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Making God Your King

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Making God Your King

Mark 1:21-39

Dr. Jim Denison

As you know, tomorrow is Labor Day. Where did the holiday come from? I did some checking and was surprised by what I discovered.

The first Labor Day in America was celebrated on this day in 1882 in New York City, but this did not become a national holiday until 12 years later, in response to a national crisis.

A railroad workers strike in 1894 shut down the railroads. President Grover Cleveland sent 12,000 Army troops to break the strike; 13 railroad workers were killed, 57 were wounded, and 6,000 rail workers did nearly $9 million in damages (in today’s dollars). Fearing further conflict, legislation was rushed through Congress six days later to make Labor Day a national holiday.

In short, the government has given us tomorrow off so we won’t riot.

This week I’ve been wondering what Jesus did when he had a day off. This summer we’ve been watching Jesus perform miracles, learning how to experience his power in our lives today. We’ve watched him feed 5,000 families with a boy’s lunch, walk on water, turn water into wine, heal the sick and raise the dead. Today we’ll wrap all of that up by seeing what he did on the day after such a time of miraculous work. How did Jesus spend his “Labor Day” holiday? What does his example say to our souls today?

The text

Our text describes Jesus’ first day of public ministry in his home region of Galilee. On the Sabbath, their day of worship, he preached the sermon in the synagogue in Capernaum. A demon-possessed man stood up in the middle of his message to disrupt him, but Jesus threw the demon out of him. The people were “amazed,” and spread the news about him around the area.

He went to Peter’s home, his adopted base for ministry, for lunch. There he found Peter’s mother-in-law sick with a fever. He touched her and healed her. After the Sabbath ended and work could begin again, “the whole town” gathered at his door; remember that Capernaum was the largest city in that part of the world. Jesus healed the sick and drove out demons. Not a bad way to begin a ministry, but an exhausting day, to be sure.

What would Jesus do the next day, on our Monday? Take the day off? Go to the golf course? Read a novel?

“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed” (v. 35). Why?

He needed to know what to do next. Should he stay here in Capernaum and build a mega church? Should he go on the road as a missionary? Should he be a preacher or a healer? What is he to do in this ministry to which he has been called by his Father?

Peter can’t believe it—the crowds have gathered but the preacher didn’t show. Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That [emphatic] is why I have come” (v. 38).

And they did. “He traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.”

This would be the pattern for the rest of his ministry. He would go to the people, not waiting for them to come to him. He would not build a church and hope the people would find him—he would go to the people, where they were, with their needs. Taking grace to those who need it most.

This is the essential difference between Christianity and the world’s religions.

Religion is our attempt to climb up to God. Buddhists keep the four noble truths and the eight-fold noble path, seeking Nirvana and enlightenment. Hindus believe they will pass through multiple reincarnations as they learn the disciplines which will lead to Moksha, salvation. Muslims follow their five pillars, hoping to be accepted by Allah into his heaven. Orthodox Jews live by the Torah, hoping to please Yahweh.

Religion climbs up to God—in Christianity, God climbs down to us. He came to us because we could not come to him. Because none of us could be good enough to earn entrance into his perfect paradise. The Bible says that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” and that the “wages” or results of sin is death (Romans 3:23; 6:23). So Jesus came to us, died on our cross, bore our sin, went to our grave, so we could receive the eternal life his grace came to give.

And the pattern for all of that was set on this day, as Jesus went to his Father to learn how he should serve him as his Messiah.

Make God your King

What does Jesus’ Labor Day example say to us? It reminds us that God has a will for every part of our lives—for Monday, not just for Sunday. For what Jesus would do during the week, not just in the Sabbath synagogue service. For what you and I do tomorrow, not just today.

You see, the God we came to worship this morning is a King. Not a hobby, a part of our lives, but the King of our world.

From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 4:17).

As you go, proclaim this message: “The kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 10:7)

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well (Matthew 6:33).

Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10).

If he is your King, you’re sitting in his chair, breathing his air, wearing his clothes. He is King of Monday, not just Sunday. Of what we keep, not just what we give.

In our culture, of course, God is a hobby. Christianity is for church, religion for Sunday. We separate the soul from the body, the spiritual from the secular, and leave God in our chapels and churches. But he can lead only those who will follow and bless only those who will receive his gifts. He has a good, pleasing and perfect will for us. He has a plan to prosper us and not harm us, to give us hope and a future. But only when he is our King can he do for us and with us and through us all he wants to do.

Conclusion

When last did you make him your King?

The question is simple: will you belong fully and completely to Jesus?

John D. Rockefeller, Sr. became a millionaire by the age of 23. He formed Standard Oil Company in 1870; by 1879, it controlled 90% of oil refining in the United States and about 70% of refined oil exports. By the age of 50 he was the world’s only billionaire, the richest man on earth. His net worth would be $323.4 billion today; some consider him the wealthiest person who has ever lived.

In 1891, at 53 years of age, Rockefeller fell gravely ill. The hair on his head, eyebrows, and eyelashes dropped off. He could digest only milk and crackers, and could not sleep. Doctors predicted that he would die within a year.

Rockefeller was a committed Christian, the son of a devout Baptist mother, but his business ambitions had dominated his life. One night, as he struggled to sleep, he came to realize that he could take nothing with him into the next world. The next day he changed the course of his life.

He established the Rockefeller Foundation, which channeled his fortune into mission work, medical research and hospitals. His contributions led to the discovery of penicillin, and to cures for diphtheria, hookworm, malaria, tuberculosis, and yellow fever.

John D. Rockefeller, Sr.’s life was transformed as a result of his benevolence, and he lived to the age of 98.

God gives the best to those who leave the choice with him. Always.

Making Holes in the Darkness

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Making Holes in the Darkness

Acts 2:1-14

Dr. Jim Denison

Robert Louis Stevenson, then a child of six or seven years, was standing at his window one night watching the lamplighter at work. One by one, the lighter would light the streetlamps as he walked down the road. Young Stevenson watched with fascination. His nurse asked what he was doing. The little boy answered, “I am watching a man making holes in the darkness.” We need holes in the darkness today, don’t we?

Military action against al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden is imminent, and the Taliban as well. This action may already be underway as we speak. Our troops may be in Afghanistan, a country which has never been successfully invaded before.

Such action causes many to worry about a military draft and the future for their children of such age.

The stock market has seen its most chaotic days since the Great Depression. Layoffs threaten the jobs of multiplied thousands of people in Dallas. Many of you wonder about your financial future and that of your family.

And the typical problems of life in these stressful days continue unabated. Marital tensions, family problems, health issues, school struggles. We need holes in the darkness.

The light we need is available to us. In fact, if you’re a believer, you already have all the power and help you need. What God’s Spirit did for the first Christians, he’s waiting to do for us. Come with me to the Upper Room, then we’ll make this place of worship our Upper Room today.

Receive God’s Spirit

Here’s the situation. Jesus’ followers number around 120, in a hostile world of 25 million. The very people who executed Jesus are now the enemies of his followers. What they did to him, they stand ready to do to them. Yet Jesus has charged them with reaching that hostile world in its entirety—all 25 million.

One third of the world today claims to follow Christ. .0006% of their world did.

If we were in their shoes, we’d be doing something. We’d be organizing strategies, starting ministries, doing all we can. They knew better.

“When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place” (v. 1). Pentecost was the 50th day after the Passover Sabbath. Jews from around the world were crowded into Jerusalem for the religious holiday.

Meanwhile, Jesus’ church was crowded into a single room. Where and why? Jesus had told them to wait in Jerusalem for the “gift” of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4). So, at the risk of their very lives, they met in an Upper Room of a Jerusalem house, where they prayed constantly for God’s protection and his Spirit’s power.

And God kept his promise (vs. 2-4). A violent wind filled the room, so they could hear the Spirit’s approach. Tongues of fire rested on them, so they could see his approach. And they were each “filled” with the Spirit of God—this means that their lives were surrendered completely to the Spirit’s purpose and power for them. The Holy Spirit took up residence in their souls and lives, and he never left.

This is how you and I received the Spirit—when we asked Christ into our lives, his Spirit moved into our souls. The Holy Spirit is God alive and at home in us, the Spirit of Christ in our hearts. As a result, these first believers began to “speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (v. 4).

This was the Spirit-empowered ability to speak in known languages they had not learned. This was not the ecstatic prayer and worship language known as “unknown tongues” in Corinthians and other places. These believers were simply given the ability to share their faith in the languages of the people who had come to Jerusalem from all across the world.

The text makes this clear: “Each one heard them speaking in his own language” (v. 6); “How is it that each of us hears them speaking in his own native language?” (v. 8); “We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” (v. 11).

By this gift, never repeated again in the New Testament, these believers were able to share their faith with the multitudes crowded into their city. If I were in Cuba and could suddenly preach in Spanish, this would be the same gift. The point is that God gave them the power they needed to fulfill their purpose.

Now Peter stands up to preach. The same Peter who had denied he knew Christ, who had fled from his cross in fear. Now the bold power and authority of the Spirit is his. So he preaches the gospel to the very crowds who had shouted for Jesus’ crucifixion and the very officials who had carried it out.

The result of the Spirit’s work through this first Christian sermon was dramatic: “When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?'” (v. 37). Peter called them to faith in Christ, 3,000 responded in faith, they were baptized, and the church was born.

All by the power of God’s Spirit at work in the lives of God’s people.

Have you done what Peter and these first Christians did? Have you asked Jesus Christ to take up residence in your life? Have you yielded yourself to his Spirit? If you have, you have the Spirit, the person, and the power of Almighty God himself alive in your life. You are God’s temple, and God’s Spirit lives in you” (1 Corinthians 3:16). Today.

Be assured of God’s love

Now, how does this fact relate to our lives, our problems, our fears and needs in these troubling days? First, it assures us of God’s love. The fact that God’s Spirit lives in us is his assurance of his love and grace. And we need that assurance.

Many are suggesting that the tragedy of September 11 is God’s punishment of America and even of the American church. My friends, when 7,000 people died on that day of infamy, God wept. The Creator of all the people who died grieved their death. God judges and punishes sin, but he doesn’t kill innocent people by the thousands to do it. We need to know in these days that God loves us, absolutely and unconditionally.

His Spirit’s presence in our lives is proof of this fact. Here’s how.

Over the years I’ve visited people in some harsh places. Impoverished villages in Mexico and Malaysia where basic amenities did not exist and circumstances were bleak. Impoverished homes in America where cockroaches were thick and a stench turned my stomach. I went only out of a sense of ministerial responsibility.

Those problems don’t compare to the cockroaches of rebellion and stench of sin God finds in my heart. And yet his Spirit chooses to live in my soul anyway. As proof of God’s unconditional compassion, grace, and love.

And his residence is permanent. Paul asks, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” Then he lists the options: “Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?” (Romans 8:35). Here’s his answer: “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (vs. 37-39).

No matter where you’ve been or what you’ve done, no matter how hard or harsh things get, be assured of God’s indescribable, passionate love for you. His Spirit in your life is proof that it is so.

Access God’s power

In these fearful days we need assurance of God’s love, and we need to access his power and help. Worries about the future abound. For the first time in American history we have a cabinet position for Homeland Defense. For the first time we’re seeing news stories about intended responses to biological or chemical warfare against our country. We need the power and help of God.

We need what these first Christians found. They discovered that when the Holy Spirit moved into their lives, he brought supernatural strength and divine abilities they did not possess before. They could speak languages they had never learned; they could preach with boldness they did not possess; they could move crowds before whom they had cowered before. They found in God’s Spirit, God’s power.

Have you made this discovery yet? Do you know that you have all the power you need to overcome temptation, to withstand the stress and strain of these days, to live in abundant joy and purpose? Do you go to your Upper Room to meet with God every day? Do you turn to him for his help through the day? Or do you live on your own, as best you can? You can access the power of Almighty God. It is as close as your knees.

