2005-05-06
Good Morning Dear Ones,
I’m one of the 235 souls in our congregation who accepted a challenge from our Senior Pastor, Dean Nadasdy, to memorize 100 verses in 100 days. My telling you this is not to brag, because at my age this is no easy task, and there is no guarantee I will succeed. An unexpected blessing has come out of this exercise now in the beginning of the fourth week. I am seeing the interface between some of the passages and my work in ministry. You’ll remember that last week we began looking at how true believers thirst for righteousness. This desire to repent of bad thoughts and behavior probably began with God’s directive, “Be holy because I am holy,” as far back as LV 11: 44 and 19:2. That doesn’t mean anyone has ever approached the holiness of God, but one can be sure there were some ancient Jews who took that command seriously enough to make some big changes in their lives. One of them was the Psalmist who in PS 42: 1-2 pleaded, “As the deer pants for streams of cool water, so my soul pants for You, O Lord. I thirst for You, the living God. When can I go and worship in Your presence?” This same thirst for righteousness is expressed in the NT too. Paul wrote about the eagerness we who are true believers all have for Christ to rapture us, so that we be with Christ and dwell at God’s right side in heaven [ 1 THESS 4: 13-17; RO 8: 19].
God feels this directive to live lives of holiness is sufficiently important to have it repeated by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount in MT 5: 48, “You must be perfect-just as you Father in heaven is perfect,” and again by Peter, in 1 PET1: 16. As stated, this needs some further explanation. God recognizes that we are stained with sin and not perfect, but He has given us Jesus Christ as an Ideal to work toward and the Holy Spirit to guide us. I feel the day we are each sufficiently perfected in the process of our sanctification that God will indeed call us home to Him. Our God is more interested in character improvements we are making than He is in expecting us to be “little gods” on earth. That character improvement is the outcome of God’s transformation of our hearts [RO 12:2] and our willingness to make the necessary changes in our attitudes and lifestyles. God’s directive was never given to evoke guilt in us, just hard work in making the changes needed. That’s the reason He gives us much specific information in the last four chapters of Romans and the other letters Paul wrote as to how to be a good believer.
I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t bring up the subject of the many schisms that have occurred in the Body of Christ. Truthfully, I’m sharing my own opinion about this, one based on spending the last 40 years carefully studying the Scriptures. All these divisions, some based on interpretation of Biblical theology, some on legalism, and some on church polity [how the denominational governments are run], are in my humble opinion man-made. I don’t believe that God ever intended for these divisions to occur. That is why we must rise above that and realize that we are all one in Christ. This includes every Christian and Messianic Jewish congregation. In RO 12: 4-6a, God’s real intention for the church is stated. “We have many parts in the one Body, and all these parts have different functions. In the same way, though we are many, we are one Body in union with Christ, and we are all joined to each other as different parts of one Body. So we are to use our different gifts in accordance with the grace that God has given us.” As for the legalism of some denominations, careful thought should be given to RO 7: 6, “Now however, we are free from the Law, because we died to that which once held us prisoners. No longer do we serve in the old way of a written law, but in the new way of the Spirit.” There is no way Christ would want us to miss His point of view. He made it clear in His intercessory prayer on our behalf to the Father in JN 17: 20-21. “I pray not only for them, but also for those who believe in Me because of their message. I pray that they may all be one. Father! May they be in us, just as You are in Me and I am in You.”
All the while, Christ knew mankind’s propensity for splitting into groups, ranking one another, and using anything like education, clothing, job position, and material wealth to do this. All of these divisions and rankings are man-made. I can say this with confidence, because I know these verses expressing God’s real heart-attitude. GN 1:28, “God created man in His own image. In His own image He created him male and female; He created them.” 2 COR 5: 17, “When anyone is joined to Christ, he is a new creation; the old is gone and the new has come.” COL 3: 10, “And [you have] put on a new self. This is the new being which God, its Creator, is constantly renewing in His own image, in order to bring you to a greater knowledge of Himself.” God loves each of us without qualifications of any kind. Think about it. He loves us enough to have created each of us in His own image. Because of that, He has given us the ability to disappoint Him or delight Him. A true believer seeks to do the latter.
PRAYER: O Lord, we seek to please You by getting on our knees and bowing our heads before You. You have told us in MT 5: 6, “Blessed are those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires; God will satisfy them fully.” We know about You as well as we can from spending daily time with Your word and by having an active, dynamic and two-way prayer life. We seek to listen to You first by quieting our souls and opening them to the Holy Spirit’s direction. You know we are sinners and we acknowledge that. Our joy is to know the peace that knowing and living the truth brings. While we are imperfect in this matter, we strive to not let our anger lead us to sin, letting the devil have his way [EPH 4: 26-27]. We know You to be a loving, compassionate, and forgiving God, because of what You did to transform David’s heart after he had committed adultery and murder. David prayed in PS 51: 10-12, “Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not from Thy presence or take the Holy Spirit from me. Restore in me the joy of salvation; grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” David went on, in PS 51: 13-15, to make an important promise, one that all of us, especially church pastors, leaders, and teachers, should make too. “Then I will teach sinners Your commands and they will turn back to You. Spare my life, O God, and save me, and I will gladly proclaim Your righteousness. Help me to speak, Lord, and I will praise You.” Whether we are given private talents, e.g. being an exemplary parent, being the kind of host that would please the Lord, or using creative talent to write or make things that stimulate faith, or we are given more public talents, such as preaching and teaching, it doesn’t matter. You have called us to use our talents to do the work of the Body of Christ in unity with You in leadership. The joy and solace that comes from being a part of a church community that feels no need to fight the battle of the sexes, to put social issues before Your word, and to put one’s selfish needs before Yours is not to be matched. You deserve our eternal praise, thanks, and dedication to please you. You are an awesome God and we love You! In Christ, we pray. Amen.
The Holy Spirit leads me to write more about adultery and divorce next week. Before yawning and thinking, “O Lord, she’s at it again,” remember I’m not the leader here, the Spirit is. There is an overarching truth that must never be forgotten. Tough subjects are a walk in the park in comparison to what the Father and Son have done for us. To this day as the mother of an only son, I can’t imagine willingly giving up my son, knowing he will suffer for the sins of the world, to die on the cross. Yet, that’s what our Father in heaven did for us. By Christ’s obedience to the Father’s direction, He was saved for eternity. Amazingly, those of us who hold fast to our faith are also saved by this unselfish act of His. How the Father must have grieved, watching Christ suffer and die! Imagine Christ’s pain when He knew He was to be separated for a time from the Father and then went through that separation! And all this was done for people who were His enemies! Not long ago, we believers celebrated Easter, the commemoration of Christ’s resurrection and the reminder to us that He is “the first among many brothers” [RO 8: 29]. Our God loves us so very much that He wants each of us to know that all our suffering, pain, and loss on account of believing in His teaching is worth it. If anyone reading this message thinks that his or her life isn’t valuable to God, then he/she doesn’t know God at all. Every privilege is balanced by a responsibility. Our responsibility is to live righteous, pious, peaceful lives in unity with each other and dedicated to serving the Lord honorably. Our privilege is to be members of the Body of Christ, to share the hope of the resurrection, and to know the joy that loving Him and each other brings. This is our reality when Christ is in leadership of our lives and our churches.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn