Luke 4:14-30

Dear Luke,

I must say that I am cheered by the final sentence of your letter—I believe that the devil does indeed tempt us to despair, to give up, to reach for each answers when the truth, especially a difficult truth, draws near.  Faith in Jesus Christ is not easy, and I believe it should change your life, and as such, it demands a thoughtful, mature response.  To make an emotional decision now without intellectual understanding and a community to support you leaves you in danger of feeling lost when the first crisis of faith hits later, and I am certain it will.  A deep faith, built upon a carefully considered faith in God, will be able to last through the storms of life.  When waves are washing over your head and the storm beats at the door, you will be glad you endured to the end and made your decision then, rather than rushed to judgment because you grew impatient in your search. 

As for some of your other questions, I must let you come to those conclusions.  I do not believe that one can know about the existence of God and not be driven to worship him, but understand that I have never stood in your shoes and wondered about the benefits and costs of coming to faith.  Faith in God is the milieu in which I lived this life of mine, and so it is impossible to remove myself from my context and consider the case from your side.  The more I learn about God, the more drive I am to worship.  I hope that you reach the same conclusion, and yet I will let you reach it in your own time.  I do not pressure you to decide, believing you to be fully capable of such a decision, and yet I will support you every step of the journey.

Your previous story is certainly a strange one in these times.  It’s hard to imagine telling this to a child and having them believe it at face value, what with society’s current dismissal of demons and the like.  Yet, like you, I believe it to be true.  While there were no witnesses beyond Jesus, multiple sources confirm it, and so we must wrestle with it, with what it means for the story as well as for the bigger picture of all of creation.  The reality of the devil and his temptations seem to be clear with every page of the newspaper, but he is readily dismissed by many.

It seems as though the temptation of Jesus was a sort of preparation for his public ministry.  Maybe it was thought that if he could resist that temptation that nothing else would prove to equal the pressure of that particular crucible.  From what I have heard, he leapt directly from one trial to the next.  The Spirit’s power filled him as he left the desert, and he returned to Galilee, where a report, probably of his baptism, began to spread throughout the country.  Thousands hung upon his every word, and he was the talk of most towns.  Jesus visited many synagogues, and his name was praised by all.  It was one of these synagogue visits, surprisingly to his hometown of Nazareth, where he had been raised, that things suddenly went very wrong. 

 It was the Sabbath, and so Jesus, being a good Jew, went to synagogue.  I’m sure countless Jews pressed to the front to capture every word that was said, and so when Jesus stood up to read the scroll of Isaiah, a prophet, and unrolled it, one could probably hear a pin drop in the room.  Word had spread fast about this man, and now he was here in the flesh, and no one wanted to miss a thing.

Jesus read from the scroll, I am covered in the Spirit of the Lord, who has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  I will announce release to the captives, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed.

With that, he sat down, having given the rolled scroll back to the attendant.  Not a single eye deviated from Jesus, and he said very simply to the awaiting crowd, “As you have heard these words, this Scripture is fulfilled today.”

The response was overwhelmingly positive—he spoke graciously, and they wondered at this man who had grown up as the son of Joseph, the carpenter. 

But Jesus continued, and this is where the story wanders into deeper waters, where it changes from a feel-good story about a man’s homecoming to a life-threatening tale of anger and passion.

Jesus continued in his teaching.  You will probably quote the proverb, ‘Physician, cure yourself’ to me, and you will demand that I do the same things here that have been reported in Capernaum.  But I must say that a prophet does not find acceptance in his hometown.  I am not the first—think of Elijah, who was not sent to any of widows in Israel, when there was famine for over three years, going to help the widow in Sidon, at Zarephath.  Or remember Elisha, who did not heal any of Israel’s lepers, but instead cleaned Naaman the Syrian.

Not exactly light words for his homecoming, and the crowd reacted with fury and rage upon hearing them.  They did not stop at words of hatred, but rather drove the man out and up the nearest hill, in the hopes of hurling him off the cliff and ending any dispute.  Jesus somehow escaped their murderous intent, slipping through a crowd blinded by anger and going on his way.  It’s hard to imagine that Jesus might have endured in a challenge with the devil and then been caught up by a crowd seeking his head because of a short sermon he preached against them, but this will not be the last time a group turns against Jesus for his harsh words.

Luke, I hope that you get a picture of Jesus as someone who challenges each of us.  In my life of faith, I have been challenged constantly to not grow comfortable and complacent, to continue seeking God in all I do.  I don’t believe that Jesus challenges us to make us angry, but, like this crowd, it is easy to grow defensive in the face of confrontation.  I believe that God does it out of love, because he wants us to keep growing, but we don’t always hear it in love.  Don’t believe that Jesus does these things just to rile us up, but rather think of them as an opportunity to re-examine your life and make sure that you are living faithfully.