Samuel Chadwick was right: “The one concern of the Devil is to keep saints from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil and mocks at our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray.”

Because he knows that prayer is our access to the power of God by his Spirit in our lives. Do you know what he knows?

Conclusion

If Christ is your Lord, you have received his Spirit. You have the power of Almighty God alive and at work in your life. The Spirit is your assurance of God’s love and your access to his power.

Now, as you fight on the front lines of the spiritual war which is before us, will you make yourself available to the Spirit? Will you ask him to control you, empower you, use you? To make you his witness to frightened and hurting friends? To use you to share his love with lonely and hurting hearts? To pray for our leaders, our military, our people as we fight this spiritual war? To bring spiritual awakening to your part of our nation?

Today is the day to yield your life to the power of God’s Spirit. Today is the day to be ready for battle, enlisted for service, prepared to be used. Today.

Leon Trotsky was one of the foremost leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russian in 1917. Two years earlier he attended Sunday school in Chicago with a friend, but the teacher didn’t show up and Trotsky never went back.

Joseph Stalin, the force behind millions of deaths, was sent to study for the priesthood in the Russian Church, but the church had become so worldly and corrupt that he rebelled and turned to communism.

Mahatma Gandhi, leader of millions of Hindus in India, studied Christianity in England but rejected it because Christians didn’t live up to the teachings of Christ.

Lee Harvey Oswald attended a Baptist Sunday school as a child in Dallas, but the teacher told him not to come back until he was better dressed. He never did.

More people are open to spirituality than in a generation, right now. Christians have greater opportunity for ministry and witness than we have seen in 50 years. We are assured of God’s love, and given access to his power, by his Spirit alive in our hearts. Are you available to him today? Would you be?

Samuel Chadwick again: “Go back! Back to that upper room; back to your knees; back to searching of heart and habit, thought and life; back to the pleading, praying, waiting, till the Spirit of the Lord floods the soul with light, and you are endued with power from on high. Then go forth in the power of Pentecost, and the Christ-life shall be lived, and the words of Christ shall be done. You shall open blind eyes, cleanse foul hearts, break men’s fetters, and save men’s souls. In the power of the indwelling Spirit, miracles become the commonplace of daily living.”

Go to your Upper Room today, and you can make holes in the darkness tomorrow. The choice is yours.

Making Jesus King of the New Year

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Topical Scripture: Matthew 6:9–15

Millions of people recite the Lord’s Prayer each day, but few stop to consider what we’re asking God to do. While serving as pastor of a Dallas church, I spent nine months teaching its truths and felt that I never began to exhaust them.

If we employ what Jesus modeled and then pray as he taught us, we align our lives with his will and make him King.

In this new year, how do I make him king of every aspect of my life? Let’s look at the prayer he taught his disciples for guidelines.

Jesus opens his model prayer by telling us more about the One to whom we pray than any other verse of Scripture can teach. As we begin learning how to pray and live in Jesus’ will for us, let’s start with his first petition: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9).

These words were truly revolutionary. You see, Jesus was without question the first Jew to address God as Abba, “Daddy.” The first words a Jewish child learned were “abba” (daddy) and “imma” (mommy). No Jew would have thought to address the Creator of the universe in this way. But Jesus spoke to him in this extremely intimate way. He called him “Father/Abba” in the Garden of Gethsemane and from the cross. Jesus continually saw God as Father. Now he invites us to see him the same way.

We can call God our Father only if Jesus is our Savior. Paul taught us, “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith” (Galatians 3:26). The Bible says that “to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).

This word makes clear all our relationships. God is our Father, not a genie in a bottle. We pray to our Father, not a Father, not the Father or even my Father. We are brothers and sisters in Christ, people of worth, for the God of the universe is our Father. We are valued, not because of our performance, possessions, or popularity, but because we are the children of God.

Make God’s name holy

Now we come to the petition we are to make to our Father God: “hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9). What does this mean? How does praying these words align our lives with God’s will for us?

The Jewish people knew their God to be “holy, holy, holy” (Isaiah 6:3). Hallowed means “to be made holy.” God’s name refers to his character and reputation. We seek God’s help to glorify and honor him with all that we pray and do each day.

God will not share his glory. Whenever we seek to glorify him with our lives, we will have his power and guidance as we fulfill his will. There is room on the throne of your heart for only one king. Put him there every morning. Say with the Psalmist, “The LORD reigns; he is robed in majesty; the LORD is robed; he has put on strength as his belt. Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved. Your throne is established from of old; you are from everlasting” (Psalm 93:1–2).

Say with Hezekiah: “O LORD, the God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth” (2 Kings 19:15). And with Zechariah: “The LORD will be king over all the earth. On that day the Lord will be one and his name one” (v. 14:9).

In his catechism Martin Luther asks, “How is God’s name hallowed amongst us?” and his answer is, “When both our life and doctrine are truly Christian.”

Charles Spurgeon exhorted us: “May his name be treated reverently, and may all that is about him—his Word and his Gospel—be regarded with the deepest awe! It is for us so to walk before the Lord in all lowliness, that all shall see that we reverence the character of the thrice-holy One. Then we can truly pray, ‘Hallowed be thy name,’ when we hallow it ourselves.”

Make God’s Kingdom ours

Now we turn to Jesus’ second petition for us: “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). This is an example of Hebrew parallelism, where the second line relates to the first. In this case, the lines amplify one another: God’s Kingdom comes wherever his will is done. He is our King wherever and whenever we are his subjects.

How do we know his will for us?

First we must believe that God does in fact have a plan for our lives. Some evolutionists say that life began as a chance coincidence, with no particular plan or purpose at all. Many postmodernists say that truth is relative, that there is no overriding purpose to life. So, does God have a plan for us, or is life a random coincidence?

Here is God’s answer: “I know the plans I have for you … plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). God has a plan for every part of our lives.

Our Father has a perfect will for us (Romans 12:2). It is bigger and more exciting than any we can imagine for ourselves: “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Living in his will is the key to living the abundant life Jesus came to give (John 10:10). How can we know it?

Before every decision, opportunity, and problem, pray for God to reveal his will to you and help you to follow it. Surrender to him as your King and choose to serve as his subject, and you will know his perfect will for your life.

Give our needs to the Father

Now we turn from these foundational commitments to the specific issues of our day. We start with our present needs: “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11).

Bread was the staple of life in first-century Israel. But the people had no way to preserve it. So every morning people baked the hard, round loaves of bread they would carry with them through the day.

In the same way, Jesus teaches us to bring every need to our Father when it arises. You can cast “all your anxieties on him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). Jesus promises that “everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” (Matthew 7:8). Paul assured us that “my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).

But we must pray first. God will not do for us what we try to do for ourselves. The omniscient God cannot lead us if we will not follow; the Great Physician cannot heal us if we will not trust our pain to him.

So develop the reflex of praying first about everything you encounter each day of the new year. When you face a decision, turn it over to your Father. Give him your opportunities and problems as soon as they arise. Turn your temptations over to him immediately. You don’t have to fold your hands and close your eyes to breathe a prayer of submission to your King. You can “practice the presence of God,” as Brother Lawrence taught us, by simply talking with your Lord about your day all through the day.

Forgive and receive forgiveness

Many of us find news distressing. There’s not much we can do about what we hear and read. But we are responsible for what God finds in our hearts. That’s why Jesus included in the Model Prayer the petition, “forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12).

Debts can be translated sins or transgressions. Jesus assumes that we have incurred such debts with the holy God, that we have each sinned and fallen short of his glory (Romans 3:23). Forgive in the Bible does not mean to excuse behavior or pretend it did not occur. It is to pardon, choosing not to punish, as when a governor pardons a criminal.

God balances holiness and forgiveness. He wants us to hate sin as he does (Psalm 97:10). We are to be holy in every dimension of life and honor God with our lives (1 Corinthians 6:18, 19–20). We are called to holiness in all our attitudes and actions. At the same time, our Father is ready to forgive our failures when we confess them to him.

But with this caveat: “as we also have forgiven our debtors.” I must forgive those who have sinned against me to be forgiven by God. This is the only phrase in this model prayer which receives further commentary by Jesus: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (vs. 14–15).

Is this works-righteousness? Absolutely not. If I will not pardon your sins, I am obviously not in position to receive the pardon which God offers by his grace. A hateful, vengeful spirit will neither offer grace to others nor receive it from the Lord. A closed fist cannot give or receive.

Has someone sinned against you? Have you sinned against God? Then you have business with your gracious Father.

Turn future fears over to God

Now we turn to our future fears: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:13). This phrase bothers many people, as it seems to suggest that God might lead us into temptation unless we ask him not to. What does Jesus mean?

This verse is another example of Jewish parallelism, a figure of speech where two lines amplify each other. It could be translated, “Don’t lead us into evil, but rather rescue us from it.” The evil one is seeking your ruin right now: “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). How are we to defeat him? “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).

Note the order: first submit to God, then you will have his power in resisting Satan’s temptations. So, begin each day of the new year by surrendering it to your King. Ask him to lead you through the day. Pray through your plans, giving them specifically to him. Seek his direction and protection. As you come to a decision, give it to him. As you face a temptation, turn it over to him.

Walk through each day with your King and his strength will be yours.

No matter what the new year bring, we can know that at the close of the year, Jesus will still be the only King. He came to announce his kingdom: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). He taught us to seek his kingdom and righteousness before all else (Matthew 6:33), and when he returns, the name by which he will be revealed to the world is “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Revelation 19:16).

As fallen people in a fallen world, our “default” position is to be our own king. Jesus will be king of this year only if you deliberately, intentionally submit it to him. He will be king of your decisions and problems this year only if you give them to him.

If you want his power and purpose in your life today, make him your King.

Ignatius of Loyola founded the Jesuits, and made this prayer theirs:

Teach us, Lord, to serve you as you deserve,
To give and not to count the cost,
To fight and not to heed the wounds,
To toil and not to seek for rest,
To labor and not to ask any reward,
Save that of knowing that we do your will.

Amen.

Making Loneliness Your Friend

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Making Loneliness Your Friend

2 Timothy 1:13-18

Dr. Jim Denison

A man who felt constantly dominated by his wife went to see a psychologist, who gave him a book on assertiveness. He read it and then drove home, pointed his finger at his wife, and said, “I want you to know that from now on, I’m in charge around here. First you’re going to cook me a delicious dinner. Then you’re going to make me a sumptuous dessert. Then you’ll draw my bath so I can relax. Then, guess who’s going to lay out my clothes and comb my hair?” She replied, “The mortician?” The man then needed our topic today.

This morning, I want to talk with you about loneliness.

Less than 4% of US mail is personal cards and letters.

James Lynch, a medical researcher at Johns Hopkins Hospital, is convinced that loneliness is the number one killer in America, the primary factor in deaths due to heart attacks and cancer. We look self-sufficient and happy, all the while being stung to death by loneliness.

This epidemic is only getting worse. Glenn Cartwright, a researcher with McGill University, warns that the Internet makes it possible for us to develop our own parallel identity. We can choose a body, gender, and role through chat rooms, Instant Messaging, and games which are amazingly real. He concludes: “The twenty-first century may well be the century of technologically induced disaffection, characterized by an increased sense of loneliness, alienation, [and] powerlessness.”

I read through several books on our subject this week. The best definition of “loneliness” I found was this: loneliness is “the feeling of not being meaningfully related.” It’s not the same thing as being alone—you can feel lonely in a crowd, sometimes more so. It’s feeling that you’re not “meaningfully related” to people, to enough people, to the right people.

It’s a feeling we all face. Every one of us, more than we know. Let’s try to understand the problem, then find ways to live with it in hope.

