“Dancing With the Snake”

A sermon based upon Genesis 3: 1-13

Dr. Charles J. Tomlin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Disciple Series/ Sermon 3 of 14:  September 2, 2012.

Randal Berry is a Baptist and a herpetologist at the Little Rock Zoo.  He likes snakes and Baptists.  (I’m not sure which one scares me most). His pastor once asked Randal when he discovered snakes as his “divine” calling.  He said that when he was a boy, his dad would take him to the Golf Course.  His Dad would play golf and Randal, who never took up the game, would hunt for snakes. He would actually go looking for them.  Choosing snakes over golf?  Can you imagine that?  (From Randy Hyde,http://www.lectionary.org/Sermons/Hyde/OT/Num%2021.04-9,%20LeavingSnake.htm ). 

According to recent polls, 40% of people list snakes as their greatest fear.  Interestingly, at phobialist.com, the fear of snakes (herpetophobia) comes between the fear of deviating true teaching (heresyphobia) and the fear of the opposite sex (heterophobia).  All three of these come to play in this story.  But what comes most to play that snakes are dangerous, but they are not our greatest problem.   That same 40 percent who have a great  fear snakes probably don’t think a thing about getting behind the wheel of a car, speeding down the highway, with all kinds of other people speeding in the opposite direction, some of them even texting as they drive.  Now that something to fear!  Snakes are not that bad, unless you come up on one unexpectedly.

The other day there was a black snake on the wall near the door on the carport at my home.  Upon seeing the snake, I wanted to go get my dog and teach her how to take care of a snake, especially since she already had suffered a copperhead bite. So I fetched the dog to kill the snake.  I got the dog’s attention to see the snake still hanging on the wall.  Then I took a hoe and knocked the snake on the floor.  Sic’ em!.  My dog Zari did just what I said.  But what I didn’t expect was that when she grabbed the snake and shook him, he landed still intact and very angry right under my feet. By this time I had invented a new dance, but fortunately, the hoe stopped the music before anyone else saw me dancing with a snake.

Have you ever danced with a snake?   We all have our snake stories, don’t we?  How many of them are filled with sweetness and give us a warm, fuzzy feelings? That’s what I thought.  It’s impossible for a cold-blooded reptile to warm our hearts.

Today’s message involves humans “dancing with a snake”.  But it’s not just any snake, but it’s “the snake,” which the book of Revelation calls, “The old serpent himself…the devil, Satan…who deceives the whole world.” (12:9). But Genesis 3 begins with a very simple different kind of description of this snake as “the most intelligent of all the wild animals that the LORD God had made (Gen 3:1 CEB).  Why did God make a beautiful garden for humans, which included a very smart “snake”?  And why is the very first dialogical story (extended narrative) in the Bible also so very diabolical (a story about temptation, sin, and evil).  This does make you wonder, doesn’t it?  But we must keep in mind that this story is not about explaining snakes, nor about explaining the how things once were in the garden, but it’s about how things are now, and how sin and evil can get into any and all of us. 

What we need to understand first of all, is that this is no ordinary story and it is no ordinary snake.  This snake is not slithery, but he’s smart. He’s not scaly, but he’s good looking.  He can even ‘walk with you and talk with you’ in the garden and tell you “you are his” just like Jesus can. He’s not crawling around on his belly, nor climbing up the walls, but he’s wandering around looking for any Adam or Eve while all dressed up in a tie and a three-piece suit.  Wouldn’t you like to meet this kind of snake?  He’s very charming, you know.  Haven’t you’ve already met him?  Let me explain.

SIN AS HUMAN COMPLACENCY

This story is a story of human sin.  The Bible does not open with a definition of sin, but it brilliantly shows us.  It shows us what sin is and what sin does to humans and to God’s world.  But remember again, this is not simply a story about “original” sin which has happened, but it’s a story about “ongoing” sin, that is still happening every day in human life and the world.  

Someone once ask the late Carlyle Marney, where did Adam live, and where was the Garden of Eden.  Dr. Marney answered the question with his own address, 214 Elm Street, Knoxville, Tennessee. 

    “You’re lying,” the person responded.  “It’s supposed to be somewhere in Asia.”

    “Well, you couldn’t prove that by me.” Marney quipped.  “For there, on Elm Street, when I was but a boy, I stole a quarter out of my Mama’s purse and went down to the store and bought me some candy and I ate it and then I was so ashamed that I came back and hid in the closet.  It was there that my mama found me and asked, “Where are you?”  “Why are you hiding?  What have you done?”

What is sin?  Many would only define sin as doing something wrong, but the Bible would rather define it as falling to do something right.  Harvey Cox called it “leaving it to the snake”.  I’m calling it dancing with the snake.  Sin is much more than a transgression, a crime, or an intentional “crossing the line,” but it also “falling short of God’s glory” (Rom. 3.23).  Sin is “missing the mark.  Sin is not simply shaking your fist in God’s face (we don’t see Eve or Adam doing this at all), but at the very heart of this story and in the Bible’s whole story, the human person’s stubborn refusal to be less than we could or to fail to do what we know we should.   As it was in this ancient story, and still is today, sin is to leave the outcome for your life and the way things are to the snake, to your lower instincts, and to your unrestrained desires, instead of following the clear, higher, command of God.  It is to become God of your own life—without any regard for the true God.  To counter the late comedian, Flip Wilson, the devil doesn’t make you do it, but the devil is sure glad you did it.  When you come to realize what you have done, or perhaps more importantly, what you haven’t done, you will not be so glad.  You will wonder why things aren’t the way they should be.  Now, that’s sin.

Mistrust of the divine goodness.  There are, of course, many angles on formulating a biblical definition of sin, but in this original story (which is not so original), sin begins not with a deed, but with doubt and with mistrust.  The snake sneaks and slithers up to Eve, saying, “Did God really say you shouldn’t eat from any tree in the garden. (3.1, CEB).”  You can see what’s up the snake’s sleeve.   He wants to create a feeling of mistrust between Eve, Adam and the Lord God.  Here’s where all sin still begins.  It does not begin in simple wrong doing, but sin begins when people haven’t learned to trust, or can’t trust or don’t want to trust.  And the most important level of “trust” is learning to trust the greatness and goodness of God from childhood into adulthood.  “God is good, God is great….let us thank him for our food.”  This lack of trust which goes “against God” and “against the most basic trust” is the baseline where all transgression starts. This mistrust is more than a simple form doubt which wants to discover the truth, but it is the kind of doubt that will not settle for the truth that comes from loving and being loved by God.  Sin always begins as sin against God, but it doesn’t stop there.

