Winning the Most Important Battle - The One With Yourself

(This first paragraph points to the fact that the day I shared this was our annual Kirkin' of the Tartans day - that's why you see all the Scottish references)

Did you notice that sword coming down the aisle at the beginning of worship?   Kind of impressive huh?  And it tells you something.    Scots often felt they had to fight just to keep their identity as a people.   That’s why, even as we lift up the heritage of Scotland, today we celebrate all the family identities from across the world that are this church family.  God has created us to be a mosaic, a tartan even, where all the different colors find their place and together make something beautiful. 

But from wherever you and I come from, we all have one fight in common.  We all are fighting the same enemy.  We are all fighting ourselves.    What do I mean?   Have you ever struggled with the gap between who you actually are and the ideal of who you really want to be?   You can see that ideal.  You can imagine it.  You can even get inspired by it.  But when it comes to living it, so often, something pulls you back.    The biggest enemy we will ever fight is right here within us.    But how do you fight that?  As one writer put it, “It is hard to fight an enemy that has outposts in your head.”  But more important than the fighting, how do you win?  How do you and I become the people we yearn to be, that God created us to be?  In these words, God shows the way.  Let’s listen and hear what God has to say. 

Romans 7:1-25

How do you fight yourself and win?   How do you overcome the worst parts of yourself so that you can live more fully into the best?  How does that happen?   In these words, God shows us.   What does God show us?   That our problem is worse than we think, and that what we think will solve it will only make it worse.   So what do we do?   We realize that God has already given us the solution.   All we need to do is believe it.

So how is our problem worse than we think?  Paul points us to it, when he tells us that sin dwells within us.    The worst parts of you don’t parachute into your life from outside.  They live there right inside you, and what lives there is uglier than anyone of us likes to think.     

The writer Robert Louis Stevenson, a Scot by the way, probably gave us the best picture of what this looks like in his story, the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.   Do you know it?   The plot goes something like this.        

This man, Dr. Jekyll, is constantly getting distracted by his baser desires.  They are holding him back from his full potential.  So he creates this potion to solve the problem.  Basically when he drinks the potion, it transforms him into the worst parts of himself, a repellent creature called Mr.  Hyde. Now why would he want to do that?  He figures if he can let his worst desires run free each night in Mr. Hyde, when he drinks the potion again in the morning to return to Dr. Jekyll, he’ll be free to live out of the best of who he is.   Great idea, huh?  

Now when Jekyll first drinks the potion, he discovers something.  As he puts it: “I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked…and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine.”    He found out that he wasn’t just a little wicked.  He was a whole lotta wicked.   But how could this be?   Because the evil that lies within you is far worse that you like to think it is.   After all, why did Stevenson call this character, Hyde?  Because Jekyll had hidden this hideous part of himself away; he had hidden it even from himself.    

The singer, Sufjan Stevens, has this stunning song about the serial killer, John Wayne Gacy.   The song paints the awful picture of what Gacy did, of the boys he killed, of how he buried them under the floorboards of his house.   But the lines that make the song stunning come right at the end.   Stevens sings.  “And in my best behavior, I am just like him: Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid.”    Wow?   Is that true?   Is Stevens right?  Is Stevenson right?   Are you and I really that bad?   Isn’t that stretching it a bit, maybe even more than a bit?   Or is it?

What if I could put up on that screen, the worst things you’ve thought just this week?  Think about it, the thoughts that came into your head, especially when you were under stress or when someone made you angry or hurt you or even inconvenienced you.   Would you want to be in the room to see that?  Would you want anyone to see that ever?  Let me tell you.  I wouldn’t.  Why?  Because when you’re honest, you know, some pretty ugly stuff dwells in you.  It may not often come out, but oh, it’s there, just like it was in Jekyll.

But how do you free yourself of the ugliness?  Well, Paul first tells you how not to do it.  He tells you don’t think that knowing the right rules will help.   That will just make it worse.   In verse 5 he puts it this way, our sinful passions, aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.  Now how can the law, in Paul’s case, the law of Moses, make you worse?  

St. Augustine in his autobiography, The Confessions, shares how when he was a kid, he stole some pears.   Now here’s the kicker.   Augustine didn’t like pears.  In fact, the pear he stole he gave to pigs.   So why did he take them?  Someone told him he couldn’t.    Think about it. 

When you see a sign that says, Don’t walk on the grass.   Even if before you had never thought of walking on the grass, doesn’t part of you now want to do it?   Why?  Some sign told you that you couldn’t.    Every human being has a voice inside that says.  Nobody tells me how to live my life.  Now some keep that voice front and center.  But most keep it hidden, but everyone has it.   Part of you hates being told how to live your life.  So once you hear the rules, that part wants to break them even more.

But our problem goes deeper than that.  Even if you try your hardest to keep the rules, to push your rebellious part down, it still doesn’t work.   And Paul knows.   How does Paul know?  He tried it.  He had been terribly good, a very devout, very religious man.   But then he tells us that one of the 10 commandments; you shall not covet, killed him.  How did it kill him?  It killed off any illusion that he was as good as he thought he was.   Why did that commandment do that?   Because all the other commandments of the 10, you can fool yourself into thinking that God is only interested in your external behavior.   So if you’re not killing or sleeping around or stealing, then you’re doing ok.    But to not covet has nothing to do with what is going on outside of you.  But It has everything to do with what is going on inside of you.   And when Paul looked there, he saw petty jealousies, selfish ambitions; arrogant self-righteousness.  He saw a lot of ugliness.   And it killed him.  

Here’s the shocking truth.   Following rigorously some moral code doesn’t free you from the worst parts of yourself, it actually feeds them.  