Understand loneliness

Erich Fromm, the eminent counselor, once wrote: “The deepest need of man …is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness…. Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature. He has been transformed into a commodity, experiences his life forces as an investment which must bring him the maximum profit obtainable under existing market conditions…. While everybody tries to be as close as possible to the rest, everybody remains utterly alone, pervaded by the deep sense of insecurity, anxiety and guilt which always results when human separateness cannot be overcome…. Man overcomes his conscious despair by the routine of amusement, the passive consumption of sounds and sights offered by the amusement industry; furthermore by the satisfaction of buying ever new things, and soon exchanging them for others.”

Fromm wrote those words in 1967, before the Vietnam War came to its bitter end; before Watergate; before September 11. Today sociologists describe our society as “cocooned,” withdrawn into ourselves more than ever before in human history. Gone is the front porch—no one even builds them on houses anymore. Gone is the evening stroll with the neighbors. Gone are extended families—most are scattered across the country and beyond. In their place, 25% of the populace experiences acute loneliness at any given time, and nearly all of us face it with regularity.

Why?

Loneliness starts early: as infants we feel unwanted, even though we are. Every time we are left alone when we want to be picked up from the crib, or the babysitter, we become afraid. Afraid of being alone.

By adolescence, our greatest fear is that others will not like us. That’s why we dress to conform, act to conform, and are more concerned with who “likes” who than anything else in our lives. We fear being unpopular above all else, and learn not to risk loving people or seeking their love. We’d rather be lonely.

As adults, we learn that we are what others think of us—of our performance, appearance, possessions. We learn to fear their rejection above all else. We are afraid to love and seek love, because we may be rejected. Then our children grow up and move away, and we feel less needed. We grow still older, and it seems that the world knows us or needs us even less. And our loneliness grows.

At the root of it all, we believe that we are not worthy of love. Not really. People may like us, appreciate us, need us, use us, but we don’t deserve to be loved. And so we make ourselves lonely as a result.

People turn to technology and the Internet to find companionship. Or to pornography to fantasize that they are wanted. Or to drugs or alcohol to dull the pain and find people who share our problem. Or clubs, social groups, sports teams, hobbies, churches to avoid loneliness. But we can be lonely in a crowd—some of you are this morning.

What do we do? Our text offers us steps which are so simple, every one of us can take them today.

See yourself as God sees you (vs. 13-14)

First, we seek our worth in God. One of our Father’s names in Hebrew is “Jehovah-Shammah,” which means “the God who is there.” He is.

What you have heard from Paul, and from the rest of the biblical revelation, keep as the pattern of sound teaching (v. 13). Believe that it is true. Believe that Jesus died on the cross to pay for your sins and failures. Believe that nothing can separate you from his love. Believe that he loves you without condition, that he has forgiven every sin you’ve confessed to him, that he’s on your side. Have “faith and love in Christ Jesus.”

Then “guard” this “good deposit that was entrusted to you” (v. 14a). “Guard” means to protect it, to preserve it from all thieves and attack. See yourself as God sees you, his created child, one died for by his Son. No matter what the world says you are.

Do this “with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us” (v. 14b). When you are tempted to believe the lies of your world, that you are what you do, how you look, what people think of you, that you are not worthy of loving and being loved, go to the Holy Spirit. Ask God for his help and power. Seek his strength, and it is yours.

Find your identity not in your reputation, or popularity, or circumstances. Not in how you feel about yourself, or think others feel about you. Find it in the rock-solid, unchanging fact that you are the loved child of the God of the universe.

Transform loneliness into solitude (v. 15)

Next, choose to transform loneliness into solitude. You can expect to feel lonely at times of grief, sickness, or failure. You can expect to face rejection, as Paul did (v. 15; 4:9-11a). Moses spent 40 years away from home in the wilderness; David wandered the Judean hills alone; Paul spent three years by himself after his Damascus Road experience. Jesus often prayed alone, and he died alone. Expect to be alone at times, and to feel lonely.

Then choose to redeem your loneliness, to turn it into the spiritual joy of solitude.

Thomas Merton, in Thoughts on Solitude: “The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with people. But the man who learns, in solitude and recollection, to be at peace with his own loneliness…comes to know the invisible companionship of God.”

Henri Nouwen adds: “To live a spiritual life, we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into the garden of solitude.”

Paul Tillich was right: “Loneliness can be conquered only by those who can bear solitude.”

How do we transform loneliness into solitude?

We use the time alone to be with God. To listen to his Spirit and his Scriptures, to “keep” and “guard” them with the help of the Holy Spirit.

We make time to meditate with our Father. Get alone with God in his creation if you can. Ask him to speak to you through nature, through some event in your life or the world.

Pick a verse and experience it; imagine yourself in it; feel it and live through it. Imagine yourself, for instance, as Paul in the Mamartime dungeon. Feel the cold, clammy walls, the rough floor, the handcuffs chafing your wrists as you write this letter. Taste the gruel you’re given for food. Smell what it must have been like. And know that if God could give a prisoner in such a place a book of his Holy Scriptures, he can speak to you.

So listen. Worship. Pray. Be still and know that he is God. His word urges us: “Come near to God and he will come near to you” (James 4:8). Choose to make your loneliness into solitude with your Father. And his presence will comfort your lonely heart.

Be the presence of Christ (vs. 16-18)

Now, what if you’re not in the prison of loneliness with Paul? You know someone who is. Be the presence of Christ to that person.

“Onesiphorus” meant “profitable.” Here is a man who took his life into his own hands, identifying with a prisoner on death row, following the same faith which would lead to Paul’s death. And his grace meant the world to the greatest apostle in Christian history.

Every one of us is either Paul or we are Onesiphorus. Either you need someone in your loneliness, or you know someone who needs you. Ironically, the more we offer others our presence, the more we find comfort in our loneliness as well. As we love, we are loved. As we offer grace, we find it. As we serve, we are served.

Conclusion

Mother Teresa believed that loneliness is the greatest epidemic in America. If it has found you, choose to see yourself as God sees you—worthy of loving and being loved. Turn your loneliness with solitude, and find in your Father his love for your hurting soul. And be his presence, his hand, his grace to the Paul you know.

A nurse writes: “It was a busy morning when an elderly gentleman arrived to have stitches removed from his thumb. He told me he was in a hurry, as he had an appointment at 9 a.m.. While taking care of his wound, I asked him if he had a doctor’s appointment this morning, as he was in such a hurry. He told me no, that he needed to go to the nursing home to eat breakfast with his wife.

“I then asked about her health. He told me that she had been there for a while, and was an Alzheimer’s patient. As I finished dressing his wound, I asked if she would be worried if he was a bit late. He replied that she had not recognized him in five years.

“I was surprised and said, ‘And you still go every morning, even though she doesn’t know who you are?’ He smiled, patted my hand, and said, ‘She doesn’t know me, but I still know who she is.’ I had to hold back tears as he left and I thought, ‘That is the kind of love I want in my life.'”

You have that love in your life. His hand is nail-scarred. Take it today. Give it tomorrow. And you’ll make loneliness your friend.

Making Peace with Your Past

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Making Peace with Your Past

Matthew 9:9-13

Dr. Jim Denison

We’re discussing today the topic, “making peace with your past.” There’s apparently a lot of past to make peace with.

For instance, this week’s New York Times reports on the growth of the armored car industry. Car makers are producing vehicles with windows two inches thick, armor plating, gun storage, and smoke machines to obscure the car during gun battles. They are all the rage right now. One manufacturer said, “One-third of the people who buy these cars are under threat, one-third think they are under threat, and one-third want to be in the first two categories.” Armor-plating your car is one way to deal with your past.

No one is immune from the issue.

John Bolton’s nomination for ambassador to the United Nations was attacked this week by an associate who criticized Mr. Bolton’s past dealings with subordinates.

Officials at the National Health Institutes are being accused of sexual harassment spanning the last several years.

Last Sunday, two Florida families opened fire on each other, part of a long-running feud. When a girl from one family began dating a boy from the other, the battle began. Two people are hospitalized. The past can be deadly in the present.

What about your past are you most grateful we don’t know today? What about your past most bothers you this morning? There is an authentic, transforming way to make peace with your past. Let’s discover it together.

Give your guilt to God’s grace

Our text describes the call of “a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth” (v. 9). It seems appropriate for us to meet a tax-collector on the Sunday after April 15. But IRS agents and tax preparers today bear no similarity to Matthew’s profession.

In the first century, tax collecting was the most profane and immoral work a man could do, akin to prostitution for a woman. The Empire employed locals to take money from their neighbors, sending a portion on to Rome and keeping the rest for themselves. Even Roman writers considered these turncoats and traitors to be destined for hell (cf. Cicero, De Officiis 1.42; Lucian, Menippus II).

Matthew’s sins were on public display in Capernaum, the fishing village on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee which served as Jesus’ ministry headquarters. To invite such a man into his movement was unwise at best. But Jesus said to him, “Follow me,” and Matthew did. After this notorious man gathered his equally notorious friends for a party with his new Master, the self-respecting Pharisees asked why Jesus would eat with such “sinners.” His reply: “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (v. 13). That’s good news for us all.

God’s word is clear:

The Lord “forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases” (Psalm 103:3).

Micah asks, “Who is a God like you, who pardons sins and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:18-19).

David, a man who knew something about sin and forgiveness, rejoiced in this fact: “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12). In fact, God promises, “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more” (Isaiah 43:25).

Now, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Confession does not earn his grace–it positions us to receive it.

Our holy God can forgive us because in his Son “we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace” (Ephesians 1:7). Sin separates us from our perfect God; the consequence of this separation is death. Jesus’ sinless death fulfilled this consequence, paying this debt, so that God can be holy and just in forgiving us. Such is the grace of God.

By contrast, our society is built on works. Materialism–the belief that the material is the ultimate reality–has been at the very heart of our culture from its beginning. Success is quantifiable. The more you do, the more a success you are. If you fail, you’re a failure. You are how you perform. Isn’t that true of every dimension of your life–work, academics, sports, music? Performance equals success. Past crimes cannot be forgiven, only punished.

Even if others won’t punish us, we’ll punish ourselves. We inflict guilt on ourselves until we think we’ve paid enough penalty for our sins. For some of us, such self-inflicted guilt has plagued us for years. But you need to know that guilt is not of God. He forgives and forgets, no matter who you are or what you’ve done.

You may have seen this week’s news report from the World Health Organization, announcing that nearly 5,000 labs in 18 countries were mailed samples of the Asian flu virus, a strain which killed between one and four million people 50 years ago. The labs are urged to incinerate the samples immediately.

The sins of your past can be incinerated in the furnace of God’s passionate love for you, before they infect your soul and poison your life. You don’t have to pay for them–Jesus already has. You don’t have to work them off, doing time in the jailhouse of guilt. Today you can give your guilt to his grace. Name that failure or sin which most troubles your conscience. Confess it specifically to your Father. Ask his forgiveness, and trust him to keep his word. Know that the One who loved Matthew, loves you. Give your guilt to his grace, this morning.

Give your soul to his Spirit

Matthew hears Jesus’ call, and gives his life to it. He “got up” from his tax-collector’s booth and “followed him” (Matthew 9:9). He exchanged his old life for the new, his previous failures for God’s future. So can we.

The “exchanged life” is a theological term which refers to the decision by which we trade our sin nature for Jesus’ holiness. The process is sometimes called “sanctification.” The key phrase is Ephesians 5:19, “be filled with the Spirit.” The process works like this.

First, we receive Christ as Lord. Then his Spirit takes up permanent residence in our lives.

Now we ask God to forgive all that is wrong in our lives, trusting our guilt to his grace. The “Holy” Spirit can bless and control only that which is holy.

Next, we submit our lives, minds, words, attitudes, and actions to him. “Filled” means “controlled” or “under the influence of.” We place ourselves at his disposal, as the possessions of our Creator and Master. We ask the Spirit to take control of us. Unconditionally, without reservation, holding nothing back. We give him a blank check for this day.

And we believe by faith that he has. Nowhere does the Bible tell us how it feels to be filled with the Spirit, to exchange the old life for the new, to be controlled by the Spirit of Jesus. It takes as much faith to believe that you are filled with the Spirit as it did to believe that you are the child of God.

