SACRED CELEBRATIONS

This weekend we Christians celebrate the two most sacred days on our faith calendar, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. 

This Friday is Good Friday, the day on which we remember the death of Jesus. 

This Sunday is Easter Sunday, the day on which we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.

The events of these two days change everything for us.

We believe that Jesus died according to the express will and purpose of God.  Jesus did for mankind what we could never do for ourselves – He kept God’s law – perfectly.  Because He did so, He could become the spotless Lamb, the sacrificial Lamb, the One who would become sin for us.  He is the fulfillment of the substitutionary picture portrayed in the Old Testament sacrificial system.

Jesus, the Son of God, the sinless one, came as a man to die as a man, willingly giving up His own life, to become my sin bearer and yours.  We deserved death for sin, but He took our sin upon Himself on the cross so that we might be forgiven.  His death made eternal life possible. His death made possible a close intimate relationship with the Creator of the Universe. 

But that wasn’t all.  Just days later, Jesus rose from the dead.  For believers in Jesus, this is glorious good news!  Jesus not only died for our sins, He rose in new life!  His resurrection makes our resurrection possible.

In 1 Corinthians 15 the Apostle Paul says this of the resurrection:

“If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.  And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. . . if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, you are still in your sins. . . If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.”

Recently, I had an opportunity to attend a workshop where clergy from a variety of faiths spoke about end of life issues.  I listened attentively as they talked about what we who ministered to patients at the end of their lives needed to know about how to treat those who were dying in accordance with their faith practices.

Many of them spoke of the rituals necessary for the dying:

·        Prayers which needed to be prayed

·        Certain Psalms which needed to be read

·        Bodies needed cleansing and/or anointing

Only clergy or people especially trained could perform the final acts.

Some of the clergy made no mention of a resurrection.

I felt sad that there seemed to be no hope for the dying. 

But for those who know Jesus, there is HOPE!  Death holds no fear. 

Oh, to be sure, many of us are afraid of what comes before death!  Will it hold pain, loss of mental acuity?  Will it be tragic?  But because of the resurrection, we do know that death is the entrance to heaven.  Death is the doorway through which we meet Jesus face to face!  Getting there might hold some fear, but a certain hope lies on the other side!

The Apostle Paul gives encouragement about this when he says:

“Death has been swallowed up in victory!  Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God!  He gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!”

When we have confidence in a resurrection, there is great reason to celebrate!

Jesus was victorious over death!  For believers in Jesus death holds no sting because eternal life in the presence of Jesus waits on the other side!

No ritual will get you there.  No absence of ritual will keep you out.

Belief in Jesus, who died for your sin and rose again so that you might be declared righteous before God – is the ONLY requirement for heaven. 

I don’t need to DO anything but receive what He’s done for me as a gift! 

Ephesians 2:8:

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the GIFT of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.”

By God’s grace, Jesus did for me what I could NEVER do, make myself righteous before God.  All anyone needs to do is reach out a hand and receive the salvation He offers.

Will YOU?

IN CHRIST ALONE

In Christ alone my hope is found, He is my light, my strength, my song; this Cornerstone, this solid Ground, firm through the fiercest drought and storm. What heights of love, what depths of peace, when fears are stilled, when strivings cease! My Comforter, my All in All, here in the love of Christ I stand. In Christ alone! Who took on flesh Fulness of God in helpless babe! This gift of love and righteousness Scorned by the ones he came to save: Till on that cross as Jesus died, The wrath of God was satisfied - For every sin on Him was laid; Here in the death of Christ I live. There in the ground His body lay Light of the world by darkness slain: Then bursting forth in glorious Day Up from the grave he rose again! And as He stands in victory Sin's curse has lost its grip on me, For I am His and He is mine - Bought with the precious blood of Christ. No guilt in life, no fear in death, This is the power of Christ in me; From life's first cry to final breath. Jesus commands my destiny. No power of hell, no scheme of man, Can ever pluck me from His hand; Till He returns or calls me home, Here in the power of Christ I'll stand.

GOD'S NOT DEAD, I'VE SEEN HIM AT WORK

 

 Yesterday Jim and I went to see the movie, “God’s Not Dead”.  The movie is about a college freshman who shows up on his first day of philosophy class and right off the bat has his Christian faith challenged by his professor.  The professor, an atheist, begins the class by asking each student to write “God is dead” on a piece of paper, with their signature, so that they can dispense with that “myth” and conduct the class from an atheistic perspective.  The young freshman will not write and sign a statement which, for him, was not true.  And so his very unhappy professor challenges him to spend twenty minutes in each of the next three classes attempting to prove his own point that God is NOT dead.

