  That way did not line up with Jonah’s preconceptions.  Jonah 4:1,2 sheds some light on how Jonah felt about God’s instructions.  The Ninevites did not deserve mercy.  They deserved a very large explosion!  It simply wasn’t fair that they would have a chance at escaping a well-deserved dose of God’s wrath.

We are like Jonah sometimes in deciding that there is plenty of contentment and fulfillment that we can enjoy staying cold in our search for God’s heartbeat.   Hey, we know He’s there and that He has a plan, but….We don’t feel it’s crucial to discover just what it might be.  The informative thing about Jonah  is discovering the process by which he searches for-or is lax about searching for-God’s heartbeat.  He is content to be ‘cold’, then waterlogged into ‘warm’, and finally for a brief moment is ‘hot’.

We can pick up two things about Jonah and his story.  First, we have to acknowledge God’s will is superior and is worth searching for. Discovering God’s heartbeat in a given situation will be good for us and bring contentment and maturity.   And then we realize that God wants to speak  to and work in others by using us to deliver His message.  These two aspects are clearly portrayed in the story of Jonah.

For myself, I have been learning that it is not sufficient to stay cold in my search for God’s heartbeat.  My wife and I have been working to refinance our home and achieve some of the important things that we need in the transportation and housing department.  It is always hard to wait and when you don’t have the financial freedom you want or the details in place that are needed to move ahead, it can be a challenge.  Discouragement can come in and you begin to feel like you might never get to where you’d like to be.  I need to discover God’s  heartbeat in these matters, and it is that He cares about my situation, will cause all things to work for the good, and that I must always have my eye on giving thanks.

The danger of staying cold in our search for God’s heartbeat is that we will at some point end up in a stormy place.  One of the profound and underemphasized points to be made about the Jonah story is that it is very much about others.  The sailors and the Ninevites are two significant groups of people that are affected by what Jonah does or doesn’t do.  Jonah and the sailors are in a very stormy place in Jonah 1:8-10.  The only way to resolve this serious situation involves an extreme measure and it will involve that for us as well when we arrive in a stormy place.  We will be stressed out, depressed, discontent, or bitter and what will we have to throw overboard to see that resolved?  Another danger of staying cold in our search is that it will affect others in a profound way.  The sailors are in real trouble and they can see there’s no way out short of throwing Jonah overboard.  Only a miracle can calm the seas and right the ship in this situation, and when someone chooses not to search for God’s heartbeat in this life, nothing less will undo the effects of love not shown, selfishness lived out, and misplaced priorities allowed to reign.  The epic, generational consequences of disobedience and coldness in the search has been the most poignantly sad thing I’ve faced in pastoral ministry. 

So, let’s not stay cold in our search for God’s heartbeat!  We can be cold by ignorance or willingness.  We may not even know there’s something more than just going to church or avoiding the “wrong” things.  Maybe we simply don’t want to go all the way and find God’s heartbeat in the situations of our lives.  We may not feel that anything is missing in our lives.  Going in our own direction won’t lead to the kind of contentment or fulfillment that God can bring.  It will leave us discontent and even frustrated and bitter.  This is the anticlimactic end that Jonah will display for us.  He wasn’t focused on God and he ended up frustrated and bitter.  He even wanted to die at one point.   Going our own way will lead in the end to the depths of spiritual death: We won’t be in fellowship with God.

Mel Fisher is probably the world’s greatest treasure hunter.  In 1985, after 16 years of personal loss, 100 different court battles, and difficult work, he discovered the 1622 wreck of the Nuestra Senora de Atocha off the coast of Key West, Florida.  The treasure was estimated to be worth 450 million dollars!  It included 114, 000 Spanish silver coins that made up the famous pieces of eight, Colombian emeralds (which are the world standard for emeralds), and 1000 silver bars.  Far more wealth connected with the shipwreck is said to remain there undiscovered.  What sustains a man for 16 years and renews his passion to continue the search?  Well, it’s reported that every day, Mel Fisher would get up and say: “Today’s the day!”

Well, today’s the day!  Let’s move on from ‘cold’ to ‘warm’ and proceed all the way to ‘hot!’ in our search for God’s heartbeat in the circumstances of our lives.  Isaiah 55:6 speaks of seeking the Lord while He may be found.  Search for Him and His heartbeat before arriving in a stormy place in your life!  Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and contentment and fulfillment will follow!  I can’t say the feeling will be the same as that of discovering 450 million dollars worth of treasure, but it will be precious and very rewarding.  Today’s the day!

pscott

The Life and Times of…..Me

I’m excited because today is the one-year anniversary of my time with you here at the church.  God has been so good.  He’s worked so many things out in my journey to this present circumstance.  I appreciate you folks.  You’ve been encouraging, helpful and supportive.  Some of the efforts I’ve made and the simple tasks that make up starting something new in ministry have been challenging and tricky, but your support has caused everything to work out fine.  I look forward to what God will do as we write further chapters in the story that is West Paris Baptist.  I have no way of knowing how many chapters that will be, but I and we  go forward realizing that God will write the story.