In the story of Jekyll and Hyde, when Jekyll learns that Hyde has actually committed murder, he resolves to never drink the potion again.  He goes on this huge do-gooder binger, supporting the needy, giving to charities, caring for his friends.   And what happens?   A few months pass, and Jekyll is sitting in a park.  As Jekyll writes:  “I smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active good will with the lazy cruelty of their neglect.  And at the very moment of that vain glorious thought…..I looked down….I was once more Edward Hyde.”   How did that happen?  

Because, what feeds the worst parts of yourself is how you center your life on yourself.  And you can be obsessively centered on yourself by both being very bad, and very good.    When you’re bad, you’re obsessed with your own desires, appetites, wants.  You care little about others.  But when you’re trying to be very good, you’re obsessed too, just now with the rules and how you’re keeping them or at least look like you’re keeping them, but you’re still focused on yourself.   Your goodness may help others.  That’s nice.  But you are really focused on how it helps you, to get in good with God or feel better about yourself.   But inside you know the truth.  It’s not really helping you at all.   It isn’t giving you peace or joy.  It’s not even making you actually good.

So then how do you get free?   You get remarried.   Do you remember how Paul started with this stuff about you can get remarried if you spouse has died?  You might have wondered.  What the heck is that all about?    What Paul is telling you is that on the cross, your self-obsession with the law, either breaking it or keeping it died.   And that’s a good thing, because, whether you realized it or not, you were married to that. 

One of the things that has made all things Scottish a little more cool is the whole Outlander thing, this steamy historic romance series on Starz, that began as a series of steamy historic romance novels.  But what is fascinating is that all this steamy romance happens in the bonds of am amazing marriage, a marriage that profoundly shapes its two partners, Jamie and Claire, in beautiful ways.   It makes each of them far more than they could ever have been alone.  That’s what a good marriage does.  It makes you more.  But a bad marriage, on the other hand can make you far less.   That’s why Paul uses it as a metaphor for our relationship to the law.  Let’s be clear.  We need the law.  We need its guidance and wisdom.  But we can’t be married to it.  What does Paul mean by being married to the law?

It means you look to the law as the defining relationship of your life.   It gives you your identity, either as a law-breaker or a law-keeper.   So if you are a law-breaker, you say that I am totally lost and worthless because I have not kept the rules.   Or if you are a law-keeper, you say.  I must keep the law.  I must meet the standard.  Why? You look to the law to give you your self-worth.

But when you look to the law to motivate you, do you know what ultimately drives you.  Fear drives you.   You fear God’s disapproval.  You fear other people’s disapproval.  Heck you fear your own disapproval. You fear that someone will see what you desperately try to hide.  In the end, when Jekyll realized he was becoming Hyde, that fear literally killed him.  He killed himself so that others could not see that ugly truth.

But even in that death, he was still focused on himself.  And ultimately when fear drives you, that is always where it drives you towards, an obsessive focus on yourself.    Being married to the law doesn’t free you from yourself. It imprisons you there.  It’s why the other image Paul uses here is slavery.  

But Paul tells us that God has killed this old marriage off.  God has set you free.  How did God do that?  He took you for himself.  He won your hand.   In Jesus, he took on even your ugliness, your Hyde-ish nature.   In Jesus, God became as one from whom others hide their faces.  God became the despised one, the one held of no account.   And in Jesus, God bore your infirmities.  God carried your diseases.  God was wounded for your transgressions.  In Jesus, who had no sin became sin so that you might become the righteousness of God.  Why did Jesus do this?   He loves you.  He wants to be with you forever.  And the more you and I realize that, that his love defines you, nothing and no-one else.  Then the less power the Hyde in you will have.  And even out of your ugliness, God will make something beautiful.  And bit by bit, day by day, he will grow within you the glorious freedom of the children of God.   All you need to do is believe it. 

How Does Change Come - You Die So You Can Live

I love a talk that gets you all fired up.   When a speaker inspires me, I feel as if I can conquer the world.  But the day after the talk, I don’t feel that nearly so much.   Do you know what I mean? 

God promises a future where the world is remade, where we are remade.  And that remaking for us begins right now.    God can empower you to live in peace and hope right in the present moment.   But even when you and I know that, we still have a big question to answer.   How?   How do you get that power?    Yes, it begins with believing that Jesus died for you; that Jesus defeated death for you.   But let’s be honest, lots of folks believe that, but you may not see a lot of change in their lives.  Heck, you might believe it, yet you still struggle with things that you wish you didn’t, that you want to overcome.  Why can’t you?

  

A century ago, the philosopher Nietzche gave Christians a pretty harsh critique, and his words still hold painfully true.  He said.  “Christians should look more redeemed”…more changed in other words.   So how does the future that God has for you, change your life right now?   In these words, God shows us the way.  Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.

Romans 6:1-18

So how does God’s future change you right now?  How does God’s gift in Jesus empower you to overcome what holds you back today?   To understand that, you first need to understand the powerful forces that do hold you back.  Only then can you understand not only how Jesus literally frees you, but how you make that freedom effective in your own life.

So what are the forces that hold you back?  Right near the end of what you just heard, God tells you.   Paul writes.  “Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.”   Now to grasp why human beings, even Christians, struggle with change, we need to understand two key words here, sin and passions.   First, let’s make it clear.   Sin isn’t simply some checklist of do’s and don’t’s.  It goes way deeper.  Sin includes anything, even good things in our lives that draw you away from loving God and loving others.    So how can a good thing draw you away from God?  That’s where that other word, passions comes in.   Passion comes closest in English to what Paul was telling us here, but to get this, to really get, we need to understand the Greek word used here, epithumia.  This word basically means an overriding, super intense desire, an epic desire, in other words.   And when you and I move away from loving God and loving others, always at the center of that moving away is an epic desire, a desire that is way beyond what it needs to be. 