Sincerely,

Theophilus

Experience God's Kindness, Part 2, 1-20-13

Malachi 3:6-12

 For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished. Ever since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return?’ Will anyone rob God? Yet you are robbing me! But you say, ‘How are we robbing you?’ In your tithes and offerings! You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me—the whole nation of you! Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing. I will rebuke the locust for you, so that it will not destroy the produce of your soil; and your vine in the field shall not be barren, says the Lord of hosts. Then all nations will count you happy, for you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of hosts.

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Let's talk for a moment about indulgence.  We all have indulgence foods.  Indulgence foods are the foods that you know are not healthy, that you know are not good for you, but you eat them anyway, just because they are so good and they make you feel good.  Indulgence foods are the foods you eat when you've just received some goods news and want to celebrate.  Indulgence foods are the foods you would eat three times a day if someone came out and said they were healthy.

What's your indulgence food?

I love big hamburgers.  The type that you have to stare at for a little while to figure out how to pick it up without it falling apart.  The hamburgers that just look messy, that take up way too much of the plate.  I think they're simply marvelous.  Plus, when you cover the rest of the plate with french fries, to the point that they're spilling over the edge of the plate when you set it down, it's a beautiful thing.  But do you know what it isn't? 

Healthy.

So what do I do?

Order a salad with it. 

The salad makes it healthy.  Because I have a salad, I can eat whatever I want.  Cookies and ice cream for dessert?  Had a salad?  More fries?  Sure, I had a salad.  Rachel didn't finish her burger?  I'll take care of it—had a salad.

We do this with God sometimes.  Sometimes we knowingly do things we aren't supposed to, but we say a little prayer beforehand and think that makes it ok.  The bad news is that it doesn't.  If we know it's wrong, a little prayer won't make it right.

We know what food is healthy.  We know what food is unhealthy.  If we're really honest for a moment, as hard as this is going to be, we can all take a moment and admit that fried chicken isn't good for us.  Let's just own that for a moment.  We can go back to denial soon, but we can all share the confession that we eat food that isn't good for us.

Now, let's imagine that we all decided to eat healthy.  We know what a healthy diet is.  If we all decided to follow it, it would change our lives, right?  We'd be different people!  We'd feel better, we'd move and sleep better—our bodies would be closer to the ideal, closer to how they're supposed to work.

But we don't eat like that.  We like to indulge every now and again.  Sometimes, it's hard to eat healthy.  Sometimes we just don't like to.

But deep inside, we know how we're supposed to eat.  And if we did really stopped eating bad things and started eating good things, we'd be healthier.

Our faith isn't so different.  We're talking about repentance today.  Repentance isn't fun.  If we do it the way it's supposed to be done, it's not easy.  But it's important. 

See, the thing is, in Scripture, God tells us how we're supposed to live.  We know we're supposed to put God first and trust him in absolutely everything.  We know we're not supposed to worry and we're supposed to love everyone, regardless of what they've done to us or someone we love.  We know we're supposed to let our lives get caught up in service of others, and we're called to spend time alone with God in prayer.

But we don't. 

This has effects.  Just like eating bad food has effects on our health, the sinful choices we make have effects on our lives.  We don't function as well as we should.  We don't live the abundant life God wants us to live.  We don't live to the highest of our possibilities, because sin prevents that.

In our Scripture reading from Malachi today, God is talking to his people about this.  See, the rule is that they were supposed to give the first 10% to God.  Didn't matter what it was, the first 10% went to God.  The first, the best—nothing was too good for God.

But that's hard.  Giving 10% to God is hard enough, but giving our best 10% to God—that's even harder.  Especially if we're called to do it before the rest of the harvest has even come in.  That's pretty radical dependence on God, so we hedge our bets.  We hold some back.  We hold back some of the percentage, and we hold back some of the best, just in case God doesn't come through.

This is the sin the people were guilty of—they weren't living up to their end of the tithe.  God called them on it.  He told them to return to him, to repent of their sins, and amend their ways.

He then went on to tell them that he would bless them if they followed the law.  He says he'll open up the windows of heaven if they tithe—blessings will spill out upon them, and they'll live the abundant life God talks about.  If they are willing to trust God completely, God promises that he will come through—he tells them to test him, to give him the chance to prove that he is faithful.  But they have to trust God.

