The Battle Primeval – Desires, Wishes, or Hope

Preached on Sunday, November 25, 2018

Scripture readings: Genesis 3:17-20; 1 Corinthians 15:12-22; Luke 24:1-12

Southern California and Santa Catalina Island, June, 2018

Once upon a time, there was a Bible Zoo. The owners collected animals from all over the world so that people could come and see all the animals mentioned in the Bible. As much as they could, the owners tried, in each exhibition, to show the animals in the scene, or in the action, mentioned in the Bible

So, a guy was taking his family through this Bible Zoo, and around these exhibits. They came to the one with the verse from Isaiah 11:6-7 “The lion shall lie down with the lamb”. That’s not actually in the Bible that way. (There are wolves and lambs, and lions and calves, but not lions and lambs. We shouldn’t fuss about this.) But, the zoo had them lying down together, anyway, on a small lawn with a lily pond, because everyone was expecting to see them like that.

This guy was amazed to look at them: the lion and lamb together and quiet. He turned to a nearby groundskeeper and asked him: “How do they do that?” And the groundskeeper replied, “Well, they have to replace that lamb every day.”

There are plenty of people who look at the promises of the Word of God that way. Even Christians find it hard to understand the very concept of hope. Even the common English language is confused at the concept of hope, to say the least.

A few weeks ago, I was thinking about what I had to get done that day. I said to myself, “I hope it doesn’t freeze tonight.” I hoped that because I hadn’t gotten around to insulating my outdoor faucets yet. In spite of my hopes, I left my other stuff undone, for a while, in order to get those faucets covered.

Of course, once that was done, I didn’t have to hope that it wouldn’t freeze that night. In fact, I didn’t need hope at all, anymore.

People like me say that kind of thing all the time. “I hope this doesn’t happen. But I sure hope that happens instead.” We’re not talking about hope at all. We’re talking about wishes: only wishes.

It’s as though we have no idea what hope means.

In the Bible our hopes are only wishes when we place our hopes in something else, or in someone less, than God; or else, our hopes are only wishes when we make our God too small, or when our hopes have forgotten who God truly is, and what our God can do.

Our three readings from the Scriptures are about hope, or about the lack of it, or about why our hopes are so weak and small.

The reading from the third chapter of Genesis (Genesis 3:17-20) tells us that we humans, who were given the opportunity to live abundantly and forever, chose death over life when they ate the fruit of a knowledge that was way too much for them to digest. They ate the knowledge that was too much for them, in order to make themselves like God.

They knew they shouldn’t do this. They knew that death was part of their choice. Waiting for the God who walked with them in the garden to choose a time to give them the fruit if he thought it was time for it, that could have been one of their greatest hopes, but they chose against hope and for their own destructive desires. We inherited from them a nature that prefers desires (and even wishes) to hope.

Only in Jesus does God offer us a life of hope again. When we choose him, we choose hope, but first we must relearn, from Jesus, the hope we’ve never known before.

Adam and Eve believed false hopes (or wishes) in the form of lies, because choosing the lies served them better than faith and hope. The result of this lost capacity for a reliable, God-centered faith and hope, is that we find ourselves in this broken world, and in these broken lives, where death seems stronger than life, and evil seems stronger than love, and stronger than God.

Because we have inherited the mental and spiritual deformities of sin, and of this world, we can only see the evidence of what has gone wrong, and we can only see that the odds are against hope. We don’t realize that God isn’t bound by what we see, or by how we count our chances. In God, in Christ, hope is not about the evidence. Hope is not about the odds.

Writing to the Christians in the Greek city of Corinth, Paul responded to the rumors that his friends, there, found it hard to hope in a resurrection of their bodies. They were convincing themselves that not even Jesus defeated death with his own physical body. They liked the idea of heaven much more than they liked the report of the resurrection.

They thought that perfection and glory were only possible for spiritual beings, because they believed that all matter (like their bodies) marched in lock step with decline and decay. If Jesus raised his own body from the dead, then he was doomed and so were they.

They didn’t want to save the world they lived in, and they didn’t want themselves to be saved in flesh, and blood, and bone. They wanted to escape from the world. They wanted to escape from their bodies. They wanted to be souls only; flying around freely in a far-away heaven.

Paul told them that exactly the opposite was true. Paul told them that the salvation and life that came from Christ was a lie if Christ was unable to conquer this world, and their bodies, and everything wrong with this universe. Christ was able to do anything he chose. Christ could conquer and heal and empower everything good. Christ could conquer everything created by God for good, no matter how much of a lost cause it may seem.

Timothy Keller says this about the conquest of Jesus, and what it means for our lives. “If Christianity is true, the good things we have cannot be lost.” Jesus enlarges our hopes to include every gift that lifts our hearts and gives us joy.

Christ could only save them if he was Lord of All. Jesus is Lord of the creation. He is Lord of the atoms, and Lord of the galaxies. He is the Lord of our souls, and the Lord of our bodies. He is the defeater of sin, and death, and the devil. He is able to replace the whole universe with eternal, and victorious, and overcoming life.

The Corinthians had made the mistake of settling for hopes that were much too small. They felt safer with smaller hopes, but small hopes don’t make a full life. They would only find life if they had a large and daring hope; only if they hoped for the unimaginable and the seemingly impossible and stake their faith and hope on a God who promised to take care of it.

In Luke’s telling of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the angels told the women who had come to the tomb: “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you….” (Luke 24:5-6) Jesus had already told all of his followers, many times, what he had to do. Jesus had promised them, many times, that he was more than able to truly do it all.

