They had a nickname for the place; they called it Massah-Meribah, the place of strife and testing. It was the place where the people of God decided they had been betrayed by God and His spokesman, Moses. It was the place where the people decided they knew more than God. It was the place where God said, “Enough.”

It would take a while for the “enough” to run it’s course, but a seed of rebellion was revealed at Massah-Meribah that would haunt the people until they had all died (except for Joshua and Caleb, but that’s a story for another time). This rebelling generation didn’t make it to the promise land, but died in the desert where they told God over and over that He wasn’t very good at His job, and that they could do it much better (See Exodus 17:1-7 for the riveting details).

In Psalm 95 a passionate appeal is made that people of God not be like those folks of Massah-Meribah but that they be a people who bow down in worship before the Lord their Maker (6). In worship the people proclaimed, “Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation” (2). In worship they said, “Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song” (3).

No rebellion here; no fussing at God because He’s not Johnny-on-the-spot. Rather a proclamation that “The Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods” (3). In the ebb and flow of life the people knew and confessed, “He is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care” (7).

God provided water at Massah-Meribah because that is the kind of God He is. Today He is with us. “Come, let us bow down in worship; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker” (6).

Wondering if anyone might respond to the following statement:

"A social justice that does not call forth repentance in persons is not the social justice revealed in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ."

Any feedback (pro or con) will be appreciated, as I am in an ongoing discussion with several people who wonder about the way the church is choosing to address issues that come under the umbrella of Social Justice. This quote came up the other day, and I really would like some feedback.

Thanks,
Rick

What is hope? How would you define hope? Is it a sense that some how, some way, things will work out for the better? Is it a feeling that no matter how bad things get there will still be a future? Is hope an intellectual activity by which we assess a given situation and conclude, "It's not as bad as it could be"?

An ancient psalm defines hope as a relationship a people has with God. Hope, it seems, is bound to the significant connection people have with the one who is God. It's not about strength or wishing or even dreaming about how things might be better.

Hope is about the integrity of God never to be less that He promised He would be. Hope is about settling down in God's "unfailing love" (Psalm 33:18), with a sure and certain conviction that come what may, God "is our help and our shield" (Ps. 33:20). Hope is coming within the embrace of God, whose arms are open wide, and relaxing our lives in His life, knowing "we can trust in his holy name" (Ps. 33:21).

So, maybe the question is not, "What is hope." Maybe the question is, "In whom do you trust." From the psalmist's perspective the one in whom we trust is no one less than Sovereign God. From His sovereign perspective God looks into the human situation and sees the ways and means of mankind. He is not unaware. In fact, He is sovereignly aware and compassionately present to draw near to all who fear him and who recognize that He is, in fact, at work in the world.

Hope comes from trust, and trust comes from integrity. We do not hope in those we cannot trust. God's name can be trusted, however, and whatever lies ahead we know that we come to it within the embrace of the One whose sovereign love is unfailing. That is hope.

February 10, 2008

Honest introspection and truthful self-awareness I fear, are far from the thinking of many people. These instruments of insight are far too painful and require far too much discipline for the unserious. Ours is a day of self-exaltation, not self-inspection. We want what we want when we want it and the thought of possibly laying aside the dreams we have dreamed for ourselves is simply unthinkable. We have money to make and homes to build and boats to buy, not to mention credit cards to maintain and sights to see.

All this being said we come to king David of ancient Israel. He had it made. He had wealth and a temple and servants. You name it and David had it. He also had lust in his heart, a lust that caught him totally off guard one day. The next thing you know this man who had it all found himself in bed with another man's wife, got her pregnant, and arranged for her husband to come back from war in hopes he would sleep with his wife and that everyone would then conclude the husband was the father. Then everything would be hunky-dory. The plan didn't work so David sent the husband to the front lines in hopes that he would die in battle. This would free the wife to remarry. Then everything would be hunky-dory. This plan worked and the deceit was underway, with everyone but God.

