Dec. 12, 2004
Advent 3
Isaiah 35:1-10 (NLT)
Even the wilderness will rejoice in those days. The desert will blossom with flowers. 2Yes, there will be an abundance of flowers and singing and joy! The deserts will become as green as the mountains of Lebanon, as lovely as Mount Carmel's pastures and the plain of Sharon. There the Lord will display his glory, the splendor of our God.
3With this news, strengthen those who have tired hands, and encourage those who have weak knees. 4Say to those who are afraid, "Be strong, and do not fear, for your God is coming to destroy your enemies. He is coming to save you." 5And when he comes, he will open the eyes of the blind and unstop the ears of the deaf. 6The lame will leap like a deer, and those who cannot speak will shout and sing! Springs will gush forth in the wilderness, and streams will water the desert. 7The parched ground will become a pool, and springs of water will satisfy the thirsty land. Marsh grass and reeds and rushes will flourish where desert jackals once lived.
8And a main road will go through that once deserted land. It will be named the Highway of Holiness. Evil-hearted people will never travel on it. It will be only for those who walk in God's ways; fools will never walk there. 9Lions will not lurk along its course, and there will be no other dangers. Only the redeemed will follow it. 10Those who have been ransomed by the Lord will return to Jerusalem, singing songs of everlasting joy. Sorrow and mourning will disappear, and they will be overcome with joy and gladness.
Ps. 146
Matthew 11:2-11 (NLT)
John the Baptist, who was now in prison, heard about all the things the Messiah was doing. So he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, 3"Are you really the Messiah we've been waiting for, or should we keep looking for someone else?"
4Jesus told them, "Go back to John and tell him about what you have heard and seen— 5the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the Good News is being preached to the poor. 6And tell him: 'God blesses those who are not offended by me.' "
7When John's disciples had gone, Jesus began talking about him to the crowds. "Who is this man in the wilderness that you went out to see? Did you find him weak as a reed, moved by every breath of wind? 8Or were you expecting to see a man dressed in expensive clothes? Those who dress like that live in palaces, not out in the wilderness. 9Were you looking for a prophet? Yes, and he is more than a prophet. 10John is the man to whom the Scriptures refer when they say,
'Look, I am sending my messenger before you,
and he will prepare your way before you.'
11"I assure you, of all who have ever lived, none is greater than John the Baptist. Yet even the most insignificant person in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he is!
Sermon: Ownership, Stewardship, and Discipleship
Take a lesson from Job. Did you ever think that God’s greatest goal for your life is to make of you such a solid believer, such a rock solid disciple that He can put you on display before His enemies? Is that your goal?
Not long ago in an extended time of prayer the Lord showed me something that He is not pleased about when He looks at the clergy of the church. What the Lord showed me was that the most common mistake clergy make is trying to make discipleship easy. I am as guilty as anyone. I’ve been doing that thing where I pat you on the back and say, “There now, if you’re afraid to step out and be bold for the Lord, if you just can’t find time to make it to church, or to pray, if it’s just too hard a thing for you to seriously examine your priorities and make some changes that honor the Lord, it’s OK. If it’s too much effort to get out of bed on Sunday morning and be here to give Almighty God the worship that He rightly deserves, don’t worry about it. I’m sure He’ll understand how hard your week was. You just sit back and relax. I want you to be comfortable.”
If you asked me what is the biggest mistake I’ve made in 20 years of ministry, I would have to say this:
The biggest mistake I have made in ministry is that I have tried to make this too easy for you, and the Lord had to show me that making discipleship easy is not my job. Listen, being a disciple of Jesus is never going to be easy. If you want easy, go to an amusement park. But when it comes to being a disciple of Jesus, well let’s just review quickly what He told us about that:
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must give up everything”
“Whoever would come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.”
“Love your enemies, bless those who curse you.”
“If you even look at another lustfully, you are as guilty as an adulterer”
“Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect”
“All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.”
“Do not think I have come to bring peace on the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword”
“I have come to kindle fire on the earth, and oh, that it were already accomplished.”