Misuse of human freedom. The lack of trust in God’s relational truth leads humans to misuse their God-given and god-like freedom.  Genesis already told us that humans are created in the image of God, which means we are already god-like and have already been given the knowledge, skill, and command to care and to make good choices to do God’s will and work in the world.  But human sin comes into the picture when humans misuse that “freedom” and we demand more---to be “god” on our own terms.  This can be a misuse of freedom and power (to do wrong), but it can also be “no use of power” (failure to do anything).  When we leave our lives to the snake---our lowest instincts; when we only do on we want or wish in the moment, rather than make decisions based on what God commands and we follow only our desires, forgetting God’s dream for the world.  This is how we fall short of what we can be and what life could be.  We are free to “care”, but we are not free, “not to care”.  This is what Eve and Adam did.  They didn’t care what misusing their freedom would do.  This is the greatest misuse of human freedom, which has been and still is being inspired by the snake. When people don’t care, they are bitten.

     

Misdeed of deliberate disobedience   The third picture showing us what sin is, is the deed or act of sin itself.  The story says that “Eve ate, and then and gave to her husband, and he also ate.”  Both are responsible and both are participants in sin.  Eve listened to the snake, and Adam listened to Eve. Both of them gave into the snake.  Both of them choose to disobey God.  Adam will blame Eve, and Eve will blame the snake, but God holds them accountable for this misdeed which is nothing less than deliberate disobedience to God’s command.  They are without excuse, just as are.  In the matter of sin, we choose to become partners with the snake rather than partners with God.

 

SIN AS A HUMAN CONDITION

This new situation wreaks all kinds havoc in their relationship with God and with each other.  Years ago a popular song by Joe South, a song too religious and honest for today, named the human sin situation rather poetically, as “The Games People Play”.  It begins:

“Oh, the games people play, every night and every day now,

never saying what they mean now, and never meaning what they say. 

While they wile away the hours, in their ivory towers, ‘til they’re covered up with flowers,

in the back of a black limousine….”

What are these “games people play”, have played, and will continue to play, which go all the way back to Genesis Three and even before: they are the Shame game, the Hiding game, and the Blame game.  You or I could be “playing one of these games right now”? 

Adam and Eve played “the shame game”, for after they realize what they had done, they felt “naked”, exposed, and ashamed.  This is something they did not feel before.  We too discover feelings and emotions of “guilt” and “shame” when we sin.   This could be a safe guard built into the human soul to call us back to obedience, but too often people cover their shame, deny it, or try to get rid of it by covering it up, pretending that  it isn’t real, or God isn’t real, and saying to themselves that everything is quite alright, even when everyone else around them knows that it isn’t.  It’s like a person on drugs who is into major denial of what is really happening to them and in their relationships, having no regrets or shame, or admitting to such feelings, but everyone else clearly sees what going on.

In regard to “shame” and “nakedness”, I’m reminded how many Europeans deal with nudity and it’s a vivid and biblical illustration.  Before the fall into sin, humans were “naked, but not ashamed.”  After the fall, they are still naked, but now very ashamed.  I grew up in a culture that practiced modesty and realized the “shame” of nakedness, but when I went to Europe, I experience a culture that had much less shame.  I recall a debate in a German newspaper, between a East German and West German, right after reunification, with the “Ossie”, the East German complaining to the “wessie”, the West German, that the West German would only go topless swimming and the East German would go swimming completely nude.  “What are hiding, or covering up, the East German complained. Are you ashamed or hiding something?  Come on “take it all off”.  As I read that conversation, my only thought was have you Europeans no shame?  I could tell you some stranger stories, but what I’m illustrating is clear is that sin brings shame, whether we cover it up or not. 

Another “game” Adam and Eve played, which humans play in regard to sin is the “hiding game”.  You all know how that goes.  Instead of facing the truth of the matter, people like to hide, cover-up, deny, or refuse to face facts.  But when we “hit and run”, somebody always gets hurt.  Instead of taking the pain of self-knowledge onto ourselves, we pretend that truth can’t find or we won’t get hurt.  This is exactly what Adam and Eve were doing, hiding, or they thought they were hiding until they heard the voice saying, “Adam, Where are you?”   The voice can always find us, so why do we hide?  New Testament Scripture answers that question:  “ …people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God." (Joh 3:19-21 NRS) 

   

The final game Eden “saw play” was the “blame game”.   When God confronts Adam with his sin, Adam blames the woman, and the woman blames the snake.   No one accepts responsibility, but everybody else is to blame.  Blame gets them and us nowhere.   You know how the second verse of Joe South’s song goes: 

Oh we make one another cry, Break a heart then we say goodbye, Cross our hearts and we hope to die That  the other was to blame/ Neither one will give in So we gaze at our eight by ten

 Thinking 'bout the things that might have been It's a dirty rotten shame.”  

Joe South understands it perfectly. Only accepting responsibility will give humans the chance they need to work through their shame, their hiding and the blame game.

We all saw a good example of the blame game the other day, when an Oklahoma high school valedictorian said a four-letter word during her graduation speech.  The school principal blames her for speaking the inappropriate and ‘discouraging word’ and she blames the principal for not respecting her right to “free speech”.  What that young girl and her Father, who went on national TV to defend her words, don’t seem to realize is that free speech may be an American ideal, but it is not in any way an earthly reality.  When you speak to other you are in dialogue together with them, not just asserting yourself.   You both will carry what you say, together, forever.  Speech must be negotiated, just like life must be negotiated.  When we hurt and offend others, even if we have that right to say or do so, it’s always best to stop the “blame game” and say “I’m sorry.”  You don’t hear people doing that much lately.  Many would rather be content at playing the “shame” or the “blame game.”  That is what sin does to us, and if it continues---if we continue shaming, blaming, running and hiding, one must contemplate what it will mean for us all---what will our condition of life become.  Right now, the death toll is Syria and just one example of what could happen if the only game in town is “blame”.  There are some homes and churches around us, maybe even closer than we want to admit, that have become battlegrounds of blame and shame.  God forbid.

SIN BRINGS A CONSEQUENCE
For Adam and for us, there are consequences to our actions.  In the Genesis story, the world that was filled with so much blessing and good---becomes quickly contaminated with curses---the snake must crawl on his belly, the woman must struggle in childbirth and serve her husband; and the man must work with blood, sweat, and tears.  However you interpret this story, ancient people knew what we still need not forget: through human sin, the blessing of life quickly becomes the curse of life. 

In a new book on Sin, Professor Gary Anderson reminds us all that sin can have many consequences in our world and in our lives.  Like Lady McBeth, it can be a “stain” we can’t wash off.  Like in the early parts of the Hebrew Bible, sin can be understood as a “burden we bear” which lingers long after the deed and needs to be released and carried away from us.  This is how the “scapegoat” became one answer for Israel’s sin.  But the most dominate metaphor for sin in the Bible is sin as a “debt” that must be confronted, confessed and compensated.  We still use such language when we say that “Jesus died for (to pay for) our sins” or when we say simply, “somebody’s got to pay.” 