Here, again, they had made their capacity to hope too small. They had made their hope small because they had made Jesus small, and they had also made the Father, who sent Jesus, small. They had made the Son and the Father smaller than the evils of this world.

The women at the tomb, and the other disciples, had made God smaller than sin, and smaller than death. They measured their God by the yardstick of their own loss and grief.

They had made their God too small. They had hearts too small for the hope that comes from God: the hope that God insists on giving us. And we often do the same.

The greatness of God, that we see at work in Jesus, is the Lord’s yardstick to measure our hopes and dreams. So here it is.

God’s goodness is stronger than evil and sin.

God’s forgiveness is stronger than guilt, or shame.

God’s peace-making is stronger than our division and alienation from him, and from others, and from the creation.

God’s peace-making is stronger than all our divisions, our conflicts, our covetousness, our envies and jealousies; stronger than the wounds we give and the wound that we receive.

God’s abundance is stronger than our needs.

***

If we have faith in this God; if we trust this stronger God, then our faith will grow. Then, Hope will sprout out from our faith. Our lives will be empowered, and changed, and set free by faith, and hope, and love, in the form of Jesus.

We will live up to God’s gifts more than we live down to our losses and griefs.

We will live up to God’s promises more than we live down to our fears, our worries, and the world’s low expectations.

We will live up to God’s eternity more than we live down to the limits of our time and strength.

We will live up to God’s crosses more than we live down to our compromises.

We will live up to God’s mysteries more than we live down to human common sense.

We will live up to God’s self-giving in Christ more than we live down to our own self-preservation.

We will live up to God’s humility and servanthood in Jesus more than we live down to our own dignity.

We will live up to the abilities of God’s grace more than we live down to our own sense of weakness and disqualification.

We will live up to the life that says “Our life is hid with Christ, in God” more than we live down to our weariness of life. Those who grow tired of life need to know that what they truly need. What they truly need to desire, and to hope for, is more life, and not less.

Living by great and daring hopes, as well as living by great and daring faith and love, will make us faithful witnesses to the good news of the gospel. We’ll join the fellowship of all God people in heaven and earth in the unimaginable purpose to which God has called us, in Jesus: “To make known among the Gentiles (or among the nations) the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:27)

The Battle Primeval – Don’t Worry Be Thankful

PREACHED ON THE SUNDAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING, November 18, 2018

Scripture readings: Psalm 104:1-24; Luke 12:22-34

A woman was at work when she got a call from her babysitter. The sitter told her that her daughter was very sick with a fever.

A Few Family Photos Over the Years

So, the woman left work, and raced to the drugstore, to get some medicine for her daughter. When she got back to her car, she found that she had locked herself out. She ran back into the store, and she called home, and she told the babysitter what was wrong, and the babysitter told her that her daughter was getting worse and that, maybe, she could get a coat-hanger to open the car. The store-clerk gave her a hanger and she ran back to her car.

She was panicking now. She suddenly realized that she had no idea how to unlock a car door with a coat-hanger. She prayed desperately for God to help her.

Suddenly a beat-up old car, covered with bumper-stickers, pulled up next to hers. Out came this hulking-bearded guy, with tattoos, and a biker’s jacket, and a skull rag on this head.

He asked if he could help. The woman told him about her daughter and her keys: “Can you use this hanger to unlock my car?” And he says, “Sure thing!”

In a few seconds, he gets the door open. The woman jumps on him and hugs him tight. Tears running down her smiling face, she says, “Thank you, sir! Thank you, sir! You’re such a nice man!”

The guy says, “No ma’am, I’m not nice at all. I just got out of prison this morning. I was in for car theft. I got released just a few hours ago.”

The woman laughs, and cries, and hugs him again, and prays, “Thank you, Lord! Thank you for sending me a professional!”

OK, the verse we read from Luke don’t have the word “thanks”. Jesus is talking about worry. Actually, he’s talking about the antidote, the treatment, for worry. Worry is one of the enemies of thanksgiving. We, on the other hand, seem to have designed our special Thanksgiving Day to be full of stuff to worry about: perfect travels, perfect timing, perfect meals, and no family feuding.

Thanksgiving Day is the celebration of being people whose very nation is built on the heritage of giving great thanks. The Pilgrim’s experience taught them to think of their presence in this land as a divine miracle, and that the Native Americans were a part of that miracle, and the Pilgrims shared that celebration day with them. At least that’s what they say. They must have done something right that day. Plymouth Colony never fought the Native Americans and never needed to.

What if we thought that our presence, here in this land, was not our own doing, but a miracle from God, so that we didn’t have to worry? If you know that you are living a gift from God, you worry less and give more thanks.

So, Thanksgiving is a celebration, and you can’t celebrate when you’re worried. You might be able to fake a smile, but you’re not really celebrating. You can’t.

One of the treatments Jesus prescribes for worry is to think, and to think again. Jesus names this kind of thinking: “consider”. “Consider some things.” “Consider the ravens.” “Consider the lilies.” Considering has something to do with how you think, and how you see.

Worry doesn’t start with a feeling, and neither does thanks. Worry and thanksgiving come from a state of mind, from a way of looking at your surroundings and your life.

Jesus says, “Look around you.” And it’s true that Jesus is being selective in what he wants you to look at.

Jesus points to the grass of the field. Well, you can walk out into some field in the spring, and you can enjoy the fragrance and the wildflowers; but you could also choose to think about snakes in the grass. In a cow pasture you might choose to worry about other things hidden in the grass. Maybe you ought to take it all in, but don’t let the snakes and the cow patties make you worry and forget about the wild flowers of the field.