Jim and I really enjoyed the movie.  The young man did a great job of standing before the professor and his peers to prove his point, and of course, we were rooting for him.

One of the themes running through the movie, not only for the freshman, but for other characters as well, is the truth that claiming to be a committed follower of Jesus will cost you something, sometimes that something will be BIG.  For the main character, the stand he took for his faith threatened the future he had planned for himself.  For another, it cost the love and protection of her family.  For a third, it cost the loss of a friend.  The cost of following Jesus is one He Himself pointed out.  Sometimes we’re just so anxious for people to come to Jesus and know the blessings, that we neglect to tell them that there is also a cost.  The movie didn’t sugar coat this.

On the other hand, as with some books I’ve read by Christian authors, this film had a “too good to be true” quality about it.  By the end of the movie, the freshman wins over his entire class.  A pastor leads a tough guy to faith, and everyone lives happily ever after.

I was thinking about the great works of God this film portrays as I drove to a women’s study this morning.  At first I was a bit whiny about why the real life evidence of God’s power isn’t always as wonderful as this movie.  I’ve been praying for and talking to people close to me about Jesus for years and not one so far has come to faith.  But then I was thinking how this was a movie.  It was based on facts, but those facts didn’t all necessarily happen at the same time or in the same way as the movie portrayed them.  I’m sure those who wrote the screenplay took some liberties in pulling together different events and then putting them ALL in the same movie.

I was thinking about how much I long to have the Lord work in that obvious, awesome way in MY life, in REAL life, as it did in that movie.  As the morning went on, in that quiet way that the Lord often has, He tapped me on the shoulder and opened my eyes to see the importance of what He WAS up to in my own life just this week.

One of my current “God” opportunities is to teach middle school Sunday school.  Teaching middle school kids was not an assignment I would normally have volunteered to do. It’s been a really long time since I’ve worked with this bunch! 

If you know an 11-13 year old, or have one living with you, then you know what they’re like.  They are full of energy, especially verbal energy!  I’m thinking that for most of them, as soon as their feet hit the floor in the morning, they’re talking – incessantly!   Put a few of them together and a verbal free for all is what you get.  At the same time these non-stop talkers are inquisitive, bright, insightful, curious, full of enthusiasm, great listeners, and the BEST group to teach – once you can get them to stop talking, of course!  After morning coffee with my husband, they are the first group I meet on Sunday morning and I can’t WAIT!

You know what I discovered this week as we made our way through a lesson from Mark’s gospel?  God is at work in those kids!  As they engage with the Scriptures they ask thought provoking questions that keep this teacher on her toes.  They grapple with faith issues, even more perhaps than some adults.  Some are curious enough that they go home and pour over the Bible to do some investigating on their own (can you believe it?). 

In my real life I may not get to see the ultimate outcome.  I may never have the privilege, as the pastor in the movie, to lead one of these kids to Jesus in class, but that doesn’t mean God is not working in power in those inquisitive minds, and open hearts, bringing them to faith in Jesus.  

Then there was the phone call I made yesterday.  A church friend asked me to call her friend.  This friend, about my age, had been asked to teach a Sunday school class of high school girls and she was not sure at all how to proceed.  In the course of our conversation, in which I described what I do with middle schoolers, and how responsive they are and how they bless me week in and week out, we found ourselves getting excited together at what the Lord has in store for her and her class.  Maybe not as exciting as the movie, but evidence that the Lord is at work in my ordinary, and her ordinary, lives getting us excited at what He’s up to!

Then today, at our women’s group, we had special visitors.  A nearby home which ministers to women battling alcoholism and addictions came with their choir to bless us with their singing and testimonies.  Through the lives of these women, all ages and backgrounds, we could see the Lord at work, transforming women by the life and power of Jesus. 

One after another they told their real life stories of redemption – redemption from sin and death, redemption from a life of self-destruction, redemption of their past to lives of productivity and dreams for the future – all through faith in Jesus.  God is at work in them – in many ways as dramatically as in the movie.

I haven’t seen them recently, but a couple of years ago when I was driving, I’d occasionally see one of these little green plastic men on a suburban sidewalk, holding a sign that said, “Children at play”.  These little guys, probably put there by parents, were reminders to us drivers to slow down and keep our eyes open for kids.

When I’m tempted to think that the Lord isn’t working in my real life, as compared to a movie, I need one of those little green men with a different sign, to remind me:  “Slow down, open your eyes, God IS at work!”

And then I need to walk by faith in what I cannot YET see.  GOD IS AT WORK!