Next to your salvation, this is the most crucial decision of your life. The Good Shepherd can lead only those sheep who will follow him. The Great Physician can heal only those patients who will let him. The Holy Spirit can empower only those who are joined to him. It’s not enough to believe in electricity–you must consciously, intentionally connect to it. A battery won’t start your car if the cables are unattached or corroded. If your car is out of gas, sitting at a filling station does you no good. You have to put gas in the tank.

We live in a culture which measures churches by attendance and buildings. God measures us by disciples, by changed lives. When last did worship, Bible study, prayer, and service change you? When last did the Holy Spirit empower you, fill you with joy, and make you more like Jesus? That was the last time God’s purpose was met in your life.

It comes down to control. Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life, said recently that we can organize the church for control or for growth, but not for both. The same is true of our lives. We can stay in control of our lives, and seek safety, security, and predictability. Or we can turn control of our lives over to God, and experience growth, joy, peace, purpose, and power. The issue faces us in every morning, every decision, every significant event. Will you exchange your life for God’s, your control for his, your will for his purpose? Will you give your soul to his Spirit?

For every person used by God like Matthew, there is this exchange, the decision to leave your tax-collecting booth for his call, to trade the old for the new, to give your soul to his Spirit, to let him drive the car and run the business, to sell out to him and let the chips fall. Have you come to this place of surrender yet?

Conclusion

Here’s the result of such a commitment. Matthew’s friends, products of his notorious sin, came to Christ. Matthew’s stenographic skills, essential to a tax collector, recorded the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew’s ministry produced the first Gospel we find in the New Testament, the first section of God’s word I ever read. God used his problems for a much larger purpose. Know that the Father will do the same with you.

People who have lost a child are the best to comfort those facing such horrible grief. Those who have been through divorce are best able to walk with those experiencing that terrible pain. A person who has lost his job is the best encourager for those who lose theirs.

Give your guilt to God’s grace and your soul to his Spirit, then look for people to help. Look for people who are where you were, people whose problems you understand, whose pain you have felt. Become a wounded healer, the very best kind.

When my father died, the person who helped me most was a fellow college student named Linda Sharp. She could help me because she had lost her father that same year. She put her arm around me and said, “Time helps,” and I believed her. I still do.

If you’re hurting, look for a Linda Sharp. If you’ve been hurt, become a Linda Sharp.

The College of Cardinals will assemble in the Sistine Chapel, under the ceiling decorations of Michelangelo, to begin the process of selecting the next pope. Here’s the process: 120 electors, all 79 years of age or younger, will submit written votes. If one of their number does not receive a two-thirds majority, the ballots are mixed with a chemical which gives off black smoke, and burned. Then the world will know that no pope has been elected. If the cardinals fail to elect a pope by the two-thirds margin within three days, voting will be suspended for a maximum of one day to allow prayer, reflection, and conversation. 21 more votes can then be taken; if no pope has been selected by the two-thirds requirement, a simple majority will decide the next pontiff.

God’s process in choosing his next Matthew is much simpler. If you’re a sinner, you qualify. This is the promise, and the grace, of God.

Making Room for the Gentiles

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God’s Power for God’s Purpose

Making Room for the Gentiles

Dr. Jim Denison

Acts 11

Jacob Walker was a lighthouse keeper on Robbin’s Reef, off the rocky shore of New England. After years of faithfully minding the light, he became ill and died. His wife buried his body on the mainland, in view of the lighthouse.

Later Mrs. Walker received appointment as the keeper of their lighthouse. For 20 years she carried on alone, and then a New York reporter went out to get her story. She told him, “Every evening I stand in the door of the lighthouse and look across the water to the hillside where my husband’s body is buried. I always seem to hear his voice saying, ‘Mind the light! Mind the light!'”

This weekend, Christians the world over will celebrate Palm Sunday, that marvelous and miraculous day which began the holiest week in human history. This was the day with the Light of the world came to bring that light to the darkest place in the world—the cross of humanity’s sin. He came to be rejected by his Father, that we might be accepted by him. He came to be made sin for us, that we might be made righteous. He came to die, that we might live.

Now we are called to “mind the light.” We are keepers of the light he brought, warning spiritual ships away from the rocky shores of sin and hell. We are to be as faithful to this task as was our Lord. Someone needs your light this week. Who comes to mind?

Defend the grace of God (vs. 1-18)

An insightful artist painted his subject, “A Dying Church,” in an unusual way. He pictured a beautiful sanctuary, sunlight streaming through stained glass windows, pews filled with worshipers, the pastor behind the pulpit and the choir in the loft. All looked healthy, even vibrant. But in the corner of the painting, on a table in the vestibule outside the sanctuary, he pictured a box with the sign, “Offerings for Missions.” There was a cobweb over the box. A dying church, indeed.

Not everyone agrees with the Great Commission. The church in America spends less than 1% to reach the unreached peoples of the world. It is true that the lighthouse which shines farthest, shines brightest at home. But it is also true that it must shine into the darkness to be a lighthouse at all.

After Peter’s remarkable experience with Cornelius, it is no surprise that the enemy would attack yet again. Remember that he prefers to strike at the point of unity, creating the greatest chaos for the least effort. The Gentile mission threatens his hold over the entire pagan world. We should not expect him to yield easily.

Peter had just returned to Jerusalem when “the circumcised believers” accused him of going into an “uncircumcised” home for a meal (v. 3). Note that these Jewish Christians made no mention of Cornelius’s conversion or baptism. Their first concern appears to be Peter’s apparent breach of legalistic etiquette.

The threat to Peter’s integrity and mission was very real. Paul would later recount to the Galatians the time in Antioch when Peter and even Barnabas withdrew from Gentile hospitality under threat of rejection from Jewish Christians (Galatians 2:11-13). Clearly “Simon” (sand) was still part of “Peter” (rock). As it is in us all.

But this time, “Peter” won out. He recounted specifically and clearly exactly his experience with the Spirit (vs. 5-17). He told the story just as it happened, leaving his critics to deal with the Lord. He made clear that it was not about him, stepping out of the conflict. With this result: “When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, ‘So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life'” (v. 18).

This would not be the last time the Jerusalem church would wrestle with Gentile conversion (cf. Acts 15:1-35). Paul would later speak of his “thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10); some scholars believe he was referring to the Judaizers, a group of Jewish Christians who followed him wherever he went and told his Gentile converts that they must become Jews to be Christians. But while the battle did not end with Peter’s testimony, the victory began. In time, the Church universal would adopt his position that God intends all to come to faith in his Son (cf. 2 Peter 3:9).

Now God calls you and me to defend and extend his grace to those who stand outside his love. We may believe that he intends all to come to Christ. But unless we tell them, the practical consequence is that the Judaizers win. The decision is ours.

Move to Antioch (vs. 19-21)

The Church is moving today from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern, and from the First World to the Third. The number of conversions in Communist China and sub-Saharan Africa are astounding, in the tens of thousands a day. More than a third (some say more than half) of South Korea is evangelical Christian. Many missiologists say that the center of the Christian movement has already shifted from America to Africa. The Fifth Great Awakening is occurring in countries all over the world.

This is not the first time the Church has shifted its missions headquarters. In the verses before us, the Christian movement will make a dramatic change from Jerusalem to Antioch of Syria. From the Holy City to one of the most pagan. From the capital of the Jewish world to one of the capitals of the Gentile. Such a significant city and movement is worth a moment of exploration.

At one time, at least five cities in Syria were named “Antioch,” before the city we are touring today was established. Nicanor I, the first ruler of the Seleucid dynasty, built the city around 500 B.C., naming it for his father Antiochus. Today it is the city of Antakya in the Hatay province of Turkey. In Luke’s day, its population numbered more than half a million.

Located at the mouth of the Orontes river, 15 miles from the Mediterranean Sea, the city hade an abundant water supply and beautiful locale. It soon became known as the Oriental Rome and the Gate of the East. It quickly became the capital of the Seleucid monarchy, and thus a city of great political importance. In 64 B.C., Rome made Antioch her seat of administration in the province of Syria. It was enlarged and adorned by Augustus and Tiberius; Herod the Great later provided colonnades on either side of its main street and paved the street itself with polished stone. Because of the trade which flowed through its portal, it soon became a commercial center as well as a political capital city.

Antioch of Syria would eventually become the most cosmopolitan city in the world. Jews were numerous there (note that Acts 6:5 names Nicolaus, a proselyte from Antioch, as one of the Seven). The art and literature of the city were praised by Cicero, while the vice and luxury of the people were infamous as well. Antioch was especially known for the cult of Artemis and Apollo at Daphne, a town five miles away. There ritual prostitution was widely popular, so that the “morals of Daphne” stood for loose living everywhere.

Josephus called it the third city of the empire, next to Rome and Alexandria. As a result of the events detailed in this week’s study, Antioch became the “mother city” of Gentile Christianity. Paul made the city his headquarters for his three missionary journeys in Asia Minor and Greece (Acts 13:1; 15:40; 18:23). Led by Lucian of Antioch, in the early fourth century, Antioch became an important center for biblical studies. A cup found in or near the city around 1910, now owned by the Metropolitan Museum in New York, is the celebrated Chalice of Antioch; some think it is the “holy grail,” though most date it to the fourth century.

It is possible, if not likely, that Luke the physician was a native of Antioch. Eusebius, the first church historian, states that it is so, as does Jerome. He may have been one of the converts of the ministry we will study this week; his association with Paul may have begun at this time.

If you were to cross Las Vegas with Sodom and Gomorroh, you would be in Antioch. William Barclay inspires us: “It seems incredible but nonetheless it is true that it was in a city like this that Christianity took the great stride forward to becoming the religion of the world. We need only think that to be reminded that no situation is hopeless.”

It is no coincidence that God moved his headquarters to the city where his followers would manifest most fully his heart for the world. He will bless our church to the degree that we will bless the world with his love. He will bless your class, your teaching ministry, and your service to the degree that you love the world as he does.

Are you living in Antioch today?

Be a “Christian” (vs. 22-30)

A “Christian” is literally “one who belongs to Christ” or a “Christ imitator,” a little-Christ. We who follow Jesus were first called by this name at Antioch (v. 26). Here’s how we can live up to it in Dallas.

Verse 19 tells us that the persecution which began with Stephen’s martyrdom scattered Christians out from Jerusalem as far Phoenicia along the western coast of Syria, the Mediterranean island of Cyrus, and Antioch to the north. However, these first missionaries preached only to fellow Jews.

But then some courageous Christians from Cyprus and the north African town of Cyrene came to Antioch to evangelize the Gentiles as well. Most Jewish Christians simply did not believe that Gentiles could become Christians. But this unnamed group of missionaries believed we could. And we will forever—literally—be grateful.

And God gave them immediate success, in four ways.

First, against all odds, “a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord” (v. 21), among them Luke, the physician and author of Luke and Acts. When you follow Jesus in missions and evangelism, you never know the ultimate result.

Second, the mother church at Jerusalem sent Barnabas to investigate this phenomenon; he “saw the evidence of the grace of God” (v. 23) and encouraged the people, and again “a great number of people were brought to the Lord” (v. 24). When God is honored, his church must expand. Our church must expand. We cannot help it. All healthy things grow.

Third, Barnabas went to Tarsus, 100 miles to the north, to recruit Saul for this ministry. Saul (Paul to us) had not been mentioned by the Book of Acts for nine years; but somehow Barnabas knows that God wants Saul for this ministry. And so Paul the Apostle reenters the stage of global missions. God’s plan for Antioch was far larger than Antioch. His plan for Dallas is far larger than Dallas.

Fourth, as a direct result of the teaching Barnabas and Saul provided for these new Gentile believers, “the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch” (v. 26). These Gentile converts so took on the character, the priorities, the morals, the personality of Jesus that even the skeptical pagans around them saw Jesus in them. How we want this to be true for us!