Jesus says, “Look at the world around you.” Look at how things fit together. See how they work. See how everything has a place. There is beauty. There is order. There is precision. There is design. This world is a work of art created by God. And you are a part of it. You also are a work of art.

Here is something we can see more than ever before, through the gift of science, which reveals more and more amazing things every day, things that cannot be explained. Oh, science can explain a lot: how it works, a bit of how the whole thing is inter-related, what it’s made of. But science can’t really explain why everything is what it is; at least not in terms of purpose: past, or present, or future.

Look at your hands. When I was in high school a girl once told me that I had nice hands. Of course, they’re getting wrinkled now. How complicated they are: and the feet, and ankles: so many little bones. And the skin: how different it is on the tops than it is on the palm and soles. Each person who has ever lived has a unique set of fingerprints, and probably toe prints, too.

Yet, if you looked inside your hand, at one, single cell; and if you were able to see what goes on inside that cell, how it’s fed and renewed, you would see a process that was just as beautiful as anything you could see with your naked eye, or more so. Then, if you could look deeper into that cell if, you saw the atoms, and the subatomic particles, and the pure energy making everything work by its attractions and repulsions, and how it was all like some faint cloud, maybe a shining mist interacting with other shining mists, which are each other.

There’s no end of design: no end of beauty. Infinite skill! Infinite wisdom. Infinite care. Not so much because they have no end, but the end disappears into the heart of the artist where they came from.

Jesus says: consider, look, think, wonder. If you are still worried, think again.

There’s a word called “providence”: Such a fancy word, and not just the name of a lot of hospitals. It has to do with God: with God providing. The teacher J. Vernon McGee had a definition of providence. He said, “Providence is the means by which God directs all things – both animate and inanimate; seen and unseen; good and evil – toward a worthy purpose, which means His will must finally prevail.” Put more simply: God, in his love, does what’s best for us, and gives us what we need. Thanksgiving comes from thinking, considering, and seeing this.

Another treatment for worry is to consider that you are important, that you matter, that you matter more than the birds and the grass. You are the objects of God’s faithful care and love.

Some people have trouble with this; and there are lots of reason why this is. Some people have been told they are worthless, or else they’ve been shown this through others mistreating them, or abusing them.

Shame, guilt, anger come from this. All of these, and more, are a kind of unsettledness akin to worry because something has gone wrong, or something hasn’t been resolved.

Sometimes the frequent defeat of our hopes, and purposes, and plans discourages us and causes us to doubt our value. Yet there are those whose lives have been marked by never having anything or any prospects, and they may have great loves, and great ambitions, and because they dare to hope, they will attempt seemingly impossible goals (which are simply about being safe, and knowing the people you love are safe, and secure, and well).

Such people may be more thankful than the richest, and the most powerful, and the most beautiful people in the world. Nothing stands between them and God.

There is something different in human beings that Jesus says is of special value. Jesus says that life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Do you realize how strange that could sound? How can life be more than food if you will die without food? How is the body more than clothes if, outside, in Desert Aire and Mattawa, in winter, your body will certainly die without clothes?

What Jesus is saying is that there is something in human life that is not physical and not material. The word that Jesus uses for our life, here, is the word for soul. “Do not worry about your soul, what you shall eat. . . for the soul is more than food.” (Luke 12:22-23)

You are a soul. You have a spiritual life that is stronger than your physical life and accomplishes more. Jesus wants you to know that this makes you a being of tremendous worth to him. This is the Lord who so much loved your life within your body that he became human with a body of the same status as your own.

His death on the cross, that was made possible by his being one of us, is part of the treasure that makes his love so beautiful to us, and still makes us more beautiful to him. But there is something eternal in each one of you and me that the Lord Jesus treasures.

Consider this, when you think about your worries, and your defeats, and your survival. You are a treasure to others. You are a treasure to God. Keep thinking about this.

There was a girl who was asked what she looked for in a guy. Her answer was, “How he fits his blue jeans.” (Well, there are boys who look for similar stuff in girls.) These are values and expectations that won’t last, especially not long past forty.

There is something spiritual, eternal in us, that is made for everlasting life with God, made for an everlasting home. Caring about that life, in ourselves and in others, will give us values that last.

Those who know the Lord have a different set of concerns. We have our hearts set on different things. We’re motivated by different loves. To be in your garden in the morning, to look in on your children, or grandchildren, or so on, when they’re in bed (and not just to say, “Thank God they’re asleep.”), to look into the face of someone you love who is still willing to put up with you, to make something that runs well, that works well, that looks good, or tastes good, or to hear or read a word that God speaks to you…in an instant you know, at least for a moment, that your life is an awesome gift, and that you and they mean something. This is an antidote for worry.

You already know that this is part of thanksgiving. Just don’t forget it. Some people forget.

Jesus says, “Do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them.”

Jesus isn’t saying, “Don’t work.” Jesus worked as a carpenter to support his mother, brothers, and sisters. When they were old enough, Jesus left that work, for something much bigger and harder, in the end.

Jesus’ work on this earth made our work just as holy as his first work creating time, and space, and the structures of the cosmos. Jesus’ work on the cross and in the resurrection enable all our work, and all that we work for, to have eternal significance.

Jesus says to work for ourselves and for others, and to work and live for bigger reasons and for bigger gifts. Live a life that’s different from what many others work for, because you know that your life, and the lives of others, is a treasure.

Jesus says, “Seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.”

There was a native Christian pastor in Laos some time past. The communist government there wanted to stop him from preaching. They wanted to stop his church from meeting and growing. They sent soldiers to his house. The soldiers gathered the pastor and his family together. They held a gun to the head of the pastor’s twelve-years-old son. They told the pastor to deny his faith. But, before the pastor could say anything, the boy spoke up and said that he would never betray Jesus. So, the soldiers shot him on the spot. The same thing happened with the pastor’s wife. They took the pastor away to a prison work-camp.

