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Learning from the Church in Sardis
Monday, April 04, 2022Of the letters to the seven churches in the early part of Revelation, by far the most negative is the missive to Sardis in Revelation 3:1-6. Thankfully, the Jackson Heights church as a whole is not like the church in Sardis, but in any larger congregation of the Lord’s people, it’s likely that the lives of some individual Christians match the description. Though it’s unpleasant, each of us ought to soberly consider whether these words apply to us.
They had the name of being alive. The Christians in Sardis continued to meet. Others regarded them as faithful, but the reality was tragically different. Sadly, our reputation among brethren may not reflect our true spiritual state either.
They were doing some things right. Even though Jesus’ tone is harshly condemnatory, some parts of their former spiritual health remained. They still were doing a few good works that could be strengthened and completed. However, such remnants of righteousness can foster a dangerous attitude of complacency. When others question our spiritual health, it’s easy to defensively point to the things we’re still doing rather than being honest about the decline in our discipleship.
They were dead. It is possible to have the name and some of the works of being a Christian yet be headed for spiritual disaster. One of the characteristics of a living organism is its ability to grow and change, and the same is true of a living, healthy disciple. We must learn to assess the way we have changed spiritually over time so we can know whether we are growing or dying.
The beginning of COVID in March 2020 makes a handy benchmark. Since that time, a living disciple will have grown. They will have learned to bear more fruit for the Master. They will have won victories in the war against sin. They will have become more committed to assembling, Bible study, and prayer. By contrast, the dead disciple will have become stagnant or lost ground in these areas.
Which one describes us?
They needed to wake up. The devil rejoices in every Christian who needs to change but doesn’t see the need. He loves to lull us into a false sense of security so that we don’t confront our spiritual problems until it’s too late.
It’s pleasant to hear the soothing lies of the devil, but it’s very unpleasant to hear warnings from the word and our brethren. Nobody loves the sound of an alarm clock! However, if we reject those warnings, if we roll over and continue to sleep on our dangerous condition, eternal disaster is the certain result. The obnoxious Christians who keep harping on our shortcomings really are the best friends we have.
They needed to repent. The hard part of discipleship isn’t the knowing. It’s the doing. It’s the determining to change and then changing. Satan is amazing at providing us with excuses not to change. If we are in decline, we will have no trouble coming up with reasons why our decline is inconsequential or even necessary: “I just can’t make Sunday evening services anymore because. . .”
That voice is not the voice of our Master. Instead, He summons us to repent, to make the hard choices, to pluck out the offending eye, to sacrifice earthly comfort for the sake of an eternal reward. If we find discipleship comfortable, we aren’t doing it right. Repentance is never enjoyable, but it’s the only path that leads to life.
The Lunch Lady
Wednesday, March 23, 2022One of the best-attended funerals I’ve ever preached was for a school lunch lady. Her name was Marlene Norris. She was a faithful member of the church in Joliet, with which I was working at the time, along with her husband and three of her children. As is the custom in those parts, they asked me to offer the eulogy.
I arrived at the funeral home early and noticed when I went into the parlor that half the chairs had been removed. Only 40 or 50 remained. Nobody was expecting a big turnout.
This didn’t surprise me. I’d known and been friendly with Marlene ever since my arrival in the area, but she wasn’t a standout in the congregation. She attended regularly, but she didn’t speak up in Bible class, teach children’s classes, or sing so that I could hear her voice. If I remembered her for anything, it was for faithfully updating me on her various ailments every time I greeted her. To the extent that there is such a thing as an ordinary saint, she was it.
The family was already there, both those who were members in good standing and those who weren’t. I knew them all. I also knew the funeral-attenders from the congregation who were beginning to arrive. You know the type: those staunch older Christians who can be relied upon to show up for absolutely everything, including the funerals of members of the congregation, their relatives, and even notable brethren from surrounding congregations. They offer one of the little-recognized fringe benefits of being a child of God—the knowledge that no matter who dies, you won’t have to grieve alone.
However, a third group also began to trickle in, a group of people I did not know. They weren’t family. Frequently, they had the wrong skin color to be family. They weren’t funeral-attenders either. They weren’t nicely dressed, utterly respectable, utterly at ease. They didn’t look like they belonged. They sure thought they belonged, though.
There were a lot of them, too. They filled the available seating, so the funeral-home staff brought back a row of chairs. Soon it was filled with people, then another row, then another row.
The process continued even after the funeral service began. These weren’t people who had ever known the stern duty of appearing punctually at The Next Appointed Time. Being 10 or 15 minutes late was nothing to them, but Marlene Norris was something.