Sometimes God can be so inconvenient, always calling for truthfulness the way He does. This time God sends a prophet into the David's presence and the prophet reveals the sin in David's heart, daring to speak the truth to him.

Here a remarkable thing happens. David receives the truth, chooses not to run from it, and enters into a time of honest and truthful self-inspection. He pleads for forgiveness and even asks that God would cleanse his life.

Suddenly we see a different David. The truth has found him out, and he owns it, prayerfully asking God, "Create in me a pure heart… Restore to me the joy of your salvation" (Ps. 51:10, 12).

May God help us not to run away from truth but to run to it. We, too, are broken and flawed but, like David, we can choose for God. By His grace, we can choose for God. We are under no obligation to choose against God. Let us hear the truth, and be what truth enables us to be.

Sometimes I feel like I’m in over my head in this thing called, following Jesus. I can’t tell you the number of times I think I’ve finally got some things figured out when life throws a mind-blowing curve at me, and I find myself realizing that I’m just a kindergartener finger painting his way through grad school. It’s not a pretty sight.

These feelings come rushing in on me when I see two longings on the part of the apostle Paul that are in such stark contrast to each other that I am left thinking surely he didn’t mean what it looks like he meant. One of them I get because I’m an American. The other one I don’t get because I’m an American.

The one I get is the one where Paul says he longs to know Christ and to share in the power of his resurrection. I get that. Who wouldn’t? To share in the power that is nothing short of resurrection, that’s huge. That puts one on the winning team. That puts one ahead of the pack, dancing in the end zone having made the defense look silly. I get that.

The one I don’t get is the one where Paul says he longs to know “the fellowship of sharing in the sufferings of Christ, becoming like him in his death” (Phil. 3:10). Now wait a minute. Dancing in the end zone because you just blew the defense away is one thing; longing to be creamed by the defense on your way to the end zone, that’s something else. (Please forgive my football fascination but the Super Bowl is coming up).

Resurrection is about power. Suffering is about weakness. And, most of us don’t want much to do with weakness. We’re Americans, my goodness.” We ain’t taken nothing from nobody (pardon my English). Yet Paul says he longs to participate in a fellowship of sharing the sufferings and death of Jesus.

Is it not refreshing to discover a life that is not rooted in self-help and in the need to always win but is rooted in the life of the One who comes into our very real human lives and works the works of God there? Could it be that in the midst of a relationship born of a suffering and a death that we are enabled to face our demons and find the life for which we so desperately seek?

Could it be that our suffering alongside Jesus enables us to better hear the cries of those around us, and causes us to break free from the heresy of always having to win and, instead, find it is grace we need and not just power.

Some things just aren’t worth fighting over or loosing sleep over. One thing is certain and it is that God’s will is “good, pleasing and perfect” (Rom. 12:2 NIV), Place this Biblical truth alongside the fact life is short and eternity is forever, and we see that what we really ought to do is to embrace what really matters; to embrace what we believe really matters to God.

The apostle Paul told the Corinthian Christians that they were majoring on minors and fussing over things that didn’t need to be fussed over. They were all hot and bothered about who had been baptized by whom. Can you believe that? So-in-So baptized me. Oh yeah, well, Whatcha McCallit baptized me. That’s nothing, I was baptized by Old-What’s-His-Name. And, Paul said, “Stop it. Will you just stop it?

Some things just don’t matter. Some things do, mind you. Things like “to preach the gospel” (I Cor. 1:17). Now, that matters. To proclaim the gospel so that the cross of Christ is exalted and filled with the power of Almighty God, now that matters.

Now a question. How can we, as believers in a local church, live in such away that the cross of Christ is not emptied of its power but is revealed to be the very power of God (I Cor. 1:18)? Whatever the answer is I am quite sure that majoring on minors is not a part of it.

How can we major on what really matters, on things that matter for all time and eternity? What does a majoring-on majors congregation look like?

Paul calls the church to live in a spirit of unity, a spirit of Christlikeness where we are so caught up in the life of Jesus that everything falls under His authority. Now, that’s a major.

