CHESS, ANYONE?

     I often think of my life as a chess game played with the Holy Spirit. He makes the first move. Then he waits for me to move. Then he makes another move, and so on. When he moves a piece, I have to respond to that specific move. He is not playing against me, rather for me and with me, helping me win. I have learned that he usually doesn't move out of turn and he doesn't make my move for me as a rule.
     God makes promises to us. We read those in the Bible. Those are his moves. Our move is to respond in faith and act as if we believe. Then, in time, he moves.
     Thinking of our lives as a call and response to the lover of our souls makes sense of so many Bible stroies:

•      He promised Abraham a son, making him the father of many. God's move. Then Abraham and Sarah, the old couple, had to couple. Their move. Then, Sarah, whose womb had long died, gave life. God's move.  

•      God tells Israel that Jericho will be delivered into their hands. His move. They had to march around Jericho seven times. On the sixth trip around there there was no evidence that God's promise would be kept. One more time around. Their move. The walls came down. God's move.

•      Jesus told the man with the withered hand to stretch it out. God's move. The man does as he was told. His move. Jesus healed his hand. God's move.

•      To the man born blind, Jesus said, "Go wash in the pool of Siloam." Jesus' move. The man does it. His move. He receives his sight. God's move. 

•      Etc. etc.

     You see what I mean.

     For whatever reason, God wants to partner with us in everything. His call is his promise. Our response is faith in a person we can trust. Then he moves again. And as I have learned, he usually doesn't move out of turn.

     Even though we only need faith the size of a mustard seed and we get to pray, "I believe, help my unbelief," we still need to believe and act as if we do.

     In light of that, what do you make of Mark 11:22, 24?

Jesus said to them, "Have faith in God..."

"For this reason I tell you, whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."

REPENTANCE

When I say with Paul that "God chose us to be in Christ before the creation of the world" (Ephesians 1:4) and that conversion is working up to that fact, I am often asked where then does REPENTANCE fit in?

After all, if we were found in Christ before we were lost in Adam, does our REPENTANCE count for anything? Since the New Testament and Jesus especially, talk about REPENTANCE, I should have an answer.

Most evangelical Christians have heard that our REPENTANCE is something we must do as a step in connecting with God's salvation. When I ask people what they think REPENTANCE means, the conversation goes something like this:

PEOPLE: "REPENTANCE is realizing we have sinned, saying I'm sorry and asking for forgiveness."

ME: "When you say sorry, do you have to be sincere or just say the words?"

PEOPLE: "You have to be sincere."

ME: "How sincere do you have to be? I mean, when do you know for sure that you have been sincere enough?"

You can see where this logic leads. We can never be sorry enough, sincere enough or believing enough ... and we know it. 

If there is a single human performance link in the chain that unites to God - we are doomed.

Whatever needs to be done to unite us to God must be done by HIM.

So now we can talk about how Jesus sees REPENTANCE. His most extensive teaching on this subject is found in his parables of the lost sheep, the coin, and the son in Luke 15.

A shepherd finds a lost sheep who will die without rescue and Jesus says, "In the same way, I tell you there is rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who REPENTS..."

QUESTION: What was the lost sheep's REPENTANCE?

A coin gets lost and a woman searches high and low to find it. Jesus says, "In the same way I tell you, there is rejoicing in heaven in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who REPENTS."

QUESTION: What did the lost coin do that in any way resembles our popular view of REPENTANCE?

Jesus teaches that REPENTANCE is like being found by a good shepherd or a determined housekeeper when we are helpless to do or say anything. The sheep and coin did nothing and contributed nothing to being saved.  

REPENTANCE, according to Jesus, is letting ourselves be found. 

REPENTANCE is like being welcomed home, which brings us to the lost son. The prodigal comes home because he is hungry and looking for food. The Father goes out and saves him. The coin, the sheep, and the son do nothing like our common view of REPENTANCE.

REPENTANCE is waking up to the truth that we are already accepted and then accepting our acceptance. 

REPENTANCE is the experience of being found.

Admitting our sin and saying sorry to God is entirely appropriate, but this is not REPENTANCE and doesn't save us.

The Father of Jesus, who is also our Father, does it all.

RECEIVING CHRIST?

People often use this term to recount their conversion.
Receiving Christ or inviting him into our hearts, however, is not New Testament language and gives a distorted impression of what actually happens in so called conversion.