In the Genesis story, as in our story, the greatest consequence of sin is always the “costs” it brings to life and to living.  Adam not only had to pay for his sin with the loss of paradise, but the cost was also paid in the feelings of “contempt” or the situation of ‘alienation’ or ‘disconnect’ in human and divine relations.   Interestingly, when sin costs, not doesn’t just “cost” Adam, but we all somehow must pay the price.   Think about how the last few lines of Joe South’s song go.  They are still quite revealing then as now, for sinners in the church, as well as, outside: 

“People walking up to you, Singing glory hallelulia  And they're tryin to sock it to you, In the name of the Lord….”  Then his final verse is very pessimistic: “Look around tell me what you see,  What's happening to you and me, God grant me the serenity, To remember who I am. /  Cause you've given up your sanity, For your pride and your vanity  Turns you sad on humanity And you don't give a da da da da da….

Speaking of giving up sanity for “pride and vanity”, did you see the spot on last Monday’s Today show, where they interviewed a lady who was doing the opposite: She was giving up her vanity for the sake of her sanity.  Due to the pressures to become obsessed with their looks, this woman took action and she covered up her mirror.  She went on a “mirror diet” for a month.  Instead of looking at herself and trying to always look good on the outside, she took time to stop looking on the outside and start reflecting more about who she was on the inside.  I guess you could say she stopped her “vanity for the sake of her own humanity.”   She came to realize what it was costing her.  She was ready to do something drastic. (http://thelook.today.com/_news/2012/08/27/13461383-mirror-mirror-woman-reflects-on-month-of-not-looking-at-herself?lite).

We might wonder what Adam and Eve felt after the fact of their sin.  However, the writer of Genesis does not give us that insight.  The writer of Genesis moves quickly from what happen to Adam to show us what God did in immediate response to Adam’s sin.  God is the one who makes the move to “cover” their nakedness and to take radical steps to “guard” the tree life, which, as they text tells us, could not “take from the tree and live forever” (v 22).  What God does, and what the whole story of Genesis and the Bible is about, is how God interrupts and intervenes in the human situation to bring redemption, to offer grace, and to restore hope.   Beside the consequences of punishment which cost Adam paradise, God also offers grace.   God does not bring “instant” death to humans, but death is delayed, and life is not allowed to go on indefinitely, so that Adam lives forever in sin.  Amazingly, with God, if Adam will come to trust him again, even death is transformed into a work of grace.

We all know that sin has consequences.  But how much do we know about God’s work to pay and “cover” the cost of sin and to both redeem and renew our lives with hope?  I’d dare say we don’t know near enough and we need to know much, much more.  These days, humans know too much about how the world is: hate, division, competition, war and destructiveness---we know the bad news better than ever before.  But how much do we want to know about how our lives can be restored, can be redeemed and how our “debts” can be lifted, lightened, and even removed.   Who wants to know more about that?  One thing for sure, Adam didn’t protest when God “dressed” him in his ‘new’ clothes.  And who wouldn’t want to try grace on for size?  Amen.

“What’s The Point?”

A sermon based upon Genesis 1: 24-31

Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, Pastor

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Disciple Series, Sermon 2 of 15, August 26, 2012

My first pastorate was less than ten miles from my home, where my parents were still living.   The road we frequented to my parent’s house would take us through a heavily wooded area known as Allison’s woods.   When we traveled the road late in the evening we would often see deer, even before deer became prominent most everywhere.  One night, I hit one.  It was a large doe and the impact did quite a bit of damage to the front of the car.  To verify to the insurance company that that I hit a deer, I called the Highway Patrol to make an accident report.  The next day, I asked my whether or not my insurance would cover the damages.  The agent answered, “Why of course.  This is covered as an “Act of God”.

That was the first time I had ever heard an insurance agent using religious language.   As I reflected upon the matter, I thought it quite interesting that insurance companies would invoke such religious language about God for an accident.   But really, when you think about it, by invoking the name of God the insurance company declared that it wasn’t “just” an accident.   In their language, the insurance company had a need to find a reason and cause for the crash.   They said what some people want to believe.  Even accidents are not accidents.  Everything happens for a reason.   

I can’t say whether or not my crashing into that deer was an “act of God”.   Today it would probably just be called a “no fault” accident.  But I’m glad the insurance company could say whatever it needed to say in order to pay for the repair of my car.   I don’t believe that God caused that deer to hit my car, and I also can’t simply believe that everything happens “for a reason”.  As a preacher, I just can’t say that.   I think you can understand why.  I just can’t tell you that God took your baby.   I just can’t tell you that God gave you cancer.   I even can’t tell you that God made you healthy.  You can thank God for it.  You can pray for God’s help when bad things happen.  But I just can’t declare that I know everything that God is up to.  Ever since I came to fully understand what Isaiah the prophet uttered in the 8^th century BC, my words and ideas about God become have much more humbled: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isa 55:8-9 NRS).  Words like that are powerful enough to shut the mouth of any loud mouth preacher or person who says they know exactly what God is doing in this world.

However, there is something we should think about when Insurance companies call accidents “acts of God” and when people declare their faith by saying “everything happens for a reason.”   The theology in such expressions would surely be matter of fierce debate in most seminaries today, both so called conservative or liberal ones, but behind these words is something that faith believes is true, not only about God, but also about ourselves.  I believe that the “reason” or the “cause” of everything is what the very first words of the Bible declare with most impressive words: “In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth….”  

WITH GOD AS OUR CREATOR, THERE IS PURPOSE
These very first words of the Bible are words of faith, not “provable” facts.   Facts are something you can prove, put in a book and store away on a shelf and then forget.   Faith is something you have to keep alive, struggle with, wonder about, ponder again and again, even question or doubt, and then you must decide, not just once, but every day in your heart (Remember how Mary, upon the birth of Jesus, “kept and pondered these things in her heart.” Luke 2.19).   It is surely no accident that the Bible does not open by arguing whether or not God exists or by giving us proofs.  The Bible assumes and affirms who God is because of what God does---He creates the world and he created us.  Theologians, philosophers and even many Scientist marvel at such words.  Listen to what agnostic and scientist Dr. Robert Jastrow wrote way back in 1982, not long after the “Big Bang Theory” became a proven, scientific fact.  In his book, God and the Astronomers, Jastrow wrote:   “Now we see how the astronomical evidence supports the biblical view of the origin of the world….  Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth.  And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot ever hope to discover (by scientific methods). For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason (alone), the story ends like a bad dream.  He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Jastrow).