By the time the last amen was said, the room was full of chairs, and the chairs were full of people. If I remember rightly, there were even folks standing because there were no more seats to be found. I’ve never seen anything like it.
The only explanation I can offer is the one in Marlene’s obituary. It reads, “No one could ever walk in her home and not eat. She will be remembered for her giving and caring spirit, always putting everyone else’s needs before her own.” That sounds like an obituary commonplace, right up there with “She loved her family,” and “She loved to travel.” All the dead are generous and compassionate in their obituaries.
In Marlene’s case, though, I think the obituary spoke truth. I think there were students at Gompers Junior High School for whom Marlene the lunch lady was the only kind voice in their lives. I think there were people who came to her kitchen at home because it was the only place on the planet where they could find warmth and food and love.
I’m guessing about all this because Marlene never mentioned any of it to me, even while she was giving me every detail about her ingrown eyelashes. I don’t think she thought about it much. Compassion was simply the water in which she swam. However, at the end of her days, the recipients of her kindness rose up and bore witness.
Such is greatness in the kingdom of heaven.
God's Great Love
Tuesday, March 22, 2022Sometimes, I run into people online who want to separate the grace of God from the good works that we are called to do. We are saved by grace, they say, so the things we do don’t matter much either way. We don’t get to judge anybody as being outside of grace.
These convictions simply don’t square with the both-and nature of the gospel. Yes, we are saved by God’s love and grace. No, we can’t save ourselves.
However, our encounter with God is supposed to transform us. We aren’t supposed to love wickedness anymore. We are supposed to love righteousness and spend the rest of our lives showing gratitude for our salvation. If, on the other hand, we are more drawn to the pleasures of sin than to our Savior, something has gone terribly wrong.
This is the distinction that John draws in 1 John 2:28-3:10. We’re children of God, but if we don’t make our parentage evident in several different ways, we prove that our true father is somebody else. Let’s see how this works out as we consider the implications of God’s great love.
First, John discusses ABIDING IN HIM. Let’s read from John 2:28-29. The idea here is simple. As God is supposed to dwell in us, we are supposed to abide in Him. If we do, we can confidently welcome Him at His return. If we don’t, we will have to cringe back in shame. In other words, the way we live has eternal consequences.
Abiding in God is vital, and we can know what we need to do by considering His nature. God is righteous. He loves even those who hate Him. He sends His mercy on the just and the unjust. However, He Himself never does evil. He is perfectly holy.
If we abide in God, or, to use John’s alternate formulation, we have been born of God, that same behavior ought to show up in us. The people who knew me when I was 10 would have no trouble recognizing Marky as my son. He looks like I did, and he has the same smart mouth that I had! Likewise, people can tell that we are God’s children when we look and act like Him. They see the resemblance when we practice righteousness.
This doesn’t mean that we live perfectly and never sin. Instead, it means that we habitually do good instead of evil. Sin is the exception in our lives, not the rule. If sin is the rule rather than the exception, we need to mend our ways before we become ashamed on the day of judgment.
From here, John explores the meaning of being CHILDREN OF GOD. Look at 1 John 3:1-3. Notice that we don’t become children of God by working really hard or being really good. Instead, we are His children because His love has made us His children. We had no part in His family, but He adopted us into it.
Now, we are children of God, but when He appears, we will become something else. When we see Him, we will be made like Him. To use Paul’s language in Philippians 3, He will bring our bodies into conformity with the body of His glory.
This is deeply meaningful to me. Every day, I encounter the limitations of my body and feel the ways that it is failing. Many of you are in the same position. However, in the resurrection, we will have a body that is literally like Christ’s: perfect, indestructible, and magnificent. Oh, what a hope we have!
As John observes, this hope should lead us now to imitate His purity. Wanting to be like God means wanting to be like God in everything. We can’t seek conformity with His eternal, glorious body while rejecting conformity with His holy spirit. It’s an all-or-nothing deal.
This means, then, that the resurrection should shape every spiritual decision we make. Do we want to become like God, or are we catering to the desires of our flesh, which is frail, corruptible, and doomed? In either case, whatever we are seeking is what we will end up with.
Next, John exposes the ugliness of PRACTICING SIN. This appears in 1 John 3:4-6. Notice the ways that he describes people like this. They practice lawlessness. They defeat the purpose of Him who came to take away sin. They do not abide in Him. They have not seen Him. They do not know Him.
These are horrible things to say about anyone who claims to be a Christian, but we must soberly ask ourselves if they apply to us. Most people who assemble on Sundays aren’t openly practicing sin, but the secret practice of sin is another matter altogether. I’ve known Christians who showed up for services three times a week while they were cheating on their spouses. I hope that nobody here this morning is doing that, but I also know that appearances can be deceiving and somebody here might be.