And every human being has epic desires that lead them away.   It can be anything, career; family; achievement; personal independence; need to have others dependent on you;  power; influence; human approval; a political cause; romance; physical attractiveness, even religion.   Now all of these desires could be good.  What makes them bad, what makes them sin is when they go epic, when they go out of control, when they become ultimate desires.  

And how can you know a desire, even a good desire, has gone epic.    Here are four ways to find out. 

First, if something blocks you from getting a good thing, sure you get angry.  But when something blocks you from a thing you epically desire, you don’t just get angry, you get epically angry.  You lose control.  You say things that later you wonder why you said it.  You carry bitterness, sometimes for years.  Are you having trouble forgiving someone?  At the root of that lies an epic desire guaranteed.

Or, if something good in your life gets threatened, you get worried.   But if something ultimate, something you epically desire gets threatened, you get epically worried.  The fear paralyzes you.  Your anxiety goes out of control.  You know it’s too much, yet you can’t stop being driven by fear and worry over it.

Or, if you lose something good, you grieve.  You weep.  It’s terrible.  It may take months to get over it.   If you lose something that is ultimate, that is an epic desire, you want to throw yourself off a bridge.   You can’t find meaning in life without it. 

Or, if something in your life has gotten out of control, and you resolve to stop it, yet you can’t.  Your desire for it has become that epic, that intense, that ultimate that you don’t even know how to function without meeting it.     

Do you see the power that such desires have?  You don’t have an epic desire.  An epic desire has you.   That’s why in the next verses, Paul compares it to slavery.  These desires own you.   And here is the stunning truth, if you don’t have an epic desire for God, then guaranteed you have an epic desire for something.   Everyone does   As the writer David Foster Wallace put it.  

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.  And the compelling reason, Wallace (a non-Christian said) for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship…is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.   But Wallace didn’t stop there.   He pointed out that “the insidious thing about these forms of worship is that they’re unconscious.”  In other words, people go around driven by epic desires that are eating away at their lives, and they don’t even know it.  They are bowing down to false gods, worshipping them, and have no clue they’re doing it at all.   

If you have an eating disorder, you are worshiping the idol of thinness.  If you are a workaholic, you could be worshiping any number of things, success, money, approval, but whatever it is, it owns you, whether you admit it or not.  If you are in a relationship and everyone know it’s bad for you, but you can’t get out, you are worshiping the idol of male or female affection.   You can’t imagine not being with someone. 

Everyone has a spiritual master.  You think that’s not you, that you are in control but you’re not.   If God is not leading your life, then guaranteed you aren’t leading it.  Something else is, some epic desire or desires have you.   What you need to do is figure out what those are for you.  

So how do you get free from these epic desires?   First, you need to understand just what Jesus has given you.   And right at the beginning of this passage, Paul shows you exactly that.  Paul says. You have been united with Jesus not only in his death, but in his resurrection.   What does that mean?   

It means first that everything that Jesus has done now belongs to you.  It’s like if you marry someone who is rich, what happens to you?  You become rich.   And when Jesus unites with you, all your mistakes and failings disappear, and all of Jesus’ righteousness and goodness becomes yours.  It is as if you died on that cross for your sins.  But not only do you share in his death, you share in his resurrection.  You don’t just get Jesus’ past.  You get Jesus’ future.  

In the Bible, in only two places you will find this fascinating Greek word, palingenesia.  They Stoic philosophers created it to describe their concept of the continual rebirth of the cosmos.  They believed that the world went into decay until the Creator purged it, and out of the purging recreated it once again, and that this cycle goes on without end.  But in Matthew 19, Jesus uses that very word to describe something quite different.  Jesus says:   “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, (the palingenesia) when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory… everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life.”   Jesus is saying.  “Yes, there will be a palingenesia, a rebirth, a new heavens and a new earth, but it is only happening once.”  Jesus is talking here about what we saw in Revelation last week.  

But the Bible uses that same word in a very different place.  In Titus 3, Paul writes: “Jesus saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”  Do you know what that word rebirth there is?  It’s palingenesia.   But that makes no sense.  Palingenesia refers to the rebirth of the universe not the renewal of one person.  But Paul knows that.  So why does he use it?   He is telling us that the same power that is moving even now to bring a new heavens and new earth, that same power, when you believe in Jesus, lives in you right now.   The same power that will remake the universe lives in you now. 

So if you have become a follower of Jesus, and you still struggle to change, then you simply haven’t accessed the power that Jesus has given you.    But how do you access this power?  It begins with simply affirming that it has happened, that as Paul puts it here, your old self has died, that it died with Jesus on that cross.

The great Christian thinker, St. Augustine, before he became a believer had serious issues with sexual self-control.  In other words, he slept around a lot.   One day, after his conversion, one of his old girlfriends recognizes him, and propositions him.   But Augustine, politely but firmly says. “No thank you.”   She is stunned, so stunned she thinks that Augustine must not recognize me.  So she says.   “Augustine, it is I.”   What does Augustine say?   He says,   “I know but it is not I.”    Augustine is telling her.  “I’m no longer that guy, who needed to sleep around to feel value or worth.  That guy is dead.”    So when epic desires rise, what do you do?  You remind yourself.   “That self is dead, gone, crucified with Jesus.” 

