MVP: Community of Christ-Followers

Make the Vision Plain: Community of Christ-Followers
(Joel 2:12-16, 25-29; Luke 18:9-14)
10:30 am, Sun, Oct 27, 2013 Windsor UBC, J G White

     For a few days last week I didn't bother shaving.  When I did, with my electric razor, I was trimming off stubble that is mostly white on my chin, not black.  A dozen years ago my beard was dark, there was hair on the top on my head, and I'd hunt with curiosity for stray white hairs at my temples.
     I'm always seeing changes in me; not just my hair.  And a decade ago I looked out on a different congregation here.  How many of you have arrived after I did?  What we are doing and how we're doing those things shifts a bit; definitely.  Sometimes I look upon my congregation like I look at the hair on my head: I see what has been lost, and if not lost, just gotten older.  I wonder about what opportunities have been missed, what mistakes made, what sins unforgiven, what time unredeemed. 
     The Lord will restore the years that were lost.  So preached Joel, 2400 years ago, in the Middle East.  Inspired by a famine brought on by a locust plague, Joel the Hebrew prophet preached severe warning and great hope to a struggling people.  I want him to talk to us today.  I'll make up for the years of the locust... (Msg)
     Windsor Baptist, my faith family – we change.  Are we and the Lord doing this well?  How much is what we are becoming different from what we are today?  The new vision statement we are dabbling with says we will be a Community of Christ-Followers.  This is of course what we are, and have been, for almost 194 years.  We are a gathered people of many ages.
The ancient poetry of Joel 2 says
     Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast;
     call a solemn assembly; gather the people.
     Sanctify the congregation; assemble the elders;
     gather the children; even nursing infants.
     Let the groom leave his room, and the bride her chamber.
The sense of being a gathered community is strong in a Church like us.  We are focused on this – on Sunday mornings.  It's the heart of what we are, eh?  And oh, how we want more of everyone to gather like this: the older, the children and babes, the husbands and wives.  A big happy family, following Jesus.
     And we want this – us – to be spiritual and positive.  We might say “spirit-filled”.  Joel claims that God was saying
     I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.  Even upon the menservants and maidservants in those days, I will pour out my spirit. 
     Positive enthusiasm, and everyone right with God.  We want this for all!  It would be a fulfilment of our prayers.   What Joel promised was a fulfilment of Moses' desire, centuries before.  Moses had once said to Joshua, “Would that all the LORD's people were prophets, that the LORD would put his spirit upon them!” (Numbers 11:29)
     We, today, are still praying for this.  We want our children and grandchildren, our brothers and sisters and parents, our neighbours and friends to be filled with God.  So, we want them to know Jesus and the salvation He brings.  That spirit-filling, prophesying, dream-weaving vision from 2400 years ago got brought into the story of Jesus 2000 years ago.  A guy named Peter takes this Hebrew Bible prophetic text through Jesus Christ, who sent the very Holy Spirit who was filling people one particular day. 
     Plenty of people today are looking for that connection with the Divine.  Seeking that personal unity with God or the Universe or whatever they think they need.  Our story (in the Bible) celebrates how available God is to human beings.  The Holy Spirit comes upon and into people... because of Jesus – the story of Jesus – what his life and death and coming back to life does.  When Peter, 2000 years ago, preached a sermon, he used the scroll of Joel, and went on to tell the story of Jesus.  Having the Divine Spirit with our spirits depends upon what Jesus did – the One who was executed by crucifixion, and later was alive again. 
     And that pouring out of God's Spirit that Joel predicted resulted in really amazing communication about the Gospel – the powerful story of Jesus.  Everyone in Jerusalem that day heard and understood.  It transformed them.  And what a multicultural, motley crew surely got united that day, in that city.  Thousands of people joined Jesus, and one another.
     Here, we are a variety pack of folk saved by Christ and filled by the Spirit.  We are sons and daughters, old men and old women, slaving servants and pensioned people.  Shall we get along and love to be with one another?  Allison Friars spoke a great little image yesterday here.  To be multi-generational is like having a chocolate cake by setting the flour, eggs, coco, milk, butter and so forth in a bowl together.  It ain’t a cake.  To be inter-generational is to put all the ingredients together to interact, and create a lovely layered cake.  MmMmm.  But will the eggs want to get cracked and integrated?  Will the flour willingly be sifted?  Will the butter line up to be creamed?
     We must soul-search: do we really want everyone in on the party – a festival of the Holy Spirit, an army of Christ's ambassadors, a family of faithfulness?  Am I willing to welcome whosoever may come?
     Luke 18: two men went to the Temple in Jerusalem to pray.
     Look at whom this parable was told to by the Master: whom.  It was told to those who trusted in themselves and despised others. (NRSV)  Peterson's translation says He told his next story to some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people. (Msg)
     We shall be a Community of Christ-Followers.  So we've got to behave like a community, a family, a body, etc.  Not just for the sake of getting more into the body.  For the sake of being on mission with the Lord God today!   But it starts with being a team and a family ourselves, with Christ as head of the household, head of the body. 
     We're going to follow Christ – be saved, believers, regenerate, Christians, disciples, etc.  But we also are reaching with open arms to those who are on the way, on the fringe of faith, and those not even close yet.  Shall we include them?  Shall we focus on reaching them... not just inviting church people? 
     Listen to Clarence Jordan's “Cotton Patch Version” of Luke 18(9-14), Bible with a southern accent. (1969) 
     Jesus gave this Comparison to certain ones who had a high regard for their own goodness, but looked down their noses at others: “Two men went into the chapel to pray.  The one was a church member, the other was an unsaved man.  The church member stood up and prayed to himself like this: 'O God, I think you that I am not like other people – greedy, mean, promiscuous – or even like this unsaved man.  I go to church twice on Sunday, and I am a faithful tither of all my income.'  But the unsaved man, standing way off, wouldn't even lift up his eyes, but knelt down and cried, 'O God, have mercy on a sinner like me.'  I'm telling you, this man went home cleaned up rather than that one.  For everyone who puts himself on a pedestal will be laid low, and everyone who lays himself low will be put on a pedestal.” 
     It can be very easy for me to put myself on a pedestal: of traditional church as usual – centred on Sunday mornings of enjoyable music and entertaining sermons that hint at being practical.  The pedestal of a solid wooden pulpit at the centre of a large sanctuary where we can imagine this space filled with people praising God, the organ resounding – band playing, and me out-singing everyone. 
     I likely have plenty of people to support me on my pedestal!  And I'm already good at looking down my nose at those who don't appreciate my way of worship, the words I use in my sermons, and they patterns of my conversation. 
Instead of me, maybe there are two others who should be put on the pedestal of my life.  God.  And those whom God cares for deeply. 
      You and I must behave like a community of Christ-followers.  It's not a matter of saying we are.  It's not a matter of coming out on Sundays.  It's a matter of interactions and actions and attitudes. 
     Only by the grace of God found in Jesus Christ will this happen in you and me, sinner.  Only by the outpouring of the Spirit of God will this happen in you and me, believer. 
     The Lord will restore the years that were lost...

