| |
September 18, 2005
|
It Really Matters
|
Pastor Brian Shimer
|
|
"Awed by the Wisdom of God"
1 Corinthians 1
- As a 10 year old boy, standing in the tree at the corner of Johnson Ave and Hawkeye Ave in Turlock, CA hiding from my dad so that he could not find me and take me to church, while pretending to observe a bug far away on the ground below my feet, I Had NO IDEA that someday all this church stuff, the language about God and His grace, the reality of Jesus Christ who knew me by name and loved me enough to give his own life would mean anything to me someday!
I mean at that time I just wanted to find ways to get out of going to church, not even realizing that God knew all along what I was doing. For me, God did not even connect to life outside the church building. That building was God's domain and it seemed mighty boring to me.
I did not like all those hymns we had to stand and sing, which seemed too slow to me (sorry folk). My parents sang in the choir. I remember enjoying the anthems sometimes and liked listening for their voices but did not catch the meaning of the songs. Then there were the long sermons! Oh, Pastor Al could talk on and on and I never could quite make heads or tails out of what he was saying. And then those "gold" offering plates were passed around with the felt at the bottoms of them and I then would recall the Bill Cosby record at home and his story of putting scotch tape on his fingers backwards so that when feigning to drop money in, actually, got some money to come out. "Hey how much did you get?" he and his friends would ask "A quarter and a dime, how about you?"
Church was boring, it did not relate and If God liked it that way, well at that point it was fine with me, and I could let God have it.
But I had no idea that what I was doing was giving into foolish notions.
I had no idea that church had to do with the awesome majesty of Heaven, that the God referred to, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, was alive and able to change my heart and life.
I did not know that the very God I was shunning by shunning worship was the God who did indeed know what was going on in my heart and life and cared.
I had no notion that all those stories about the power of God displayed in places like Egypt, Jericho, Israel and Babylon, and the people of God like Moses, Elijah and Daniel were stories about the living God who cared enough to enter human history.
And I certainly did not know that one day I would believe it all, yep, every bit of it and be standing here preaching it.
I thought to escape dad by hiding in the tree was ingenious of me and that was about all I thought.
- The Corinthians had divided the God Paul had preached into camps. Like me hiding in my tree, they were hiding from the true God behind their divisions. They had slipped from the majestic wisdom of God into the foolishness of pagan thinking.
They were missing out on the real message, so Paul reminded them what he had preached and how he had preached it. His reminder is worthy of our consideration for it is the core of our faith. It is Christian Orthodoxy, if you want the theological term. Orthodox means "right teaching" and if we get this wrong we are really missing the mark.
I am not all that unusual, hiding in my tree, hiding from dad, God and church. We tend to be hiding in our own little worlds, inventing what we believe and why without testing if our belief lines up with what is true. Indeed today the idea seems to be that "anything you want to believe if it works for you is just fine."
But the point made here is that we cannot "concoct" the Gospel to suit our fancy. The truth about who Jesus is and what Jesus did is not a matter of you in your tree, me in mine inventing our own little worlds of faith that work fine for us.
If I believe Jesus, I do not have the option to cut and trim from the story the things I disagree with. Instead the Gospel works on me.
I do not decide, "I don't like the idea of Jesus' blood shed for me, it is too messy," instead I say, "Wow, God chose such a graphic way to show me just how ugly my sin looked and how desperate my situation was."
I do not reject a miracle told of in Scripture as "out of hand" because I have not experienced a similar miracle in my life, but instead say, "If God could do it then, then God can yet do it now."
Paul says here in no uncertain terms that the message God has given in Jesus is not based upon human wisdom or intelligence. So, it is not something people will embrace because it tickles their intellect. Indeed in America in the academic world of our universities it is in vogue to scoff at the idea of the gospel, to renounce the idea of creationism as a foolish notion, and to reject anything that smacks of Christianity, all the while embracing all world religions and witchcraft. But it was God's plan "to destroy the wisdom of the wise and to frustrate the intelligence of the intelligent." You see, God's ways are not our ways and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts.
So when we hold to the wisdom of God, we had better expect to be opposed. I received an email this week from a dear friend, a pastor alongside her husband in an Episcopal congregation on the east coast. She wrote to me and several other friends in Christ, saying:
Ok my dear friends;
I need a little reality check.