“Anyone who loves father or mother, sister or brother, wife or children, even his own life, more than me, is not worthy of me.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound to me like a description of an easy life. Here’s the point:
The Lord doesn’t want a comfortable, secure church that has been coddled and congratulated in its timidity, or its sin. He wants a bold church that is ready to take a stand, take a risk for Him, trust Him, and obey Him.
That kind of risk taking attitude for God begins in worship.
I think there are some things the Lord wants us to change, and although none of us likes change, sometimes change is absolutely necessary to life. And let’s be clear about this. God’s Word never changes. That isn’t the change I’m talking about, changing doctrine. But human beings must change constantly in order to live. Much of the church today has got this all backwards. They think that it’s time to change God’s Word so we don’t have to change ourselves. Wrong!
The reason for all this is simple. Sin has infected this world, and each one of us, with a mindset that is different from what God intended for us. So each day of life we have a choice. As St. Paul said in Romans, there are two forces at work within us. There is the nature of our flesh, and there is the Spirit of God. The flesh tells us one thing, the Spirit tells us another. Basically it goes like this.
The flesh tells us we’re OK as we are. The Spirit tells us we have work to do on ourselves. The flesh tells us to “claim our feelings” and celebrate what we already are, no matter how selfish and sinful that may be. The Spirit tells us to “come out, come apart, come to the Lord and be made new.” There is always this tension between those two voices in us. We can embrace ourselves, which includes embracing our sins and our broken parts just as they are, or we can embrace the Holy Spirit and believe that there is more life that God wants to show us than what we have now.
Sometimes we get confused about what kind of change we need. We change our hairstyle, or we change our clothes, or we change our house, or our career, we change our circle of friends, or we change our marriage, and we say, “Look, it’s a whole new me. New car, new wife, new hairstyle……”, but it isn’t. It’s the same old you in a different mask. That isn’t the kind of change that Jesus Christ brings.
God wants to change us inside. God wants to change your heart. And here is the key. Wherever sin still has a pull on your heart, that’s where God wants to change you.
God doesn’t just want you happy, He wants you HOLY!
He doesn’t just want you pacified, He wants you perfected!
Jesus did not just forgive sin, he taught people how to live without sin and to love God.
And wherever you have stopped short of holiness, that’s where He wants to change you. Wherever you have compromised with something that is less than God’s best for you, that’s where He wants to work His change. But He won’t force you to do this. You have to let Him. And do you understand why? Do you understand why God won’t do this without your permission, your cooperation? It has to do with ownership vs. stewardship.
Stewardship has to do with that which God owns and loans to us for a while. That is true of almost everything in our lives. As we learned recently in our study of Job, every gift that God gives you is a test of stewardship: your possessions, your home, your career, your family, your body, your health, your very soul is only on loan to you. These are blessings, gifts that belong to God and were created by God. He can give them to you any time, and as Job learned, He can withdraw them at any time. He can do that without your permission because they were made by Him and belong to Him. As Job said, “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
There is, however, one thing in your life that God did not create, and it does not belong to Him. Anyone know what that is?
It’s your sins. Your sins are the one and only thing in your life that you can honestly say are truly yours because you created them. No, the devil didn’t create them and they don’t belong to him. He may have tempted you into them, but only you can create them. And that means that only you can determine their position in your life.
Truly, God is willing to take them from you, and that is what the cross of Christ is all about. Jesus Christ became the one perfect and sufficient sacrifice for our sins, and He is willing to take our sins from us. But He will only do it when you give Him permission. He will never rob you. He will not break into your private, self-made world, and steal that which does not belong to Him. That would make God a thief, and that is not who God is.
This is the barrier to healthy change that we all must face. The changes that need to take place in us, the changes that God would like to work in us, cannot begin until we give God our full permission and cooperation. Permission, AND cooperation.
Cooperation is required because God isn’t interested in doing this alone. His desire is to be in partnership with us, not to be our slave, as though we order God to do this or that and have a right to get angry when He doesn’t do it our way, but to be our partner in a new creation. That involves change, and as long as you live, there will be changes that need to be made.