Make the Vision Plain: Intergernerational

Make the Vision Plain: Intergenerational

(Jeremiah 31:27-34; 2 Timothy 3:14-17)

10:30 am, Sun, Oct 20, 2013 Windsor UBC, J G White

A little fellow in church service for the first time saw the offering plate being passed. When it came by he piped up: “You don’t need to pay for me, Daddy. I’m under five.”

The new stated vision we are formulating begins by claiming that we, Windsor Baptist, will be an intergenerational community. Look around. We already are. Not that I want you to guess at everyone’s age. But you see various generations. Most of the youngest are elsewhere in the building. We want to remain a congregation of every generation, every age and stage.

God plants and grows faith in people of all ages. Echoing the words in the first chapter of the book, Jeremiah 31:28 says “I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the LORD.” Those were words to Hebrew people millennia ago, and they remain an inspiring promise from history. A promise that still is coming true. God growing spiritual children in every generation of human history.

We could decide to be a fellowship of people of certain age groups and not others. Be a youth and young adult church. Or a church for retirees. But to leave any out is to be incomplete, in our minds and and hearts.

A congregation in a town is like a human family. I happen to be at an early middle-age stage of life. I can go down the valley and visit, along the way, my parents, then my 90 year old grandfather, then my step-daughter and my almost 7 month old grandson. I have a grandson, and still have a grandfather.

So too in our local family of faith. And we want to keep it this way. The promises of Jeremiah’s day get completed in this age of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world. We heard also from 2 Timothy 1 - a letter from Apostle Paul to Apostle Timothy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, says Paul to Tim, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.

If you are 16, you know your faith was passed on to you not only by the Holy Spirit, but by people of older generations. You who are pushing ninety know that your faithfulness and prayers to the Lord have led to the growth of personal faith in others, younger.