The Bible is not science nor scientific.  Science is human knowledge.  The Bible must put its words into human ideas and thoughts, but the Bible is also the written Word of God.  The Bible takes us where no Science can ever hope to take us; to answer the most fundamental human question of all: “Why are we here?” and “Why is there something and not nothing?” What’s the point?  In this opening word of the Bible, “In the Beginning God….” we have this dramatic assertion that the world was created by God on purpose and for his purposes.  These words come to us by faith, through the heart, not only in the head, as a mere fact of science.  As the writer of Hebrews confirmed much later, “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible (Heb 11:3 NRS).  

Right now, on the planet Mars, an unmanned spacecraft is conducting experiments, taking pictures and even shooting laser beams.   That spaceship was sent there by NASA not only to learn more about Mars, but it was sent because humans want to know more about life.  Even with the Bible in our hands, even after landing on the moon, and even after telescopes can show us more than we’ve ever seen, people are still not satisfied with what they know, and are still wondering why, as well as, how life happened.

This question of “Why” is a powerful and motivating.  It not only asks hard questions, but the question of “why” gives a definitive answer about who we are in this world.   “Why” is one the very first questions a child will ask.  Parents know all too well, children don’t just start with the easy questions, but they like to ask the hardest ones.  “Why is the sky blue?”  “Why do you have to shave?  “Why do you always leave your socks on the floor, Dad?”  Why? Why? Why?   Isn’t it very interesting that humans are the only living creatures who ask this question of purpose about our lives?  “My God, why is the question Jesus asked on the cross and is the question every reasonable person will ask in their heart.  Why are we here? What’s the point?

This story of creation would rather show us “why” than tell us.  In this story of “why” it is the Spirit or Wind of God that is hovering over the deep, dark waters of chaos and nothingness.  In the midst of all that darkness, God speaks and calls for light.   Then God divides the waters and makes what we would call the atmosphere so he can command the seas and the earth to “bring forth life”  (vs. 11, 20, etc).  It’s as if God gives his creation the “why” of his “Word” and the earth itself allowed to work out the “how”.  The point of this story is not meteorological, astronomical, geological nor biological.  As Galileo rightly said long ago, “Science tells us how the heavens go, but only God can tell us how to go to heaven.”   The point of this story of creation is not to tell us exactly “how”, but “why” so it will answer our deepest, most fundamental question, which no human can ever answer: “What’s the point?”  The answer in Genesis is that God is the point, or there is no point at all.   And this picture of creation much more than God created the world, but it is a picture of God creating the world as his natural temple, so that “the whole earth can be full of his glory”(Is. 6.3).  God creates his world, not just so we can live in it, but so his presence can live in us and in this world which is his great temple.

WITHOUT GOD AS OUR CREATOR, THERE IS A GOODNESS

Not only does Genesis creation story tell us God is the purpose for life, which is the only purpose which can ever be known through faith, but this creation story gives something else to wonder about.   When God creates the world, he is the only one who can call it “good”.   “And God said, let there be….” quickly gives way to the next foundational word, “God saw that it was good.”  How can we call life “good”?  How do we even know what good is?   That’s not as easy of a question as it sounds. 

Saying that “life is good” does not mean that life is “fun”, nor does it mean that everything that happens in this world is good, nor is life always way it is supposed to be.   There is pain in this world.  There is suffering.  There are earthquakes, storms, floods, fires and many other tragic, life stealing events.   Even the innocent suffer.  Good people have bad things happen to them and bad people have good things happen to them.  How can anyone, even the writer of Genesis, look at this world as it is, and still call it “good?”  On a good day, we might consider it and be thankful, but on a bad day, even on some normal days, if we look around long enough and see how things really are, and how bad things can become, it can seem impossible for us to say that “life is good.”  That wealthy Film maker who made the movie Top Gun and recently jumped off a bridge to his death, made his point about how bad life can seem.   We may not want to admit it, but if we been around long enough, we too can understand how people can lose faith and say to themselves “life is not worth living”.  How can the Bible say that life is good?

But this is exactly what the creation story declares, isn’t it.  “And God made the land and seas…and saw that it was good (v. 10)  “And God brought forth grass, whose seed was in itself…and saw it was good” (12).  “And God made to great lights…to rule over the day and the night….and saw it was good” (18).  “And God made every living thing in the sea, air, and on land…and saw that it was good (vs. 21,25).  Finally, God made “humans”, and we are told that he made them “in his own image” and saw “everything he had made” and “behold, it was very good” (31).  Life may not always look good, we may not always look so good ourselves, but the Biblical word says, in spite of how things seem, at least at the beginning, “God saw…everything” and “it was good!” 

 This biblical word does make you wonder, doesn’t it?  It makes you wonder how everything that looked and worked so good, could get so quickly messed up.  That’s another story, we’ll get to in our next message.  But for now let’s just consider this one:  What does it mean that God calls this world “good”?

Last week comedian Phillis Diller died.  She was 95 years old.  Her family said: “she died during the night in her sleep with a smile on her face”.  God rest her soul.  But Mrs. Diller, wouldn’t appreciate me saying that.  If you know anything about Mrs. Diller, she did not believe in God.  Sometimes, in her comedy, she was quite vocal about it. Once she said, “There is no God, you idiot!” and another time she quipped, “So, God made man in his image… No,” she continued, “we made God in our image.”  That’s the problem.   Diller was right about one thing, if we make God in our image, we are all in trouble.  I can appreciate Diller’s humor and how she used her humor to make a living and feed her family.  But what did you ever do beside make people laugh.  Laughing is certainly a good thing.  It is good, but is it good enough?

Unless God has the final word on what is good, and what good is, there is no moral foundation for life now, nor is there any hope of justice to come.  This would is unfair and it will not only stay that way, you will die and no ultimate good will come out of anything you or I have done.   Oh, yes, people can be good, live longer, help others, but unless God’s goodness and value comes into play, Shakesphere was right: “life is but a tale told by an idiot, full of fury and signifying nothing.”  For you see unless there is a God who created life to be good, and will one day “put this world to rights” in the world that is still to come, we are all idiots.  Phillis Diller was funny, but if her word is the last laugh, we all should be crying: “Unless God has given life its value and unless he made us good for his own good, then, Phillis Diller at least half right, you and I are idiots.”