Jesus did not come into history out of a vacuum. If He had come this way, we wouldn’t have a clue as to how to understand Him. Instead, however, Jesus comes from within the context of a people. He has a family tree, a heritage that shaped and formed Him in His earthly life, a foundation out of which He shares the glory of God. In the New Testament book of Romans the apostle Paul spoke of “the gospel of God which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning His Son…Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 1:1-4). So it is that we see Jesus in the Old Testament.

Of this, John Wesley wrote in His commentary on Isaiah, “As the name of David is sometimes given to his successors, so here the name of Israel may not unfitly be given to Christ, not only because he descended from his loins; but also because he was the true and the great Israel, who, in a more eminent manner, prevailed with God, as that name signifies, of whom Jacob, who was first called Israel, was but a type.” So, what we see in the Old Testament prophet prepares us for how the true Israel, Jesus Himself, was to be among us in this world of ours.

In Isaiah chapter 49 the prophet speaks of God’s Servant and of how His Servant would be “a light of the nations so that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Is. 49:6). The one true Servant, Jesus, is on a mission to bring the salvation of God to the end of the earth. He is a light shining in the dark places of life. He shines not simply to help us but to save us. Truthfully, we are in over our heads, and we need God. We need Him badly; desperately, if you would. And, He has come to us in Jesus. In Jesus we see the glory of God (Is. 49:3), and life can’t get much better than that.

The world is changing so fast in so many ways that the message of change promised throughout the Old Testament might be overlooked. Familiarity breeds the possibility of over-familiarity, and over-familiarity can breed many things, including neglect.

Yet, in Isaiah 42:9 the prophet looked forward to a time when God’s people will be impacted by “new things” God promises to do. The “former things” were wonderful, but they are former. God was going to do a new thing.

God had a servant who would bring forth justice to the nations. He would be powerful and authoritative but He would also be humble and gentle. His mission was not to crush but to heal and to bring the spirit of justice into the human situation. He would live in justice but He would conduct Himself in such away that it is said of him, “A bruised reed He will not break and a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish” (Is. 42:3).

As Christians we believe it is Jesus in whom God has ultimately spoken to the human situation. Through Jesus, God’s new thing breaks into history, and He is present to speak to the deepest needs of the human experience. In His life the very life of God comes among us. The God who “created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and its offspring, who gives breath to the people on it” (Is. 42:5) has come up-close-and-personal.

Through His Servant God fulfills a promise. He draws near in intimacy and communion to “hold you by the hand and watch over you’ (Is. 42:6). He is a living “covenant to the people” (Is. 42:6), and a constant reminder that God is not off at a distant but present in His world, and present here to be God.

God is up to something wonderful.

Like many people, I love a good mystery. Plot twists and surprise turns in a good story hold me spellbound. Sometimes the twists and turns of a story are so unexpected for me that I find myself stunned as I try to process it all. I love a good mystery.

In Jesus a mystery has been resolved and a new storyline breaks into history. What was once uniquely Jewish now becomes a worldwide phenomenon. Of God one of the ancient psalms says, "May the whole earth be filled with His glory" (Ps. 72:19). In Jesus it happens and "the unfathomable riches of Christ" (Eph. 3:8) are extended to everyone of every race, creed, color and background. In Jesus we come to see that "the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel" (Eph. 3:6).

Jesus is the Messiah of every human being on the earth. He is God's response to the human situation. In Jesus God draws near and brings grace, mercy, forgiveness and hope into the story of every person. He is bigger than culture, bigger than race, bigger than religion. He is bigger than philosophy, bigger than ideology, bigger than perspective, outlook and point of view.

What Paul calls, "The unfathomable riches of Christ" are available to you, your family, your friends and your neighbors. The apostle John said that in Jesus "was life and the life was the light of men" (John 1:4). There is no one outside the reach of God's grace and there is no one who. if they called on Christ, will be turned away. He is the Messiah for all.