But still, let’s be honest, even with that, this process takes a while.   Why does it take so long?  Do you remember the story of the parting of the Red Sea in the Moses story?  God parts the waters.  The Israelites escape.  The Egyptian army is destroyed.  In that one awesome act God delivers the Israelites out of slavery.   But they still spend 40 years in the desert before they are ready to enter the land God promised them.  Why?   God can take you out of slavery in an instant, but it takes years for God to get the slavery out of you.  

But ok, you might say I get that.  But why does it take so long to get the slavery out?   Because in your heart of hearts, you don’t believe that Jesus really has the best for you.  At the very beginning, that was the original temptation in the garden.  The serpent said.  You can’t trust this God, what He tells you, what He wants you to do.   And we still struggle with that message.  After all, as enslaved as we are to our epic desires, we don’t feel that enslaved.  So to offer ourselves to God without reservations feels so hard.   So we think, hey I can keep the illusion of independence even though I’m really enslaved.  Or I can go into something that looks as if it will enslave me, but that actually sets me free.  And you get scared.  You back away.   And how do you break free of this fear?   You look at what God in Jesus has given for you.   You see the one who lost his freedom so that you can be free forever.  You see the One who gave up power so that his power might live in you.   You see the One who paid the ultimate price to give you the ultimate freedom.   And you realize.  Why would I not want to offer myself to the only master who has already offered himself for me?   Give yourself to anything else, it won’t die for you.  It’ll want you to die for it.   Or you can give yourself to the one who has already died for you, who has even defeated death for you.   For only there, will you find the perfect freedom you yearn to have.                  

When You Know This Future, It doesn't Just Change Your Future. It Changes Your Right Now

Do you know what movies I really like?  I really like the movies that have a cool twist at the end, one you don’t even see coming.  That’s why I went and saw 10 Cloverfield Lane.   I wanted the twist at the end.  It was a pretty good one.  But I gotta admit.  It couldn’t hold a candle to the ultimate movie twisted end.  

That end scene I will never forget.  Bruce Willis sees his back in the mirror, and then he gets it.  But not only does he get it, we get it.    Have you ever seen the movie, The Sixth Sense?   If you haven’t, I’m not going to spoil it for you.  But with that movie, you don’t really get it until you’ve seen how the movie ends.   And when you see that ending, everything you’ve watched before makes sense in a way it didn’t before.   After seeing that ending, you can never watch that movie in the same way again.

 

When it comes to Easter, it’s the same.   You don’t get Easter fully, what it really means, until you’ve seen the end.   And Easter is not the end, no, not at all.  At Easter, you are still living in the middle of the story, granted the climax of the story, but still the middle.   But if you want to understand the Jesus story, if you want to understand your story, if you want to understand the story of everything, then you’ve got to know the end to which Easter points.   Only then will you get it, really get it.

And what will you get?  You will get a power for living that nothing can shake.  You will gain a hope in the future that enables you to live in peace right now. You will realize maybe for the first time, exactly what time it really is.   How does that happen?  In these next words, God shows the way.  Let’s listen and hear what God has to say. 

Revelation 21:1-7

When the writers of the Bible talk about Jesus and his resurrection, do you know what they call the risen Jesus?  They call him the first fruits.   What does that mean?   It means that the risen Jesus is only the beginning, the beginning of something so much bigger.   For the last two thousand years, we’ve been moving toward that ending.  And here in the words you just heard, God gives you a picture of it, of what is to come, of the glorious ending that awaits.

And when you grasp what God shows you here, it will change everything from how you view Christianity to how you view your future to how you view yourself. 

Too many folks think the whole point of the Gospel is to get you up there, to get you to heaven.   But do you see what God shows us here?  Nobody is going up anywhere.  No, instead God is coming down.  A new heavens and a new earth are coming down.   God is not leaving the world behind.   God is restoring it, transforming it, healing it.   When Jesus rose, he didn’t rise as some spirit floating through Galilee.  He rose in flesh and blood.  He even munched down on fish with his buddies.  

When the end comes, do you think that you’ll be floating around on clouds playing harps?  Forget that. 

Have you ever had a memory of a place that you remembered as so amazing, so wonderful?  Then you get there, and it just didn’t live up to the memory.  It seemed so much better in your mind.   Have you imagined what some new experience will be like, a meal at a certain place, a concert, a time with friends.  Then, whatever it is, it just doesn’t meet the vision.  It may come close, but something is missing.   What are you longing for in those moments?  You are longing for what will be, for what God is even now bringing, the new heavens and the new earth. 

Think about the most joyous moments you’ve had in love.  Think about a great party, an amazing meal, a piece of music that rocked your world, the joy you felt.  Think about the wonder of a magnificent waterfall, or a mountain or the sea the joy it gave you.  Where did that joy came from? The books or the music in which you thought the joy was located…it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through was a longing….They are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower you have not found, the echo of a tune you have not heard, news from a country you have never yet visited. (C.S.Lewis, The Weight of Glory).  As one writer put it, “All beauty in the world is either a memory of Paradise or a prophecy of the transfigured world,” (Nicholas Berdyaev) the new heavens and earth that Revelation proclaims.  In that transfigured world, you will experience THE waterfalls of which all other waterfalls are just hints and echoes.  You will experience THE party of all parties, THE song of all songs, THE family of all families, THE joy of all joys.    