In this book, The Brothers Karamazov, one of Dostoevsky’s characters, Aloysha has a brother who does not believe in God, nor that life is good, nor even that he should do or be good.  In one moment of their discussion, Alyosha tells his brother his greatest fear; “If there is no God, then everything is permissible.”   That childhood prayer which says, “God is good”, is the hope of our world.  Even if we can’t explain exactly, precisely what God’s goodness means, just aiming for it changes everything, but without aiming for God’s goodness, changes nothing.   Several years ago, a school in Germany, which had once been a catholic school that survived communism, was now closed and was taken over by German state schools.  In this area of Germany, Brandenburg, they were following the American form of education, and not teaching religion in the schools, but trying to teach ethics and morals without Jesus.  I asked one of the teachers how the new experiment was going.  “It’s not going, he told me.”  Ethics just doesn’t work without a personal example.  Jesus was our best human example of the kind of human being we should be.  Without him, without the personal dimension of faith and religion, teaching ethics in school is simply a waste of time.  The students don’t care and the students don’t get it.”

WITH GOD AS OUR CREATOR, THERE IS RESPONSIBILITY, CARE AND EVEN MORE

 This brings us to our final word of word of wonder about creation.  With God, there is purpose and with God there is goodness, but without God, there is no ultimate foundation for either.   But we finally put the spotlight on us: What are we here for?  What’s the point of us?  If God creates the world, holds the ultimate purpose for the world and also gives the world its goodness and moral value, then, what is human life about?   Why did God make us “in his image”?

In the “creation stories”, humans are created by God to be both “free” and “responsible.”  Humans are given “dominion”, but they are not given “free reign” over the earth, but are given freedom within God’s limits of responsibility.   Even this word “responsibility” implies that humans must “respond” properly to life as a gift from God.   What is the most basic human responsibility?  In the second version of the creation story, we are told that humans are put here for even a bigger reason than to “rule, have dominion” or to “multiply and fill the earth”.  Humans are put on this earth to take “care” for life, as if it were our very own garden.  This is why it was called “the Garden of Eden”.

And if I’m reading Genesis right, the point of life is not just that we learn how to “care” for the earth, but the story means that we are created to grow up and learn how to care, period.   Maybe this is why later, the forbidden fruit will kill humans, but it’s not all bad.  It’s the fruit of the “knowledge of both good and evil.”   It is this knowledge of “good and evil”, this learning how to live and learning how to care that can also kill us, but it also makes us very much alive in this world.   We are given life by God to learn how to care, even if it hurts.   Caring for this earth means that we are not to misuse or abuse this earth for our own sake, but we are to care for it and become stewards or managers of it, both for God’s sake and for our sake, and also, for the sake of those who come after us.  We are to care, even if it hurts and kills us.  And of course, this caring includes God’s most important creation; humanity, us, each other.  We are to care and be responsible for the world and how we rule over it, and we are to learn to be responsible for each other, and how we serve each other.   “No greater love has anyone, than to lay down his life for his friends.”   This could just be the main point.  Caring and learning to care, just could be the greatest purpose, the greatest good, and it may be exactly what it means to become the responsible human person who has been given life in God’s world.  

Last Sunday evening, I told the discipleship class about the story of a man in the small town of Corbett, Oregon, who was featured on CBS’s Sunday Morning program.  The man, they called “Woody”, who was not wealthy, but he always was doing the things to care for the people in his community.  He helped people all his life. Whenever people offered him money, he wouldn’t take, even when he needed it.  He wasn’t rich.  His life was simple.  But this was the kind of man he was.  A few months ago, Woody discovered that he had ALS, Lu Gary disease.   He was dying.  But this man still rode around in the community, visiting people, doing whatever he could, always waving at everyone he met on the road.  Just before he died, he wiped away tears, saying how he was glad he was dying slow, so he could say farewell to all the people he had helped.   When he did die, they laid him in a simple wooden box, covered with the signatures of the people he cared about, who also cared about him.  As they brought his body through town for burial, people lined the streets to wave farewell, mimicking his signature wave.  His son Clint said, Bill Gates could have come to this town and had not been able to have outpouring of love people repaid to him.   “You just can’t buy the love they’ve poured out for Dad.”   http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57495803/oregon-town-says-goodbye-to-man-who-spent-life-helping-neighbors/.  Amen.

“THE BIBLE’S POWER FOR LIFE”

A sermon based upon 2 Timothy 3: 12-17

Dr. Charles J. Tomlin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Disciple Series, 1 of  15, August 12, 2012

You can get into all kinds of trouble when you read, believe, live or teach the Bible.  A.J. Jacob’s, in his book, The Year of Living Biblically, reminds us of all kinds of Bible texts we had better not put into practice today, such as “the stoning of stubborn and rebellious children” . (Deut 21: 18-21).  There are many more.  

In our text Paul reminds Timothy right up front: “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted”(12).    To live “a godly life” in a world that is not convinced nor sold out on God’s “revelation” of righteousness (Romans 1:17) can cost you.    It might cost you a friend.  It might cost you your job.  It might cost your reputation among some.  It might also cost you money and, but hopefully not, it could, as it does in some places, even cost you your life.     

The recent Chick-Fil-A controversy is a case and point to the “cost” of living “biblically”.   The controversy has not about using cows in advertising, nor eating chicken, and not even about eating fast food, but it has been over America’s continued stewing over what defines a marriage or a family.  It all started when son of Chick-Fil-A founder, Truett Cathy, made a bold statement recently in the Biblical Recorder stating how his company stands for the “biblical definition of the family unit”.   (http://www.brnow.org/News/July-2012/%E2%80%98Guilty-as-charged,%E2%80%99-Dan-Cathy-says-of-Chick-fil-A).

Stating that his company operates on “biblical principles” is a great witness to truth as “revealed” in the Bible, but it was when Cathy went from witnessing to “preaching” on a news talk television show that he got into trouble.   “…I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say 'we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage' and I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about." (http://www.goodasyou.org/good_as_you/2012/07/audio-chickfila-president-coo-dan-cathy-says-arrogant-same-sex-marriage-shaking-fist-at-god-invites-god-judgment.html .

When you move from selling chicken in the world and to “preaching” the worldview of the Bible to the world, you are asking for trouble.   As Paul says in our text, “Scripture…rebukes, corrects and instructs.”  Here, already, Paul knew what Dan Cathy now knows, the “world” cannot always receive, understand nor appreciate biblical values.  If you speak up for what you believe in the midst of the moral, spiritual and the increasing societal confusion of today’s “culture wars”, people will take shots at you.  Even if you are trying to say what you are for, rather than trying to be against anyone, as Cathy later explained he was doing, (He was not anti-gay, but pro-marriage).  Even though New York’s mayor Bloomberg, who disagrees with his Cathy’s view on marriage, defended Cathy’s constitutional right of “free speech” (www.nypost.com), the truth of matter is that speech is never completely free.  The words of God in the bible aren’t free either.  

The problem the Chick-Fil-A controversy depicts the greatest problem humans always have with the Bible.   Mark Twain once commented, “It ain’t the parts of the Bible I don’t understand which trouble me, but it’s the parts of the Bible I do.”   We can come to understand even most of the difficult parts of the Bible, but will we?  How do we actually receive, learn, believe, and hopefully, come to live the words of the Bible?  

