Social and Moral
Issues
(Proverbs
6:16-19; John 3:16-21)
10:30
am, Sunday, July 28, 2013, Windsor UBC, J G White
It’s Sunday
again.
One week ago
today it was Sunday, the Lord’s Day, as Christians say. Sharon and I had company coming for supper
and overnight. We were going to make
potato salad, among other things – but, oops, we had no mayonnaise.
Off to the
grocery store I drove. When I entered, I
soon ran into one of my active church members.
We had a very pleasant chat.
There we were, shopping in the grocery store: on Sunday. Neither one of us blinked an eye.
I bought more
than mayonnaise; and as I went out and got back into my car, I met another
happy member of Windsor Baptist. We
greeted; then I beckoned her over. “Do
you remember, a decade ago, when we Windsor Baptists were concerned that Sobeys and Superstore and Home Hardware were going
to start opening on Sundays!” Oh… we
were again’ it! Now here we are, buying.
And buying into it.
She admitted she
felt some guilt and regret.
Have we bought
in to the “secular Sunday,” as our Covenant calls it?
Christian morals
and ethics, social issues – these things are important. Important because the ways we live our lives
make a difference. Make a difference to
us, to others, and to our relationship with our Lord.
Social and moral
issues are not simple, have never been, really.
But we seem to have more issues now than we did a century or more
ago. These matters are not simple, not
cut and dried, no matter what scripture verses we quote, one at a time. Thank the Lord there has been progress,
through history, among believers. We’ve
seen more of the light, when it comes to slavery, women, racism, and so
forth. We have yet farther to go, I’m
sure.
We love John
3:16, and maybe 3:17; but today we read beyond… words about evildoers avoiding
the light, doers of good living in the light.
Judgment.
Shining
flashlight at night on raccoons at the birdfeeders. They scatter!
So do we sinners when light threatens to shine upon our wrongdoing.
You’ve heard how
to tell apart the different Christian denominations? The Roman Catholics don’t recognize the
ministry of other churches. The
Anglicans don’t recognize the authority of the Pope. And the Baptists don’t recognize one another
when they meet in the liquor store!
God, in His
perfect goodness and holiness, graciously calls us into holier living in these
days of our lives. When we rely upon
Jesus for Salvation, the Holy Spirit does His life-long work of sanctifying us
– making us holy.
Many still
wonder, how possibly to be good enough, to become worthy, and to stop
failing. How can the Holy God accept us?
The late Rev.
Robert Matthews introduced me to this hymn by Thomas Binney, c. 1826.
Eternal Light! eternal Light!
How pure the soul must be
When, placed within Thy searching sight,
It shrinks not, but with calm delight
Can live, and look on Thee!
O how shall I, whose native sphere
Is dark, whose mind is dim,
Before the Ineffable appear,
And on my naked spirit bear
That uncreated beam?
(Remember the
scene in the movie, Raiders of the Lost
Ark, where the bad guys get the Ark of the Covenant, open it up, but then
are melted by the holy energy that shines and is released? This is the quandary… how can the impure not
melt or burn up in the face of perfect Holiness?)
There is a way for man to rise
To that sublime abode:
An offering and a sacrifice,
A Holy Spirit’s energies,
An Advocate with God.
It is by Jesus,
God’s Son who came and died and rose for
us, that we are reconciled to God.
It is His sacrifice. It is the
working of the living Holy Spirit with our human souls. Now, thanks to God, we can live in the light,
and one day dwell in the pure light of God.
Today, the Lord shines the light, and shows the way.
Yet still, the
saved of earth are imperfect, sinners.
And we do not agree on morals and ethics and social issues. This is often tied to how we judge one
another more than how we truly seek to live and make a difference in our global
village.
Ever notice that
you have your own pet peeves when it comes to social issues. Or, at least, maybe you see this in
others. One person is always getting
excited about prayer and Christian stuff not being allowed in schools. Another is often bringing up homosexuality,
eyes flashing with anger. Someone else
is fixated on environmental issues. And
a few are always bringing up problems with Churchgoers and religion. I used to visit a Christian fellow who always
mentioned money, and seemed sure that I was always visiting to get his money
for the Church!
