Social & Moral Issues

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.

Be Saved

Be Saved

(Ephesians 2:4-10; John 3:1-21)

7 pm, Sunday, June 23, 2013; Drive-In Service; J G White

(copied/edited from March 18, 2012)

It is interesting what people will say about Jesus and Christianity. I've heard a few wild ideas through the years. There is a book out now called “Jesus Is _____.” The authors have a website set up, which says: Everyone has an opinion of who Jesus is. That's why this website exists: as a platform for people to express who Jesus is to them. There are a lot of concepts about Jesus, and what His message of salvation really is.

I remember a memorial service reception a year ago, where a young woman spoke about her grandmother-in-law, who had then been dead for about four weeks. The young woman got tearful when she sort of pleaded that the ashes be buried so the deceased would not have to wander purgatory, but would rest in peace.

To me, it would be a strange world if all you needed to do to get into heaven was have your body or ashes buried. Might make the undertakers and the cemeteries happy!

Today, it is not clear what the message of Jesus is. Is it clear what Salvation is?

How does one get saved?

How does one enter the Kingdom of God?

How does one inherit eternal life?

I remember once, a woman spoke to a church member of her deceased mother, and hoped both she and her late mother would be in heaven together one day. “How do I get to heaven?” the person asked. The church member said: “Well, you need to be a good person and do what God wants...” Or something like that.

Wrong answer again, eh? Am I right? Be a good person and get to heaven is the wrong answer, in our Faith. Rely upon our good God and trust in the Saviour, that is the better answer.

Of course, it's not completely as simple as that, is it. We have in Matthew 25 a parable of Jesus Himself, that speaks of the final judgment. He talks of those feeding the hungry, quenching the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, visiting the prisoner. “Just as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me,” says the King in the story, representing Jesus. And then, to others, “Just as you did not do it to the least of these, you did it not unto me. And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

We tend to emphasize that right living flows out of a right relationship with God, which God makes possible by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God. To be saved one must rely upon the Saviour.

To Be Saved is a key, a linchpin, a big idea and main idea of our Faith. Without salvation from Jesus Christ, our spirituality and our religion are lost, and mere shadows of the real thing. In our evangelical tradition, we have often spoken of being saved as something that happens at a certain, definite point in a person's life. I got saved on such-and-such an occasion. Being saved is the starting point. “You must be born again,” as Jesus tells Nicodemus the Jewish religious expert, one special night long ago. To be connected with our own personal Faith we stay in touch with our beginning – how God reached us, and how we responded to Him. How we were saved.

Yet is it just the beginning of the race of life, that can be run victoriously as we rely upon Christ for our salvation.

We can recite quite a litany about salvation just from a few richly-packed verses from Ephesians 2. (Do you have a car Bible, like I do?) Turn there if you like. Notice...

Salvation is by grace.

Salvation is through faith.

Salvation is not of your own doing.

Salvation is the gift of God.

Salvation is not the result of works.

Salvation is not for us to boast about.

So... we are what God has made us.

We are created in Christ Jesus.

We are created for good works.

Good works are prepared for us beforehand.

Good works are to be our way of life.

For those initiated into the language and ideas of the Bible, these words are profound and meaningful. To those outside of Faith in Christ, they are not understood the same way. The words we use for our Faith, the Bible we quote, might be almost a different language form some people. It might as well be Greek.

Example of jargon... I was on a field trip a week ago, and in the woods we found an interesting and rare species. The opposite blades were sessile, the red calyxes also sessile, in small whorls, with inferior ovaries, and five pointed green and red sepals. A very exciting find; I'd never seen it before! It was Triosteum aurianticum, of the Caprifoliaceae family.

Did you understand me? It was a rare wildflower – Feverwort, or Horse Gentian, of the Honeysuckle family of plants. If I spoke your language – your words and terms you use everyday – you might understand me. So too when we explain Jesus. We must reach people who need Him in their terms.

We all have people in our lives whom we would say are “not saved.” They are not Christians, they have not taken basic steps to put their lives in God's hands, or they have rejected the commitment they once made or the things the Lord did for them. These people are in our homes, in our families, down our hallway or street. They are our co-workers, our fellow students, our facebook friends. They are also perfect strangers: the faces we pass by each week but don't know the names, and the chance encounters around town.