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”  Hebrews 11:1

DETAILS, DETAILS, DETAILS! TO ME, THEY MATTER!

Since I came to faith in Jesus way back in 1975, the Lord has given me opportunities to teach the Bible.  I admit I wasn’t very good at it at first.  I hadn’t read a good deal of the Bible at the time, so having to teach necessitated becoming a student!  I attended Bible studies taught by others, did correspondence courses in Bible study, bought fill-in-the-blank type studies, and  absorbed the teaching of every adult Sunday school teacher whose class I could attend.

Then in the mid-1980s I started attending Bible Study Fellowship.  Wow!  Nicknamed the “Marine Corps of Bible studies” by some, BSF was foundational to my growth, first as a student and then as a teacher.

After serving in many leadership capacities in BSF, I one day found myself the teaching leader of a women’s class here in New Jersey.  One of the stumbling blocks to my teaching was a tendency to get so fixed on details that I had a challenge finding the big picture of a passage.  Thankfully, the Lord provided a substitute teaching leader who was really good at that!  Many times she would express in a word or a short sentence something I just could not see right away.

My love for details made today’s time in God’s Word a treat!  At the end of last year I decided to challenge myself in the New Year, 2014.  I went through my Bible checking the dates on which I last studied particular books (I always mark the reading dates in the margins) and made a list of those I hadn’t read in quite a while, both from the Old and New Testaments.  I ended up with a list of ten.  I began reading in January, alternating between the Old and New Testament books and have just begun my third, the Old Testament book of Judges.

In chapter 3, which I read this morning, there was a little detail that intrigued me.  With the help of Dr. David Jeremiah, whose study Bible I am using, I discovered something detail lovers like me live for!

Verse 15 records this about Ehud, Israel’s second judge:

“When the children of Israel cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for them: Ehud, the son of Gera, the Benjamite, a LEFT HANDED MAN.”

As soon as I read that I wondered, “Now why did the Lord include THAT little detail about Ehud?”

Apparently, Dr. Jeremiah did too, because he wrote this in a footnote:

“God’s answer to Israel’s cries was Ehud, a Benjamite (Benjamin means, “Son of my right hand” – remember, he’s LEFT HANDED).”

Judges 3 tells us that Eglon king of Moab, along with some allies, came against Israel and for 18 years forced them to pay him tribute.  When the time for the yearly paying of the tribute arrived, a cadre of messengers, including Ehud, was appointed to bring it to Eglon.  Before they left, Ehud fashioned a daggar in order to assassinate the king, and in that way deliver Israel.

Dr. Jeremiah goes on to say:

“Note how God used Ehud’s left handedness to the benefit of Israel in this scene: Ordinarily, since most soldiers were right handed, the king’s bodyguards or soldiers would only check the left hip of a soldier, because right handers kept their sword on their left side in order to draw it quickly in battle.  Ehud was able to conceal a doubled edged dagger on his right thigh and then use it to fatally stab King Eglon.

The entire episode encourages us with the truth that when God’s people find themselves in bondage, God delivers them in the most surprising, unexpected ways.”

I don’t know about you, but details like that really grab my attention!  The Lord can use ANYTHING, any little detail, to bring out spiritual truth!  AMAZING!

So, maybe my attention to detail will explain why I went on a rant last week on Facebook about my disappointment in the movie, “Son of God”.  (Although I had to repent of my critical spirit toward the well-meaning people who made it).

 I’ve been a Bible teacher for so long, I value God’s Word so much, and I love the many details that seem insignificant, but which so often turn out to be profound – that I’m bothered when people fiddle with the details.  There was much detail fiddling in that movie.  Let me give you one significant example – at least to me!

Take chapter 11 of John’s gospel.  For me the first part of this chapter is critical to our appreciation of the account of Jesus’s raising of Lazarus, which begins at verse 17.  Before that, Jesus had been preaching in the villages on the other side of the Jordan River from where Lazarus lived in Bethany, not far from Jerusalem.

When Lazarus’s sisters sent word to Jesus that their brother was sick, Jesus did not immediately leave for Bethany.  He simply said, “This sickness will not end in death”, and he remained where he was. 

We’re told that he loved Mary and Martha, Lazarus’s sisters, YET when he received the news, he stayed where he was for 2 more days, so that later, when he finally did arrived, Lazarus had been dead for 4 days!  All of that was left out of the movie’s telling of the raising of Lazarus.  How could they leave out something so powerful???  At least that’s what THIS detail oriented teacher thought!

And then, when Jesus finally arrived, the most powerful moment for me was when he told the onlookers to roll away the stone.  In the biblical account he never entered the tomb.  Rather, he stood outside and simply said:

“Father, I thank you that you have heard me.  I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing her, that they may believe that you sent me.”

