| |
June 13, 2004
|
"Holiness" |
Pastor Brian Shimer
| |
"THE WAY OF HOLINESS II"
Proverbs 1
| I. |
Holiness is our theme this year, but really, holiness is the theme "
| |
of life! All of our days are lived in relationship to God, and holiness is our daily response to God's promptings, our willingness to say Yes to His commands. We are to become like incandescent light bulbs where the light shines brightly from within through our lives into every action of our lives.
In Proverbs holiness and the walk of holiness is called by the word "wisdom". The wise are the holy ones in this book, and the first thing you hear they do is "listen and add to their learning" in verse 5. In verse 7 we learn the theme of the entire book, "The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom or knowledge," so the wise also fear the Lord. In that same verse we also have the first mention of the group of people who are presented in contrast to the wise, the foolish. The foolish don't listen, they despise wisdom, it says. Thus is set the stage for this entire book.
We have the wise and the foolish that are contrasted and the bottom line the blessed line is the fear of the Lord. What on earth is the fear of the Lord?
| | II. |
I tell you the fear of the Lord is great promise to us.
| |
We read in verse 23 of chapter 1, "If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured out my heart to you and made my thoughts known to you." As we fear Him and revere Him God will pour out His secrets to us. We read this also in Psalm 25:14. "The Lord confides in those who fear him. He makes his covenant known to them." Isn't this a great promise of friendship with God we have in fearing God. This is an incredible picture of relationship with the Almighty that happens in the fear of the Lord.
Actually the promise is even beyond that, for we read in Isaiah 8:11-14 a series of verses where the Lord says, "Won't you just fear me?" God says this because, as it says in the living translation, "if you fear the Lord you don't need to fear anything else." What promise is that! Isn't that a great promise!
Anyone here deal with any fears in your lives? There are fears all over the place aren't there. And sometime we get trapped by those fears.
| | III. |
But God says not only is there great promise but there is
| |
great power in the fear of the Lord. There is power to make a difference in our lives. Power to change us on the inside so that we can be the people God wants us to be.
I am the participant in and an "experiencer" of that power in my life on multiple occasions. One time was when I was in England. The Lord powerfully met me in England. I thought I was just going on vacation. I went to England the last two weeks of May to visit a dear friend of mine, David Luce, whom some of you have met a couple years when he was here. He is 71 this year so is 26 years my elder, but it is like he is my best friend, my Paul to me being his Timothy, my brother in Christ in a very precious way.
Well I was there just to visit. I rested. I had a wonderful, wonderful visit. But you know God had other plans.
He has been healing me of a season of sexual abuse that many of you know happened when I was a young child between the years of 3 and 7. The assistant pastor of the church where my mom and dad attended and raised me, hurt me, abused me. It has been much to recover from. Over the years I have struggled and dealt with addictions, identity issues and shame because of it. Shame is a terrible, sneaky thing. It puts its tentacles into all kinds of areas that have nothing to do with the thing that happened so long ago.
God's been healing me a layer at a time for years. I've been a real project. I was broken in relationship and He brings lots of other relationships into life to do the healing.
So in England I was sitting there with David at one point and it was like God put the final turn on a screw in my heart and finished a process. It has been totally finished. God changed my insides. I was sitting there and it suddenly occurred to me that the man I was talking to, whom I dearly love and respect, is 26 years older than me. This is about the same number of years older as the man was who originally hurt me. The revelation took my breath away as God met me there.
God chose that moment to finish a process. The work he did was so deep that I cannot put words to describe what it was, except to know that it changed me. Bill, one of my dear friends said, "Something's changed, for your face is different." What an amazing comment to have him make.
That is the power of the fear of the Lord to change our lives on the inside. God has His own timetable with everybody, right? He did not do anybody the same way nor according to the same time table. But His purpose is to transform us that we can more and more be "light" from the inside showing forth into the outside and changing people's lives around us.
That issue in my life has been the source of lots of fears. One of those was the fear of man's opinions. This had conscious and scared of what people would say or do. Annual Conference was incredibly uncomfortable for me sometimes. For often there were conversations where I felt that the person with whom I spoke did not "give a hoot" about how they may affect me. Also, there are some who love controversy, love the tension in the air when there is a hard discussion, and thrive on disagreement. So, if I would stand and bring controversy they would love it. But the tension did not make me thrive and it would be tough to be in that environment at times.