Friends, we're in the same position.  God knows that we aren't fully dependent on him.  God knows we're holding something back for ourselves, hedging our bets in case God doesn't come through.  We say we depend on God, but we're afraid and uncertain of what total dependence on God is, so we hold a little back. 

And it's sinful.  It's the construction of idols in our hearts, idols in our lives, and slowly, we begin to worship them.

So what Romans says is this—that the kindness of God, the blessings and riches and mercy of God, is poured out upon us to lead us to repentance.  When we see the love and wonder of God, it should be to us a reminder that we aren't living as God intended for us to live.  It's like the produce section at the grocery store—it's a reminder to us that we're eating too much mac and cheese, and that we need to change our ways. 

What God is saying is that if we repent of our sin and return to him, it's the first step in moving toward the abundant life Christ talks about.  God promises us that if we trust in him completely, if we follow him with all of our life, he'll bless us in ways we cannot understand.  God takes our repentance and does a work in it—he changes us into a different kind of people, a kind of people who delight in doing his will.

But we need to repent, and honestly repent—this isn't like just getting a salad with a massive heart attack on a plate.  This is changing how we live, true repentance.  This is going to God in prayer and allowing him to do a work in you.  This is hard, hard work.

Repentance isn't easy.  But it's necessary.  God's kindness should lead us there, but God doesn't then leave us alone—he changes us, transforming us into the kind of people who delight in doing God's will, in living the life he has imagined for us, one caught up in love of God and love of neighbor.  But to get there, we need to repent.

Let us pray 

Luke 4:1-13

Dear Theophilus,

I cannot tell you how tempting it is to jump straight to the end of the story.  So much of the story is weighted there, and yet I feel like a thorough examination demands that we wade through the details en route to the finale.  I am grateful for the list of Jesus’ ancestors—there are some big names in there, as well as some that I have never heard.  I agree that we could invest significant amounts of time into researching each and every name, but I trust that they are there to give weight to the man’s life—to link him to the past, which is so important in the Jewish tradition.  Jesus did not simply arrive out of nowhere, but rather is a continuation of a long history of faith.  It’s easier for a man like me to grasp his story when placed inside the truth of a larger story.  I would daresay that it’s easier to believe in a God who has a long tradition of belief than one who seems to arise new out of the desert. 

I turn from this to actual stories about the life of Jesus, which should consume the bulk of our correspondence through the duration of the story.  We know so little about how he arrives, but suddenly the stories come in a deluge, pouring down upon us one after another, some with little or no context and others with more.  John has played his part in the play, and while he may yet appear again, the focus shifts now to the primary mover in this tale:  Jesus of Nazareth.  While the historical record of many of these reflections I do not doubt, the aspect of the miraculous, of the supernatural, I turn a skeptical eye toward.

After the baptism you mentioned, an event that I find, frankly, a little hard to believe happened as you say it did, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the same Spirit that filled him at baptism into the wilderness.  It seems an unlikely sequel to the previous event—surely people were demanding to spend time, to know this man who was claimed by God in a booming announcement across the heavens.  Wouldn’t he want to stay and capitalize on such a public event?  I must say I don’t fully understand the reasoning for him fleeing into the wilderness at such a time, but considering that we are still discussing it today, clearly there was a reason for it. 

For forty days he fasted in the wilderness, being tempted by the devil.  I can only imagine the hunger that consumed him by the end of his time there, and I will admit that I would not have the strength to resist any temptation if I didn’t eat for forty hours, let alone forty days.  Perhaps this strength is our first hint that Jesus is different than we.

At this nadir, the devil came and said, “Take this stone and turn it into bread if you are the Son of God.”

Jesus, hunger surely dripping from every pore, looked beyond the simple task and saw something deeper beneath it.  When he replied to the devil, he quoted from the Hebrew Scriptures:  “One does not live on just bread.”

How valuable it would be to see this in real life, to see the facial expressions upon each player in the scene—I’d love to see the stony resolve of Jesus, weakened by hunger but determined to defeat his tempter.  I can imagine the wry smile of the devil as he offers these temptations, and the shock of watching a hungry man turn down a simple request for food.  I can imagine the scene as hushed, still, as all of creation waits to see if the man will turn down what the devil offers, as generations of men have been unable to do.

Knowing that each man has a weakness and unaware, or perhaps unwilling to fully realize, that Jesus was not just a man, the devil took him to a place where all the kingdoms of the world appeared before them, and the devil offered their glory and authority to Jesus, for they are in the devil’s hand, and he is free to give it to whomever he pleases.  Granted, it would not be given freely—only with the condition that Jesus worship the devil.

