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July 1, 2007 VBS Sunday
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Relationship
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Pastor Brian Shimer
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"WITH A GOD LIKE THAT!"
(this is a children's and adult's message)
Philemon 1-3
- Today we are beginning a book study of one of the smallest books in the New Testament, a letter written by the apostle Paul to a man he had led to Christ, who was pastoring a church which met in his home. The man's name was Philemon. There is one point which is made at the start of this letter, one point that I want us to be taking home with us. So, today, to kick off this time in this book we will begin with a story the children heard the first day of VBS. For this story, I need to think back a long ways and for the moment become a little boy.
Once I was lost in a big dark Jungle. It was dark. There were really scary sounds all around me. I was so frightened.
Then I heard it. A loud growl. (Could all of you be that growl?)
A growl so big I knew I was done for.
I looked around. Ever so slowly and there behind me was a lion.
Not a baby lion. But a BIG lion. A lion so big it was bigger than me.
It had a big, big head. It had big eyes. It had big teeth. It was huge and scary and so I did what you might have done had you been there.
I screamed and then I ran.
I ran down the hill. I tripped and fell flat on my face in the mud. It was slimy mud. It was full of little creatures. Then I looked around and to my horror I had tripped on, on an ALLIGATOR!!!! I tried to get up, I kept slipping on the mud. The lion was still behind me, it leapt into the air, springing out to get me. I screamed and then something happened:
I woke up.
I was in my bed, sweating, shaking, and scared to death. My bed was wet. I felt embarrassed on top of fearful. I began to cry and called for the only people in the world I knew who would be able to help: "MOM! DAD!" They came running.
Dad arrived first, took me into his arms. He did not care my PJs were all wet. He did not care that my nose was dripping. He only cared to hold me, to love me, to comfort me.
And mom came, and stroked my head, and said, "It will be okay, Brian."
And somehow deep inside I knew it was true, but at that point I really did not want to go to sleep again.
My dad began to whisper to me: "We're here son. We love you. We are with you. It is going to be okay."
Eventually I could tell them my dream. They prayed for me and Jesus moved close to comfort me. And then dad began to tell me "You know son, I may be an okay daddy but there is a better one yet, someone who is bigger, and better, and more able to help than I am. Someone who is good, who can protect you when you no longer live at home, who will guard your heart and your soul and give you strength to think Godly thoughts.
"Who is that Daddy?" I asked.
And what did my daddy say? (congregation answers)
"Were you there too?"
That is what he said, "God is the father we always hoped our father would be. God cares for us, nurtures us like a mom her children, and defends and guards and relates to us like a father, calling forth the best in us, leading us into life, more and more life!
My dad said, "This God is all the best things that I am and so much, much more. He loves you in a way that changes your life and makes it better. God made everything. All the stars and galaxies - even knows all the stars, the billions of stars by name. And God made you and the smallest cells of your body, even the parts of those cells, and the hairs on your head. It says in the Bible that God even knows the numbers of those hairs on your head."
"WOW!" I said to my dad.
"God is big, God is good, God lives in loving relationship always, day by day, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit always loving one another, and pouring forth love onto you and me and inviting us into that fellowship God shares always. With a God like that," my dad said, "you don't have to be afraid."
- Whenever we begin to look at a book of the Bible, we need to remember the letter or book we are looking at began with God. It did not begin with some impersonal, away up there, nasty, couldn't care less kind of God. Not a God like some idol which cannot move or speak or hear or act. But with a God who is personal, who can rescue you even from a nightmare. A God who has revealed Himself as a good Father - a father we can pray to and hear from-a God who is also the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and a God who has imparted His Holy Spirit in order for us to be directed and empowered to live life.
When we begin in this very short book we will find that the Holy Spirit prompted Paul to write to stand against cultural evils, to communicate a truth to a dear friend, to stand in the gap for someone who had no voice for themselves, but before we get to any of those lessons, today, the Holy Spirit offers us 2 gifts in our lives, precious gifts.
- Paul writes this letter identifies the first most precious gift that God has given - not imprisonment, which is how Paul identifies himself as a prisoner not of Rome (where he was in prison for preaching Jesus) but as a prisoner of the anointed One, of Jesus.
The first gift is that God gives us Himself.
