In the Marketplace of Gods

This year, I’m preaching about Representing Christ in a Non-Christian Culture.  Last year, I asked you to tell me the hardest things about living for Christ these days.  Here at the start of the year, I am taking those obstacles you mentioned and asking, “What does Scripture tell us about this?”   One of the things you said you struggled with was relating to people of other religions.  Many of us grew up in a very Christian-dominated environment.  I might be an extreme case, but I didn’t know anyone who was of a non-Christian religion until I went off to college.  Today, our culture is more religiously diverse than it has ever been.  Many of us have close friends or relatives who are members of Non-Christian religions.  Most of us have neighbors, co-workers, or acquaintances who are of a different faith.  And all of us regularly pass by synagogues, mosques, temples, Kingdom Halls, and other buildings of Non-Christian faiths.  And that diversity will continue to increase.  We’re nice people, and we want to get along with our neighbors of other faiths.  We’re also Americans, so we treasure the freedom to worship as we see fit, and we don’t want to do anything that would infringe on that.  But most of all, we’re followers of Christ, and our obedience to His call should trump everything else.  So what instruction do we find in His Word about relating to people who worship other gods? 

This Sunday, we'll be looking at Acts 17.  Paul lived in a world even more religiously diverse than ours.  At one point, he found himself in Athens, which was, more than any other city (even Rome) where cultural thoughts and trends were formed.  In that sense, it functioned much like New York or LA does in our culture.  Athens was a city of many gods.  There was an ancient proverb that said, “In Athens, there are more gods than men.”  V. 16 says that Paul’s spirit was provoked within him as he saw all these gods.  The Greek word that’s used there has an implication of anger, even rage.  So what did Paul do?  We'll talk about it Sunday.

When Moral Standards Are Collapsing

This year, President Obama invited an Atlanta pastor named Louie Giglio to pray at his second inaugural.  Giglio is the founder of the Passion conference, which brings as many as 60,000 young Christian adults to Atlanta every year.  Moreover, he is a major figure in the fight against modern-day slavery, and since this year is the 150^th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Louie seemed like a great choice (To show you what a small world this is, years ago Louie Giglio served as a collegiate intern at my wife’s church, where he met and married a friend of Carrie’s family).  But a website called Think Progress found a sermon Louie preached fifteen years ago, in which he cited biblical references that call homosexual activity a sin.  The website urged people to protest his inclusion in the inaugural event.  Last week, Louie withdrew from the event, saying, "It is likely that my participation and the prayer I would offer will be dwarfed by those seeking to make their agenda the focal point of the inauguration." This all comes less than a year after “Chick-Fil-A-gate,” in which the president of Chick-Fil-A caused great controversy by stating in a magazine interview that he and his company supported “the biblical definition of marriage.”  Here’s why this is important: Not so long ago, perhaps as little as ten years ago, such statements wouldn’t have caused even a ripple in the media.  It shows us how much things have changed in our culture, and how quickly that change has happened.  It shows us that there is a wide gap between evangelical Christians and an increasing number of our fellow citizens when it comes to certain moral issues.   

            This is not going to be a sermon about the political issue of gay marriage.  I’m preaching all this year about representing Christ in a non-Christian culture.  Here at the start of the year, we’re looking at some of the main obstacles we face today.  In this message, I want to see what Scriptural principles we should put into practice when the moral standards of our culture change.  My prayer is that I can do this with great sensitivity and precision, knowing that this is a very personal issue for many people in our church, as well as people we love outside the church.  So here is the question we’ll be seeking to answer Sunday: In a culture where an increasing number of our friends, co-workers, classmates, and fellow citizens, including the media, think that our views are backward or even dangerous, how can we conduct ourselves in such a way that we represent the name of Jesus so well that everyone we meet is drawn closer to God just by knowing us, and some actually become reconciled with God?  Pray for me, that I would share the Word of God effectively, and for us, that we would represent Him well. 