Let's be authentic and aggressive as we continue to tell the story of Jesus and His unfathomable riches. If not us, who? If not now, when?

First Sunday After Christmas, 2007

In the dark night of her soul, homeless Judah receives a word of promise and hope. Her captivity has ended, a new day has dawned and a new name is given to her. She will no longer be referred to as "Forsaken" and "Desolate." Now she will go by the name, "My delight is in her." Her Land will be called, "Married." Once again God will rejoice over her (Isaiah 62:4-5). So great will be the turn-around that God's people will now be referred to as a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of…God (Is. 62:3).

What a transformation. What a God. From disconnection and disenfranchisement to the place of community and home and future, all because of the grace of God. To this Isaiah simply says one thing, "For Zion's sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not keep quiet" (Is. 62:1). It was too powerful, too wonderful, too dramatic, and too awesome to remain quiet. It had to be shared.

We still share it today. What happened in the life of Judah is available for every person. God has spoken and the future can be different than the past. Old can be replaced with new. Deadness can be replaced by life. What once defined our lives no longer has to be that which defines our lives. "Desolate" and "forsaken" no longer must be our names. God is present to be in our lives so meaningfully that we become a crown of beauty and a royal diadem.

The new life was to be so wonderful for Judah that Isaiah said, "God will rejoice over you" (Is. 62:5). What an image, God rejoicing over His people. In a way, though, it makes sense. Being shaped and formed in the image of the God of all grace brings a people to that place where God is free to do what He longs to do in the lives of His creation; Bless them with honest and authentic blessing.

Live in God and have a grace-covered rest of your life.

Fourth Sunday of Advent

In Matthew’s Gospel the birth of the Son of God into human history isn’t told. The closest we come to a telling of the story is Joseph’s dream about what was happening to Mary, and that only takes eight verses, or about 200 words. The genealogy of Jesus’ family tree at least gets 17 verses, and you’ve got to really know your history to appreciate those 17 verses. My goodness, Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address took 278 words, and historians tell us it was far too short a speech for the importance of the occasion.

I’m not sure what all this means but I do find it intriguing that an event so important to the human situation is more referred to than told. Apparently, we don’t need the details of the birth of Jesus. What we need is what those details reveal. And, what they reveal is that this baby is no one less than “Immanuel, which translated means, “’God with us’” (Matt. 1:23). This fact takes a few more verses and a whole lot of words to explain its meaning. It fact it takes four Gospels, a historical telling of the story of the first church, several letters and a prophetic revelation to give us understanding about what it means for God to be with us.

I am thinking that what we really do need to absorb into our lives in Advent is the meaning of the birth of Christ event and not the event itself. After all, if God really is with us this is huge. I mean, this is really huge.

I remember the day of my children’s birth. It is burned into my memory. However, time moves on and kids grow up and life unfolds. You can’t spend too much time on the birth experience because there is a whole lot of living to do after that event.

The day of Jesus’ birth means something to us only because of the years following His birth where He really did reveal that, in deed, God is with us. Now, that is a cause for outrageous celebration.

Third Sunday of Advent 2007

Sometimes I feel like getting my self on a mountaintop and proclaiming to the top of my voice, "Behold the wonder that is God." Mountaintop or not, however, we followers of the Christ ought to find ways in our living and in our being to proclaim the wonders of God.

Think about it. God, Creator and Sustainer of the universe, comes up close and personal so much so that to capture it all Isaiah the prophet turned to metaphor and hyperbole to speak of what it means when God is present. In his telling of the story he uses phrases like, "the wilderness and the desert will be glad, and the desert will rejoice and blossom (Isaiah 35:1). He speaks this way to describe the difference God will make even in dry and barren places of life. There will be rejoicing and glory and streams of fresh flowing water in the desert. It will be a time when everything is stamped with grace and the glory of God will be seen and experienced everywhere.