But what I experienced was that God had changed me, for I had so much fun at Annual Conference this year.
One of the things I had to do was give a report to the clergy. Some of these colleagues I don't know very well, and have been a bit uncomfortable around them. My report was on behalf of a task force I am on called the "Order of Elder Task Force." As an elder in the United Methodist Church I am in an "order," similar to the religious orders established in the Roman Catholic Church. Our task force oversees what we will be doing as an order and how we minister to one another. We have been doing work all year and my job was to summarize this to the group there. They gave me ten minutes.
I was sitting in the front row of this whole group at the conference and I began to feel sick to my stomach about addressing them. What flashed into my mind was this image of the young girl in the movie Princess Diaries who has to give a speech, cannot get one word out, and runs from the room to lose her lunch. I knew I would not have that trouble but the image was truly a gift, for it caused me to chuckle. I relaxed a bit, and at my time, gave my report.
How exciting can a report be? I had worked hard on this thing, but what surprised me was this group of peers, around whom I have often felt lessened, applauded me. I sat down and began to jot down some notes. I began to sense that the Lord was speaking something into my heart. And this is what I heard the Lord speaking, "I am so proud of you child. You stand. And you stood well. They heard excellence. Yours and mine. They applauded some. I'm applauding louder." I was so blessed.
It spoke volumes to me about the character of our God and the healing that he has done.
The fear of the Lord, the power of God in our lives isn't a run from the Lord it is a run too the Lord. It is a run FROM sin. We run from evil, we hate it, (Proverbs 8:13) because we want to please God. We run from that which is evil toward the good.
The fear of the Lord is not an emotional thing, our fears are emotional. The fears of snakes, spiders, bugs, water for some, heights for others, airplanes, are just a sampling of the fears we have in our lives. The fear of the Lord says if you fear the Lord you don't have to fear anything else.
Perfect love casts out fear, we read in 1 John 4:18. So if we fear God He can take care of some of those other fears.
The biggest of these fears we have in our culture is the fear of death. That's why the cosmetic industry is so huge. We are trying to look less dead than we are already getting. Make those wrinkles leave.
My precious Aunt got a facelift once when she was about 60, for she had always hated the way her skin sagged around the side of her face and wagged when she talked. So, she got this facelift, but was so mad at us because we didn't notice. She was trying to make herself look better than she thought she did and there was nothing wrong to begin with! WE loved her. Who needs any repair work! She was fine already.
Choose the fear of the Lord. It is a choice. We read in verse 29 that we choose to fear God. It is not an emotion, it is a choice. It is a response to the greatness of God. We say, "God, all I want is to please you, and I am going to choose that relationship." We choose to fear the Lord and can be done with the other fears.
| | IV. |
There is great promise in the fear of the Lord and awesome power
| |
in the fear of the Lord and also a great purpose in the fear of the Lord. It says in scripture the purpose is wisdom. That's God's purpose, that we be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. Now, I don't know how wise a serpent is nor the character of a serpent. But know they know when to escape, when to strike, when to sleep on a rock. If we fear God enough we don't have to be bothered with some of the things that go on around us.
My dear friend Mike Voigts came from Asbury Seminary visited the Buffalo Annual Conference on Wednesday, the Nebraska Annual Conference on Thursday and then flew here to be with us on Saturday. In Nebraska this year they had been all in an uproar. All the evangelicals there had been so upset because many people were wearing stoles around their necks showing their support of the homosexual movement. The evangelicals were angry. "We're going to strike back," they were saying.
Mike said, "Brothers, sisters, where is Christ in that kind of a response? God says 'Man's anger does not accomplish God's purposes.'"
It showed me how far behind us Nebraska is. We are a decade beyond that kind of action. They are just encountering that kind of upset. If God is really in control, if you are going to walk in wisdom, you can love this brother with whom you disagree. You could cherish them, you could pray for them. And God could do something through that. God can move mountains through his love. But when we start getting our own anger in the way, well, we become a mountain and that just really gets hard.