Eventually, he escaped to Thailand, where he devoted himself to sharing Christ among the other refugees. Even though, by some standards, it could be said that he had lost everything he held dear in life, yet, by his standards, he had not lost everything. He followed Jesus who had lost everything for him, and who held everything the pastor held dear in his own hands.

He heard the voice that says, “But seek his kingdom, and these things will be give to you as well.” He shared this Christ with others out of a thankful heart. People who know the Lord find that their hearts are set on different things, and that they are motivated by a different love.

Jesus says, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted.” Here Jesus says: know what counts and live accordingly.

When Jesus said to cut off your hand or pluck out your eye, if they cause you to sin; he was using strong, shocking language simply to say: take this seriously or you will be saying “no” to my life.

When Jesus said to be ready to sell what you have: he was using strong language simply to say: make a real choice about where you stand. How will you live, and what will you live for, if you believe that your Father has been pleased to give you his kingdom?

What does “his kingdom” mean? A kingdom is wherever its king rules, wherever the king’s will is done. It means that you live a life in which God truly rules. God provides for you. God works with you, and in you, and through you, and around you. You live where God’s plan is at work, under God’s protection, in God’s peace.

Heaven is yours. The coming kingdom is yours.

In a very real way, God has given you his kingdom already. You have come home. You have come inside.

God gave us his kingdom when Jesus died for us on the cross. Jesus carried whatever separates us from God and each other. He carried those things on the cross. So, that separation, whether it formed a wall or a chasm, has been broken down and bridged over with the cross.

This is the same thing John was talking about when he said, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

Knowing the Lord is all about receiving a gift from someone who loves you, and whose love you can trust. This is the antidote for worry. This is where real thanksgiving comes from.

The Battle Primeval - The Prize for Veterans, Scarred and Schooled

Preached on the 100th Anniversary of Armistice Day, 11-11-1918-- Veterans Day, Sunday 11-11-2018

Scripture readings: 2 Samuel 1:17-27; Philippians 2:19-30; Luke 22:24-38

I’ve loved dictionaries since I learned how to read. That makes me a genuine dictionary veteran. My big old dictionary tells me that the word veteran comes from the Latin word “vetus”; which means old. The ancient meaning of veteran is old.

Various Veterans (Pre., During, and Post.)
Members of their families

Yes, I am a dictionary veteran.

OK, I’m on a roll here. My big, old dictionary tells me that a veteran has: “Grown old in service having served for a long period; experience through long service or practice; “as veteran politician”; as “veteran toper” (look it up); … especially of soldiers, having had long service, or much experience in warfare.” “One who has seen long service in any occupation”; …or “field”.

(adapted from “The New Century Dictionary” c. 1927—1940)

Since “veteran politician” is part of the mix, we can see that even though you may be a veteran, that may not always be a good thing. But I’ve always seen it as a good thing.

For me, and for all the kids my age, the word veteran meant our dads, and sometimes our grandpas. For us, when we played war, it was usually World War II, and that was part of our looking up to our dads and wanting to be like them, because they participated, in some way, in World War II.

Even when our dads weren’t always such good dads, being sons, we still wanted to be like them. So being a veteran was always a good thing. It meant quality.

It meant skill, ability, knowledge, discipline, confidence, strength, responsibility, taking care of others, and putting others first. We saw our own personal veterans taking care of their us and teaching us the stuff we needed to know.

Maybe military veterans think that the meaning and result of being a veteran is different from this. Their kids don’t.

When I got older, I was a Republican in college and so, maybe, I was strange in yet another way; but the veterans I knew in college, and in seminary, were the grownups whom the rest of us only pretended to be.

When I was a kid, the most fun veteran I knew was my cousin Larry Oliszewski, who was an officer in the Coast Guard. He treated me like a younger brother and taught me some exciting things about electronics that I’ve forgotten since.

Or else the most fun veteran I knew was my Uncle Eddie Stoll who showed me what fun it was to use your brain to see things the way no one else can see. He could read Dr. Seuss to my little sister and make up verses off the top of his head that were as funny as anything in the book.

My sister knew those stories by heart. She knew what Uncle Eddie was doing and it gave her a fit because she had such a hard time not laughing at the way he was ruining her story. I wanted to play tricks with my brain.

In seminary, there was Tim McClain, or army captain Timothy McClain. He left the service in order to prepare for the ministry. Captain Tim, we sometimes called him, had the greatest sense of humor. He also had a different perspective. Again, he was just more mature than most of us. He had a better sense of what mattered. He had a better sense than we did of what other people would need from us if we were serious about our calling to be pastors.

Another veteran was the youth group leader in my home church. When I was eighteen, I started going back to church again after some absence. Navy Veteran Larry Jenkins taught us to understand the Bible just by asking us questions.

I think he was in the Navy for six years, so he wasn’t that much older than us. He knew how to teach younger people and make them like it. He shared his skills, and taught us to love the Bible and see it as our friend.

Larry became my friend. He was already in college. When I started college, Larry wasn’t a classmate of mine because he was studying computer science. I wanted nothing to do with computers. He was my friend, and he helped me get my driver’s license at last: which is another story.

Years later, I was an interim (temporary) pastor in a church near a naval air station. About a fourth of our congregation was from the Navy: people who lived off base. It was 1988, and the church was having its centennial. As interim pastor, it wasn’t even sure that I would be there for the centennial.