In those days people will see "the majesty of our God," (Is. 35:2), and the good word to "the exhausted, the feeble and the anxious" will be, "Take courage, fear not" (Is. 35:3-4). The healing power of God will be present and the influence of God's love will spring up like pools of fresh water in the blistering heat of the desert.

A highway of the holiness of God will makes its way through the barren places and those who say YES to God will be invited to walk on that highway, and the blessings on that journey will be so great that Isaiah says the people, "will come with joyful shouting to Zion, with everlasting joy upon their heads" (Is. 35:10). People who walk on that highway, Isaiah says, "will find gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing will flee away" (Is. 35:10).

God has invited us to join up and be with Him. He is the difference out there in the heat of the day. It is His presence that makes all things new. The desert is still the desert but the desert is not God. God is God, and He is present to touch our lives and to draw us to Himself that in Him we might live.

Come to God, Isaiah says, "and "He will save you" (Is. 35:4). He will save you from anything that keeps you from hearing and receiving His take-courage-and-fear-not word.

Second Sunday of Advent 2007

We live in a violent world. It’s hard to ignore the daily news of man’s inhumanity to man that seems rooted in every culture, every neighborhood, every city and every nook and cranny. Where there is a way evil will raise its ugly head and somebody, many times the innocent, will suffer the consequences. There is no safe place anymore, but there ought to be.

The one safe place ought to be in the community of those who have come within the embrace of God. The Church is that people who have come to God’s holy mountain in order to be shaped and formed by His life. Therefore, the Church is that people who are led by God’s Messiah, and they are led in paths of peace. People of God’s Church live and move and have their being in Jesus, and in Jesus the remarkable and unfathomable occurs.

To illustrate just how remarkable and unfathomable the prophet Isaiah turned to story and imagery. He speaks utter nonsense when he speaks of the wolf and the lamb dwelling together and of the leopard and young goat lying down together and of the calf and young lion being together and the cow and the bear grazing together (Isaiah 11:6-7). What Isaiah is saying is that the incompatible are at peace with one another.

The Church must be that place where the incompatible find a home. It must be that place where swords are hammered into plowshares and where spears are hammered into pruning hooks (Is. 2:4). It must be that place and that people where war is studied no more and where peace reigns. It must be that place where nations and peoples no longer lift up swords against each other.

Impossible? Sure sounds like it. Yet, in Christ all things are possible. So, we proclaim God’s “little boy” (Is. 11:6). We bow our lives to Him and we submit to His Lordship, and those who have really done these things stand amazed at what God can do.

First Sunday of Advent 2007

Would-be presidents are roaming the country these days, with the cameras rolling of course, telling us how they will resolve world conflict. Forgive me if I don’t get too excited about it all. I’ve just been through too many presidential campaigns to take anybody too seriously.

I do take the son of Amoz seriously, however, partially because of his brutal honesty and partially because of his forthright passion to let the truth fall where it falls. Isaiah had very little tolerance for teeing up and spin doctoring ideas. When he came on the scene he told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth because he felt truth was more essential than loyalty to his nation. Actually, he felt that truth telling was essential to being loyal to his nation.

Through Isaiah God lays out His peace plan. It is a simple plan but in its simplicity it gets complicated. Why? Because God Himself is the peace plan, and lots of folks just don’t want to have much to do with the God of the Bible. Still the peace for which our planet longs, most of the planet any way, comes to us not in declarations and treaties and promises of governments but in the very life of God Himself.

He invites us to go up to His mountain and there learn His ways so that we may walk in His paths (Isaiah 2:3). He says that if we will do so there will be no need for nation to lift up sword against nation and that, in fact, “never again will they learn war” (Is. 2:4).

I would sure love to live to see that day. However, until that day the invitation is extended, “Come and let us walk in the light of the Lord” (Is. 2:5).

This is what the Church should be doing, walking in the light of the Lord and modeling the peace that comes in that walk.” I’m not sure how well we do it, but the peace for which we long should begin at the altar of God and at the table of Jesus.