If Paul's view of reality is anything to go on, then Jesus, from eternity, has already included us in his life. 

Conversion to Christ is then us coming out of darkness and awaking to this truth.

Here is Paul:  

"Long before he laid down earth's foundations, God had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ." Ephesians 1:4-5

And...

"God who saved us and called us, not according to our works, but according to his own purposes and grace, which was given to us in Jesus Christ before time began."

So, receiving Christ amounts to awaking to the truth that you are already home free. 

When Paul said, 

"It is for Freedom that Christ set us free"

and 

"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" 

his words were based on this insight.

If we worry about our own performance regarding connecting with God, we are not free.

Bondage follows fretting over the quality of our repentance and the rightness of our believing.

We may feel closer to God when we are good and alienated when we are bad, but it's all illusion. 

The Father did not leave it to us whether or not he accepted us. 

His purposes are in no way dependent on our opinions or our decisions. 

We don't get a vote. 

"Long before God laid the earth's foundations, he decided to adopt us into his family."

In a real sense, coming alive to this truth is a kind of conversion. Everything changes. Realizing that we are included in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, that we are home free forever does or at least should transform us.

• Our guilty conscience loses its grip on our imagination. 
• Other people's opinions of us exercise less power. 

Seeing how well loved and eternally secure we are and always have been, enables us to take risks:

1. love others, all others
2. and freely forgive
3. take risks

We begin to see the world as a safe place for us.

The greatest and most life changing benefit of all is what pops into our imaginations when we think of God. We now see him loving us with no shadow of turning. 

There was never a time, nor will there ever be a time when he looks upon us with anything other than loving acceptance. 

CALL JESUS

Last week I performed the wedding of my third son.

It seemed appropriate to speak of Jesus' first miracle - turning water into wine in order to rescue a wedding ceremony after the wine had run out. This was a shame based culture and saving face was paramount. Therefore, failing to provide hospitality for guests equaled deep humiliation for the host families and the couple would have to begin their life together in shame.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, assumed leadership in this situation and determined to solve the problem. She asked Jesus to "do something."

At first he put her off by saying, "It is not yet my time."

But she refused to take no for an answer and told the servants to do whatever Jesus told them to.


Lesson?

                Got a problem?

Call Jesus and don't take no for an answer. If he communicates to you in some way, in Scripture or more directly, do whatever he tells you to do.

This is what the servants did. After they filled six water jars with water, Jesus turned that water into wine.

Problem solved.

This often happens when Jesus gets involved and gains our cooperation. Not only is a problem solved, in this case, a humiliating deficit is turned into a joyful abundance. This happy ending would never have happened if, when the wine ran out, everyone had focused on who was to blame. After all, it was someone's fault that there wasn't enough wine. 

Faultfinding and blame shifting not only kills problem solving, it's something Jesus repeatedly refused to get involved in. So Mary didn't go there. She focused on the need for more and Jesus as provider.

Another thought....

Running out of celebration wine is a significant social embarrassment, but not a life and death issue. 

Why would Jesus perform his first miracle simply to prolong a party and protect people from shame? 
  

We might ask such a question if we see Jesus as primarily concerned with the big spiritual issues of life... 

sin

forgiveness 

obedience

redemption

the last judgment

etc. 

But this story shows that Jesus cares about what we care about. 

He is in every corner of our lives, seeking to repair and add value to all of it. 

He is within our love of babies, baseball, barbeque, and all the rest.

This story tells us we can look for Jesus everywhere and call on him for any need and share with him every joy.  

THE GOD WHO STOOPS

Religion, including what often passes for Christianity, is all about how we reach UP to GOD. 
Religion is predicated on the false notion that there is a GAP between us and GOD.

us                      GOD

And that doing religion right is how we bridge that GAP.

us ------------> GOD

The Gospel, by contrast, is radical, different, unique, one-of-a-kind. Only the Gospel tells of the GOD Who Stoops to unite with us - not where we ought to be, but where we are.

us <------------ GOD

THIS IS THE GREAT REVERSAL...

Both the Old and New Testaments show GOD as being keen to reverse the positions of those who are above with those who are below. Old Testament prophets often proclaimed that their GOD brings down the ruling powerful from their thrones, to lift up the poor and vulnerable. He did just this in the Exodus and numerous other places. In the New Testament, Jesus spoke of the prideful being cast down and the humble being raised up in echo of what his Father is like.