The church leaders worried that the church was too much in flux to organize such an important event. They had some doubts. Would the Navy families even be interested in our centennial, let alone help the rest of us?

The Navy people, the men and their wives and their kids, picked right up on it. They used their veterans’ skills of organization. They were driven by their dedication to the American heritage, which they were sworn to defend, to love our farm town. Their skill in team work showed us that they identified with us, and they taught us to identify better with them. The Navy helped the love within our congregation to grow. Isn’t that what veterans do?

What they had, as veterans, seemed to me, in some way, transferable to the rest of us, if we paid attention to them. We could learn better from veterans to be better veterans of life, of Jesus, and of the church of Jesus.

Jesus didn’t talk much about soldiers, but Jesus found Roman soldiers to be people of great potential faith, especially the key officers called the centurions, who held commands of about a hundred soldiers. A Centurion’s long veteran experience allowed them to look inside you: see you for what you are.

They saw Jesus for who he is. So, they had absolute faith in him when they saw through him.

Jesus is our Lord. He created us. He has the ultimate ability to look through us and to know us for what we are. He sees our weakness and our sins, but he also sees our enormous need as no one else can. Veteran Jesus can see that we are his children: worth dying for.

Our veterans sometimes have a greater ability to look into people, in times of peace and conflict, and size us up. If we study them, and our veteran Jesus, then we will look into people, to know their weaknesses, but also see their great need. We will see children of Jesus, worth dying for.

King Saul was a warrior for many years. This made him a veteran. He was also the king, and so he was commander-in-chief.

Prince Jonathan, heir to the throne was a warrior and a veteran, as well as a prince. Being a veteran helped him protect David from his father, the King.

Grown-up shepherd boy David was a warrior, a veteran, a valued, trusted officer, and the victim of Saul’s insane hatred and many murder attempts. Saul tried to kill David; yet David always showed his respect for Saul, as his commanding officer, even though his commanding officer wanted him dead.

When Saul and Jonathan died together in battle, David spontaneously burst into a song of praise and grief. David celebrated Saul and Jonathan, both, equally, as heroes and friends. As fellow veterans, they still shared a bond that none of them ever forgot.

It was such an unlikely bond of love, but it was real. It would be impossible to even believe in such a bond, unless we shared some part of one of the great commitments which they shared. This bond was their commitment of their lives to the service of the Lord and his people.

We can’t share all their battles. We can’t share all the battles of the military veterans we know. As a body of the followers of Jesus, gathered together, we can share the battles of being a team, a single family, a single unit, wherever we come from, however different our private histories may be.

A veteran named Joe Engel told me, a few days ago, about this instant bond that one veteran has with fellow veterans as instantly as the bond is known.

The apostle Paul never served in the Roman military. But he was a veteran servant of Jesus. Because of this, Paul felt perfectly at home calling other Christians his fellow soldiers. This wasn’t because they were in the military. This was because they were all becoming veteran servants of Jesus.

Being veterans was only part of it. Paul also felt at home calling them sons, brothers, and sisters. He could even be the father of his brothers and sisters and his fellow servants. It was all one for Paul. This is a gift we might see in some military veterans better than we can see it in ourselves: this band of brothers.

Veterans may fight each other, as my dad did and went to the brig for it. Veterans also know their calling to fight for each other, for life and death.

Christians sometimes find it easier to fight each other, than to fight for each other. We need to fight for each other’s faith, and well-being, and healing, and wisdom, and strength. Military veterans know the secret, among themselves, of what we should know from Jesus.

Jesus is the great veteran of our wars. He is the greatest veteran in the battle for the lives and souls of us and everyone we know. Jesus gave his life in this battle. He gave himself so fully that he rose from death. He mortally wounded death in the process.

We can learn from veteran Jesus how to die for him, and for each other. We can learn from Jesus to die to ourselves, and get so connected with Jesus, that we also rise new, every day. Our dying is done with Jesus, and so we rise with him.

Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, predicted that Peter and the others would think that they couldn’t help Jesus unless that had swords, and money, and used them for the success of the cause. To their shame, they found, in the garden of Gethsemane, and on the mount of crucifixion, that Jesus’ weapons are never swords, or money, or any power of this world.

Jesus reminded them that they (and we) are always taken care of in God’s own way. They learned, from Jesus, that the greatest weapon of all is the cross. Our best weapons are the love both of his cross and our own: the cross of our love for him and others.

Veterans know that their greatest gift, and their greatest weapon of war and defense, is themselves. That’s not far from understanding the cross of Jesus.

I think that you become a Veteran when you devote yourself to a cause that is not just a little bit higher than yourself. It’s a life cause. It’s indescribably greater than yourself, and the cause is part of the age-long battle for God’s love to re-win and to remake the world.

There is something in us, and in this world around us, that does not serve God’s cause. We call this sidetracking of God’s service sin.

Our battle comes from this. The battle clearly has casualties. It leaves unhealed wounds. It leaves scars, and changes lives, and gives wisdom, and insight, and strength, and comradeship.

Joining in this battle together, and with Jesus, is a calling to give ourselves to a better world coming. That future world is of the kingdom and the family of God: the very thing for which each one of us was specially, personally designed and created.

The Battle Primeval - Till all the World is Gained

SERMON Dennis Evans 10-7-2018

“The Battle Primeval – Till all the World is Gained”

Scripture readings: Revelation 7:9-10; Matthew 8:5-13

Walking near Lower Crab Creek
North of Desert Aire/Mattawa WA September 2018

Both of the scripture readings I chose for you have more in common than you might think. Both Scriptures teach us about spiritual warfare; the ongoing battle between the Kingdom of Jesus and the kingdom of the Devil.