And when you realize that, it changes everything.   It gives you a power right now to live your life that nothing can shake.   What do I mean?   Who was John writing these words to?  He was writing to people who were facing a dangerous, even terrifyingly hostile world.   The Roman Empire had begun to notice Christians, and they were not amused.   Christians were dying.  Leaders such as John, who wrote this letter, were being sent into exile.  Over the next two centuries, the church would live at the mercy of an empire that would veer from bare toleration of their existence to campaigns to wipe them out completely.   Yet in the midst of that, what happened?   Followers of Jesus grew into the millions, until their presence dominated the empire.   They changed a cruel and brutal culture, into one that began to care the most vulnerable.   Where did hospitals and orphanages come from?  Christians created them.  Before Christianity, they didn’t exist.  And what enabled the revolution to happen?  The Christians had this.  They knew the end of the story.   And, knowing that future gave them the power to change their present.   

Think about it.   Knowing your future doesn’t simply affect you in the future, it affects you right now.   Imagine, two people get a job, some mundane job like fitting widgets into wodgets.  But one person gets told that in one year, he’ll get a raise from 20,000.00 a year to $25,000 a year, but the other gets told that in one year, he’ll get a raise from 20,000.00 a year to 20 million.  Who do you think is going to come to work every day with more enthusiasm, the 25 grand guy or the 20 million one?   But get this.  They are both experiencing the same circumstances.  But they are experiencing those circumstances in two very different ways. (Tim Keller)   Why?   Because, what both believe about their future is changing the way they live their lives right now.    

Last week, we heard the African American spiritual, Soon I Will Be Done.  Did you notice what that song was about?    It sang about the future, a future where death is no more, where God brings freedom and peace.  Most of the spirituals have that focus.   Why?  It was that future that helped them get through the horrendous years of slavery.   As Howard Thurman, the great African American scholar put it,   “This sung faith…. taught a people how to ride high in life and look squarely in the face those facts that most dramatically argue against all hope and to use those facts as raw material out of which they fashioned a hope that their environment with all its cruelty could not crush.   This enabled them to reject annihilation and affirm a terrible right to live.”    In the midst of a horrible situation, these slaves found dignity, strength, even power, in a vision of a future where God makes all things right.    And their persecutors and owners could not touch it ever.  Why?  It lay in the future.  But that future hope gave them power right in the present moment. 

What sort of future do you believe in?  Do you believe in One where God makes everything right, where all creation becomes what God intended it to be, that you become all that God intended you to be?  Or do you believe when you die, that you push up the daisies, and that in a few billion years everything burns up, and therefore nothing really ultimately matters?  What you believe about the future changes the life you live right now. 

You will hopefully never face servitude or persecution, and thank God for that.   But right now, you are facing challenges that make you anxious; possibilities that worry you (maybe the news from Brussels), problems that weigh you down, relationships that you fear won’t make it.    But history shows us that people who carried this living hope triumphed over all that and far worse.  Why?  They knew the end of the story.  God wins.  Love wins.  When you realize that the worst you can face cannot hold a candle to what God has in store for you, for this world, it changes you.  It changes you right now.  It gives you a hope, a power, a peace that nothing can defeat.   

How do you get this hope, this power, this peace?  How does it live in you?   It lives in you when you believe the gospel; when you believe that Jesus did die for you; that he did defeat death for you.   That’s the water of life, water that Jesus gives as a gift; water that meets your deepest needs, that gives you a strength that nothing can defeat.   And for Jesus to give you this water, he gave up his life.  He gave up everything.   He lost heaven and earth so that you might receive it now and forever.   He cried tears of blood so that he could wipe your tears away.   He suffered unimaginable mourning and crying and pain so that you might one day suffer those things no more.   He ended his life, so that you can have a new life, more wondrous and blessed than you could imagine.   This life doesn’t begin out there somewhere, it begins right here, right now. It gives you a hope that nothing can defeat, not even death.

Many years ago, a pastor named Donald Barnhouse losthis wife.  Their little girl, Margaret was only ten years old.    Barnhouse yearned to help his little girl cope with this huge loss. One day, as they were getting ready to cross the street, a truck speeding by startled her, even scared her a bit.   As he comforted her, Barnhouse had an idea.   He said “You know Margaret how sad we are about mommy?  And she said. ”Yes, we’re sad.”   But let me ask you.  “Did the truck hit you?”  No.  What hit you was just the  shadow of the truck, and it scared you, but you’re ok.   Well, death didn’t hit your mom.   Only the shadow of death hit your mother.   But death hit Jesus.      And because death hit Jesus, and we believe in him, now the only thing that can ever hit us is the shadow of death, and the shadow of death is but our entrance into glory. 

The resurrection doesn’t just give you hope for the future.  It gives you hope right now, a power, a peace that nothing can defeat.  Why? Because you realize the truth, the reality of what Jesus has given you, You get what time it really is.   You get.   It’s not give up on the world time.  It’s God is bringing a new heaven and earth time. It’s not evil has the last word time.   It’s always love has the last word time.    It’s never give up hope time.  It’s always live in hope time.  It isn’t death time.  It’s new life time.   It isn’t crucifixion time.  It’s resurrection time. 

And when you know what time it is, it changes you.  It changes how you see the future.  It changes how you live right now.  It opens you, by God’s grace and love, to becoming the person that God dreamed for you to be, a person who has a hope that nothing can defeat, not even death.   Because you know, even when death comes, only its shadow touches you.  Because you know it’s not give up time.  It’s get up and live time.  It’s never evil wins time.  It’s always love has the last word time.    It isn’t death time.  It’s new life time.   It isn’t crucifixion time.  It’s resurrection time.   And when you know that it changes everything, not just in the future.  It changes it right now.  