Of course, adultery is not the only possible sin to practice, and in the Bible, there’s no such thing as a venial sin. Even the sins that seem smallest and least to us will cost us our souls if we make a habit of them. They will show that we don’t belong to God.
Now, if I were here in the crowd today, and I were practicing sin, all this would leave me feeling pretty low! If that’s you, though, I’m not here to shame you. I’m here to plead with you.
Don’t be the person we finished reading about. Nobody wants that for you, least of all God. Recognize where you are, recognize how much is at stake, and make the change you need to make.
Finally, John calls us to ask, “WHOSE CHILDREN ARE WE?” Let’s conclude our reading with 1 John 3:7-10. Our analysis of this must begin with John’s first words. He is warning us not to be deceived in these matters because it is so easy to be deceived.
Indeed, this is Satan’s goal for all of us. He wants us to believe we’re good enough to inherit eternal life when really we’ve been serving ourselves for years. To this end, he loves to get us focused on the things we’re doing right. He wants us to say, “Yeah, I know this thing I keep doing is wrong, but look at all that I do for God! Surely my good works will outweigh my sin in His eyes!”
This argument is powerfully deceptive. Two of those adulterers I mentioned above were deacons of the church, and I’m sure they minimized their sin to themselves in light of all they did for the kingdom. The problem is, though, that when we think like this, we are treating our good works like something extra we’re doing for God when He already is entitled to our perfect obedience.
John’s words are unambiguous. If we practice righteousness, we are righteous and children of God. If we practice sin, we are wicked and the children of the devil. The lives we live determine whether our initial salvation is of any account at all.
It's Not a Wonderful World
Thursday, March 17, 2022Recently, I ran across an NBC News story about a woman in the Lviv train station who played “What a Wonderful World” on a piano as refugees from the fighting in Ukraine streamed past. Of course, NBC painted her as a Symbol Of Hope amid devastation and despair, a promise of Better Days Ahead. The secular must seize on such symbols because if they can’t hope in this life, no hope remains.
I wondered, though, what the refugees thought of the message of the song, if they thought about it at all. When you’ve been driven from your home with nothing but the clothes on your back, does the world seem wonderful? How about when you know that people just like you are being callously slaughtered, and you’re fleeing for your life? How about when you look into your future and see a refugee camp or worse?
Perhaps I’m wrong, but I don’t think wonderful worlds have refugee camps in them.
The delusion of a perfectible world has been hard to sustain, these past few years. COVID has carried off millions. In the worldwide wave of government mandates that has accompanied it, we saw a determination to master the disease from those who must believe that disease can be mastered.
The recent retraction of those mandates isn’t a declaration of victory, whatever the spinmeisters may say. It’s an admission of defeat, an acknowledgement that we are at the mercy of a malevolent force that is too powerful for us. COVID might stop on its own, but we can’t stop it.
We cannot restrain brutal dictators, we cannot limit the ravages of disease, and we cannot keep disaster from overtaking our own lives. I have spent my life diligently pursuing wisdom and living according to it, only to find out that I was doomed to die young from the moment I was conceived. I’m certain that wonderful worlds don’t have ALS in them.
Of course, it’s not all bad. I have savored tremendous beauty, joy, and love in my life. Even after sin and death have done their work, we still can glimpse the original glory of God’s creation. Likewise, making a better world for our brother and our neighbor is a noble goal for any disciple of Jesus.
However, the world remains stubbornly irreparable, and the earthly good that we can do is limited by its setting. The fatal flaw of life under the sun is that it’s fatal, and people who hope in it will be disappointed.
This is not the hope of the Christian. We know we can’t defeat our earthly enemies, and the Bible warns us that life here is vain. Even as we drink of earthly delight, we must not hold the cup too tightly. Even as we work, we must remember that the good we do is temporary, but tragedy is here to stay.
Instead, our hope is in Jesus. Rather than trying to fix this broken world, He will consume its ruins with fire. Our eternal home will much better, new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. By His power, the dust of the slaughtered refugee, the COVID victim, and the ALS sufferer will be raised up to new life. The resurrected faithful will enjoy eternity with Him by His grace.
This world isn’t wonderful, and it never will be. Our Savior is wonderful, and He never will be anything else.
Misunderstanding the Messiah
Tuesday, March 15, 2022In this life, there are a few certainties. Water is wet, the sun rises in the east, and the mass-media articles written around Christmas and Easter about Jesus are drivel. However, during the last holiday season, I encountered one that, despite its clickbait title (“The Way We Think About the Messiah Is Very Problematic”), was semi-not-drivelly. It can be found at https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-way-we-think-about-the-messiah-is-very-problematic.