The only people in this world who never change are those who are dead. Either physically dead, or spiritually dead.
I believe God is calling His church to get out of our preoccupation with ourselves and embrace His call to a new level of living, the level of living that Isaiah described in the first reading today- “the path of holiness.” It isn’t going to happen overnight, and it isn’t something anyone can push you into. That isn’t how it works. No, this is something the Lord will deal with us, each in His own way.
He wants to take us back to a place of real worship, worship from the heart, not just going through the motions. Not reading words out of a book, but bringing our lives before Him as living sacrifices. He wants us to take all that teaching about discipleship that we have heard over the past few years and start putting it into practice. Let me give a few specifics.
Some of you may be dealing with moral issues in your life. You’ve gotten into some behaviors that you know are not bringing glory to God. If you are not ready to confess your sin as sin, and walk away from it, I’m not going to comfort you in that, and I’m not going to just give you another lecture about biblical morality. Stop kidding yourself. You already know what God’s Word says. What are you going to do about it? What you need to do is fast, and pray, and seek the Lord, seek His heart, and find out what part of your life, your heart, you are holding back from God. That’s what I’m going to encourage you to do.
Some of you are dealing with honesty. You have a problem with the truth, telling the truth, or hearing the truth. You especially have a problem with receiving God’s Word as truth. You’re still wondering if the Bible is really true. You treat God’s Word as though it were just one opinion among many. You read other books that say God’s opinion is wrong. Now if that’s your problem, you don’t need to read another theology book by some so-called scholar who lost his faith years ago and makes a living peddling his empty philosophy to empty souls. You need to turn to the Lord with all your heart and stay in that position until you perceive the truth of His Word.
Some of you are dealing with relational issues. Someone is making your life difficult, or there is someone you are having trouble getting along with. There is someone who hurt you and you don’t want to forgive them. And you’ve got all kinds of reasons why you’re not forgiving them. You’re anxious. You’re edgy. You go to the therapist but the anxiety continues. And if that is you, I’m going to say something that might be hard to hear. All the therapy in the world is not going to help you calm your nerves. You need to seek the Lord, seek His heart, meet Him at the cross. You need to see your own sin and what it did to Him, and find out why you are refusing to forgive as you have been forgiven.
Some of you have a problem with giving. Whether it’s about giving to God or giving to others, you’ve gotten blocked somewhere in your heart and you need to unblock it. It is about your relationship with God. So let me say this, and some of you might not want to hear this. If you are having trouble letting go of your money, then what you need is NOT another stewardship program. What you need is to fast, and pray, and seek the Lord, come back to the cross, seek His heart, and let Him show you why you are so afraid to let go, open up your hand, and do what the Bible says. “Freely you have received, freely give.”
Here’s the pattern I’m suggesting. Instead of debating with yourself and “dialoging” your sins until you feel comfortable with them, you need to set your heart before the Lord and let Him do some major surgery on it. And the pattern that I just gave you for that comes from 2 Chronicles 7:14
2Ch 7:14 …if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
Did you hear that? “Heal their land”. This isn’t just about you. It’s about the nation. The world isn’t going to get any better until the people of God start boldly leading the way. God’s first answer to your prayers for morality in the media is His call to you to clean up the immorality in your own heart. He isn’t going to hear your self-righteous prayer for “those sinners out there” to come out of their sinful lifestyle until you and I deal with the sin in our own lives. And when He calls you, really calls you, I guarantee it won’t be about your comfort.
Some of you have been hearing from God this morning. If any of this is for you, if there is something in your heart that isn’t right, some part you’ve been holding back from God, if there is some challenge that God has set before you and you’ve been stepping back from it and you know right now that God is calling you to step forward in faith, then let’s pray about that right now. Turn in the Prayer Book to p. 831. Let’s pray this prayer together.
A Prayer of Self-Dedication
Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to You, so
guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our
wills, that we may be wholly Yours, utterly dedicated to You;
and then use us, we pray, as You will, and always
to Your glory and the welfare of Your people; through our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.