It’s an ongoing battle that we see, and fight within ourselves, and within our families and friendships. We see and fight the battle in the world around us in every nation, tribe, people, and language.

We may see and fight the same battle in the one holy church around the world, and maybe within these walls. We can see, in the centurion in Matthew’s gospel, how Jesus fights his spiritual warfare to beat us, and win us, and make us, and keep us his own. We are called to join him in this fight for ourselves, and for others, and for the world that God so loves and plans to save.

In the Apostle John’s Book of Revelation, the vision of the crowd that no one can count is a picture of the people of Jesus in all times and places.

The pictures of the first disciples are there. Our pictures are there. The pictures of Christians in North Korea, and China, and India are there. The pictures of our brothers and sisters in Latin America, and Africa, and Europe are there.

We all fight together for Jesus. We all fight for love. We fight to bring the Kingdom of Jesus for the healing and for the recreation of the world, wherever we are. We fight with Jesus against the kingdom of the Devil, who is already defeated, however much that dark kingdom refuses to admit it.

Jesus defeated the kingdom of Satan on the cross and in the resurrection, but the kingdom of darkness fights on until Jesus returns and mops them up. The Bible tells us that one of our greatest weaknesses in this warfare is that we don’t have the weapon of patience. Peter says this about the Lord’s tactics: “He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)

The patience of the Lord is so great, just on this planet, that people “from every nation, tribe, people, and language” will be liberated and come home. Our friends, Jim and Carolyn Mudge, along with groups like the Wycliffe Bible Translators, are still hard at work using the weapon of the Lord’s patience.

Jesus was patient. He waited patiently for someone to show up who would also show up the people who were so proud of their faith. The pagan centurion was ready for Jesus without knowing it.

The Romans had a myth about being descended from two boys, twin boys who were abandoned at birth and raised by a she-wolf. This she-wolf suckled them (nursed them) with her own milk, and so the Romans believed that they had wolf’s blood in their veins and they loved to be ruthless. They loved to watch people kill each other in their stadiums. But the Roman centurion, with his faith so hidden that even he didn’t really know about it, was more of a sheep in wolf’s clothing: not a real wolf at all.

Romans thought it was weak to see slaves as humans. The centurion called his sick and paralyzed slave “his boy”. Instead of Roman pride, he claimed to be unworthy of Jesus come to his house.

The bath of Jesus’ blood is filled with compassion and humility, because God became human to die for us in compassion and humility. This is his blood in which the uncounted crowd washes themselves.

How disgusting it sounds, to wash in a blood bath, but that is what Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is. It disgusts us, the thought of accepting our blame for some great hurt in another person’s life, or in our family. It even disgusts us to think of surrendering some bitterness, or anger, or hurt that we carry in our hearts. Even if it promises to make us whole,We will do anything but that, and the terms of surrender that we set by insisting on our “anything but that” has no humility or compassion in it.

The people dressed in white for victory are the ones who surrender so absolutely that they stop to wash in the blood that is their only hope for life. The Roman centurion was ready for that bath. He believed that Jesus would love his slave as much as he did. He believed that Jesus would do more for that slave than his owner could.

When we wash in the blood of Jesus, we may win the victory because we hardly notice our own hurts and wounds, because we are bloody already. So much has been done for us. So much has been given for us.

In the end, the victory will bring us a shepherd, someone who guides us to the living water, which means a life that is refreshed and renewed all the time. The victory will bring us someone who wipes our tears away. That will be our everlasting joy.

This is not only the reward of the victory that is promised to us in the future. It’s the victory that we have now.

We have a shepherd now, who leads us always. He’s the good shepherd. He always refreshes us. He always wipes our tears. Jesus does this now. Jesus does this now in his patience, and in ours.

The Lord’s Supper is one of those places where people of every nation, tribe, people, and language gather. Jesus and the Centurion represent nations, tribes, people, and languages who are enemies who have no reason to love each other. They have no understanding, no compassion, and no humility toward each other.

The Lord’s Table is a place where the haters and the fearful, the safe and the vulnerable, become friends. The Lord’s Table is a place where we become one in Jesus.

The Battle Primeval - Our Captain in the Wars

Preached on Sunday, September 23, 2018

Scripture readings: Isaiah 53:1-12; Romans 8:28-39; Luke 10:1-9, 17-20

We Christians often think that the term “spiritual warfare” applies to Christians being attacked by invisible, evil, spiritual forces, for purposes of defeating us. We are told to fear their power to demoralize, or tamper with, or pollute our faith and our safety.

Tall Timber Ranch
(Presbyterian Church USA camp and conference grounds)
Above Leavenworth, WA
September 2018

When we want our lives to be in harmony with the love of Jesus (and of everyone else who loves us) we may find ourselves in a hard place. We meet a strange and troubling disruption or resistance, or a powerful attraction that pulls us and pushes us in directions that will harm our own lives, and disappoint those who trust us and love us. We feel pushed or pulled in directions that may hurt them, even if no one ever found out about it.

There is this strong tug or push in the wrong direction that we call temptation. We might very well think of temptation as a spiritual attack upon our integrity as a friend of Jesus. This is only a part of our spiritual warfare.

Even worse than that, we may actually want to go along with the push and pull of temptation. To our shame, our desire is there.

Not only are we defeated, but the face of Jesus in our souls gets mutilated in a terrible way that makes us look very different from Jesus. With this mutilated face of Jesus, we may say or do something that causes Christians, or potential Christians to be spiritually injured. We can become part of Satan’s spiritual attack on someone else.