The Book of Common Prayer’s Gospel reading for November 25, 2007 is Luke 23:35-43. It’s a great text but, for me, it just doesn’t seem to fit for this Sunday, does it? Last Sunday maybe, but not today, Christ the King Sunday. On this day don’t you think we should be focusing on king stuff and not cross stuff. Yet, there we find the King, in all His capitol K glory, hanging on a cross being killed by His own creation.

Jesus is a different kind of king, however, so maybe He would be pleased for this text to be the text of the day. He was so absent of arrogance and so filled with humility and so loving and forgiving, maybe that is what we most need to see about Him on this last Sunday of Christian year.

Besides that, wouldn’t you know it, even in His dying moments He isn’t isolated but is so present as to bring the grace of God into the life of a man dying beside Him. In a few moments He will die saying, “Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit” (Luke 23:46). Before this, however, He prays “Father, into your hands I commit the spirit of this man beside me. His actions and decisions over the years have brought Him to this cross, Father, but today I’ve told him that he will be with me in Paradise. So, I give him to you, Father. Take him home.”

In the midst of all the sneering and mocking and abuse Jesus finds it in His heart to touch one more human being before He goes back to heaven. You know what? I think this unnamed criminal made it to paradise that day, not because of who he was but because of who Jesus is.

What a great story. What a wonderful moment in time. What a momentous act of forgiveness. More than these, though, what a Savior. What a KING.

It used to bother me that I didn’t have a better awareness of prophecies about the future. I just never could get the time frames down and the flow charts together or an exact understanding of what all those weird looking creatures in Biblical visions and dreams were all about. I felt like a failure that I couldn’t, with a sense of confident assurance, tell people exactly and precisely what was barreling down the pike toward them. Then one day I started reading the Bible a bit more closely.

Did you know Jesus Himself didn’t even know when He was coming back for His Church? In Mark 13:32 He said, “Of that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” As if that isn’t enough, just prior to His giving the gift of the Holy Spirit to His Church He said, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority” (Acts. 1:7). Sounds like dates and timetables and charts weren’t on His agenda.

What was on Jesus’ agenda was the fact that He was coming back, that the world was moving toward a day of judgment, and that as those days approached His people were to know that those days would “lead to an opportunity for your testimony” (Luke 21:13). In that light Jesus said two important things: (1) “See to it that you are not misled” (Luke 21:8), and (2) “By your endurance you will gain your lives” (Luke 21:19).

Instead of His people being preoccupied with “times and epochs” Jesus called them to know that they would “receive power when the Holy Spirit” had come upon them, and that in that remarkable power they would be His witnesses ”to the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:7-8).

Spirit-filled power. Now that’s something worth sinking your teeth into.

W.C. Fields was not known for having a heart for the Bible, but one day he was caught reading the Bible, and he was asked why. His response was, “I’m looking for loopholes.”

Mr. Fields seems to have many friends all around the world who are doing the same thing-- looking for loopholes. One’s worldview drives this kind of looking-for-loopholds thinking. Some folk’s philosophy of life is so settled for them that anything not embraced by their belief system is challenged. Particularly, when it comes to Jesus it seems that some people will do just about whatever they need to do to trip Him up or trap Him so that they can win the “Gotcha” game.

In Luke chapter 20 we are told that the Sadducees didn’t believe in resurrection so, of course, they had issues with Jesus who profoundly believed in resurrection. In order to stump Him and make Him look bad, I suppose, they came up with an outrageous story about a woman whose husbands kept dying. In that culture it was the responsibility of a brother to take care of a widow when her husband died. This woman started going through husbands like you wouldn’t believe -- seven of them; and the Sadducees wanted to know whose wife of the seven brothers she would be in heaven.

Jesus said they had missed the whole point. In heaven it’s not about marrying. It’s about being in the presence of God who changes an old order of things for a brand new sinless order. Besides that, Jesus said, God isn’t the God of the dead. That’s a “gotcha” question. God is the God of the living. This sounds like there may be a lot of stuff you and I need to work out long before we see who's marrying who in heaven, or what it means to be like an angel.