What I want to know is if my intellectual and spiritual affirmation that doctrine really does matter, that is to say,... it really does matter what we believe and in WHOM we believe, does not mean that I am unloving, callous, pharisaical, uncompassionate, and otherwise unenlightened?
If you could just set this one straight for me, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks.
Because this friend is standing up for Jesus, and if you knew this friend you would know she would "stand" in the most compassionate and loving way, because she is standing for the truth of the Gospel, because she is saying, "the core of faith is found in the fact that Jesus Christ came and died for sinners to set them free from sin" she is being shunned, ridiculed and sidelined.
People react against the Gospel, against the wisdom of God, when they have not believed. They will view it as foolish and do everything in their power to disprove it. Aspects of how God chose to deliver us will become stumbling blocks to their faith. They will announce that other World Religions are just as "saving" as the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
"It is all the same God," they will say, "and what right do I have to push my faith upon them."
Karen was talking with a pastor just this past week who complained, "I think it is wrong for us to make Jesus so exclusive by saying He is the only way of salvation." The speaker missed the point that is not us who made Jesus exclusive, but God. It was Jesus Himself who said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6).
Those who say such things miss the reason why, too. We needed a major rescue operation (Colossians 1:13-14). There is no way to "work our way" to God, as all world religions demand. We cannot be "good enough" to warrant heaven as a reward of a life well lived as both the Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons teach and many unbelieving people claim.
In the Wisdom of God, the Triune God chose the only means whereby to save us from our sins and that was for God Himself, in the second person of the Trinity to come to earth, be born and named Jesus, live life, die on the cross, be resurrected on our behalf in order to grant us the very possibility of life to all who respond to his call.
If the Gospel was about our efforts to reach God, then I suppose many world religions would be equally suited to the job, but that is not how God worked in His wisdom, destroying human pride and human effort, in His effort to reach us.
Let us be reminded that…
Religion is man-made, while the Gospel is God-given.
Religion is man's search for God, while the Gospel is God's search for man.
Religion is good VIEWS, while the Gospel is Good NEWS.
Religion is good advice; while the Gospel is a glorious announcement.
There are many religions, but only one Gospel. (from a similar list by JT Seamands, Tell it Well: Communicating the Gospel across Cultures, Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press, c. '81, p. 64, ubp).
And in that Gospel is the Wisdom of God wherein it is possible to be set free from the sin that entangles us, and liberated by the power of God into a new life.
- So Paul says, "Brothers, think of what you were when you were called…" and reminds them that they were nothing to write home about. They were ordinary people, like you and like me. They were people with needs, loses, unmet desires, hurts and sin. But God in His wisdom rescued them from all that they were to make them into what they would become.
Think of those we know of -
Peter went from a stuttering impetuous fisherman, to a powerful witness seeing people convert to the Gospel and be healed.
James and John were known from their cantankerous nature, "sons of thunder" Jesus dubbed them, became mighty leaders in the church, John even being known as the Apostle of Love.
Paul went from persecuting the church of God to being a great leader in that church he sought to destroy.
The Corinthians were sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, homosexual offenders, thieves, greedy, drunkards, slanderers, and swindlers, but they were washed, sanctified and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God (1 Corinthians 6:11), so that Paul can refer to them as "the church of God in Corinth, sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours" (1:2).
Orthodoxy centers in the person of Jesus, but friends, it is not about us just saying "yes I believe" for the demons do that it does not do them a bit of good. Rather, the Gospel is about getting out of our own little trees of rebellion, and standing on the soil of God's grace and walking day by day in friendship with this God, walking in the wisdom of God.
For the Good News is not about a belief that does not relate to life, but about a belief that changes how life is lived, for Jesus Christ is wisdom from God, that is our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Those words mean that our whole life - how we relate to people and God is our righteousness, how we walk our faith in this world is our holiness, and our reason for a future hope of heaven is our redemption, the salvation that God is unfolding in our lives.
So as we think of those the Gospel has changed, we need to arrive at ourselves. How has God through the Gospel changed you, how has He changed me? In answer to that question is the reason we can boast in the greatness of God who has given us the Gospel in the first place.
"Let Him who boasts, boast in the Lord."
I think of Delores Hodney and her love for the church and her story about telling that Dr that it was not him who saved that woman's life but God who used this man. "God? There is no God!" Well, Dr, you may not believe, but the truth is you are nothing but an instrument in the hands of a Great God.
|
|
|