The first thing that the article gets right is its observation that the story of Jesus’ birth is a messianic one. In our society, the conflation of the birth narratives with the secular, commercial holiday of Christmas does a great deal to confuse the issue. When Lauren and I still lived in Joliet, every December we sought out a house that had in its front yard a nativity scene complete with Santa Claus gazing adoringly into the manger. In addition to being hilarious, it aptly illustrated the muddle of the American mind concerning the birth of the Lord.
The article correctly notes that the star that the magi followed was a royal, messianic symbol. Though the author doesn’t spend much time delving into the gospels, the birth accounts of both Matthew and Luke are replete with messianic language and imagery. We must understand Jesus as Messiah according to the thinking of first-century Jews and the prophecies they pondered.
From this accurate observation, though, the article goes astray. It critiques the traditional Christian belief that Jesus was more truly the Messiah (indeed, the only true Messiah) than, for instance, Simon bar Kokhba, the so-called messiah who led a Jewish revolt against the Romans from 132-136 AD. It dismisses texts like Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 by denying that they “refer to a crucified messiah” and claiming that it “seems unfair to imply that Jewish interpreters were overlooking something”.
However, there’s a problem here. If Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 aren’t messianic texts, what are? The obvious answer is, “prophecies that mention anointing or the Anointed One”.
Such prophecies are hard to find. Though I may be overlooking something, I can find only one clearly prophetic Old-Testament text that mentions anointing: Isaiah 61:1-2. However, when Jesus applies this prophecy to Himself during His visit to Nazareth in Luke 4:16-30, his audience apparently thinks that He’s claiming to be a prophet, not a messiah.
Other passages that mention the Anointed One and turned out to be prophetic, such as Psalms 2 and 45, are not obviously predicting future events. If I were a first-century Jew and interpreting them without the benefit of Acts 4:25-28 and Hebrews 1:8-9, I would have assumed that they referred to the historical Davidic kings. After all, the Scriptures often call Israelite kings “the Lord’s anointed”.
By contrast, the passages that the Jews did identify as messianic don’t mention anointing. The Micah 5 prophecy we’ve already examined doesn’t, but Herod’s counselors say it’s messianic anyway. After the time of Jesus, the Jews apply the prophecy of Numbers 24:17 to bar Kokhba (“bar Kokhba” means “son of the star”), and there’s nothing in it about anointing either.
In short, there’s no principled reason for Jewish interpreters to have denied that Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 were messianic while affirming that Micah 5 and Numbers 24 were. The latter fit in with their expectations; the former didn’t. If you’re looking for a martial messiah, you’re going to reject anything about a suffering-servant messiah, even if you have reason not to.
Such reasons are particularly apparent in Isaiah 53 and its context. In Isaiah 52:13-14, the prophet predicts a servant who will be successful and exalted, yet appalling and disfigured. The first half of the prophecy sounds awfully messianic, which implies that the second half is too.
The Jews could have, and indeed should have, picked up on that, particularly when Isaiah 53 goes on to warn them that the servant will be misunderstood and rejected yet victorious. They were on notice to look for a messiah who would subvert their expectations, but they didn’t listen. Once we add “suffering” to the portfolio of the Messiah, all sorts of other passages and prophecies, from Psalms 22 and 69 to Zechariah 10-13, commend themselves to our attention. Only Jesus fulfilled all of them.
After this, though, the article does us a service by warning us against the distinction between Jesus the spiritual Messiah and the hoped-for political messiahs of the Jews. This is a temptingly easy distinction for us to make. Then, we can put Jesus in the church box—the box of a God who used to do things but doesn’t anymore—and look elsewhere for the solutions to our problems. Is it surprising, then, when Christians begin to describe contemporary political figures using language that Second Temple Jews would have called messianic?
This way of thinking fails both to reckon with the political dimensions of Jesus’ work and to give Him the place that He deserves in our lives. He wasn’t conventionally political like bar Kokhba was, but His ministry was politically significant nonetheless. When He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, cleansed the temple, and condemned the chief priests, He was making political statements. Certainly, His enemies understood them as such; that’s why they killed Him. His early disciples did the same in confronting the Sanhedrin or refusing to sacrifice to Caesar, and they faced similarly dire consequences.
Today, we too must embrace the political implications of our hope. As He did 2000 years ago, Jesus still calls us to look for a deliverance that the world around us does not expect. We must not put our trust in princes nor think that if we elect the right group of leaders, the ills of this life will be put right. Instead, salvation will come from God and His Anointed. Christ continues to guide the course of history according to His will, and He will appear at its climactic end to vanquish evil forever and reward all those who have put their trust in Him.