We really do need to stick with the real questions; questions that matter for all eternity. Do you believe in resurrection? If you do it wouldn’t be a bad idea to prepare for it. What we believe about resurrection is a pretty serious deal. Playing “Gotcha” games with God probably isn’t the best use of our time.

Long ago there was a hated Jewish tax collector by the name of Zaccheus, who was small in stature but still had a way about him that enabled him to do his job so well that he was rich. He worked for Rome and made his money off the backs of his fellow Jews who very much disliked him. In fact, his job, a long with every tax collector working for Rome had gained him the title, "Sinner." Needless to say, in a very real way he was a man without a country.

I suppose we all have our stories don’t' we? Through choices we've made, attitudes we've held, poor decisions that have disconnected us from family and friends, we find ourselves making it, but not really. We're okay but not really. Everything's fine, but not really.

Then Jesus came to town one day and Zaccheus wanted a look at the show. The only problem is that Jesus isn't much into show and before he knew what hit him, Jesus had invited himself to Zaccheus' house.

Exactly what happened over the next few moments is unclear. We just know that something profound and life changing took place in this tax collector. Suddenly he was making great promises and incredibly generous statements about how he was going to change his ways. He was going to give up to half his possessions to the poor and to those he had defrauded he was going to return to them four times as much as he had taken from them.

Apparently his response wasn't just words and empty promises. At least Jesus believed him and said, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham" (Luke 19:9).

This one man who was lost found God and it changed his life. I wonder if there are others like him around us. We really need to bring Jesus to them because Jesus said that He came "to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10).

He found you one day and me, too. I wonder if there’s anybody else in our town like us who also needs to be found by God?

Jesus had some words to say to people whose religion had gone to their heads but not their hearts. Head religion is a dangerous enemy to those who long to know God. It builds false security and creates illusions of holiness, when holiness is, in fact, far, far away.

In Luke 18:9-14 Jesus tells the story of a man whose Head was filled with religion but whose heart didn't know God. In this condition the man lived out his self-righteous charade, so full of himself that he actually "viewed others with contempt." So arrogant in his religious charade was he that he actually thanked God he wasn't like those other low-life people; you know the kind, "swindlers, unjust, adulterers, and tax-collectors." Apparently he was so busy fasting and tithing and self-exalting that "other people" were a nuisance to him, folks he didn't much want to be around.

As the man prayed at the altar of God one day, a certain tax collector, also wanting to pray but not feeling worthy enough to come inside the temple, just stood "some distance away" and said, "God, be merciful to me, the sinner" (Luke 18:13).

Of the two men who prayed that day only one was heard by God and it wasn't the one who thought of himself as being so very holy. Of the man who stood at a distance Jesus said he went home justified. Of the other man Jesus said (and may I have some literary license?) "Go home. You're wasting my time and yours."

Then Jesus said, "Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted" (Luke 18:14). I think that's another way of saying, "Get real. Never forget from whence you come. Don't be religious. Instead, fall in love with God and live a life of love and forgiveness. Receive others the way God has received you."

Southern California fires

Hello, everybody,

A member of our church shared with me that her daughter and grandchildren have been evacuated from their home in San Diego County, along with thousands of others. I've watched the NEWS along with you and can't even begin to get my mind around all the devastation and suffering that is happening this week here in Southern California. In this matter, I am calling our church to prayer.

Some of you have friends who are impacted by the some 13 fires burning in Southern California today. It has been a devastating week, and for thousands of people this week is just the beginning of a long journey of recovery. I want to ask you to be available to help -- in prayer, in moral support, in financial assistance, in whatever way you can.

When the fires go out, and they will, the road to rebuilding and recovery will go on for months and months, if not years.

This is a time for persistent, tenacious, and ongoing prayer, and for persistent, tenacious and ongoing availability to serve others in whatever way we are able to do so.

Thanks for being there.

Pastor Rick Savage