Now watch their Antiochian success become global significance. Some prophets from Jerusalem warned this vibrant, exploding church that bad times are ahead: “a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world” (v. 28). This happened during the reign of Claudius, around A.D. 45.

These Gentile believers in Antioch have enormous resources, given the economic prosperity of their city. This famine will likely not affect them greatly. They don’t need to care. The Antioch Christians had enough resources not to worry much about the coming hard times.

But the Jerusalem Christians are in for disaster. Jews in their culture have ostracized them for their faith; they have lost their jobs, many have lost their homes. A famine will mean starvation for them. So the Gentile believers in Antioch, previously ignored by the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, immediately decide to help. They take an offering and send it to the Jerusalem church by Barnabas and Saul. They become compassionate about needs beyond themselves. They gain a passion for a larger world.

And this larger world would beckon them again and again.

One day as they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, “The Holy Spirit, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them'” (Acts 13:2). These are their founding pastors, two of their five ministerial leaders. They could have refused. They could have kept their leaders and spiritual mentors for themselves.

But again they saw a larger world: “after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off” (v. 3). And they would continue this sacrificial support. Each of Paul’s three missionary journeys began with Antioch. Continually he received financial, material, and spiritual sustenance and support from this, his home church.

And God made a group of Gentile believers in the most immoral city in their part of the world to be a church of global significance. Their ministry touched the ancient world as they prayed, gave, and went for Jesus. Their ministry has affected the world for twenty centuries since. You and I are Gentile Christians today, in large part because of the Antioch believers. They stepped from temporal success to global and eternal significance.

So can we. What are the steps?

Believe that your life must change the world. Get a passion for the world. Believe Jesus when he said you were the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world” (Matthew 5:13-14). Believe him when he said that you would “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19) and be his witness “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). You have not obeyed these commands unless and until your life has changed the world. Believe that you can, and you must.

Next, define the needs which surround you. Just as God used the prophet Agabus to tell the Antiochian Christians about the needs of their world, so he will show us the needs he intends us to meet. Ask him to make you sensitive to the people around you and their problems. Like the Antioch Christians, he has given you the resources you need to meet them. Decide that you will do all you can do to help. You can give food, time, energy, and abilities to help hurting people in your community and around the world.

And last, support those who will do what you cannot. God did not call everyone from Antioch to go to the larger world, but he called some. The others prayed for them, gave money to help them, held the ropes as they went out. We give money to support missionaries who go where we cannot. And through them, we touch the world.

Conclusion

Church history is littered with missed opportunities to imitate the church at Antioch. Among them:

Leon Trotsky was one of the foremost leaders of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Two years earlier he attended Sunday school in Chicago with a friend, but the teacher didn’t show up. Trotsky never went back.

Joseph Stalin, the force behind millions of deaths, was sent to study for the priesthood in the Russian Church, but the church had become so worldly and corrupt that he rebelled and turned to communism.

Mahatma Gandhi, leader of millions of Hindus in India, studied Christianity in England but rejected it because Christians didn’t live up to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Lee Harvey Oswald attended a Baptist Sunday school as a child in Dallas, but the teacher told him not to come back until he was better dressed. He never did.

But we have success stories to tell as well, times when believers followed the example set by our Antiochian ancestors:

A Sunday school teacher named Ezra Kimball led one of his young students, Dwight L. Moody, to faith in Christ, and Moody lifted two continents to Christ.

Some concerned ladies invited George H. Lorimer to church; he was saved and later became pastor of the famous Tremont Temple in Boston. A young lawyer named Russell H. Conwell heard Lorimer preach and was saved. He later built Temple Baptist Church into one of the largest congregations in America.

A lay preacher spoke one snowy Sunday morning in Colchester, England, at the Primitive Methodist Church. A 15-year-old boy, driven in by the snow, was sitting under the balcony. He heard the sermon and was saved, and Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the greatest of all Baptist preachers, led tens of thousands to Christ.

John Warr, a shoe cobbler, worked by the side of another young man and witnessed to him until he was saved. His young friend, William Carey, became the father of the modern missions movement.

What do you believe God could do with you and with our church, if we would “mind the light”? Who will see the light through your witness this week?

Making The Past Into The Future

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Making the Past into the Future

Isaiah 55:12-13

Dr. Jim Denison

In the United States, the standard distance between the rails of railroad tracks is 4 feet 8.5 inches, and has been since the first railroads were built in this country more than 170 years ago. Why such an odd distance?

These first tracks were made by railroad pioneers from England, and that’s the distance between their rails. Why? Because the people who made the first railway cars were carriage makers, and the wheels on their carriages were 4 ft. 8.5 inches apart, so their manufacturing equipment was set up to make railway cars that wide.

Why were their carriages that wide? Because the dirt roads in England at the time had ruts that were 4 ft. 8.5 in. wide. Why were their ruts this wide? The original roads in England were laid out by the Romans after they conquered the country in Julius Caesar’s day. The Roman war chariots were 4 ft. 8.5 inches wide, so two war horses could be hitched to them side-by-side.

Now the story gets even more involved. You’ll remember seeing the launch of a space shuttle, and the two large round rockets strapped to its side to help blast it into space. These are the Solid Rocket Boosters, or SRBs. They are made at a plant in Utah, then shipped by rail to Cape Canaveral, where they are strapped to the shuttle.

Their manufacturer would like to make the SRBs bigger than they are, but there’s a problem: a railroad tunnel along the only feasible route to Florida. The tunnel is just a little bigger than the width of the railroad rails, and the rails are the width of two war horses’ rear ends.

So the size of the major booster rockets on the world’s most advanced transportation system is the result of ruts made by Romans twenty centuries ago. And that’s how the past affects the present, and the present affects the future.

We all want our lives to matter. We want to know that what we do today will have a legacy tomorrow. But there’s only one way to be guaranteed that your legacy will matter. We’ll discover it today.

What can God do with a life?

Isaiah 55 calls us worship in response to the grace of God (v. 1), and to submit our lives to the revelation of God (v. 11). When we do, when God’s worship and word accomplish their life-transforming purpose in us, here are the results.

You will experience the presence and purpose of God (v. 12a).

“You will go out.” The people are enslaved in Babylon, but not forever. They are in captivity today, but not tomorrow. They will be set free. So will you, when you worship God in gratitude for his grace, and obey the revelation of his word. Whatever traps you in despair, in discouragement, in hopelessness, will be broken. You will mount up on wings like eagles, run and not be weary, walk and not faint, in the victory of God.

You will go out “in joy.” God’s joy is not that happiness which depends on happenings or happenstance, but a deep sense of well-being which transcends our circumstances. Whatever frustrates or hurts you today, you can “rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4). When you worship God and obey his word, you have his joy.

You will be “led forth”—God will guide your steps and make straight your paths. Whatever decision you’re facing, or confusion you’re feeling, he will “lead you in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”

And you will be led forth “in peace.” No matter what conflicts you may face in your family, friendships, or future, you can experience God’s inner serenity which nothing and no person can steal from your heart. When you walk in God’s worship and God’s word, you have his peace.

Do you know today the victory, joy, leadership, and peace of God?

Others will see a difference in your life.

“The mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands” (v. 12b).

God’s presence and peace in your life will be so obvious that the mountains and hills and trees will see it. People will notice it, even more than you do. Moses’ face shone when he came down from the mountain with God, though he did not know it. When the Jewish Sanhedrin put the apostles on trial, they “took note that they had been with Jesus.” When last did someone say that about you?

Others will be changed by the God who works in you.

“Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow” (v. 13a).

The thornbush and briers were worthless nuisance plants. They produced no edible food, and made cultivation difficult. The pine tree and myrtle, on the other hand, gave shade and beauty to this arid land.

God will remove the bad and grow the good. And as God changes us, he will change others through us. They will want what we have. They will see the Christ who lives in us. And that Christ will touch their hearts through ours.

With this result: “This will be for the Lord’s renown, for an everlasting sign which will not be destroyed” (v. 13b).

The Lord’s “renown” or glory will be advanced through us.

This legacy will be “an everlasting sign,” a permanent mark left on the history of humankind “which will not be destroyed.”

Here is how to leave a legacy, to make your life matter. Put it in God’s hands. Worship him each week and each day, in gratitude for his grace. Yield each day in obedience to his word and will. And he will use your life to change the world.

As you know, Dr. E. K. Bailey died this week. I know of no human being who more proves the promise of this text. His visionary leadership, prophetic preaching, scholarly mind, and humble heart were the result of a soul placed in the hands of its Father and King. God gave him his victory, joy, guidance and peace. Others were changed by the Christ we saw in him. When his cancer was first diagnosed, E. K. told his congregation, “You have heard me preach. Now you will watch me preach.” And we have.

How do we join the commission of God?

Now, who of us can be used like this? There are some conditions. First, we must believe that God can use us to change the world.

A popular fish these days is the Japanese Carp or Koi. These fish will grow proportionately to accommodate the size of their surroundings. In a fish bowl they grow to two or three inches. In a pond they grow to three or four feet. Have you limited God’s use of your life by the size of your faith in him? How small is your fishbowl?

The next time you think God cannot use you, remember that Abraham was too old; Jacob was a liar; Joseph was abused; Moses stuttered; Aaron was an idolater; Gideon was afraid; Rahab was a prostitute; David was a murdering adulterer; Elijah was depressed; Job went bankrupt; Jonah ran from God; John the Baptist ate locusts; the Samaritan woman was divorced, more than once; Zaccheus was too small; Peter denied Christ; the disciples fell asleep while praying; Timothy had an ulcer; and Lazarus was dead. Now, what’s your excuse?

God uses those who believe he can. Can he use you?

Second, live for a legacy.

More than 150 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville said of Americans, “It is an arduous undertaking to excite the enthusiasm of a democratic nation for any theory which does not have a visible, direct, and immediate bearing on the occupations of their daily lives.”

Live for the line, not the dot. The Bible reminds us, “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10). A baby knows only its mother’s womb until the day of its birth, when it emerges into a world it could not see or know.

One day you will step from time into eternity. On that day, only what you did for Christ will last. Only what you did for eternity will matter. And it will matter forever. God uses those who live for a legacy. Can he use you?

Third, declare your faith.

Lesslie Newbigin, bishop of the Church of South India, asserts: “When I say ‘I Believe,’ I am not merely describing an inward feeling or experience. I am affirming what I believe to be true, and therefore what is true for everyone. The test of my commitment to this belief will be that I am ready to publish it, to share it with others, and to invite their judgment and—if necessary—correction. If I refrain from this exercise, if I try to keep my belief as a private matter, it is not belief in the truth.”

Martin Luther changed the world when he told the persecuting authorities, “Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.”

Jesus told his followers, “You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:13, 14). Not “you will be” but “you are.” Your private faith is already public. Is your witness effective or damaging to God’s Kingdom? Do people see that you are proud of your God, or ashamed of him?

God uses those who will declare their faith. Can he use you?

And last, refuse to quit.

Col. Laird Gunnert was a POW in Vietnam, beaten and tortured mercilessly. Between “interrogations,” he was forced to kneel for hours at a time. One day, Gunnert’s Vietcong captors took him to an interrogation room he had not seen before. This time his beating was especially severe. He crumpled to the floor in a broken heap, and lay there in excruciating pain, too exhausted and battered to lift his face from the dirt floor.

Opening his eyes, Col. Gunnert saw something on the wall, about four inches from the floor, right in front of his face. As his eyes focused, he saw that someone had scrawled in the dirt and mud, “Keep the faith, baby!” Then the Colonel knew he was not alone, and that the faith was enough. And it was.

It’s always too soon to quit. Who or what is tempting you to give up today? You may fail, but you’re not a failure. 366 times the Lord tells his people “Fear not.”

The Bible promises you: “our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). God can use anyone who will not quit being used. Can he use you?