One of the things that happened at annual conference this year occurred during our legislative process. The whole conference breaks into legislative groups. Each one has certain action items to vote on so that work gets spread out to smaller groups. My legislative group had an action no one else received because of how late it was submitted. It was about unity. It was written by a dear brother who is a lay member of the conference. He wrote a statement of unity in response to the resolution passed at General conference. Leo's concern was that although the resolution was passed at the national level nothing was put in place to implement it at the local level. Knowing that the only unity we can have is around Jesus he wanted to write something to help facilitate this.
His statement called for each pastor to have every member read and sign this eight point statement. I read it and knew it would never fly. It used all the buzz words that upset people: born again, forgiveness, Jesus, etc. He listed basic beliefs. But he had points that were inflammatory. One of the statements was: "I believe all the commands of God in the Bible and obey them 100% of the time." Now how many of you believe and obey everything God has said in the Word 100% of the time? That is what repentance is for, right?
I looked at it and thought "it's talking about faith!" We could talk about faith here. That was exciting, but I knew if I left it like it was, we would have no discussion at all. It would end up like the first bird of the season shot by the 100 hunters in the field! You don't eat that baby!
Just the thought that I wanted to promote discussion and work with this in this manner, demonstrates part of that "finishing of the product, the turning of the screw in my life" that I was telling you about.
I knew the only way to get the people to talk about faith a bit would be to move an amendment. We use Robert's Rules of Order for all our proceedings. So, I moved an amendment and did massive reconstruction on the document. I think I made a total of eight adjustments to what this brother had created. I put scripture in it that was not there and less inflammatory language. I knew they would not like it, but I didn't care. The result was this room of people talking about faith, about how they process their faith, about Jesus. This was a first. This was exciting. So, they talked about it and came to the vote and I was the only one in that room who voted for my amendment. I turned in my seat and said, "Hey, it's my amendment. I have to vote for my own amendment."
They all laughed. There was no tension in that space. We were enjoying one another and enjoying our differences. This is the first legislative group I have been in where there was no tension. Well, I put my hand down and every other hand went up. Everyone voted against it even my best friends did so as well.
But I was just enjoying the process. There's power, there's promise, there's purpose in the fear of the Lord. That relationship with Jesus changes us so that we can step out in places where we are uncomfortable and be a different person.
So, I said, "I hear two things. First I hear that you are uncomfortable with this legislative action because of the language, think it would be divisive, don't like the manner with which it is being suggested. But Second, I hear that you also want to affirm the spirit with which it was brought to us. You appreciate Leo our brother and you want to honor his desire to lift up unity in our annual conference.
They all agreed that they liked unity, wanted a way to be unified and did appreciate the spirit with which Leo had come to our group. I said, "Is there something we can do?"
There was a sister in this group who is part of the clergy in our conference and we are as far apart theologically as you can be. There are no two people in our conference that are further apart then she and I are. We know this. I really respect her. She is a great pastor in the local setting. Debbie Pitney is her name. She was a district Superintendent for some time.
She said, "Brian, why don't you and I write something. We will bring it to the floor of annual conference."
I said, "Great, let's do that."
The group was excited too.
So, we finished our business and then Debbie and I sat down and wrote a resolution. That resolution basically stated, "In the light of Ephesians 4:3, "Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace," we affirm the action of General conference with the resolution they have made regarding unity in the denomination and encourage every local setting to make it their effort to study to be a part of unity and make it happen." Our motion was seconded and then we both spoke to it. I said, "We believe that unity begins at the local level and many of our churches are not unified even around who they claim that Jesus is. If we lift Jesus higher we know that unity will happen."
Our action received applause. We expected this for we knew we were a kind of symbol, Debbie and I at the same microphone. Here we are a sister and brother both of whom love Jesus but from two very different places on the compass of what it means to love Jesus. And yet both affirming the unity our denomination needs to have in Jesus Christ around the one Person of Jesus.
There is power and there is purpose and there is great, great promise in the fear of the Lord. So if you choose it God can work in your life and you don't have to fear anything else.
|
|
|