The Job Description that Changes Everything

On July 4, 1854 in London, a condemned criminal ironically named Charles Peace was being led to the gallows to be hanged.  An Anglican priest was following behind him, reading from the Book of Common Prayer.  Believe it or not, in the prayer book there was a ceremony to be read at the execution of a criminal.  The priest read the following line: “Those who die without Christ experience Hell, which is the pain of forever dying without the release that death itself brings.”  At these words, the criminal stopped, whirled around, and shouted to the priest, “Do you believe that?  Do you believe that?”  The priest stammered, “Um…I suppose so.”  Peace said, “Well, I don’t.  But if I did, I'd get down on my hands and knees and crawl all over Great Britain, even if it were paved with pieces of broken glass, if I could rescue one person from what you just told me.” 

It’s amazing how sometimes unbelievers have a better grasp of the full implications of the Gospel than the people who preach it.  That man who was about to die for his crimes identified something that most law-abiding, church-going Christians never seem to grasp: If we believe what we say we believe, it should change everything about the way we relate to other people.  In fact, that should be the primary identifying mark of anyone who truly follows Jesus.  You will know Christians not because they go to church on Sundays or because they abstain from cussing and adultery and getting drunk on Saturday night.  You’ll know them by how they handle their relationships with others.

This Sunday, we'll look at the most succinct and challenging job description you'll ever read, found in 2 Corinthians 5:16-21.  It's Christ's expectation for you and me.  Let us not simply walk through life, mumbling our pre-digested prayers and tending to our religious duties, while our culture shambles along to its demise; let us be ambassadors for Christ, ministers of reconciliation between God and man. 

A Simple Plan to Change the World

When we were kids, my brother and I loved watching movies with our dad.  To my mother’s consternation, there were certain movies we liked watching over and over again.  One of these was The Magnificent Seven, in which a Mexican village is continually attacked by a ruthless gang of bandits.  So the villagers approach a gunfighter, played by Yul Brynner (the Eastern European gunfighter, a very big deal in the Old West), to defend them.  The gunfighter then recruits a team of righteous outlaws to help him overthrow the forces of evil, men like Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but The Magnificent Seven is actually a remake of a Japanese film, The Seven Samurai.  That same theme has been repeated over and over again in movie history; an elite team of heroes is assembled to use their various skills and cunning to rescue the helpless and destroy evil—think of The Avengers last summer.  And so it was that when the God of the Universe wanted to rescue this world, He formed a team of His own.  Only He could redeem us from our sins, but He chose twelve men to form the most significant movement in human history, an army who would take the saving message of redemption to the uttermost parts of the Earth.  Luke 6 tells us that Jesus chose them after spending an entire night alone in prayer.  This was no casual decision.  He wanted only the right men on His team.  Today, we know those men’s names well.  We name our sons after them, as well as cities, universities, and hospitals.  And we are part of the movement they began, a religion that claims up to 1/3 of the world’s population.  Christianity has changed our world more than any other human movement.  For a very simple example, think about what year it is: It’s 2013 years since the presumed date of Jesus’ birth.  Christianity gave rise to concepts that are key to the way we live, such as the university system, public education, hospitals, and ideas like the responsibility of a society to care for the weak, and the full personhood of children.  As Christians, we believe Christianity’s greatest contribution to mankind has been spreading the saving message of Jesus Christ so that millions are experiencing eternal life today; but even if you don’t believe that, you have to admit that the world is a better place because of what began with those 12 men chosen by our Lord.

But there’s still pervasive evil in our world.  What is God’s plan?  The plan hasn’t changed; He continues to assemble His team.  In every generation, He seeks men and women who will follow in the footsteps of those original Twelve to penetrate the darkness with courage and compassion, rescuing the world for Him.  That’s us.  We are His elite team.  Jesus is sending you and me out today to do what those first disciples did.  Someday, each of us is going to stand in judgment before Him.  And thank God, our salvation is not in question; that has been settled at the cross for all who believe.  But as Jesus said in the parable of the talents, He our master has left us with certain opportunities, and when He comes back, He’ll want to know what we’ve done with those opportunities.  I don’t want to be the one who buried my stuff in the ground and lived for myself.  I want to represent Him well.  That’s what I’ll be preaching about all this year: Representing Christ in a Non-Christian Culture.  About mid-way through last year, when I started to think this was the direction we needed to go in 2013, I started asking you and some Christian friends outside of WBC “What are the main obstacles we face in trying to represent Christ well?”  I got some great feedback.  Then I spent the better part of a week alone in a house Carrie’s sister owns in the Hill Country.  Brutally suffering for Christ, in other words.  I spent those days studying the people in Scripture who represented the Lord well in times of moral uncertainty and rampant unbelief.  What were the characteristics that God used in their lives to enable them to change the world for good?  What do we need to do in order to live out those same characteristics, to live in a way that is compelling and transformational to everyone we see?