God Wants To Marry You. Seriously...God Does, and Once You Get That, You Will Never See Yourself or God the Same Way Again

Every time my mom offered, I jumped at the chance.   I didn’t care who it was.  I just wanted to be there, but not for the worship.    I couldn’t have cared less about that, except that it was usually pretty short.   I wanted what came after, the fancy nuts, the butter mints, the tea sandwiches, that amazing punch with the green sherbet floating in the middle.   That so rocked. 

I was ten years old and I already loved weddings, ok, wedding receptions.   And as a pastor’s kid, you scored a lot of receptions.   But at those old style Southern affairs, I had no idea what I was missing.   In the South where I grew up, even the fanciest receptions weren’t much more than a generous cocktail hour.   And most of them weren’t that.   You didn’t get much at a Southern wedding reception – nuts and crackers, punch and cookies, and maybe if you were lucky tea sandwiches.

So when I moved north as an adult, it blew me away.   You had these elaborate cocktail hours, sit-down dinners, open bars, and a DJ; sometimes even a whole band.   Now I still love the receptions, but I love the weddings too.    As a pastor, I usually have the best seat in the house.  I can see how big the groom’s eyes get when he sees his beloved walk down the aisle.  I catch the tender looks between the bride and groom that others can’t see.  I look out at parents teary eyed with pride and bittersweet joy, friends and family beaming with smiles.  I still love the receptions, but I now love the weddings more.  How about you?  Do you love a good wedding? 

On a wedding day, nothing seems impossible.  You feel.   Love will make a way no matter what this couple faces.   And you know that hard times will come.  Every relationship has them.  But on that day, it’s all about the joy, the possibilities; the adventure that awaits.  

But weddings don’t simply show a beautiful picture of human love.  They point beyond. They point to God’s love, to the tragedy of that love, to its ultimate triumph.   The story of God’s connection to us isn’t a morality tale.  It’s a love story.   And until you know that, you don’t really get God or what God desires at all.  But once you do, it changes everything.  It opens you to a relationship with God more intense, more amazing, more incredible than you might ever have imagined. So listen and hear the ending of the ultimate love story, the love story that lies at the heart of everything.  

Revelation 19:6-10

When you come to the end of the Bible, what do you find?  You find a wedding.  That’s how the story ends.   And in that ending, if you didn’t see it before, you get what God desires.  God doesn’t want to relate to you as a ruler to subjects or even like a shepherd to sheep.   God wants to relate to you the way lovers do in a marriage.  God wants that level of intimacy, that deep and binding a commitment.   God wants a wedding.    In no other religion will you find a God who desires you like that.   And once you see that, you’ll never look at God or yourself the same way again.            

First, you’ll see what lies at the heart of the human problem.   What does?   Human beings have become unfaithful lovers.   At the heart of every human moral failing, every sense of disconnection from God, from others; even from yourself, is this painful reality.  You’ve fallen away from your one true love. 

It’s why again and again the Bible’s writers describe God as a spurned lover, God’s people as a faithless spouse.  So how does this happen?  How do we cheat on God so to speak? 

Imagine this for a moment.   A woman’s beloved proposes to her.  He gets down on one knee. He offers her this beautiful ring.  But then she is so captivated by the ring, she forgets about him.    She just walks away.  She doesn’t even hear her lover’s proposal.   Now you might think.  Sheesh, that must have been some ring.  But do you get the point?    It was never ever supposed to be about the ring.   The ring only pointed to the relationship, to her beloved’s desire to be with her for the rest of his life.    Yet she missed that completely. 

It reminds me of a couple I knew in college.   They had been engaged to be married, when she broke it off.   But she decided to keep the ring, even wore it around campus.    She just wore it on her other hand now.  She said that just made it a regular ring.    But did it?  I gotta tell you.  No one I knew thought so.  We were all appalled.   Why?   You couldn’t look at that ring without thinking about the man that had given it.   No one could separate the ring from that relationship, a relationship from which she had walked away. 

Yet, that’s what we do.  We’re that woman wearing the ring. God showers us with gifts, but we get so focused on the gifts that we forget completely about the giver.    And then we wonder why we don’t feel fulfilled, or why things that we know shouldn’t matter to us end up mattering so much?    What’s going on? We’ve held on to the ring and walked away from the relationship.

How can you know what rings you’re holding onto?    What do you think about when you are alone, when your mind wanders?   What do you worry about?   What do you find it easiest to spend money on?    Answering those question will give you an idea of where you unfaithfulness lies.

This unfaithfulness not only brings God incredible pain and heartbreak, it brings you pain and heartbreak.  Why?   Whatever ring you’ve run after can’t give you what you need, what you yearn to have.   You weren’t made for the ring.  You were made for the relationship.  Yet, whatever your ring is, it ends up binding you.  You thought you owned it, but in reality it starts to own you.   And it pulls you further and further away from the love you desperately need.  

So if this is who human beings are, those who have broken God’s heart and lost our true love. So how do we get back together?  How does the wedding even happen?  

God does what we could never do for ourselves. In love, God rescues us.   Why do you think human beings create story after story with just such a plot?  The princess lies under an enchantment.  The dragon holds the damsel in distress.  Then a hero comes from outside, and at the risk of his life, he rescues her.  He wins her hand.  Why do we create those stories?  We are sensing the ultimate story that lies behind all those stories, the ultimate story that lies at the heart of everything.    

But in this ultimate story, the hero doesn’t risk his life, he gives his life.  He gives his life to bring us home, to restore the relationship, to make the wedding happen.  When we hear the words here, marriage supper of the lamb, that’s what they mean.  In Jesus, God became that lamb, the sacrifice that makes us right; that brings us to the wedding.