We want to know how to reach them. How to pray for their salvation. How to speak with them. How to show them Christ is real in us. Who to introduce them to to guide them. What book or movie or event or blog to recommend to them. What church event to invite them to and bring them.

Sometimes the results of our attempts have been mediocre. In many cases, we are deeply concerned for a few certain people, some very close to us, whom we want be saved and find new life in Christ. Some seem like tough customers.

This seems hard today. I know it is. The days of the revival tent meetings, the tracts handed out, the door-to-door visits of lay evangelists are over. I think that even the days of invitations to church services, or evangelistic “crusades” or to watch television religion are over. Most of this is rejected; people are inoculated against it. Much of it is ineffective today.

This is the day of social media. It is a day of Christianity being one minority among many. It is a day when people will meet Christ when they meet Christians, where they work, where they shop, where they learn, where they play, where they retire.

It is at the grass-roots that people will find and be found by the Lord, and get saved, and become disciples of Jesus. Our programs, of the Churches, must equip us to be the evangelists, the missionaries, the personal spiritual trainers of others. It happens out there.

So we must learn to speak of salvation in ways that will be understood by those who hear. And they must see the example and evidence of our saved lives. When salvation is real, it will attract & impact.

There is more than one ministry group out there that I've heard claiming to be “making a certain sound.” The point is that they are not making an uncertain sound, not giving an unclear message. You might want to turn to 1 Corinthians 14:7-8.

A year or so ago I traveled down to Clyde River to buy a rusty, musty musical instrument. It is painted purple. It weighs maybe 100 pounds. It is a stringed instrument. Can you guess what it is? It is a simple harpsichord. It looks like a small piano, with 57 keys. It had but a few, rusty strings in it. I started putting new strings on the harpsichord, but they were not tuned, and the bits that pluck the strings are in bad shape. My harpsichord is still making very uncertain sounds.

While writing about the spiritual use of prophecy and speaking in tongues, Paul says: It is the same way with lifeless instruments that produce sound, such as the flute or the harp. If they do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is being played? And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle? Paul's point then is that our speaking about the Lord together needs to be clear and understandable.

We might feel led to go beyond this teaching and see that our messages to people in West Hants today need to be clear and true, not uncertain or confusing.

We can't speak in King James language anymore and expect to be respected for the spiritual sound we maketh. I still see signs along the road that say “Prepare To Meet Thy God.” I saw a sign outside a Church that announced Sunday service, and also: “Compline.” I bet there are Anglican Christians who don't know what that is, not to mention passers-by.

We cannot speak with allusions to scripture and expect the general population to know our shibboleths. Good Friday is about Jesus Christ being executed? Easter is about Jesus coming back to life after three days in a tomb? We cannot assume that everyone in our neighbourhoods knows such facts. Fewer are aware of who Paul was, or Moses, or Lydia. So we meet people with a clean slate, ready to explain the most basic things, and not think them dumb.

We cannot speak with an attitude of superiority to those who do not have much time for traditional religious forms. As sure as we may sometimes feel about how right we are about the Lord and His saving work in Jesus Christ, we need to be sure to love and care for those who don't make the same claims. Remember Jesus, who once, seeing a great crowd, had great compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

We cannot speak with judgment about right and wrong, in moral or spiritual issues, when those listening will reject such thinking from people who are clearly not living perfect lives. We've visited the Ten Commandments a couple times already this winter. What would you do if it became known that I, the Senior Pastor, had committed murder last week? Or had been stealing, lately? Or was having some affairs this year? The skids would be put under me, eh! Those commandments are just four or five words each in Exodus 20. But what if I said, “Whew, I haven't had a day off in a month.” I'd get applauded. Yet the command to keep the Sabbath holy goes on for sentences: about 80 words. No one can approach others with an air of judgment.

And it is so important for us to be very clear about what salvation is, in our day and age, for the sake of those around us. It is time for a new clarity about this key concept in our Faith. It is a priority for us to live the saved life, and we must speak the language of our neighbours when we are witnesses of what the Lord has done. Our words can be clearer, and our actions, our lives. Jesus is _____. What do you say?

Saying this well is our mission. Let us pray.