READ THE BIBLE---- LIVE A GODLY LIFE IN CHRIST

If you want to find the power and authority for life in the Bible, it will require effort and learning on your part.  Paul tells Timothy to “continue in what you have learned …”  (14a).  The way of a Christian disciple is based upon the fact that you have “learned” the truth about Jesus Christ, and that you still need to “continue” learning, as the old hymn says, “more about Jesus.”  In fact, the very word disciple means “learner”.   A true follower of Jesus Christ continues to be a “life-long learner”, as you can only “grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ” when you keep learning, one day at a time.

But we surely can’t “continue” in what we haven’t learned, what we haven’t really read, what we aren’t reading, or haven’t studied.  The foundation of living the godly life revealed to us in Jesus comes from taking time to read, meditate upon, and pray Scripture.  Are you part of a regular Bible Study?  Are you daily reading and learning what God has said, and what the Spirit still says?  I know this sounds elementary (my dear Watson), but you can’t beat simplicity for grasping the truth.  You can’t know, find, discover, or learn God’s eternal truth for yourself unless you take time and effort to read and learn the saving story of Bible for yourself.  

The Bible is expansive in its scope, substance and subject.  It’s made up of two major sections: The Old and New Testaments or Covenants.   It’s tells about the History of Israel and the Coming of Jesus in that history to redeem them and us.   The Bible was written over a period of over 1,500 years detailing both religious experience, religious progress including religious failure, so that it can be now be “received” as a guide for faith and the “supreme revelation” of God’s redemptive truth in history.  In more recent Church history, scholars like John Wycliff and William Tyndale were hunted down and burned at the stake because they believed you and I should have a Bible to read for ourselves.   And do you know who hunted those men down and killed them for translating and printing the Bible?  Strangely enough, it wasn’t the world, but it was “church” that didn’t want people reading the Bible.  There was a time when the church assumed it could make up its own “authority”, just like people do today, rather than following the word of Scripture.  

So, at the very heart of learning the way of discipleship begins by learning the Bible, especially learning the Bible as children.  Paul reminds Timothy how “from infancy he has learned the Holy Scriptures” (3.15).  It is his learning of the Bible that will give Timothy the ability to endure, grow and continue following the way of Jesus.   Everything young Timothy has learned and will continue to learn about Jesus is grounded in the ‘authority’ of the Word of God.

BELIEVE THE BIBLE----KNOW THE GOD WHO GIVES LIFE

The second word Paul advices Timothy is to “continue…. in what you have become convinced of.”  

 When we speak about the Bible having “power or authority for life” we know that the word “authority” has become negative for our much of our culture.  Beginning in the 1960’s the prevailing mood of western society became anti-establishment and anti-authority, which continues in subtle and more obvious forms of protest today.   Ask many people what is their ultimate “rule” or “authority” in life and many will tell you “they don’t know” or “don’t have a clue” or that “they are their own authority” as they are “making up the rules as they go.”   As Jay Leno’s Jay Walking segment has shown, when asked what are the names of the writers of the gospels, you will get all kinds of answers, like the one person who answered, “Paul, John and George and Ringo.”  In this world where there are so much ignorance about the Bible, so many beliefs, so many angles for truth, and so many choices.   In a world where there is so much ignorance about the Bible, how can we, make a claim of ultimate saving, spiritual truth found in the words of the Bible?

I know there are many arguments for affirming the “truth” in and of the Bible.   Arguments never work to convince anyone.  But let me simply ask you: WHAT EMPOWERS YOUR LIVE?  What gives you the confidence and assurance to face each day?  Do you have the “authority” to live the kind of life that keeps on giving life and hope?  Some people pick and choose a lifestyle that drains them rather than sustains them.   In contrast, the Bible’s authority is based upon living by a set of truths, boundaries and rules which empowers love and life.  

On the very first pages of the Bible, we have an unforgettable image of God's claim on our lives.  In the second chapter of Genesis, we find that life is not absolutely free life without conditions, moral boundaries and God-given limits.  For human life to flourish and to continue on earth, humans must bow to the ultimate authority of God.  As the text in Genesis says:  “And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;  but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will certainly die." (Gen 2:16-17 TNIV).  The gift of God’s life-giving “yes” comes with a death preventing “no.”  As the giver and gate-keeper of life, God warns that there are lines we humans must not cross.  If we reject God’s word of truth for life, we choose death.    

Interestingly, on the very first pages of Scripture, God not only gives life, but God also puts our own lives into our own “human” hands.   Our God-given power to choose life or death, becomes even clearer with Moses, as he charges the Israelites with the God-given conditions for life:  “The word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.  See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction…. (Deu 30:14-15 TNIV)…. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life… (Deu 30:19-20 TNIV).   When I read such powerful words, already, even in the first books of Law, called Torah, it’s no wonder many Jews still say the “Torah tells us the truth all need to know about life.”  From the very beginning and continuing until the full revelation of God’s truth in Jesus, God has given his people the power and authority for life.   By giving us Scripture, God has put the choice for life into our own hands.  

LIVE THE BIBLE---GOD GIVES LIFE THROUGH SCRIPTURE

Finally, we can see this direct connection between God's life giving Spirit and the God’s life giving Word by comparing two unforgettable biblical images, one from Genesis and this one from Second Timothy.   Do you remember how God creates Adam?   The text graphically describes how God “breathes into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life.”   Even though Adam is only made from the dust of the earth, God breathes his own life-Spirit into Adam so Adam can live (Gen. 2.7).  Now, in today's text, the same kind of life-giving picture returns in Paul’s words about Holy Scripture.  Scripture is “God-breathed” or “inspired” by God (16).  This means that Scripture does not have a life of its own, nor is it limited by human words.  No, when Paul tells Timothy that God has breathed God’s life into Scripture, he says the “written Word” points us back to the life of God himself.  When we read, believe and live the true ‘word of God’ in Scripture, God gives the same “God-breathed” or “inspired” life he gave life to Adam, to Moses, to Timothy, and now makes available for us.  It is this very life-giving word from God’s own life, based upon God's on authority and power for life, the Bible becomes “useful” for “teaching”,  “rebuking” for “correcting” and for “training” in “righteousness” to help “God’s people be equipped for every good work”.   As sure as the word reveals God’s divine life, God continues speak the very words of life through Scripture.    