From the beginning Jesus knew that was why he had come.  That’s why he said some very strange words at his first miracle, when he turned water into wine at a wedding.    Jesus’ mother finds out that the happy couple has run out of wine.   She knows what a crisis that is, what an embarrassment.   So she reaches out to Jesus, to do something.  And what does Jesus say?   He tells her.   Woman, it is not my hour.    What does he mean?   If you read further, you will hear Jesus say that same phrase again and again, and each time, he is referring to the hour of his death.   So why did he say it at this wedding in Cana?   Jesus was thinking like lots of single folks do at weddings, about his own wedding day.  But Jesus knew his wedding day would be like no other.   He knew the prophecies, how God had proclaimed himself to be the groom of his people.   Jesus knew.  He had come to be that groom.   But he knew that for the wedding day to come, for us to be able to drink that cup of joy, he would first have to drink the cup of sorrow.    He would need to give up everything for the love to be restored, for the wedding to happen. 

And Jesus did.  He drank the cup of sorrow so you might drink the cup of joy.   He entered into ultimate darkness to bring you into the light forever.  He delivered you from the rings that bound you so that you can have the love that frees you.   He rescued you for your wedding day.

And what does it mean this marriage with God?   It means the same that any marriage does.  First, it’s a legal thing.   If you are poor and marry a rich person, then you’re rich.  And when you accept God’s proposal in Jesus, God’s righteousness, God’s holiness becomes yours too.

Like marriage, it’s a comprehensive thing.   It encompasses everything.  I remember how stunned I was when I realized that what I wore needed my wife’s approval. But then she explained, if you wear something awful, they won’t blame you.  They’ll blame me.  How could she let him go out in something like that?   Marriage affects absolutely everything, even your clothes.  And with God, it’s not all that different?  If you are a Christian, when you put on judgment or arrogance or have  failing, they don’t just look to you.  They look to God.  After all, that’s who you represent.

And this relationship is an intimate thing.   It ain’t marriage unless there is contact, unless there is intimacy.   In this union, God pours his love into you, and you return that love right back.  What does this look like?    In the 19^th century, a famous preacher named D.L. Moody led a church in Chicago.  But when the Great Fire hit that city in 1871, his church building and many of his members’ homes burned down in it.  It threw Moody into despair. In the midst of this depression, he visited New York to raise funds to rebuild, and he pleaded with God there in his despair, please let me know your love.   And he recounts what happened next, “One day in the city of New York, on the streets of New York, Oh what a day, I can hardly describe it.  I seldom refer to it.  It’s almost too sacred an experience to name.  I can only tell you this.  I had such an experience of his love that I had to ask him to stay his hand (to stop).  I would not now be placed back where I was before that experience if you should give me all the world.”   Moody fell into God’s arms, and it changed him forever.  And you can do the same. 

And as with any marriage, if you have intimacy, you usually have children.  Your marriage has fruit.   And so in the same way, as you grow in intimacy with God, you bring fruit into the world, love, joy, peace, patience, what the Bible calls the fruits of the spirit.  You come more and more like Jesus. 

And finally like marriage, this relationship is a consoling thing.   A good marriage gives you a refuge in the world, someone with whom you can share your burdens.    And in Jesus, you find the ultimate refuge, who took your failings into his arms so that you need never weigh you down again.   He gives you a love without limits, a love literally with no end.   As great as any human marriage is, this is the marriage that you need, that every human being needs.  This is the only marriage feast that will feed you till you want no more.  

And it all awaits you.   All you need to do is say yes.   Jesus has his hand outstretched to you, a hand literally pierced for love of you.   All you need to do is take it, to receive his never-ending grace, his undying love for you.  So, Jesus is asking.  What are you going to say?  

Don't Look for Happiness. There's Something Way Better.

Have you ever been to a buffet that was ever as good as you expected it to be?   At first, you might have looked at all the food, and thought.  This is going to be amazing!   It may have even started out that way.  But the thrill fades doesn’t it?    The more you eat, the less thrilling it becomes.   By the time you’re done, forget feeling thrilled.  No, you feel a bit queasy and uncomfortably full.  

Nothing really lives up to its billing, does it?  It may bring some happiness, even a lot of happiness, but does it last?   It’s why they came up with the term, buyer’s remorse.   When you bought it, it seemed so awesome, but now weeks later, not so much.   Or it could be worse.  You could look at it, and say to yourself. Why did I buy that?  What was I thinking?  But it’s not just stuff you buy, it’s anything.  At some point, the feelings fade.      

   

All of that disappointment shouldn’t surprise us.  Nothing can ever sustain our happiness forever.   In fact, likely, something that really makes us happy, at some point, will also make us sad, maybe even angry.    Think about it.   Your spouse may make you happy, but doesn’t he or she drive you nuts at times?   Or even think about a sports team you love.   At some point, the Dolphins probably made you happy, but haven’t they also made you sad, even angry.   Yet, here’s the crazy thing.   People keep looking for all of those things to give them happiness both now and forever.   And yet it never happens, nor can it ever happen.

So why do people look?    They sense that something like what they’re seeking does exist.  And here’s the good news. They’re right.  It does.   And if you want to find it, in the words we’re about to hear, God shows the way.  So let’s hear what God has to say. 

Romans 5:1-11  

Why do people look for happiness?  They believe it exists; that somewhere out there the way to happiness can be found.   Yet, here’s the problem.   Happiness, at least the way most define happiness, can’t be found.  But something deeper and richer can be.   What you and I truly need is not happiness.  What we need is joy.   And here in these words, Paul shows us that joy comes not because we gain it.   Joy comes when we realize that God has already graciously given it.  