I came up with a preaching schedule for 2013 called Mission Impossible: Representing Christ in a Non-Christian Culture.  This Sunday, we'll kick it off by looking at what Jesus required of His original 12 disciples...and what He still requires of you and me.  Here's a basic outline of the rest of the year's schedule:

1-13: The Job Description that Changes Everything. 2 Corinthians 5:16-21.    

1-20: When Moral Standards Are Collapsing, 2 Timothy 2:24-25, 1 Corinthians 6:19-21.     

1-27: In the Marketplace of Gods, Acts 17:16-34.   

2-3:  When our Faith is Unpopular, John 15:18-21, 16:1-3, 1 Peter 3:15-16, 4:12-19.    

2-10: When We Doubt Our Own Beliefs, Matthew 11:1-15. 

2-17: When We Feel Weak and Discouraged, 1 Kings 19:1-18. 

(Mid-February through March) Call on His Name: A Study of Prayer in the Names of Jesus.

(April through early May) Boldness: Storming Hell with a Water Pistol

(Late May through June) Irresistible Holiness: A Study of Colossians

(July) Unshakeable Faith

(August through early September) Hope: What the World is Looking For

(Mid-September through early November) Be the Church: A Study of Rev. 2-3

(Mid-November through Christmas)Wisdom: Being Good at Life

 

A Christmas Message for 2012

The Gift You Keep

John 15:5

 

 

Note: This is the message I delivered at our Christmas Eve service this year

Years ago, I was part of a Christmas Eve program at another church.  As part of the program, a couple of teenagers dressed up as Mary and Joseph and held a baby who was only a few months old, while our youth minister sang a song called, “A Strange Way to Save the World.”  The song is sung from the perspective of Joseph at that first Christmas, wondering why God chose to do things this way.  The chorus goes like this:

“Why me?  I’m just a simple man of trade.  Why Him, with all the rulers in the world?  Why here beside this stable filled with hay?  Why her?  She’s just an ordinary girl.  Now, I’m not one to second-guess what angels have to say.  But this is such a strange way to save the world.”

Our youth minister was an excellent singer, but he was a youth minister.  The spiritual gift of sarcasm is a job requirement.  In fact, I once said I was changing his title to “Minister of Ridicule,” and he considered it a compliment.  He just wasn’t what you would consider a tender kind of guy.  But as he sang this song, he started to choke up.  Tears were forming in his eyes and his voice was getting all husky and broken.  For a while, I thought he wasn’t going to be able to finish the song.  I was astonished; I didn’t even know the guy had tear ducts!  And then I suddenly realized: That baby those teenagers was holding wasn’t just any baby; it was his baby.  This was his first-born child.  Afterward, I talked to him about it, and he said, “I’ve sung that song before, but not since I became a dad myself.  I guess I’ll never be able to sing it again.”  He had grown up in church.  He had heard John 3:16 all his life: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life.”    But now, as he looked at his one and only son on that stage, he finally understood how much that cost God.  He thought about how much he would hate to give up his baby boy; how he would fight anyone to the death who wanted to harm his son.  On that day, he grasped in a way he never had before the amazing gift God gave to you and me in giving us His only Son. 