Then, while the crowd held its collective breathe, he said, “Lazarus, come out!”, and Lazarus did!

When the movie had Jesus entering the tomb, with Mary alone, and speaking in a soft voice as he stooped at Lazarus’s head, so much was lost!  Jesus’s prayer, designed to inspire faith in those standing by, and the power displayed by the sound of his voice ALONE to awaken the dead was minimized.  I’ve heard it said that if Jesus didn’t specify that it was Lazarus he was raising, if he had simply said, “Come out!”,  every dead person in a tomb would have come forth! 

That was one of many details fiddled with by the producers of the movie – and I was so greatly disappointed – for myself, the Bible purist, but also for those who would see the movie but not know what they’d missed.  If they decided then to read the biblical account themselves, which would they believe?  Would they decide the biblical account was too rigid, not human enough, and set it aside?

When it comes to the Bible, we shouldn’t mess with the details.  The Bible needs no editing, no detail fiddling, no human help to spice it up or make it more audience friendly, no politically correct changes.

The Bible says of itself in 2 Timothy 3:16:

“All Scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correction and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Who are we to think we can improve on something, breathed into being by God Himself?   Don’t even get me started on “Noah”!

THE NEED IS THE CALL

 

A number of weeks ago my pastor was preaching from the New Testament book of Acts, chapter 13.  The account tells the story of how, while the church at Antioch was praying, worshiping and fasting, the Holy Spirit made it clear that they were to separate out Barnabas and Saul to the work for which He had called them.  Commissioned and prayed for by the church, they were sent on their way by the Holy Spirit to preach the gospel in Cyprus. 

Our pastor, in speaking of the nature of the call of God, pointed out that in this instance the church had been in prayer for the direction of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit had responded by specifically appointing Barnabas and Saul, and the church had responded by sending them out with the gospel. 

One of the things he said in his sermon about how God calls was this:  Sometimes the NEED is the call.  In other words, sometimes the Lord makes a need known and the need itself becomes His call on our lives. 

This was what happened in Acts 16.  The Apostle Paul and his companions had been traveling through Phrygia and Galatia.  They wanted to move into Asia but the text says that they were kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word there.  The Bible doesn’t give us any explanation about how the Holy Spirit made this clear, but however it was, they could not go.

While they were wondering what to do next, Paul had a nighttime vision of a man from Macedonia who was standing and begging Paul to come and help them.  In that case, the NEED in Macedonia WAS the call, and Paul responded by concluding that going to Macedonia was God’s plan and leaving at once.

There is another illustration of this I think, in the 6^th chapter of the Old Testament book of Isaiah.  Isaiah has a vision of the Lord seated on the throne of heaven, with the train of His robe filling the temple.  Above Him, Isaiah saw seraphim and heard them calling to one another, saying:

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory.”

At the very sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook!

When Isaiah saw and heard all this, he said:

“Woe to me!  I am ruined!  For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty!”

Verses 6 and 7 say:

“Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.  With it he touched my mouth and said, “See this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

Immediately then, Isaiah heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send?  And who will go for us?”

I had always thought that the Lord has issued this call directly to Isaiah until I a radio pastor speak about this verse.  He said that the call Isaiah heard was not necessarily issued to Isaiah.  It could have been that the Lord issued A call, and Isaiah was the one who heard and responded.

If this is so, then it is another illustration of what my pastor referred to as: “The NEED is the call”. 

Isaiah’s response to God’s call was: “Here am I.  Send me!”

My pastor’s sermon immediately brought me back to the day in 2012 when I read a link on Facebook encouraging readers to think about donating a kidney.  I knew that Jennifer from our church, who had posted the link, needed a kidney and I had known it for some time.  But it was only then that my heart finally “heard” the need.  Her need became God’s call on my heart to take the next step of pursuing donation.   

I wonder whether I have ever missed a call because I was not in tune with the Holy Spirit, not really in a place to listen for His “voice”?

Did the Lord ever say, “Who shall we send and who will go for us?”, and I did not hear?

It’s not always easy to stay in the kind of sweet, intimate fellowship with the Lord that puts me in the opportune place to hear when He calls.  Too often I choose lesser pursuits to occupy my time than spending time in God’s Word and in prayer. 

The best times of my life, however, have been those where I am actively waiting on the Lord.  Those are the times when He shines His light on a need and invites me to join Him in some plan of His to meet it.  When that happens, I want to HEAR Him and join Isaiah in saying:  “Here am I, Lord!  Send me!!”