And that is what I want to do in this sermon:  Compare our Christian lives with a great piece of literature.  You are a great work of non-fiction!  Also, you bear the autograph of the Author of Life!  A great book will have significant characters, a plot with twists and turns, and a satisfying ending.  This sentiment is akin to what David says when He states that “My times are in your hands”, In Psalm31: 14-16, David speaks of trusting the Lord and placing his times in God’s hand.  David trusted God to write his story.  Do we?

I love books.  I came into a life of reading a little bit late in life.  I loved to read as a kid, but only in my twenties did I begin to realize that there was good intellectual exercise and enjoyment in consistent and varied reading.  Not too long ago I read the Iliad.  It’s not for everyone; it’s a fairly long blood- and- guts war poem!  I’ve read Frost, Twain, ancient Greek tragedies, and even some Brazilian literature (yes, there is some).  I feel good; taking this accomplishment and adding  99 cents to it should get me a large coffee at McDonalds! 

The first thing to note about how our Christian lives are like books and will be written by God if we will allow Him, is that the Author will write the story; He’ll carry the characters through the story.  Phil. 1:6 talks about God performing the work of becoming like Christ in us from beginning to end.  The Author will carry us through the story; He’ll see us through!

Speaking of characters, a good book portrays some character development.  The character will change, adapt, mature, and his personality traits or lack thereof may intensify!  I Thess. 1:9 tells us that the Thessalonians had changed, adapted and matured.  they had turned to God from those things that would seek to keep them from acknowledging God and following him.  They had also exhibited hope in the imminent return of Jesus Christ!  Let’s face it:  We want to read about the ebb and flow of a character’s life and development; we don’t want to read about a hum-drum life.  Captain Ahab in Moby Dick experiences a descent into madness through the course of the story; he succumbs to the great fish in the end.  Moses begins an incredible career in a tentative way, asking God how he could possibly hold his own when it came to  public-speaking abilities and his credentials as leader.

Further, we can expect the process of God writing the chapters of our story to make us more human.  Now hang on, this is a subtle but important point about how God will write us to be the characters we are fully meant to be if we let Him.  Modern Literary critics and commentators say that effective, believable characters must be drawn as real human beings.  There needs to be murder, murderous intent, jealousy, sexual fantasies and their fulfillment, and the other elements of the human experience in order for a character to be believable and authentic.  Tom Sawyer is a modern character who means well, does comical things, tells a few fibs, and well…breaks the law.  I suppose he is a relatively tame example of a modern character.  And he IS well-written and enjoyable of course.  Well, I would say that great characters of the past were written without all the gratuitous additions that seem to be prevalant in modern literature.  When it comes to being fully human, our focus must be on seeing how God might remake us with a capacity for wonder, true companionship, to learn and be taught, and to care.  We can become something special in His hands, unique and possessing our God-given personalities without becoming  robots!

The next element in a story that we can focus on is plot.  Without a plot, a story of course is not too organized.  There will be twists and turns; tragedies and triumphs in a plot.  We have already experienced some of that in our church life,  right?  And as we allow God to write more chapters, there will be more!  What we want to avoid is the ever-present temptation to write our own twists, directions, or ending.  The story will suffer in the end if we do that!  We have to submit ourselves to the professional Authorship of God!

We now come to the ending.  Who doesn’t like a satisfying and glorious ending to a story?  There are some books that cause you to exclaim or gesture when you’ve turned the last page.  I believe one of the very best examples of this is The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom.  What greater victory and satisfaction can there be than God’s love conquering the Nazi occupation, giving meaning to the  killing of Corrie’s sister and father, and making bearable and triumphant the brutal time they spent in concentration camp?  Another triumph is the story of William Carey, the Father of Modern Missions.  He once watched years and years of translation work go up in flames, but he kept on living and working for God, and dramatic things happened in India.   Joseph trusted God and placed his times in God’s hands as well.  What a story of misunderstood and envied youth, murderous jealousy, and epic success after crushing difficulty.  Rom. 8:28 states that “all things work together for good to those that love God”.  The very best role we can play as characters in the story that God wants to write in our lives, and by extension, in this church is to trust Him enough to submit ourselves to His skill as an Author. We have to say “I trust in You”.

Do we trust Him enough to let Him write the story of our lives?  The way the chapter that we now find ourselves in as a church will be written is intricately tied to our answer to that question!

pscott