Now is the time of salvation! For people of every age. So we must share visionary focus and be ready. Across the span of our ages. Across the cultural differences among us. Some of us are from West Hants. Some of us like County Music. Some of us went to Acadia. Some of us moved here for work. Some of us were born outside Canada. Some of us don’t yet know what to be when we grow up. Yet despite our diversity we can be a rich family of Faith.

Along with the salvation of people that the Lord works to bring about, God frees people to respond and be responsible. We discover there is no “fate” that traps us in the chain of life’s events. In Christ we shall be free. The real freedom of the individual to live in the forgiveness and love of God was foreseen in the prophecy of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 31:29-30

In those days they shall no longer say:

“The parents have eaten sour grapes,

and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.

Ezekiel 18 says the same this about this proverb. You sin, you are responsible. And your children will be responsible for their own sins, not for yours, and for their own reconciliation with the Lord.

These words came out long before Jesus. Yet they point to the individual freedom from sin and death that Jesus would bring. We know that a person can’t rely on their parents or grandparents to have a right relationship with God for him or her. And today, fewer and fewer people simply follow their parent’s footsteps into churches and into serving the Lord day to day.

The story is told of a young girl who asked her mother in the kitchen why she always turned over cans from the cupboard before opening them with the can opener. “I don’t know” the mother had to admit. “Your grandma always did it; let’s ask her.” Not long after, mother and daughter were with grandmother, who told them why she always turned a can over before opening. “In the old pantry, in the basement, the cans would always get a bit rusty and dusty on top. So, I opened them on the clean end, the bottom.”

We don’t need to do things our certain ways just because we always did. We have hymn boards here with numbers. Why? Well, when there were invented, there were no weekly bulletins. This was the one place to read the hymn numbers. These are actually redundant. We turn the tin can over for no reason, anymore.

The reasons for our methods are sometimes long gone. The personal spiritual needs of each succeeding generation change. The Lord can meet them all. We want people to be free in their spiritual lives to seek and find Jesus in the best ways possible, and serve Him in new and wonderful ways when they are saved. As we talk with one another, across the generations, we learn new things from one another.

So we want to be not just multi-generational, we want to be inter-generational. Various ages knowing one another, seeing the changes, encouraging one another in the Lord.

2 Timothy 3:14b-15a (NIRV) says Don't give up what you are sure of. You know the people you learned it from. You have known the Holy Scriptures ever since you were a little child. “You know the people you learned it from.”

Less and less in Nova Scotia today is faith passed on from parent to child to grandchild. Giving faith in Christ to the next generations a definite challenge. It is a missionary challenge, on our own doorstep, in our neighbourhoods and families.

I’ve shared before the wonderful way Charlie Harvey once asked a question about reaching youth today. Some of you know Charlie and Fran Harvey were long-term Baptist missionaries in Africa. One year, at the Evangelism Conference, Charley Harvey said this. (1:00:12 - 1:03:15)

Despite the challenge, we are the missionaries to those around us here. We want them to know Christ, and the freedom of soul He brings! This mission is for every generation.

God has vision for all generations to know Him. He foresees. Jeremiah 31:27, 34 says The days are surely coming, says the LORD…

No longer shall they teach one another, saying, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least to the greatest, says the LORD.

They shall all know the LORD. Every generation. What a message for today! Is it for today? These 2,500 year old words? Do you not feel the voice of God to us now in these ancient passages? The vision of every one, from the greatest to the smallest, knowing the God who seems so mysterious to so many.

Paul to Timothy said, Don't give up what you are sure of. (2 Timothy 3:14a, NIRV) or, Continue in what you have learned and firmly believed. (NRSV) What have you been sure us that God is up to? Sending Himself in Jesus - also a human - to show us the way of life, the way of God’s Kingdom. To die by crucifixion so that the evil in us dies, and we can live free from wrong. To arise after death so we can know life is eternal. To be present with us in this life now, as God the Holy Spirit.

As Charley Harvey said, we know that Jesus can make a tremendous difference in everyone’s life; hold onto that! Even when you’re unsure how to give Jesus to them.

Conclusion Jeremiah 31:34 “...for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” This is what our God does for all people, and this ministry is for all ages and stages of life.

In our Fall edition of Mosaic, from Canadian Baptist Ministries, is a First Nations story, “My People are in Prison.”

An informal group of Christians in the Duncan, region (BC) have banded together to support the leaders of the Cowichan Tribes. Several churches are involved.