Conclusion

We worship a holy God who is also forgiving of our sins. He is powerful, but also loving and gracious. He reveals himself to us, and then invites us to share his revelation with his world. He is a commissioning God, calling us to share his mission, to join his cause, to serve his Kingdom.

And so each week we respond to worship with commitment and service. We make public our faith on Sunday through the invitation and offering, through our baptism and parental dedication, through our singing and our ministry to each other.

Then we measure Sunday by Monday. The measure of your authentic worship today is your authentic ministry tomorrow. A tree is measured by its fruit, a farm by its produce, a factory by its products.

Changed people must change the world. They must serve their King and his Kingdom. Worship must become work; salvation must become service. What will you do tomorrow, because you were here today? Where is the Lord commissioning you?

On May 29, 1939, a group of Baptists from the Park Cities met at the City Hall of University Park to discuss organizing a church in this area of the city. They left with this question burning in their hearts: “Are you willing to enter this open door of opportunity through which the Lord is leading? Go to your homes, think it over, pray it through, and with the courageous spirit of Caleb and Joshua say, ‘If the Lord delight in us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us. Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are well able to overcome it.'”

They responded to the commission of God. That small group divided up the telephone directory and called every family in the Park Cities, an area which was home to 15,000 people. They worked through the summer. Then they came together on October 26, 1939, 64 years ago today, gathering in the City Hall of University Park. Without a pastor, without any founding churches or organizations, without any financial support except their own, they birthed Park Cities Baptist Church.

From the first, their new church would exist to serve the Savior and build his Kingdom. In their first worship service they received an offering for missions. In the last 25 years, our church has contributed more than $35 million to the cause of world missions; $2,302,920 was given just last year to advance the mission of our King around the world. And our people are found serving the Kingdom each day and each week across Dallas, and travel each year around the world with the good news of his love.

Why has God so blessed Park Cities Baptist Church? Because we have answered his commission. We have joined his mission. We have partnered with our King in his Kingdom. Now, will our past become our future?

Marching Orders

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Marching Orders

Joshua1:1-18

Dr. Jim Denison

Thesis: God calls us to fulfill his highest purposes by faith.

Goal: Identify and embrace God’s highest calling for your life.

Oswald Chambers lived one of the most extraordinary Christian pilgrimages of the 20th century. A native of Scotland, his ministry of preaching and teaching took him to the United States and Japan. He founded a Bible Training College in London, then served as chaplain to British troops in Egypt during World War I. His death at age 43 was a tragedy to the troops he served and the family he loved. But his ministry has touched millions of souls he had no opportunity to know, myself included.

Oswald’s wife Biddy made his life motto the title of the devotional book she created from his various sermons and talks: “My Utmost For His Highest.” I’ve been reading daily from this guide for twelve years now, and have found it to be the most essential book in my spiritual life next to Scripture. Its title motivates me constantly: find and give my “utmost” gifts and service to God’s “highest” purpose for my life and work.

What is your “utmost”? What is its “highest” purpose in the will of God? How can you help your class find and fulfill God’s greatest plan for their lives? These were the issues facing Joshua as our text unfolds. The answers given to Joshua are precisely God’s guidance for us this week.

Listen for the call of God (vs. 1-5)

Alexander the Great led his armies by the strength of his single focus and indomitable will. After his death, his generals met to plan their future. To their dismay, they discovered that they had marched off their maps. They were in an unknown location, facing an unknown future. They were not the first, or the last.

Listen in the hard places

So it was for Israel as the book of Joshua opened. Moses had died. This was easily the most traumatic event in the young life of the nation of Israel. He had been the “servant of the Lord” (v. 1), an exalted title given only to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Caleb to this point in Jewish history (Joshua would be added to the list at the end of his life and work; cf. 24:29). Now their mentor, guide, and hero was gone, and the future was uncertain at best.

The book of Joshua connects its narrative directly to this crisis. Its first word, translated “After” in the NIV, is “and” in the Hebrew. The narrative continues directly from the end of Deuteronomy and the death of Moses. Perhaps the thirty days of mourning for Moses had now ended (Deut 34:8). But the crisis facing the nation had not.

God often calls us to his highest purposes in the midst of personal and corporate crisis. Isaiah heard the word of the Lord “in the year that King Uzziah died” (Isaiah 6:1), as the prophet mourned the death of his king and relative. God began to use Elisha immediately after his mentor Elijah had been assumed to heaven (2 Kings 2:19ff).

It has been calculated that the typical adult faces six crises in his or her life. Not just the routine problems of daily living, but major issues such as death, divorce, and serious disease. If a person graduates from adolescence without trusting personally in Christ, he or she is typically open to the gospel only during such times of crises. It is then that Christians who have built relationship with the person can show God’s love in theirs.

It is also in such periods of crisis that we can hear the Lord most clearly. He speaks far more than we are willing to stop and listen. But when we know that we need his word and help, that we have come to the end of our own wisdom, we will listen for his voice with desperation and faith. And we will always hear him speak. So, whatever your circumstances may be, ask God to use them to bring his word to your heart. And he will.

Expect God to speak to you

In the immediate context of Moses’ death, “the Lord said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ aide….” (v. 1b). Theologian and apologist Francis Schaeffer was right: he is there and he is not silent. God speaks far more than we hear his voice. Just as the room where you are reading these words is filled with radio and television waves you are not hearing, so the Spirit is speaking constantly to his people. But we must “tune in” to his frequency.

God spoke the universe into being. He spoke to and through the prophets, so that their most common refrain was “Thus says the Lord….” Jesus spoke constantly to the disciples and the crowds during his incarnational ministry. His Spirit spoke to those he inspired to record the rest of his written revelation. He speaks now through this word to and through preachers and teachers of his truth. He speaks when we are willing to hear him in silent prayer. He speaks to us through the words and music we use in worship. All truth is his truth, so that every word we hear or read which contains truth comes ultimately from him.

Joyce Huggett has written a marvelous book titled The Joy of Listening to God. She’s right—whenever we are still enough to hear God’s Spirit speak to us, the result is joy. Whenever we are yielded to the truth of Scripture, to the words of a sermon or Bible study, to the truth contained in a worship song, to the truth of God revealed through human agents and means, there is joy.

So it was for Joshua, even in the crisis of the moment. So it will be for you. But you must expect God to speak to you, if only you will listen. You must tune the frequency of your spirit to his voice.

Seek his will for the now

God does not reveal himself in five-year strategies. You and I have inherited the Western worldview, with its linear philosophy of history. We like to think of history as a line on a page, progressing logically toward some conclusion. But God knows that this day is the only day which exists. His will is first and foremost for the here and now. He speaks to us in the present, about the present.

Joshua needed to know the next step to take. He didn’t need a long-range plan, but a present-tense guide. Not a map, but a flashlight. God gave him exactly what he needed to know, for the moment he needed to know it.

God gave him the who: “you and all these people, get ready….” (v. 2a). Not just the leaders of the tribes. Not just the army. Not just the priests. Not just some part of the population. The entire nation intended by God to live west of the Jordan River was now involved in the call and purpose of God.

He gave Joshua the where: “get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them” (v. 2b). The Jordan is typically only 80 to 100 feet wide, and not deep. I baptized a large group there, and had no difficulty wading out into the middle of the slow-moving current. But when the spring rains come, the river can flood its larger bed. Where Joshua and his people would be crossing, the river would be more than a mile wide and a raging torrent. They didn’t know what the Lord already knew—that they would face an insurmountable obstacle which he would lead them across miraculously. We are called to follow God today, and leave tomorrow in his hands. He already knows every step he intends us to take.

Next the Lord gave Joshua the what: they would inherit “the land I am about the give to them” (v. 2b). God had earlier promised this land to Abraham for his descendants (Gen 15:18-19), and had renewed his promise to and through Moses (Deuteronomy 11:24-25). Now he would bring it to fulfillment.

He would give them “every place where you set your foot” (v. 3). The Hebrew tense indicates that the land was already theirs, though it remained to be taken. It already belonged to God, and thus to his heirs. They just had to go and claim it. Each Christmas some very kind friends give our family gift certificates to restaurants (the boys’ favorite) and bookstores (Janet’s and my favorite). Our possession is already purchased and belongs to us—we need only claim it. So it is always with God’s planned future for us, on earth and in heaven. He already owns all that is; we need only go and “set foot” on that which he wants us to have.

Note that the full dimensions of this land would belong to Israel only under David and Solomon, five centuries after the time of Joshua. God’s plans are seldom fulfilled in our sight, or our lifetime. A great leader plants trees he or she will never sit under.

God did not give Joshua the long-term plan, but only the immediate next step to take. This is always how we will hear his call. We must be close enough to hear his voice when he calls to us. We are to be faithful to the last word we heard from the Lord. Only then can we hear the next.

Trust his provision for his purpose

God knew that his people would face opposition for the land he had promised them. Jesus warned us of the same fact: “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16.33a). Then he added, “But take heart! I have overcome the world” (v. 33b). The Lord made the same promise to Joshua: “No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life” (v. 5a). Why? Because “As I was with Moses, so I will be with you: I will never leave you nor forsake you” (v. 5b).

To “forsake” meant to abandon, to turn loose of. Imagine a mountain climbing guide, holding the lifeline for a climber who has lost his grip on the mountain. This is precisely our condition spiritually. But our Father will never turn loose of our rope. He will always hold us up until we have climbed to his full purpose and will.

Jesus likewise promised his followers that he would be with them always, to the very end of the age (Matthew 28:20). When he calls us, he goes before us. We will journey to no place in his will which he has not already prepared for our arrival. We can always trust his provision, so long as we are willing to walk in his purpose.

Have you heard the call of God for your life and work? Can you identify the “utmost” which is God’s “highest” for you? If not, stop now, wherever you are, whatever the crisis or circumstances which surround you. Expect God to speak to you, if only you will listen for his voice. Seek his will for the now, the next step you are to take into his purpose. Trust him to provide for every step of that pilgrimage. Sign a blank check to him. Give him your unconditional commitment to his purpose, whatever it might be. And you will know what you are to do next in the plan of God for your life.

Choose courageous obedience (vs. 6-9)

The next words Joshua heard from God were a direct command: “Be strong and courageous” (v. 6a). “Be strong” translates a Hebrew word which means to be bound strongly together, to be put together well. To be “courageous” meant to be firm-footed, to take a strong stand, the opposite of shaking or quaking knees.

Three times God repeated these words to his servant. Later the people gave Joshua the same exhortation (v. 18). Paul’s word to Timothy brings this encouragement to New Testament believers as well: “God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7).

Why would Joshua need such courage? Because “you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them” (v. 6b). Even Moses did not fulfill this purpose. Their greatest leaders had not brought them to this place of victory. Now Joshua would lead a nation numbering in the millions into hostile territory inhabited by some of the most wicked cultures known to human history. Indeed he would attempt something so great it was doomed to fail unless God was in it.

What is the secret to such courage? Faithful obedience: “Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go” (v. 7). Obedience was and is the prerequisite for divine power and protection. The land was not unconditionally theirs, as Deuteronomy 8:1 made clear; they had to obey the Lord to receive it. Such obedience was not works righteousness—they could do nothing to earn or deserve this grace gift. Rather, their obedience would position them to receive the power and provision God intended to give.

So what is the secret to such obedience? Constant communion: “Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth” (v. 8a). Those in the biblical era typically read the Scriptures aloud, whether to others or themselves (see Acts 8:30 for one example). We would do well to follow their practice, as we remember far more of what we hear than what we see. And so Joshua and his people were not to allow the word of God to “depart from your mouth.”

Rather, they were to “meditate on it day and night” (v. 8b). “Meditate” in the Hebrew describes a low murmuring sound made by a person contemplating something. We will not simply read the words and leave them on the page, but we will bring them into our hearts and lives. When you read the word of God, first read its words aloud. Then use all your senses. Imagine yourself in this setting—how it feels to your skin, smells, tastes, sounds, looks. Experience these words fully and sensually. Then ask the Lord for one thing you should do differently because you have spent this time with him in his word. Write down that idea or fact; read it over through the day; ask the Lord to apply it to your unconscious thoughts as well as your intentional decisions.