We all know that Christmas is a time for giving and receiving gifts.  Maybe the weirdest gift-giving tradition we have in our culture is the White Elephant gift exchange.  Sometimes this happens at Christmas parties; we all bring stuff we don’t want, put it in Christmas wrapping, and exchange it.  There’s a complicated game involved, where you have the option to trade your gift for something someone else opened.  People get furious with each other, and isn’t that the point of Christmas parties?  I’ve ended up with some truly fascinating stuff at these exchanges.  One year, I came home with a “Redneck Briefcase,” which was actually a pair of wooden handles glued to a large pair of men’s white cotton underwear.  You’ll be glad to know it has never been used.  Another time, I came home with a DVD copy of the film, “The English Patient,” which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, but to my knowledge, no human being has ever actually watched the film.  I’ve heard that doctors prescribe it to insomnia patients, along with the sermons of certain Baptist preachers.  We’re all familiar with that tradition, but did you ever wonder why we call it a “White Elephant” gift exchange?

Apparently, long ago the King of Siam had a strategy for destroying his enemies.  He would give them a gift: a baby albino elephant.  Albino elephants are extremely rare, as you can imagine, and in Siamese culture, this animal was considered sacred.  So the recipient of the gift would feel obligated to take excellent care of this baby elephant.  As it grew larger and larger, caring for the elephant would take up more and more of the man’s time, money and energy.   Eventually, the man would be utterly destroyed because of this gift.

Ironically, the world tends to give white elephant gifts.  Often, the worst thing that can possibly happen to us is to get exactly what we wanted.  So a woman might get a job she’s aspired to for years.  But in order to keep the job, she has to work long hours.  She had always been active in ministry to the disadvantaged, but now she doesn’t have time.  Not only do the poor miss out on her service, but she becomes much more selfish as time goes by.  Or a man buys a house in an exclusive neighborhood, thinking he is truly providing for his family.  But he is so in over his head with the mortgage, he never has any money to give to God’s work.  He used to be generous, but now all his money goes to pay for the house.  Meanwhile, his kids grow up learning that what matters most is money and status, which is the opposite of what he hoped to teach them.  Or a family puts their child in a select baseball or softball or soccer league.  But the tournaments are all out of town and on weekends, so they are rarely in church anymore.  Soon, the entire family starts to drift spiritually.  Jobs, houses, youth sports are all fine things.  None of these are things invented by the Devil, but he can use them to warp us.  My question is this: Do you have any white elephants in your life?  Is there anything in your life that makes you say, “If not for that, I could be more consistent in worship, more active in ministry, more generous with my resources, more disciplined in drawing near to God daily?”  I am not saying you have to get rid of your white elephant.  But ask God, “What do I need to in order to re-orient my life around your plan?”  He will show you the way.   

   Compare that to the gift God gave us in Jesus.  He said in John 15, “I am the vine and you are the branches.  If anyone abides in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit.  Apart from me, you can do nothing.”  Two things about that: First of all, He’s saying that He gives life.  Just like a branch gets its life from the vine it’s attached to, we get our life from our union with Jesus.  So the Devil uses gifts to steal life from us, to make us busy and bitter and stressed-out and tired.  But Jesus is a gift that fills us with hope, joy, peace, and transformed character.  The second thing to note about this is that Jesus says, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.”  If right now you’re not satisfied with your life; if you feel like you’re lacking something important, you might be tempted to think it’s a better job, a nicer house, or something else related to status or possessions.  And those things can indeed be blessings, but they’re not what you are lacking.  If you need more LIFE in your life, the answer is to focus on being united with Jesus.  Remove from your life whatever stops you from being fully committed to Him and dedicate yourself to drawing nearer to Him than you ever have before.  That is the gift you will never want to return. 