But before we look at how God gives it, let’s look at why we need it, why joy gives so much more than happiness ever could.   To see that, you need to ask first; what do I mean by happiness?    If you are like the vast majority of people, happiness means you want to feel good.   And why do you feel good?   Your life is going well.  You have good health.  What you want to buy, you can.  You don’t have a lot of stress or worry.  As the psychologists put it, “your happiness is all about drive reduction. If you have a need, a desire -- like hunger -- you satisfy it, and it makes you happy.   You become happy, in other words, when you get what you want.

But come on now, how often does that happen?  Even Mick Jagger said it.  You can’t always get what you want.  And if you do get it, it still doesn’t really do the job, does it?  It’s why even a buffet can’t fully satisfy.  But still people think.  A better buffet must lie around the corner.  And if I got that one, then I’d be happy.   Here’s the truth.  It doesn’t, and you won’t.  

Happiness depends on our circumstances, and rarely in life will your circumstances so line up so as to give you the happiness you want.   And when they do line up, how long do those circumstances last?   What you need, what everyone needs is something that doesn’t depend on circumstances, something that you can rest your life on, no matter what life brings your way. 

And that’s where joy comes in.   Look at what Paul says.   Paul writes.   Not only this, but we also rejoice in sufferings.   How can you rejoice in suffering?   Because when you have joy, not only will your suffering not take your joy away.   Your suffering can cause your joy to grow deeper.   How does that happen?   Because in the midst of the pain, your heart grows stronger.  Your character grows greater.  Your hope in God goes higher than before.  And why does that happen?  Because God’s love becomes more real than ever.   You find God pouring his love right into your heart.     

Many years ago, I had a woman break my heart.   We were engaged to be married, and she walked away.   I was devastated.   I was about as far away from happy as I’d ever been.   In the midst of that, I remember talking to my cousin, Martha.   About five years before, her marriage had ended due to her husband’s unfaithfulness.  And this is what she said to me.   I will never forget.   She said, “Kennedy, I envy you.  I remember in the midst of my heartbreak, how God came near.   I had never felt God’s closeness and presence like I did then.”    And as she said it, “I knew exactly what she meant.”   I did not have happiness.  But I had discovered joy.   In the midst of my pain, the intimacy I experienced, the sense that every moment God was loving me, comforting me, standing by me.   I will never forget it.  Over 15 years later, I cherish those months as some of the most precious of my life.   And countless others have recounted similar experiences throughout history.     

What was going on?  In the midst of my heartbreak, I couldn’t rejoice in my circumstances.  I hated my circumstances.  But I learned.   I could rejoice in God, and God was not susceptible to my circumstances.  God could lift me above them.   I still felt pain, sadness, unhappiness, but underneath it all, a current of joy flowed through me, a joy that nothing could take away.

And, when you seek for happiness, this is actually what you’re seeking, something that goes this deep, that cannot be shaken by anything.   But often when things are going great, you can’t see this.   Your good circumstances almost anesthetize you to your need.  They dull your senses to what you truly hunger for.   It’s almost like they act like junk food.   They fill you up for a while, but they don’t give you what you really need.   But when joy comes your way, then you realize.  That’s what I was looking for all along.

But that’s not all of it.  Joy, Christian joy, not only brings you an assurance that God will never leave you nor forsake you.  Christian joy assures you that in the midst of all you face, God is bringing you forward into greater beauty, greater love, greater joy than you could ever imagine.   It’s what Paul means when he says.  We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.   That’s the hope of the glory of God.  You don’t have it yet, but joy has given you a taste.   And so you know whatever happens, it’s simply a bump on the road, the road that leads to the fulfillment of all you yearn for life to be.   

The writerC.S. Lewis put it this way.   Let’s say you are lost in the woods.   So when you see a sign post, it’s a huge deal.  Finally something that gives you some direction, some hope.  You might even stay and linger beside it.  After all, you don’t know when another will appear.    But when you’ve found the way, then sure, you note the signpost.  You’re grateful for the authority that put them up. But it’s not that big a deal.  Why?   You’ve found the road.   So even if the signpost is gorgeous, engraved in silver and gold even, you don’t linger beside it.   After all, you want to get where you are going.      

Food, drink, friends, success, acclaim, popularity, all the things that you think if I have that, that will give me the joy.   Those are simply signposts.  Enjoy them.  Some of them are awesome, engraved in silver and gold even.  But they’re only signposts pointing to your ultimate destination, to life with God forever.   Knowing that frees you.  You can enjoy all the good things of life but you place your ultimate trust in them.  You know what they are.  They’re simply signposts pointing you to where you were created to be.   

So how do you get this joy?  How do you know that God will never leave you or forsake you?  How do you experience the certainty of the beautiful, glorious destiny that awaits you? You realize what God has already done for you.  And what is that?  Paul tells us here.  While we were still helpless, lost, Christ died.    Even when we had so radically missed the mark, God still gave up everything for us.   God in Jesus took the death that rightly belonged to us.  And in that death, God made it right.  God made us right.  And when you really see that, oh, then the joy comes.  When you see, Jesus went through infinite suffering so that you can have infinite joy; that Jesus lost more than you can ever comprehend, to give you a life, a destiny more beautiful than you could ever imagine.   That’s where you live.  You live on the other side of the cross, of that radical gift.   That’s what the cross proclaims, that stunning, breathtaking gift for you.   And as you get that, what that cross brings into your life, then you’ll know the love; you’ll feel it being poured into your very heart.  And in that love, joy will come, a joy that nothing can shake, a joy that leads you day by day into the glorious future of the children of God.   So enjoy life but rejoice in the One who was broken for you so that you might be made whole now and forevermore Amen.