This must be true because the Christians most aware of spiritual warfare sometimes feel that the behavior of others is a part of a Satanic ambush against them. So, if others can do it to us, we can do it to them. We might hold a spiritual sword in our spiritual hand that isn’t the word of God at all, but a word from hell. This is part of our spiritual warfare.

Paul was very aware of this side of spiritual warfare. He had found that unforgiveness within the church, and between Christians, was part of Satan’s spiritual warfare against us. Paul writes: “Anyone you forgive, I also forgive. And what I have forgiven—if there was anything to forgive—I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake, in order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.” (2 Corinthians 2:10-11)

Paul brought this problem of unforgiveness to Christ, because it is one of our battles in the spiritual warfare, and Jesus is the captain of our spiritual warfare. Jesus wants to see forgiveness go forward because he wants to see Christians go forward. Jesus wants Christians to go forward because his kingdom is made of Christians. And, back to the beginning again, Jesus wants his kingdom to go forward because his kingdom is about the power of forgiveness. Jesus and his kingdom are all about the healing and eradication of all sin and evil. Forgiveness is one solid step in this direction. It’s one of his weapons in our spiritual warfare.

Jesus is fighting a war against the world-as-it-is, in order to replace it with the world as he had created it to be. The truth is that we, as Jesus’ friends, are captives in his victory parade just as much as we are his fellow soldiers. Our story is that we were enemy soldiers who let ourselves be caught by Jesus.

The world-as-it-is has turned God’s children into slaves on sin-drugs, and so Jesus has had to fight us and defeat us. Being caught by Jesus has really saved us from the other side, and has put us in training, and in rehab, so that we can serve as his soldiers in a war to set the rest of creation and all its people free.

Satan and the mind-altered forces of evil hate the kingdom of Jesus and his Father and the Holy Spirit. They hate faith, because they rule by betrayal. They hate hope, because they are bullies who thrive by enslaving us. They hate love because they want to receive everything, and consume everything, and take, and take, and not give back.

For Jesus, and for us, spiritual warfare means fighting all of that, on and on, until the battle is done and all is set to right again. All the attacks of the dark side are only counterattacks against the spiritual warfare being waged by Jesus and those of us who are in his army.

When Jesus was tempted by Satan in the desert, it was Satan who offered the world-as-it-is to Jesus, if only Jesus would change sides, and kneel and acknowledge Satan’s rule over him. It was the only straw he could grasp at (and he also liked it because it made him look big, which is what the Devil is all about) and because he suspected that Jesus was a dangerous invader, and Satan was right, there. Jesus had come to invade and liberate a world that Satan had defeated and claimed as his own.

He’s the father of lies and he can’t help himself. He wants us to react to him as if he were our greatest fear. The truth is that we are his greatest fear: well, us and Jesus together.

His war on us is a continuous counter-attack based on his own desperation and fear, because our invasion is progressing on many battle fronts. Each one of our three readings from the Bible, this morning, is directed to a separate campaign in our invasion with Jesus.

In the Gospel of Luke (10:1-24) Jesus sent seventy of his disciples out on a mission to demonstrate that “the kingdom of God” (“the rule and authority of God”) was coming, invading, conquering. In the little farming and fishing towns the disciples gave a new lease on life to those in the deepest need. They reversed all the bad stuff they found in those towns. They reversed sickness into health. They reversed handicaps into new muscles, nerves, bones, and cartilage. They reversed blindness and deafness into seeing eyes and hearing ears. They also reversed the domination and oppression of people by devils. They reversed that evil into freedom, and victory, and safety, and hope, and the power from God to live their own lives in fullness. They replaced weakness with strength.

Outside of the kingdom and the authority of God there is no life lived to the full, there is only weakness, and struggle, and worry.

Sometimes amazing things can be done and enjoyed in spite of this. (Great goodness lingers in God’s creation.) But the freedom that comes from God making all things right, and in harmony with him, are what life is all about.

Outside of God all things come to an end eventually. All things share in a kind of death.

Only in God is there eternal life, eternal joy, eternal love. Only in God can we truly and forever thrive. That is one point of invasion where we are sent to fight under the command of Jesus. The invasion of spiritual healing. Under Jesus, ordinary people invaded these towns and Satan fell with a flash.

I want to read something old. Here are words from a commentary written by Ephrem the Syrian in the fourth century. Here it is: “I was looking at Satan, who fell like lightening from the heavens.” It was not that he was actually in the heavens…. but he fell from his greatness and his dominion. “I was looking at Satan, who fell like lightening from the heavens.” He did not fall from heaven, because lightening does not fall from heaven, since the clouds create it. Why then did he say “from the heavens”? This was because it was as though it was from the heavens, as if lightening, which falls suddenly. In one second, Satan fell beneath the victory of the cross. Ordinary people were anointed and sent out by reason of their mission and were highly successful in a second, through miracles of healing those in pain, sickness and evil spirits. It was affirmed that Satan suddenly fell from his dominion, like lightening from the clouds. Just as lightening goes out and does not return to its place, so too did Satan fall and did not again have control over his dominion. [Jesus said]: “Behold I am giving you dominion [to tread upon snakes and scorpions.]” (Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron10.13)

Serving under Jesus, we are invading the dominion of everything that robs the world of life. We are sent on a mission to bring the power of Jesus in healing, and in love, and in faith to the sick, and to those in pain, and to those in the grip of sin or the grip of the devil.

There are many kinds of sickness, pain, and deadly grips; physical, mental, moral, emotional, spiritual. You can lay hands of prayer upon them. Lay hands of your love, hands of your life touching their lives, hands of your time touching their time.