When you “meditate” on the word of God “day and night,” the result will be that “you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful” (v. 8c). As we commune with God in his truth, we find his help in practicing the faithful obedience which creates courageous strength.

Last, what is the secret to such constant communion? Trusting the presence of God: “Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go” (v. 9). He is “the Lord your God.” Martin Luther believed that the most important single word in the 23rd Psalm is found in its first clause: “The Lord is my shepherd.” Not just the shepherd or even our shepherd, but my shepherd.

Likewise, the Lord is your God. You can go no place which is exempt from his providence and presence. If you will trust him to be present in your life in this and every moment, you can then practice his presence through communion in his word. When you commune with him in his word, you have his guidance to practice faithful obedience. And as you are obedient to his word and will, you will have his strong courage to fulfill that purpose.

As we will see across this study, Joshua experienced precisely such strength and courage. He would lead the people to the great military conquest which would create their nation. He would establish them in their Promised Land, and make of their roving tribes a permanent and mighty people. His God will do no less with us.

Stand publicly for God’s purpose (vs. 10-18)

Now the crisis moment has come. Joshua could lead the people to stay where they are. The nations surrounding them are not yet strong enough to threaten their short-term safety. They could camp on the eastern side of the Jordan and declare victory.

He could abdicate leadership. After all, he’s already done so much, and is now advancing in years. If he was only 20 when he began his service to Moses, and then endured 40 years in the wilderness with the people, he would now be over 60 years of age. This was nearly twice the typical life expectancy in the ancient world. Joshua could with merit claim that he had led the people as far as he could, and ask God to find another to finish their pilgrimage to their land.

He could enter the land privately, seeking his own fortune and his family’s security. Then if he failed, none would know. If he succeeded, he would only take his just reward for his years of faithful service.

Or he could make public his commitment to God and his purpose. This was a true hinge point for Jewish and redemptive history. Would God have a people in this land, or not?

His decision was clear and instantaneous: “So Joshua ordered the officers of the people…” (v. 10). With this commitment, he assumed full command of the army and the nation. Their destiny would be his. He would step into the office vacated by Moses’ death and now assigned him by God. He would stand publicly for the purpose of God.

And he would call the nation to follow him. He sent the officers throughout the nation to prepare the people for their pilgrimage across the Jordan and into their Promised Land (vs. 11-12). Then he spoke personally to the tribes of Reuben and Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh with them (v. 12), calling them to public obedience as well.

Why did he single them out for special encouragement? Their story takes us back to Numbers 21, where Moses and the people took possession of the land immediately east of the Jordan River. Og, king of Bashan, and Sihon, the king of the Amorites, had possessed this fertile land before Moses and his army took it from them. The large tribes of Reuben and Gad soon found this land to their liking. They owned very large herds and flocks, and discovered the land to be excellent for ranching. And so they asked permission to stay on it permanently (Numbers 32).

Half of the tribe of Manasseh chose to join them. Remember that Joseph had two sons: Ephraim and Manasseh. Both were adopted by Jacob as his own children, so that Israel was in fact composed of thirteen tribes. However, God made clear that the tribe of Levi was to have no assigned land, but would live on the support of the others as it served the tabernacle and later the Temple. The twelve tribes which remained would all receive land in due time. The tribe of Manasseh chose to divide in two; half wanted to stay east of the Jordan and raise their cattle with Reuben and Gad.

Moses gave them permission, with the proviso that when the nation was prepared to cross the Jordan and take the rest of Canaan, their soldiers must fight with the rest of the army. This they had agreed to do.

Now Joshua came to remind them of their agreement (vs. 13-15). The situation was potentially dangerous. They already had “rest” (v. 13), an Old Testament concept which includes secure borders, peace with neighbors, absence of threats to life, and security for the future. Now God wanted to give this “rest” to all the nation, with their military help (see the NavPress discussion on page 28 for further insight). But the people would need their “fighting men” (v. 14), all those over the age of 20 who were physically able to wage war. Would they keep their promise? Or would the nation move into the land without a significant part of its military strength?

These “transjordan” tribes gave Joshua their immediate and unconditional support (v. 16). But they made two requirements of him, the same expectations every group has the right to ask of its leaders. First, “may the Lord your God be with you as he was with Moses” (v. 17). They wanted to follow him only if he would follow God. Second, “Only be strong and courageous!” (v. 18). He could not expect them to follow where he would not lead. They wanted an example of godly courage they could follow into battle, and into their future together. And Joshua would answer their call, with miraculous results.

Conclusion

When this pivotal chapter opened, we found Joshua and the people still mourning the death of their beloved hero and leader. Their future was uncertain in the extreme. Their leadership was unclear, their direction undetermined. Joshua had not yet determined to follow God’s purpose for his life and leadership, nor had the people chosen to follow him.

When the chapter ends, the people are one. Joshua is their strong and courageous leader. The people are unified and resolved to follow him into their future. And they will find that future to be as bright as the promises of God.

We need Joshua-type leaders today. Will you follow the Lord with your personal obedience and faithful commitment? Will you trust God, commune with him in his word, and practice his presence? A study group cannot be expected to go further with God than the leaders are willing to lead them. If your class were as close to the Father as you are this moment, would this be a good thing?

Perhaps this chapter could be as pivotal to your soul as it was for Joshua. The choice is yours.

Married to God

Written by

Married to God

Revelation 21:1-5

James C. Denison

This is the season for weddings. I’ve performed three in the last three weeks, with more to come. Fortunately, each of the grooms I’ve married knew that he was marrying over his head, as I did. Not all husbands are this wise.

For instance, a friend sent me this unfortunate story: “When our lawn mower broke and wouldn’t run, my wife kept hinting to me that I should get it fixed. But somehow I always had something else to take care of first–the truck, the car, fishing, always something more important to me.

“Finally she thought of a clever way to make her point. When I arrived home one day, I found her seated in the tall grass, busily snipping away with a tiny pair of sewing scissors. I watched silently for a short time and then went into the house.

“I was gone only a few minutes. When I came out again I handed her a toothbrush. ‘When you finish cutting the grass,’ I said, ‘you might as well sweep the sidewalk.’

“The doctors say I will walk again, but I will always have a limp.” As he should.

This summer we’ve surveyed a number of images and metaphors for the church. We’ve learned that we are his “saints,” called out to belong to him. We are his new creation, the temple of his Holy Spirit, branches on his vine, his “building.” Today we learn that we are his bride and he is our Groom. We learn that being ready for our wedding in eternity is the best way to live today. And we learn why.

For those days when you wonder if your life matters much, whether anyone really knows or cares about you, whether you’re going anywhere significant or your days are worthwhile, remember this fact: you are the Bride of Christ. Today it is my privilege to show you why that fact is our hope.

Know that you belong to Christ

Have you ever wondered why Catholic nuns do not marry? According to official Church teaching, they are married–to Christ. We Baptists may not have known that about nuns. And we may not know that we have joined them–we are married to Jesus as well. We are already the bride of Christ. Our marriage has already been arranged.

In first-century Judaism, marriages were always arranged. Sometimes between a man and his prospective wife’s family, sometimes between parents of children. Then the time would come when the couple would enter into a formal engagement. This would last for a year. They were considered to be married in every way except physically. She still lived with her family, and he still lived in his home. If he were to die during that year, she would be considered a widow, and would in fact be called “the virgin who is a widow.”

Then would come the day of their wedding, when they would consummate their marriage and live together for the rest of their lives.

You and I are in the formal engagement period with Jesus. The moment you asked him to become your Lord and Savior, you became his “bride.” The New Testament consistently refers to Jesus as the “Bridegroom” (John 3:29; Matthew 9:15). Paul told the Corinthians, “I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him” (2 Corinthians 11:2). You and I are engaged to be married to Jesus. We can belong to no one else. We are completely his. And soon our wedding day will come.

Rejoice that he is preparing your eternal mansion

When it does, everything we have done to be ready will be worth its cost and more. We will move into a new home with our Bridegroom: “I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea” (v. 1).

No more of this fallen, decayed, corrupted planet. No hurricanes or earthquakes or cancer or AIDS. No more disease or disaster. Not even any “sea,” that which had separated John on Patmos from his beloved church in Ephesus. We move out of the rundown old shack where we live today into a mansion with streets of gold and gates of pearl.

Our Groom has a “mansion” he has been building for us in glory. He is a master carpenter. We cannot begin to imagine what our home will be like, for “no eye as seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

When this happens, we will be united with our Groom for all time: “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (v. 3). When we are with him, we will have all that our hearts yearn for today: “In thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Psalm 16:11, KJV).

We will receive “an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade–kept in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:4).

We will “eat at the feast in the kingdom of God” (Luke 14:15).

We’ll have perfect understanding there: “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

We will be in “paradise” (Luke 23:43), the walled garden of the king. The good comes, the bad is gone: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (v. 4).

Not a single evidence of our fallen world will be left. Not a single day spent in pain or grief, guilt or loss. All of that is gone. The life we had before is no more. We are now married to God, and will live with him in his mansion for all time.

Be ready for your wedding today

But none of us knows when the time of our wedding will come. Only the Father, the One who has arranged our marriage and is preparing our wedding knows that. Not even the Son, the Bridegroom, knew when the moment would come. And so we must each one be ready, as if it were today. We must use earth to be ready for heaven. We must live every day prepared for it to be our last day, ready for the time when our Groom comes and our wedding commences and eternity begins.

How?

We share our faith, for we want as many as possible to be part of the Wedding. Every person you know will spend eternity either in paradise with God or separated from his blessed heaven forever. You hold the invitation to the Wedding. Why wouldn’t you give it to everyone you can?

We do all we can to improve life on this earth, because we want the King who is our Groom to be pleased with his kingdom when he returns. We must do all we can to end racism and war, poverty and disease, environmental and relational sin. We want to show him that we managed his property well, that we took good care of his estate while he was gone, that we loved his people as he loves them.

We spend our days in personal holiness, for we want our Groom to be pleased with his Bride when he comes for us. The Bible describes sin as spiritual adultery, for that is what it is. We want our garments to be white and holy.

Listen to C. S. Lewis: “If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven.

It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.” We want our lives and world to be ready for our Groom when he comes for his bride. If it were today, would you be ready?

So we are to live for the future because this is the best way to redeem the present. We are to live for heaven because this is the best way to live on earth. We are to be ready for eternity because this is the best way to be ready for tomorrow. Why?

Lewis continues: “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither. It seems a strange rule, but something like it can be seen at work in other matters. Health is a great blessing, but the moment you make health one of your main, direct objects you start becoming a crank and imagining there is something wrong with you. You are likely to get health provided you want other things more–food, games, work, fun, open air. In the same way, we shall never save civilisation (sic) as long as civilisation is our main object. We must learn to want something else even more” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity 118-9).

When I live for heaven and eternity, I am motivated to teach God’s word today in a way which will please him, not just to fulfill my Sunday morning responsibilities–and that makes me a better pastor. (God save us from those who preach only because it is Sunday.)

When you live for heaven and eternity, you care more for the souls and eternal lives of your employees than their monetary value to you–and that makes you a better employer. You care more about your integrity than you do your salary–and that makes you a better employee. You care more about the wellbeing of your clients or patients then their ability to pay you–and that makes you a better lawyer or doctor. You care more about the souls of your friends than their popularity or status–and that makes you a better friend.

When we live for heaven, we live our best lives on earth. All the while, we please and honor our Groom for this time when we are engaged but not yet married. And when the wedding hour comes, we will be glad forever that we were ready.

Conclusion

Are you ready? If our Groom were to come this morning for us, would you be pleased to see him? What would you do differently if you knew it were today?