Notice once more, with a keener eye, the most basic truth Paul is reminding Timothy in this text.   He is speaking to this young Timothy who has known the Scriptures since birth, who is already a follower of Jesus, and who is studying to be a minister and missionary along with Paul.   Paul writes to this one who has known the Scripture all his life, even since infancy, these words: “But as for you, CONTINUE IN WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNED and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, WHICH ARE ABLE TO MAKE YOU WISE FOR SALVATION THROUGH FAITH IN CHRIST JESUS. (2Ti 3:14-15 TNIV).  Do you grasp the meaning here?  Timothy needs to “continue” in the Scriptures not because Timothy can lose his salvation, but Timothy needs to stay in the Scriptures because God has not given all of life or salvation to Timothy yet.  God still gives the life-saving, and life-renewing conditions for life and hope through God’s revelation of himself, particularly revealed in life of God's Son, Jesus Christ.

This brings back to the word “authority”.   It also brings us back around all the hot button issues about who can rightly define marriage, or even about whether or not one should “eat more chicken,” ---or any other question a person might put to the Bible.   If God’s word  of truth found in Scripture “rebukes” or “corrects” our thinking, and hopefully “trains us” us about God’s “righteousness”, then the living Word of Scripture is only considered “useful” for the purpose of making people “wise unto salvation”.   We must not “use” or misuse Scripture for proving our own points.  Scripture already has a purpose and a point.   As followers of God’s word and people of the book, we don’t have to defend Scripture to the world, nor beat people over the head with its revealed truth about marriage nor even about its most important revelation of Jesus as God’s son.  The living Spirit of truth is perfectly able to protect the truth and judge the world.   Spurgeon, the great Baptists preacher of another age used to say, “The Bible is like a lion, just turn it loose and let it go.”   

So the question about God’s authority for life revealed in Scripture put to us is not “how we you using the Bible”, but do we let the Bible’s message find us?  Do we let the message of Scripture useful for “making us wise unto salvation” in Jesus Christ?  In the moral confusion of our times, sharing Christ’s love is how we show the life-giving power and authority of the Bible.  The apostle Paul gave us all way to express the ultimate “saving” message of the Bible, when he pronounced this final blessing.  In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul closes with this prayer: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”   (2Co 13:14-1 TNIV).   When we “continue” to mediate upon the “grace of our Lord Jesus” and “continue” to learn more of the “love of God” “for all”, and when we study the Bible, not alone, but in the “fellowship of the Holy Spirit”, we gain the very life of God.   This ongoing experience of grace, of love and of fellowship, is how God continues to inspire and instill the power of life and the authority for life in us and through us.   Amen.  

"Great Omissions"

A sermon based upon Matthew 28: 16-20 (NIV)

Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, Pastor

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Disciple Series: Introduction, August 12, 2012

We’ve all forgotten something.   I guess “forgetting” can have a good purpose, like “forgiving and forgetting. But most of the time forgetting can be quite frustrating.   Maybe we forgot where we put our car keys.  Maybe we forgot our doctor’s appointment.  Worse of all, we occasionally hear how someone has forgotten and left their child in their car seat or worse.  

One man told about his grandmother, who practically raised him, while his mother worked.  His grandmother is now 96 and her short-term memory is gone.  It’s sad, but sometimes you have to laugh, he said.   Recently his grandmother had been leaving pieces of cookies around the house.  She would eat a bite and then forget she was eating it and leave it lying somewhere.  On one occasion she found the cookie and brought in back into the kitchen, where his mother was fixing supper.   “Who left this cookie lying on the table?”   The 96 year old grandmother complained.  Her daughter answered carefully, “Uhm, Mom, I believe it was you!     

The grandmother responded with a gruff: “I always get blamed for everything!”

In the Hebrew Bible, God warned his people that when they arrived in the promise land, they could “forget the Lord, thy God” (Deut. 8. 11-20).   “If you ever forget the Lord”, God reminds them, “you will be destroyed” (Deut. 8.19).  Those are sobering words. The recent movie starring Denzel Washington entitled “The Book of Eli,” told of a culture in the future where the Bible was forgotten, but later rediscovered and fought over like people starving for bread.  Are the arts trying to tell us something?

In today’s text we encounter one of the most important passages of Scripture in the Bible, known as The Great Commission.  It’s a well-known text, but upon closer examination, we may see “omissions”, certain specific instructions from Jesus that we seem to have forgotten in the way we do church today. 

Authority Is Given To Jesus, Not To Us.

Before we get to this text in the last chapter, turn to the second chapter of this Gospel, where Matthew depicts a group of mysterious figures from the East -- the magi -- who find their way to the infant Jesus.  As they present their precious gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, we read: “On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him” (Matthew 2:11 NIV).

This is a quite stunning image written by a Jew, whose first rule of faith was: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one (Deu 6:4 NIV) and “thou shalt not have any other gods before me.”   But here, as Matthew opens, we find a very human infant named Jesus receiving worship, worship that rightly belongs to God alone.   Throughout Matthew’s gospel, he has stated Jesus unique authority throughout.  Jesus taught, he tells us, “as one who had authority” (7:29).  He also claimed that “the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (9:6).  So, now when the risen Jesus asserts that “all authority in heaven and on earth is given to me,” he is making the same bold claim he has made since his opening lines.

God has vindicated his only son and “raised him from the dead” giving Jesus “authority” not just as the true Messiah for the Jew, but also Jesus is being clearly revealed as “Christ” for the whole world.  What Matthew says here is made even clearer by Paul’s melodic words to the Philippians: “ And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death-- even death on a cross!   Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,  that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,  and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father  (Phi 2:8-11 NIV).  Now, all of us are invited to bow before the authority of this man Jesus----something no Jew would have ever dreamt of doing before.  This “world-wide authority, given to Jesus the Son by God the Father, forms the basis for the missionary commission which was given to the disciples then, and now includes us. 

We should note, however, that the text does not say, “All authority is given to us; therefore, go.”  If it did,   Brian Stanley has rightly written, “we would have a text that implied that God has handed this whole enterprise of world mission over to us, lock, stock and barrel.   It would then mean that converting the world would then be OUR business, not God’s, and it would be A business, a simple matter of employing the right methods with sufficient resources.  Our understanding of mission should never degenerate into that kind of business mentality. It is the greatest of omissions, to forget that all “power” belongs to Jesus alone, not us. (http://www.faithandleadership.com/sermons/brian-stanley-great-omissions-the-great-commission).

But neither does this text say, “All authority is given to me; therefore, there is no need for you to go.”   If this  text said, “Jesus will do everything for us”, then we all be hyper-Calvinist logic, which is very popular today among some Southern Baptist.   It would be a commission which invited the church to sit on its backside and simply do nothing, go nowhere, waiting on God to make the first move.  But that kind of “misunderstanding” of the Bible and of Calvinism, omits the fact wait God has already made the “first move” in the sending Jesus who, when lifted up “draws all people” toward himself.   God did make the first move, but we still need to go.