In the spiritual warfare of Jesus, life invades the darkness. The kingdom of God is the kingdom of life, and we are sent to fight for everyone whose life is stifled and controlled and hurt by the evil of this world. Even before Jesus was crucified, his cross reached backward through time to give his friends power to be life-givers to the world. His cross reached forward through time to fight with us, now, to bring the good news of life, and the fullness of life, to the world, now.

In Paul’s Letter to the Romans we find another point in Jesus’ invasion where he fights for us and by our side. Here, we invade the future and hope. “in all things God works for good,” Paul writes.

John writes the same thing in other words, in his first letter: “Beloved we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.” (John 3:2-3)

To hope in Jesus is not to have Jesus as a goal somewhere up ahead. In ancient Greek, the parts of speech that we call “prepositions” (words like in, on, of, from, and so on) are not abstract.

To hope “in” someone is to have your personal hope located inside that person. To hope “on” someone, is to be like having your hope riding piggy-back on someone’s shoulders.

Essentially our hope (according to the Biblical way of thinking) is riding piggy-back on Jesus, or inside of Jesus, some way or another. It’s not an idea: it’s real. Ancient Greek works this way.

In Romans, Paul lays down a challenge that is also a promise: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (8:35) We are attached to Jesus: nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (8:39) “In all things God works for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the first-born of many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined he also called; those he called he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” (8:28-30)

Once, before the beginning of time, we were all only a gleam in God’s eyes. Forever in the new heavens and the new earth we’ll all be the apple of God’s eye. God fights for our future and our hope.

Our experiences of spiritual warfare, when we’re under attack from the Enemy’s side, make us doubt our future or the future of others, because the Enemy is a liar, and the father of lies. He wants to create doubt, and worry, and fear to stifle our faith and our trust in the ability of Jesus to love anyone to the end, and through the end of time to all eternity.

We can only have doubt, and worry, and fear if we forget the faithfulness of God. God holds our future in faithfulness. We can see what this faithful grip on the future looks like when we look at Jesus.

What God does in Jesus is guarantee our future and our hope. He does this by becoming human and taking our life into himself, and by dying for our sins and in order to defeat the spoilers of life within us. He guarantees our hope and future by rising from the dead to give us heaven and resurrection.

This is a front in his invasion of the world-as-it-is. With Jesus as our captain, since he has already invaded us to give us hope and a future, it’s our calling to fight with him for the world he loves. We take our fight to where someone has no hope. We see our fight where people seem to lack a future, and we fight for them on the side of Jesus. How do you give another person hope? How can you give them a future? Pray to find the way.

The mentoring ministry we are trying to start in our school district is just one way. You may see a completely different calling that no one else, here, can see yet, but it’s a ministry to give hope and a future. All of that comes from the fight of Jesus for us on his cross and in the tomb.

There are all different kinds of loss of hope and future in all areas of life. Wherever you see this, that may be your calling and maybe your calling includes calling others to help you. Prayer is part of God’s armor in this warfare, and we are supposed to use it.

Back in the book of the prophet Isaiah, in chapter fifty-three, there is this wonderful chapter about the servant of the Lord, who is also the arm of the Lord. This doesn’t mean that God has arms. The same way that the law doesn’t have arms but some people get caught by the long arm of the law.

God’s arm is God’s power. God’s power is the servant who “was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” (53:5)

God, in Jesus, is the captain and the fighting arm of God in our battles against our own sins, and he has won. He has conquered us first by dying. Then he goes further. Our captain, both dies and lives again. In Jesus, God battles our sins by both dying and by living again. He rises again: “Though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days.... After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied.” (53:10-11)

Sin and evil are conquered by death and resurrection. That is the point where the invasion of Jesus makes landfall. Captain Jesus has already armed himself for this battle. He has died and risen from the dead. We are his soldiers and we must be armed the same way.

The only way for us to function in the world-as-it-is-now, as invaders with Jesus, is to learn how to die and rise.

One of the lessons that Jesus taught his disciples, in the ninth chapter of Luke was the business of dying and rising. “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) In Galatians, Paul writes: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who life, but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

Jesus has invaded us, and conquered us, but there is still guerrilla warfare going on inside us. Our human nature, as God created us, designed in God’s image to enable us to fulfill our purpose in this world as easily as a bird flies, was altered by the sin of Adam and Eve. You might say that our spiritual genetics (if there could be such a thing) was altered, and that we have a hybrid nature. We are composed of what seems like the remains of the image of God, but that image has been deformed by our double allegiance to God, on one hand, and to sin and the Devil on the other. We are by nature double agents. The enemy is within, as well as on the outside. The two agents in us are so mixed together that to free us from sin and the devil requires an invasion by Jesus. This invasion is like an injection of something that reacts with sin and feels like death. When we see sin reappearing in us, we have to go to Captain Jesus who is also Medic Jesus for another injection of him into us. It’s another death and another rising. Someone recently told me about a sin of mine that I need an injection for. I don’t look forward to it. But I look forward to the life that is possible afterward.

We are called to battle on the same front in this-world-as-it-now-is. But we are that injection. We go from our nice bright beaker and get under the skin of the world and the people in it. We have to do this as those who no longer live but who have become the Christ living in them. We succeed by being like the Jesus who fought sin, not only by the cross, but by welcoming sinners and traitors of all different kinds. Besides, it was due to Jesus’ welcoming everyone (absolutely everyone) that got him crucified in the first place. Those are his arms for battle. We present these same arms to others. We die, and live, and welcome others in Jesus. We do this so that they might live as well and pass it on. That’s how we fight the world-as-it-now-is and fight for the day when our world, and we, will all be made new by Jesus.