Paul was not looking to meet God when God found him. Paul, then called Saul, was striding against God. He was a man filled with murderous thoughts. He was pursuing to kill people who loved Jesus. Now was that a nice thing to do? Not at all!
But that was what Paul was doing when God got Paul's attention by knocking him off his horse with a really bright light and spoke to him saying: "WHY ARE YOU PERSECUTING ME?"
Paul was blind for 3 days. He had to be led around by his hand. Until the Holy Spirit sent another man named Ananias to lay his hands on Paul, prayed for him to receive the Holy Spirit and receive his sight as well. Both took place and he was baptized into the faith.
This was not some religious ceremony, but an actual meeting of Jesus, and incorporation into who Jesus is, so that Paul's heart and name were changed from that day.
God gives us not a religion but Himself, a living, breathing relationship with the most awesome holy wonderful God. With a God like this moving into our lives, we can be changed like Paul was. When Paul suffered persecution because he believed in Jesus, he no longer cared.
Why didn't he care? Because such a God had moved into Paul's life, God made all the difference.
- This is the first gift God gives. This gift of Himself is called grace - it is the grace of God that is the presence of God moving in our lives to draw us into this relationship with the living God, so that we begin to allow God to change us from the inside out. This is what Paul writes in verse 3. "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
Paul begins each of the letters he writes with this or a similar greeting,
You see, grace and peace come from this living fellowship with God the Father and Jesus.
But you notice they come as "grace" then "peace." Nowhere in the New Testament will you find peace preceding grace.
Grace is the word assigned to the undeserved favor of God. It is a word meaning that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are acting on your behalf in your life before you even thought to act for yourself. God stirs the hunger of my heart for Him. God draws me to Himself. God places a longing, an unquenchable thirst in my life which nothing can satisfy except relationship with Himself. God does this and these are pictures of grace.
Years and years ago a man named Augustine was fleeing and fleeing from God, but his mama was praying for him. The more this young man then in his 30s fled the more she pled with God to work in his life and the day came when he was desperate for hope, crying out to God, he heard a group of children singing a song as part of a game. The song repeated the phrase: "Take up and read; take up and read."
Nearby was a copy of the letter Paul wrote to the Roman Christians, and so this man opened it and read: "cloth yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature" (p 131, Confessions, quote from Romans 13:13-14 from NIV translation not the translation from Latin Vulgate as in Augustine's writings.)
Those words shook him to his core. That sentence lit up his heart. He wrote: "Instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away" (ibid. p 131).
Notice, grace (conviction and grief, and direction to 'take up and read') preceded peace, serenity in his conversion. You cannot find true peace, God's peace without conversion. Hence peace follows conversion.
What is this peace? Paul is not speaking of an absence of war, but of a healed relationship with the living God. Peace is the presence of God in my life, no longer separated from God but brought near by Grace. Peace is the gift of God's presence in our lives, a comprehensive fulfillment, a perfection of the gift of God. As we say yes to Jesus we are ushered into "peace with God" through our Lord Jesus Christ. So grace indeed precedes peace and grace follows peace as we walk on day by day in Jesus and by grace, by God's strength, we live each day.
- First gift is how God gives us relationship with Himself - something seen in how Paul was changed by God, how he sees himself in bound together with God, every circumstance is God's design for him. The second gift flows from the first, and it is the incredible gift not only of Himself in our lives, but of those God has placed around us.
This letter was written in the first place because of the importance of having God-honoring relationships. It was written because of a dear relationship that Paul shared with the person to whom he wrote, Philemon, and a dear friendship also with a man who once was a slave of Philemon named Onesimus.
But look at the other people listed in the first verses.
There is Timothy who is a man Paul led to faith in Jesus in the first place, who is like a son, and to all is a brother. Then there is Philemon the dear friend and fellow worker, a woman named Apphia a sister in Christ, and Archippus a fellow soldier and then to the church that meets in their home.
All these are mentioned at the start. Our lives are not solitary journeys with faith being some private something that we can keep to ourselves. Like a child knows to yell for his or her parents to help through a nightmare, so we have a God who is real, living and active in the difficulties we encounter in our lives. Faith in Jesus is a relationship that then births relationship in the body of Christ with brothers and sisters, fellow workers and fellow soldiers
You cannot read Philemon without facing the central place that relationships with God and others have in our lives. It is a little book with this loud and clear message that those people God has given us are there for a divine purpose, they are there to change our lives.
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