No one could have guessed or would have ever imagined how far GOD would go in his greatest reversal. Two thousand years ago, the GOD of all power stepped down from his cosmic throne. In Jesus, he humbled himself, became one of us, united himself to us in our poverty and vulnerability, in order to lift us UP.


Religion says we are to lift ourselves UP by doing more and trying harder. 

• If you are a Buddhist, you must be nice and successfully complete the Eight-Fold Path of Enlightenment. 
• If you are a Muslim, you have to pray five times a day, pilgrimage to Mecca, etc. etc.
• If you are a Jew, you must keep over 600 laws. Good luck with that. 
• If you are New Age, you have to save the whales and go green. 
• If you are a Christian, some churches say your doing more and trying harder comes in the form of giving time, energy, money, and not embarrassing the church leadership with bad behavior.

In other words, religion sees a GAP between us and the Divine and knows nothing of the GOD Who Stoops to lift us UP to where he is, free of charge or effort.


The next time you hear someone wonder if all religions are the same, say YES.

Only the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of GOD, Son of Man, is different.

FORGIVEN

Love keeps no record of wrong. That's what it says in I Corinthians 13:5.
On the day Jesus died, God fired all the bookkeepers in heaven and assigned them happier jobs. 


John says in I John 2:2, that Jesus died for our sins and the sins of the whole world.
And Paul says, "God made you alive with Christ. He FORGAVE ALL our sins, having canceled the written code...He took it away, nailing it to the cross." Colossians 2:13-14 

This means there is now  -

NO RECORD OF WRONG

 Eternally FORGIVEN

If there be any doubt about this, Jesus himself said, "Father FORGIVE them," as he died.
 
Now when we think about the judgment of God at the end of the age,
                                                      when God destroys all sin and evil,
                                                     He can do so without destroying us.

Should we choose to believe this Good News, we can walk through life free of guilt and shame.

And because we are fully and eternally FORGIVEN, we can now FORGIVE others.

This is also Good News.

We have all been hurt by others - sometimes grievously.

I know from personal experience that FORGIVING our enemy, especially a beloved enemy is not easily done.

To FORGIVE something serious is to experience a kind of death.

God bore in His flesh the pain and death of FORGIVING a world.

We experience our own little deaths by following him in this work.

And it is work - and may take time.

But it is work that has to be done and is well worth the doing.

If my wife and I didn't regularly FORGIVE each other, our marriage would be unbearable.

If I don't FORGIVE others, my life becomes unbearable.

When we are able to FORGIVE, we set others free and find that we too, are set free.

After all, withholding FORGIVENESS is like eating rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.

When God, in Christ, FORGAVE the world, He did it not only for us, but also for Himself.

He lives with a free and generous Spirit toward us.

Following Him empowers us to live with a free and generous spirit toward others too.

Jesus tells us to FORGIVE as we have been FORGIVEN.

Again, he's looking out for us.

TREASURE!

In Matthew 13, Jesus tells this story...

"The kingdom of heaven is like a man who found a TREASURE in a field and with joy, sold all he owned to buy that field."

Imagine walking into a field and finding something so beautiful, so valuable ...

that all you possess or could ever gain in this life pales in comparison.

So you make a sign... EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!!! ...and have a garage sale.

Everyone thinks you've lost your mind.

             "Why are you doing this?" they demand.

You point to the field and smile. 

"I'm buying that!"

"You're crazy," they protest. 

"Don't you see? You're losing everything." 

But you just keep smiling because you know that with the field comes the TREASURE. You are gaining - not losing. With joy you sell ALL, because you've seen a beauty worth losing EVERYTHING for.

I like this story. I've preached it many times as though we were the ones who find the great TREASURE - the kingdom of God - worth losing everything for.

But recently, my son, Aaron, wondered, "What if GOD is the man who sold everything and WE are the TREASURE?"

Yes. 

Yes.

Even better.

It is a little story that points to the big story.

We are the TREASURE God emptied himself to buy. 

When Jesus came from heaven to find us, he found his TREASURE.

Heaven was bankrupt as Jesus gave ALL and died for us.

"But for the JOY set before him he endured the cross..."

the pain and the loss...

Hebrews 12:2

JOY?  

Yes. The JOY of finding and gaining the TREASURE.

Think what it cost God to own you and now what JOY He has in having you.

You are the TREASURE!