Does the Creator
hate one thing? That bit from Proverbs 6
lists seven things the LORD hates, most are parts of the body that go astray:
haughty eyes, lying tongue, bloody hands, wicked heart, evil feet, and then the
lying witness and the sower of family discord.
God is comprehensive in His concerns: the Lord wants justice and
rightness for all. He doesn't really
have six or seven pet peeves; God has the complete picture. And it’s not about rules, it’s all about
behaviour. Our conversation about
morals, ethics, social issues, must be with our God, and must be about
everything. Praise Him! We have access.
Last week we heard
Jesus teaching on divorce and marriage, in Mark 10. As his opponents and students keep looking
for loopholes in the rules for moral living, Jesus turns the subject back to
God and God’s plan for wonderful life. Christ
is concerned with what really goes on among people – such as in marriage. No matter what paperwork for divorce you get,
that former connection stays with you, is part of your life, affects you and
yours always.
Jesus cares for
us in our relationships. Check out how
he treated a foreign woman who’d had five husbands and was living with a new
man – John 4. He shines the light into
her life, shows up everything she’s done, and she is totally impress by Jesus
because of it! She and her whole
community seem to welcome Christ and put their confidence in Him.
Those things
listed in our Church Covenant, some may seem vitally important, some may seem
petty nowadays. That strikes me as a
cute phrase, “issues and questionable
practices…” It mentions in the list “literature,
movies and TV programs which promote violence…”
Sharon and I rented and watched “Skyfall” last weekend – last year’s
James Bond film. I’m sure it promotes
violence at least as much as buying mayonnaise on July 21 was part of a secular
Sunday. And what is left out that is
just as dangerous as gambling, abortion, or neglect of the aging? Questionable practices such as injustice for
the poor, destroying the environment, or texting while driving?
There are, as we
know, new ethical issues in society, which the Scriptures do not address
directly. Stem cell research, nuclear
power, global climate change. But the
God of the scriptures will address them, as we converse with Him.
So the
guidelines of our Covenant are very good.
We covenant together about how
to be guided by the Lord in our morals and ethics, individually and in
society. We ask…
1.
Does this
behaviour violate any particular part of Scripture?
2.
Does it harm my
mind or body in any way?
3.
Will this
behaviour hinder my witness as a Christian?
Will it be a stumbling block to others?
4.
What is God’s
will? Can I ask His blessing upon it?
5.
What would Jesus
do? Can I ask Christ to go with me?
As we ask these,
me must also ask: how set are we in our moral standards? Were our minds made up, long ago, about most
things? How then can we sincerely ask our God for guidance? Are we ready to receive new answers?
Above and beyond
what our minds and hearts think about moral living these days, it all comes
down to our actions. What we do. As various Christian leaders wisely teach,
the best way to show better ways of living is not to criticise those who are
wrong, but to do things better, ourselves.
Show the better way, with the Lord. And keep learning from Christ.
American activist
and Christian author Shane Claiborne gives this example…
As Red Letter Christians, we need to be pro-life
from the womb to the tomb. Abortion and
euthanasia, the death penalty and war, poverty and health care – all of these
are issues of life and death. And they
are issues Jesus cares about because they affect real people. (Red
Letter Revolution, p. 85)
Claiborne is
getting to know folks living in prison.
A friend of mine is spending life in prison for
committing a terrible crime, which he says he has regretted every day of his
life since then. But when he went to
trial, the victim’s family happened to be Christians, so they argued against
the death penalty. They knew that there
is something wrong with killing someone to show that killing is wrong. They said, “God may not be done with this
guy. It’s not going to bring our kid
back, so we want him to think about what he did.” Because of their witness in court, he was not
given the death penalty. He said, “So
then I had a lot of time to think about grace.”
While he was behind bars, he kept hearing their words, that he was not
beyond redemption. He started reading
the Bible and ended up having a powerful conversion. Now he sees the point of his whole life and
his vocation behind those bars as trying to continue to speak that grace to
other imprisoned men and women.
(p. 88)
By the grace of
God there is real hope for people in ‘hopeless’ failure and sin. Good living does not save, Jesus saves.
By the grace of
God we can be guided in our moral, ethical and social living. Seek that Guidance from the Lord.
By the grace of
our Loving God we can be empowered, and set free to do what is good and right. Go, and sin no more.
The Lord is the
light; the Lord shows the way.
Thanks be to
God!
AMEN.