Looking upon all the world, all of its glory and splendor, all of the wondrous riches and resources, Jesus looked the devil in the eye and once more quoted those Scriptures:  Worship the Lord your God and serve him alone.

Surely, the devil’s mouth opened a little in shock at such a reply.  The devil has seen countless men bend at far lesser offers, and here is this man, turning down a chance to rule the world.  Jesus’ spine must have straightened a little as he saw the devil’s shock, and he must have believed that he could win this battle with whatever strength he had within him.

From there, the devil whisked him to the highest point of the temple, from the point where they could see all of Jerusalem and the lands that surrounded them, and the devil tempted him, “Jump from here, for if you are the Son of God, it says in those same Scriptures you love to quote that ‘God will order his angels regarding you to protect you’ and ‘not a toe on your foot will be dashed against his stone, for their hands will lift you up.’

That sly devil uses the Scriptures Jesus knows so well to twist Jesus into a difficult place, but I can almost see a twinkle in Jesus’ eye as he looks at the devil and replies simply, strongly, “It also says, ‘Don’t put God to the test.’

Such wisdom and knowledge must have frustrated the devil more than he knew he could be frustrated, and it is not difficult to hear him scream in dismay at the replies of Jesus, for he had met an adversary he could not tame.  I wonder if he knew fear at that moment, or if he set his jaw and went about finding any possible way to defeat the man.  He left Jesus, knowing that other opportunities would arise, and prove more advantageous to him then.

Relaying this information to you, it’s easy to get caught up in the tale.  I’m composing what I believe to be a factual case for your information, and yet I can’t simply relay this without having to wrestle with the truth of the whole case.  If this scene is true, and I believe it is, it clearly indicates that Jesus is more than just a man, and that there is a world more than just what I can see.  If so, does that prove the existence of God?  And if that is true, must I then give my life to him in worship?  Do those two things necessarily go hand in hand?  Or can I believe that God is real and yet have no desire to worship him?  Or perhaps find no consequences if I choose not to worship him if I find him not to my liking? 

I wish the case was clear, Theophilus, but a lifetime of ambiguity has left me in a place where it is so difficult to see clearly what is before me.  I know there are many chapters yet to write, in this tale as well as my own life, and so I will strive for patience.  Perhaps it is that same devil that leads me to despair now, tempting me to give up the search before I have truly begun!

Sincerely,

Luke

1/17 E-News

Announcements

Men's Breakfast—The next men's breakfast will be this Saturday, January 19 @ 8.

Chili Cook-off—Next Wednesday, January 23. See if you can topple reigning champion Dewey French. (Let the church office know if you plan to bring a pot of chili.)

New Hope News

Church Office Closed —This Monday for MLK day.

Sunday School—This Sunday, the adult class will study Luke's Gospel.

Prayer Service—The Sunday night prayer services will continue in February.

Pray For:

Lynn Meyer

All those dealing with the flu

Our new elders—Walt, Peter, Larrie & JoAn.

Pray for those who do not know Christ.

Links

Want to bless your neighbors?

Interesting thoughts on gun control & suicide

An interesting tale about what home means

Sweden sees treasure in the world's trash

Last week there was a link here about the worms. Here's evidence of the Carter Center battling (and beating!) the worms.

Keith's Random Thoughts

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Everything else in this world can be pretty confusing. I don't know what the best way to tackle gun control is. I know we need to address the issue, but I'm not sure what the most effective way to do so is. National debt? I've solved it many times over in theory, but the reality of what effect those cuts would make them difficult. I don't know how best to keep our children safe, and I'm not exactly sure how best to combat the decreasing attendance in mainline denominations. Heck, I don't even know who to believe in the Manti Te'o and his fake girlfriend hoax.

But I know that Jesus Christ is Lord. I know that Christ has been Lord since before God spoke a creative word over the formless deep, and I know that Christ will be Lord long after the sun has ceased to shine and the waves have ceased their constant assault on the beaches and the mountains have fallen into the sea. I know that Christ reigns in power, and that no one, no thing, can dethrone him.

Of this I am certain.

Some days, that is all. But I also believe that it is enough. If I know nothing else in this world, that will get me through.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Text for this Sunday

Malachi 3:6-12

For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished. Ever since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return?’

Will anyone rob God? Yet you are robbing me! But you say, ‘How are we robbing you?’ In your tithes and offerings! You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me—the whole nation of you! Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing. I will rebuke the locust for you, so that it will not destroy the produce of your soil; and your vine in the field shall not be barren, says the Lord of hosts. Then all nations will count you happy, for you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of hosts.

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