Many years ago, in 1792 William Cary wrote a historic pamphlet “An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens.” At that time, Carey, a Missionary Baptist, was endeavoring to refute those Particular (i.e. or Calvinistic) Baptists who believed, “That if God wants the heathern to be converted, then let God do it  himself.”   But Carey, the evangelical Calvinist he was, had it exactly right when put the “omission” of “going” back into the commission: “All authority is given to me -- therefore, you go.” 

But there is one more thing we must also remember, right up front.  This Jesus who has been given “authority” in heaven and on earth; who commissions us as church to “go into the world” and not just to “come” to church; this Jesus who already has been given authority “in heaven” by God the Father, only has “authority” on earth when we give it to him.  Just as Jesus did not “demand” authority, but “humbled himself to death on the cross” and waited in that tomb for the Father to raise him up and exalt him, this same Jesus never forces himself on anyone.   Jesus will not assume “authority” over us, unless we give him authority, by making him Lord of our hearts, our lives, our churches and our world. 

And if we decide to be Church without obeying his great Commission to “go”, we can still do church.  This can be “your” church just like you want it, but just remember that if it is “your” church, it won’t be his church, it won’t be his body, nor will we be part of the “bride of Christ”.  Yes, we can do our own thing as churches, but do you think it will work?  Doing your own thing won’t work in any other relationship, will it?  Some have learned that the hard way.  And doing church on our own terms will not make us the kind of church “the gates of death or hell” won’t knock down either! 

So, if we omit the main part of his commission to “go”, can Christ commit his grace and power to us?   Do we even dare imagine the answer, if he Jesus really does have “authority” to say, what Matthew has him saying “with authority” (7.29): “Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?'  Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away… you evildoers!' (Mat 7:22-23).  If we omit the mission Jesus has commanded us, Jesus does not have to commit himself to us either.  Now, that’s authority!

We Are Also To “Make Disciples”, Not Converts

Some people have made very bold claims about the mission Christ gives us, when they’ve got all wrong.  I recall when I was in language school in Germany and a new pastor was being inducted to become the pastor of the English speaking Baptist church in Cologne.   After the charge, he stood up to give and acceptance sermon.  He went on to challenge the church, saying, that he would lead this church to “win the whole city to Christ.”  Do you think he’s done that?  The biggest problem was that he couldn’t even speak German.  Cologne does have 10,000 English speaking citizens, but it also has over one million, who only speak German.  How does an American, English speaking church, win a city that can’t understand its message.

Many churches mean well when they are constituted.  They have an idea of the “big picture” of the mission of Jesus, but they often start too big.   Churches would do much better taking the gospel to the world by first focusing on the specific place and people, where they are.   Bill Hybels, the pastor of the now famous Willow Creek outside Chicago, once suggested the best evangelistic approach was simply “to walk across the room.”  

Interestingly, however, Jesus did not tell his disciples to “win the world” nor to “convert” people.   Jesus told his disciples simply to “make” other disciples.   But have you ever see a church with a plan to do exactly what Jesus said: “Teaching them to observe what I commanded you?”  Church have a lot of plans and programs, but I don’t know a single church that has a program to specifically teach and train people to follow and obey exactly what Jesus commanded, do you?  How did we miss that?

You see, the main mission of the church is not just to “preach”, but to “teach” people to obey what Jesus commanded.   This is actually what the Great Commission commands.   And it is a “command”, not a “suggestion”.   The word “disciple” means “one who learns from a master”.  Learning what Jesus commanded does not mean simply listening to sermons, going to Sunday School, participating a Bible study, or even going on a mission trip, but being a disciple actually means learning to obey Jesus in your life now, and even being held accountable for actually obeying and living what Jesus taught.  

Are we doing this?  Isn’t it here, as plan as the words on a page that we are not!  One thing we have done, to make such an omission with this Great Commission, is churches today stopped doing what the early church did when people wanted to follow Jesus in Baptism.  The early church did not immediately “baptize”, but would first demand that candidates for baptism, called catechumen, were instructed how to be “disciple” and how to follow Jesus, before they were allowed to be Baptized. Baptisms were normally held only once a year on Easter, so that people would have time to prepare, learn, and prove they were going to “obey” Jesus. 

What happened?  Why did the church and most all churches stop “making disciples” before Baptism and now we have so few, disciples in our churches today?  There are many ways to historically analyze this.  You could go into all kinds of details about what happened in what scholars call Constantinian Christianity.  But my mother had a good expression for what happened:  She would say the church simply got “too big for its britches”.  It forgot who it was and what it was supposed to be doing as it was doing other things.  It made some great and bad omissions from the original great commission.  So, the question for us is how can we return to being the disciple making church we were commissioned to be?  

Christ's Presence Is Promised In Doing His Mission

 Do you know anything about “cat” and “dog” theology?  When I was in the bookstore recently, I came across a book with this title.  Since then, I’ve done some research on the subject.  This form of popular “theology” is the brain child of Bob Sjogren and Gerald Robison.   They do seminars in churches across the world, helping them to strengthen a living relationship with God. Their entire ministry is based on an old cat and dog joke that goes something like this:  A dog says, you pet me, feed me, shelter me, and love me.  You must be God.  A cat says, you pet me, feed me, shelter me, and love me.  I must be God.”  The cat says, “You exist to serve me”, but the dog says, “I exist to serve you.”   Now which one do you think is more like a true follower of Jesus?

As you can clearly see, “cat theology” has taken over too much of the church of Jesus.  But the true nature of the mission of the church is not to be like cats who are independent, finicky, and self-absorbed; but we are to be like dogs, obedient, faithful and cooperative.  Could such “cat theology” be part of the reason why there are so many omissions in the great commission?  Could it be why we often don’t know, experience or sense the presence of Christ in the church?   Instead of making church a place to learn genuine discipleship so we can follow Jesus and make disciples who serve God, we have made church a place where there are too many cats who say: pet me, feed me, shelter me, and love me, so we can say to ourselves: It’s all about me. I’m God.     

What can we do about all this?   Nothing.  We don’t have to do anything.  If we want our “house” built only on the sand of our own opinions, whims and wishes, then we can let “whatever” happen.  The winds will come, the rains will fall, and the waves will rise and the house will eventually fall.   But if we want to build our house on the rock, a rock that can withstand the rains, winds and the waves of life and of death, then we must build our house on the authority of Jesus, not our own.  We must make disciples not converts.  We must know Christ is with us, because we are with him.  We must be “doers” of the word, not “hearers only”.  We must hear the word and “put it into practice” so we can build God’s house “on the rock (Mat 7:24).  For all other ground is sinking sand.  Only when follow Christ’s mission without any omissions, does Jesus promise to give us his presence, staying with us, as we stay with him, until the very end.  Amen.