Christmas in Heaven

In just a few days, we will celebrate Christmas.  Based solely on the songs we sing and the cards we send this time of year, here’s how most people seem to think the story goes:  On December 25 in the year 0, a man named Joseph was trying to find a suitable place in Bethlehem for his wife to have their first child. But a cranky hotel manager took one look at this pregnant woman on a donkey and said “Hit the road!”  Fortunately, the innkeeper’s wife snuck Joseph and Mary into the stable behind the hotel.  This was a very unique stable featuring animals that never made a sound or went to the bathroom. The whole place was dirt-free, with reverent lighting and the smell of cinnamon and pine cones in the air.  There, Mary knelt down and, in a few moments of painless labor, produced a newborn baby with flawless skin and a golden halo around His perfectly formed head.  Like the animals, the baby also did not cry or go to the bathroom.  Ever.  Joseph was by this point useless, so Mary asked him to tear up strips of a satin bed sheet for Mary to wrap the baby in, figuring this was a job even a man couldn’t mess up.   Meanwhile, a group of shepherds who looked like bearded male models wearing LL Bean Hoodies were surprised by a group of angels who looked like naked infants with wings.  The angels told the shepherds to go to Bethlehem and see the new King, so they went immediately to the stable, which was easy to identify because a huge supernova star was sitting directly over it and the strains of the Hallelujah Chorus emanated from inside.  Curiously, no one else in town noticed this.  But soon some visitors from out of town arrived.  And so Mary, Joseph, and the baby were joined by three ornately dressed Kings, a little drummer boy, a crippled lamb, Frosty the Snowman, the full cast of the Nutcracker, and Joel Osteen.  After posing for a few pictures, the whole group went home, tucked themselves in for a long winter’s nap, and hoped that their names were on the good list so Santa would bring them a Nintendo 3DS in the morning. 

 

            Fortunately both Matthew and Luke give us separate accounts that tell us the real story of the birth of Christ.  But you may be surprised to know that there is a third account of the Christmas story in Scripture: Revelation 12:1-17.  I doubt any of you has ever heard a Christmas sermon on this passage, but it’s a Christmas passage nonetheless.  It shows us what the first Christmas looked like from Heaven’s perspective.  And it shows us what Christmas should tell us today.

 I'll be preaching on Revelation 12 this Sunday, December 23 in our 10:30 worship service.  I hope you can be there.  And I also hope you can join us for one of our Christmas Eve services.  Our 5:30 service is specially designed for families with young children (though all are welcome).  Our 7:00 service is a bit longer and more reverent in tone.  Either way, have a Merry Christmas!

Enough

As the song says, soon it will be Christmas Day.  I have to tell you, I am a confirmed Christmas junkie.  I love this season.  For me, the year isn’t complete until I drink some eggnog, watch Ralphie get his BB gun and George Bailey find ZuZu’s petals, and sing Joy the World and Hark the Herald Angels Sing about a hundred times.  I say that because what I am about to say is going to make me sound like a Grinch.  But here it is: In a week and a half, when you open your presents on Christmas morning, please know that nothing you open is going to make you happy.  Oh, some presents you receive will probably delight you.  If you are lucky enough to get one of those nice cars with a big red bow on them—like they show in those Satanic commercials—I am sure this will be a Christmas to remember for you.  But guess what?  That car won’t last.  If you sold it on December 26, you’d get a mere fraction of what your dutiful spouse paid for it in the first place.  Even if there was a true Christmas miracle and you got something more than a trinket or a toy…even if a lonely single person met Mr. or Ms. Right, or a poor person got a better-paying job, or a chronically sick person suddenly got well…those things in and of themselves wouldn’t bring lasting happiness.  After all, Mr. or Ms. Right would quickly prove to be all-too-human.  That uptick in your income will be nice for a while, but you’ll find all that extra money doesn’t go nearly as far as you thought it would.  And physical healing is nice, but these earthly bodies will wear out eventually, anyway.  So Merry Christmas!  Actually, I have a Christmas gift for all of you this morning.  The Word of God tells us about the gift that keeps on giving, a treasure that brings true, lasting happiness.  Let’s consider Proverbs 15:15-17, All the days of the oppressed are wretched, but the cheerful heart has a continual feast. Better a little with the fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil. Better a meal of vegetables where there is love than a fattened calf with hatred.

Keep in mind, the guy who wrote those words was the richest man in the world at the time.  He was talking about contentment, a subject that most of us know little about and rarely (if ever) consider.  But contentment is a key virtue of the Christian life--as we'll see Sunday when we take a look at 1 Timothy 6:6-10, Philippians 4:10-13.  Not only that, contentment leads to a happy life, free from the grasping and envy that is common to our current rat race existence.  Come to Westbury Sunday, and we'll talk about how to live a life that is a continual feast.