Sarah, 82 years old, is one such tribal elder whom they work with. Some of her own children experienced the tragedy of the boarding school abuse we hear about so frequently. Sarah is grieved at the lingering impact as children returned, ashamed and angry at their parents and their culture. Many in turn became abusive and some now pass on their distrust and animosity towards “white” people to the next generation.

There's the parents eating sour grapes and setting the children’s teeth on edge!

But Sarah has been able to deal with the ghosts of her family’s past and has been instrumental in creating initiatives to help others. She was the first one to put into action the Cowichan knitting project — buying wool, washing, carding, dyeing and making the yarn for the traditional sweaters that are so sought after by tourists. Currently she is working with the Catholic sisters, visiting communities, distributing food and other necessities. She also spends a lot of time counselling young people in marriage and family issues.

“My people are in prison. They don’t know who they are,” says Sarah, describing the lostness she sees. Sarah fervently believes that only faith in Christ can heal the trauma in her people. She has become a dear friend to the whites in the local Baptist churches, and is a great help in navigating protocol and cultural issues as they seek to help their First Nations neighbours.

Every age and generation is involved in that story of the Gospel; and at least two cultures.

God plants and grows faith in people; God ‘faith-plants.’

God frees people to know Him and be healed.

God has vision for all; God foresees all generations knowing Him. This is God’s heart.

Today, we are an intergenerational church; let us keep this among our goals, in our vision: for the sake of every generation here among us, and to whom we reach out, with the Gospel.

Hearing God: Not the Voice

Hearing God: Not the Voice

(Matthew 4:1-11)

10:30 am, Sunday, October 6, 2013, Windsor UBC, J G White

Many stories could be told of an unusual Nova Scotian woman, years ago, who took up a hitch-hiking ministry.  She was very zealous about talking to people everywhere about the Lord.  As she hitch-hiked around her county, she talked a lot about Jesus to those who picked her up, whether they wanted to hear or not!  Sadly, she was thought of in her home town as eccentric, at best, or an unwell religious fanatic, at worst.

I knew this lady and heard from her all sorts of things she had been directed to do by the Lord.   Hitch-hike in that direction.  Stop and speak to so-and-so.  Stop for a meal with someone else.  I wondered if she thought God told her what clothes to put on each morning, or even what way to hang the toilet paper roll in the bathroom. 

One story from her life was about the New Yorker.  She told friends in her church one day that she was praying for a car.  She needed a car.  Weeks later, she mentioned she was praying, in particular, for to Lord to provide a Chrysler New Yorker.  That sounded rather a specific request for the Almighty.   

But soon, her friend’s jaws dropped when she sailed along one day driving a New Yorker!

What the friends of the woman later found out was that a close pastor friend of hers, who’d had this big car, was thinking of getting himself a new car; and then he did; & finally decided to give his old car, the New Yorker, to the hitch-hiker. 

Did our God guide that woman to pray for that particular car, and then answer that prayer?  Or was it her own voice, her own ideas, which came to fruition by the kindness of a pastor? 

Our listening to God question today is How to know what is Not the Voice of God.  The still small voice has several rivals.  We are not told explicitly how God the Holy Spirit led Jesus to spend His forty days in the wilderness, and we can also wonder about how Satan actually expressed his temptations to Christ.  We’ll look at this event in more detail momentarily.

First, let’s notice three mistaken interpretations about life here with God.  Three ways we can be tempted to think God is going to guide us.  The first is the Message-a-Minute view.  And this was really what the hitch-hiking Christian expected.  God could and should guide a believer every moment of the day in every decision to be made.  Really?

This is actually neither necessary nor completely good for us.  I don’t see Paul or Peter, or even Jesus, having constant promptings from God the Father about every word to say, action to take, and thing to avoid.  The New Testament does not paint that kind of a picture for us.  We can get definite divine guidance daily, but not about every moment’s activity. 

E. Stanley Jones wisely wrote,

I believe in miracle, but not too much miracle, for too much miracle would weaken us, make us dependent on miracle instead of our obedience to natural law.  Just enough miracle to let us know He is there, but not too much, lest we depend on it when we should depend on our own initiative and on His orderly process for our development. (A Song of Ascents, p.191)

Another common idea about God’s will and guidance is the Whatsoever-Comes view.  Whatsoever happens is, in the end, what God wanted, after all.  The Lord is sovereign, of course, powerfully in charge of everything, so everything happening is according to plan.

I talked briefly about this last Sunday morning.  One problem with this is it actually leaves out the need for God to guide us consciously.  Also, it leaves out the powers of evil in this world, which still accomplish bad and wrong things.  Wrong things do happen, and for the wrong reasons.  Thanks be to God that He can do good things in the midst of disaster!