Never wonder again if your life has value or significance, for the God of the universe, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords chose you for his Bride. He is working right now to prepare your mansion in his paradise. If you will use today to prepare for eternity, you will find your days filled with joy and purpose. And one day, all you have done to serve and follow him will be worth its cost and so much more.

We just celebrated our nation’s 231th birthday this week, largely because of the bravery of men and women who have served and died for our freedom across the generations. One example of such bravery is the troops left behind by General Douglas MacArthur when he was forced to retreat from the Philippines in 1941.

MacArthur left Lt. General Jonathan Wainwright in charge and promised to return. Those men he left on the peninsula of Bataan continued to fight for freedom and serve their country. They lived, and some died, as loyal and faithful soldiers.

Two and a half years later, the General returned. In a radio broadcast he issued this statement: “This is the voice of freedom, General MacArthur speaking. People of the Philippines, I have returned.” In the meanwhile, their hope made them the best soldiers they could be. It kept them going through the hardest days of war. And it was more than repaid when their General came for them.

Your Groom is coming for you. We’re one day closer to the wedding than we’ve ever been. Are you ready today?

Measuring Success As God Does

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Measuring Success As God Does

2 Samuel 12:24-25

Dr. Jim Denison

The Pythagorean theorem in mathematics can be stated in 24 words. The Model Prayer takes 66 words to recite in English. Archimedes’ Principle requires 67 words. The Ten Commandments (in the King James Version) comprise 179 words. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was composed of 286 words. The Declaration of Independence was written in 1,300 words. And United States government regulations on the sale of cabbage require 26,911 words.

But if you had to pick one word as your favorite, the one word which creates in most of us the strongest emotional reaction, the greatest immediate warmth and gratitude, you would likely pick “mother.”

It has been so for a long time. Mother’s Day was first celebrated in ancient Greece. In the 17th century, England began “Mothering Day.” Mothers who worked as servants lived in the homes of their employers, but were allowed to go home to their families on this one day. Most mothers would still say they work as servants in the homes of their employers. Not much has changed. But the rest of us are grateful.

In our David series we have watched his greatest victory and greatest failure. Today we’ll consider his greatest legacy. Here’s the one simple point of the message: God measures our success as parents by our faithfulness to him. Not by our society’s definitions of our children’s achievements. By our faithfulness to our Father.

Here’s why: our children typically become what we are. For some of us, that’s not necessarily good news. But God can redeem anyone and any family who will measure success by faithfulness to him. We’ll prove it today.

The story of Bathsheba

No one names their daughter Bathsheba. Last week we revisited the sin with which her name is most frequently associated. Today let’s take a moment to remember the rest of her story.

After her first child with David died, the Lord gave her a second son they named Solomon. But the Lord gave their baby a second name, “Jedidiah,” meaning “loved by the Lord.”

And indeed he was. Through his life and work, Israel reached its zenith of significance and wealth. Through the family line he continued, the Messiah would one day come for all of humanity.

After bearing Solomon, Bathsheba would later save him. His older brother Adonijah tried to claim the throne. If successful, he would have killed Solomon and any other threat to the crown. But Bathsheba alerted the dying king David, and he guaranteed Solomon’s ascension (1Kings 1).

According to Jewish tradition, Solomon later wrote the beautiful Proverbs 31 in honor of his mother. This text, so often read from Mother’s Day pulpits across the land, closes with words which are ironic, given Bathsheba’s earlier story: “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her the reward she has earned, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate” (vs. 30-31). Despite the way her story began, her son knew her to be “a woman who fears the Lord.”

No matter how our story reads today, this is how it can end. And should.

Others in the family line

Now, let’s continue the story of mothers in the family of David. Matthew’s genealogy gives us four others, each worth remembering on this Mother’s Day.

Here is the first in his list: “Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar” (Matthew 1:3). Her first husband was put to death by God for wickedness, as was his brother, her second husband. When the third son grew to marriageable age, Judah was afraid for his boy’s life and refused to give him to Tamar. So she pretended to be a prostitute and slept with her father-in-law. The result was twin boys, Perez and Zerah, children of incest. But she’s in the story.

Second comes “Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab” (v. 5a). Rahab was the town innkeeper and prostitute in Jericho. You already know her story.

Third is “Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth” (v. 5b). While her courtship with Boaz is a story of romance and beauty, her heritage was anything but.

Ruth was from the Moabite race, located east of the Dead Sea. Moab was the son of Lot (Genesis 19:36-37). Lot’s daughters got him drunk, and became pregnant by him. Moab’s name sounds like the Hebrew for “from father,” a perpetual reminder of the incestuous beginnings of this nation.

Later the Moabites led the Jews into sexual and spiritual immorality, so that 24,000 of Israel died in the wrath of God.

The Jewish people never forgot what Moab had done to them: “No Ammonite or Moabite or any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, even down to the tenth generation” (Deuteronomy 23:3). Further, the Jews were to remain perpetually at war with them: “Do not seek a treaty of friendship with them as long as you live” (v. 6).

And so we find in David’s family line a woman whose history should have barred her forever from such inclusion. Imagine a German descendent of Hitler as the mother of the Jewish prime minister, and you’d have a situation no less shocking than this. A woman forbidden by her race and history from ever entering into the worship of God, now an ancestor to the very One we worship.

Last we read, “Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ” (Matthew 1:16).

She is today the most famous mother in all of history, but things certainly did not begin that way. Mary was a young teenager, a seventh-grader if she were alive today, when Gabriel called her to be the mother of the Messiah. The Jews had taught their girls to pray every night that they might be chosen for this honor. But they all expected the mother of the Messiah to be chosen from the royal family in Jerusalem, or the powerful among the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Sanhedrin. No one would have expected a peasant teenager living in the country hills of Galilee.

Measure success by obedience

And so we have five mothers in the line of David. What do they have in common?

They were all outsiders, foreigners of sorts. Tamar was a Canaanite (Genesis 38:1-6), as was Rahab (Joshua 2:1). Ruth was from Moab (Ruth 1:4). Bathsheba was married to a Gentile, which made her one in Jewish eyes (2 Samuel 11:3). And Mary was from Galilee, the rural hill country despised by the sophisticates in Jerusalem and Judea. They were each outsiders to proper society.

Theirs were troubled families. Incest in Tamar’s family, and Ruth’s race; Rahab a prostitute, Bathsheba an adulteress. Mary became pregnant before she was married to Joseph; while she was, of course, beyond reproach, her society didn’t see her that way.

And so all were unlikely choices to be useful to God. Matthew could not have found more scandalous names and stories to include in his genealogy. But matters were out of his hands. They were chosen by the Lord as ancestors for his only begotten Son, our Savior and Lord.

What’s the point? God measures success differently than we do.

I often think of the time Mother Teresa was opening a new ministry center in New York City. Of course, the media turned out in force for the event. A reporter asked the tiny nun how she would measure the success of this new effort. She turned, smiled into the glare of the cameras, and said, “I don’t believe our Lord ever spoke of success. He spoke only of faithfulness in love.” Do you agree with her?

Our culture says parents are successful to the degree that our children achieve status and social recognition. We are measured by their class rank, their sports achievements, their friends and popularity, the college they attend, the vocational success they attain.

But the Lord’s word to Samuel concerning David is his word of assessment for us all: “The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

And so the Lord calls us successful to the degree that we are faithful to him, and teach our children to be faithful to him. They have freedom of will, and can choose to reject our example and teaching. But it is our responsibility to teach them the word and will of the Lord, whatever their response to his truth. This is not the job of the church, or the schools, or society. It is our job to teach our children the word and will of God. And to live what we teach.

With this knowledge ever before us: our children will do what they see. They will likely become what we are.

Aurelius Augustinus would have made the cover of People magazine, if it had been around in 354 AD. He had two mistresses, the first when he was only sixteen. He fathered an illegitimate child, and ran from one scandal to another. But his saintly mother Monica wouldn’t give up on her wayward son. Where he moved, she moved. While he sinned, she prayed. Finally, at 33 years of age, he came to faith in Jesus. He was ordained a priest, then a bishop; he wrote sixteen volumes of the greatest theology since Paul, and is considered the most brilliant Christian since the New Testament. To whom do we owe Augustine?

The mother of George Washington was known for her integrity and moral courage. And so her son “could not tell a lie.” To whom do we owe the character of the “father of our country?”

Susannah Wesley was the 25th child of her father and the mother of 19. She taught each of her children to recite the alphabet by his or her fifth birthday; when they turned six, she spent six hours each day teaching them Christian theology. Two of her sons, John and Charles, would in time found the denomination known as Methodist. John Wesley later said, “I learned more about Christianity from my mother than from all the theologians of England.” To whom do we owe him?

Abraham Lincoln said, “All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” Dwight Moody testified, “All that I have ever accomplished in life, I owe to my mother.” Charles Spurgeon agreed: “I cannot tell how much I owe to the solemn words of my good mother.”

John Newton’s mother prayed for her wayward, sinful son every day. Finally he came to Christ, and later wrote Amazing Grace, the most beloved hymn of all time. We have it because of his mother.

Do you believe that children usually become what we are?

Conclusion

That fact will be encouraging to you, if you are leading a godly life of biblical integrity and teaching your children to do the same. To you the message on this Mother’s Day is, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9).

But if today’s message is not encouraging to you, take heart. God is still on his throne, and he can still redeem us and use us for eternal good. No one would have thought Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, or Mary likely candidates for a Mother’s Day sermon 20 centuries later. But God measures success by faithfulness. If you will be faithful to your Father, and faithful to your children, you can trust eternity to God.

So, is today a good day to renew your obedience to your Father? A good day to submit and surrender your family, your future, your hopes and dreams to him? A good day to ask him to help you be all your heart longs to become? A good day to pray for your mother, or for her continuing influence in your life and soul?

Let’s close with the story of Jesus’ last days, when his friend Mary “took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair” (John 12:3). This was actually twelve ounces of one of the most expensive perfumes of their day.

She broke the clay vessel and poured its contents out unto her Lord. In the very same way, God has given every mother the privilege of pouring out the child given to her, unto God. Listen to this song about that event—may this be your commitment to God this day. Would you give your most precious treasure, that which God has given to you, back to him, right now?

One day a plain village woman,

Driven by love for her Lord,

Recklessly poured out a valuable essence,

Disregarding the scorn.

And once it was broken and spilled out,

A fragrance filled all the room

Like a pris’ner released from his shackles,

Like a spirit set free from the tomb.

Broken and spilled out just for love of You, Jesus;

My most precious treasure lavished on Thee.

Broken and spilled out and poured at

Your feet in sweet abandon;

Let me be spilled out and used up for Thee.

Lord, You were God’s precious treasure,

His loved and His own perfect Son,

Sent here to show me the love of the Father;

Yes, just for love it was done.

And though You were perfect and holy,

You gave up yourself willingly.

You spared no expense for my pardon;

You were used up and wasted for me.

Broken and spilled out just for love of me, Jesus;

God’s most precious treasure lavished on me.

Broken and spilled out and poured at

my feet in sweet abandon;

Lord, You were spilled out and used up for me.

In sweet abandon, let me be spilled out

and used up for Thee.

Benediction prayer:

Let’s close again this year with Peter Marshall’s beautiful Mother’s Day prayer, and express in its words our commitments together:

“On this day of sacred memories, our Father, we would thank Thee for our mothers who gave us life, who surrounded us early and late with love and care, whose prayers on our behalf still cling around the Throne of Grace, a haunting perfume of love’s petitions.

“Help us, their children, to be more worthy of their love. We know that no sentimentality on this day, no material gifts—no flowers or boxes of candy can atone for our neglect during the rest of the year. So, in the days ahead, may our love speak to the hearts of those who know love best—by kindness, by compassion, by simple courtesy and daily thoughtfulness.

“Bless her whose name we whisper before Thee, and keep her in Thy perfect peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”