Some of our Old Testament stories challenge us when thinking about how unchanging God’s plan is.  Read Exodus 32 and remember how Yahweh determined to destroy the people, after they built and worshiped the golden calf, and start over with Moses and his family.  God said to Moses, “Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” 

But Moses had a real heart-to-heart with the LORD, and did not accept this plan.  Moses’ prayer was answered when God relented, and “the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.”  Even a human can work on the master plan with the Master Himself. 

Thirdly, there is the It’s-All-in-the-Bible View.  The verse that tells us the disciples were all in one accord is not guidance to buying a Honda car.  The New Testament book after Philemon is not telling the men of the house to make the coffee: He-brews.  I recall my Old Testament professor telling of a man in a church where he’d pastored, who was convinced a scripture was telling him to apply cream cheese to his wife’s hair. 

This greatest of all books is not like the owner’s manual of a car.  Every detail of your life is not secretly hidden in it.  Then again, maybe the Bible is like an automobile manual: when I look for an answer about some detail of my car, it’s not in the book!  The principles and inspiration for our lives are in the Bible; much detailed guidance must come from the Holy Spirit communing with our human spirits. 

So, as we get to know the Voice of the Shepherd, we must guard against other ideas that vie for attention.  People sometimes wonder, and rightly so, about the voice of Satan.  Not often like the deep, scary voice of some demon in the movies, the Evil One will communicate in one’s own thoughts, the voice of people around us, and even use the scriptures. 

Matthew’s record of Jesus’ forty days in the desert is instructive.  But you might want to turn in your Bibles now, not to Matthew, but to Deuteronomy 8.

Forty days and forty nights, fasting in the desert.  It’s a desert; it’s deserted; and there’s no dessert!  Or even bread and water.  And Jesus is tempted… by the Tempter. 

Some of the round stones nearby look like loaves of bread, freshly cooked.  “So you are the Son of God: turn the stones to bread.”  Jesus finds the answer in a scripture.  He does not have a copy of it with Him, of course; just about no one did.  He had memorized much of it.  Such as Deuteronomy 8:3…  One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.  Perhaps knowing the Bible – a lot of it – will help us recognize the ideas that look good but are not.

Jesus saw Himself at the pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem.  “Throw yourself down,” the Accuser suggested.  The Bible, Psalm 91, says God will send angels to protect you, “so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” 

No.  Jesus remembers another phrase from the fifth book of Moses.  Deuteronomy 6:16.  “Do not put the LORD your God to the test.”  We too must remember that the Bible can be used rightly and wrongly.  God may speak here; but the Evil One quotes it too!

Thirdly, Jesus gets a vision of the kingdoms of the world.  By bowing to the devil, could they all become His?  “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only Him,” says Deuteronomy 6:13.  Jesus finds the right path, the Tempter leaves, and Christ is cared for by better visitors, angels attending to His needs.

Hearing from the Tempter does not mean you are worse than others, or even that you are possessed or some such thing.  Jesus heard the voice of Satan!  We may remember that Peter the apostle at least once spoke for Satan!  “Get behind me, Satan,” is what Jesus said to him on that occasion.  Recognizing the sources of the voices and ideas that come to us – this is key.  Then we obey God, and not the rivals. 

And so, “hearing God” is found in our day-to-day experience.  James Dobson described a prayer when seeking the will of God.  “I get down on my knees and say, ‘Lord, I need to know what you want me to do, and I am listening.  Please speak to me through my friends, books, magazines I pick up and read, and through circumstances.’”  (“The Will of God” radio broadcast, December 3, 1982)

The Lord whose speaking we grow to recognize is the best Guide and Friend we can rely upon. 

 Some years ago, a pastor was one day called by a parishioner whose husband had recently died.  The woman informed the minister that God had told her to give the husband’s suits to him.  Would he please come over, she asked, to see if they suits would fit? 

The pastor very sensibly replied, “If God told you to give them to me, they’ll fit.”  (Bud Robinson, as in Hearing God, Dallas Willard, p. 205)

We believe in a competent God!

A God who speaks, every so quietly, subtly, and surely. 

A Spirit who wants to have fellowship with us day-by-day even more than we do. 

A Saviour who will be our Good Shepherd, and whose voice we can learn to recognize and follow. 

And a Saviour who speaks to our souls again today, as we eat bread together, and drink the fruit of the vine.