All posts in category Life

Revelation 20:1-10 – Sermon Manuscript

-Think back to the most significant moments in your life. You can probably remember the smells, the feel, the emotions behind all of it, right?

-Receiving an award in high school, the day I got married, the day my kids were born (somewhat foggy due to lack of sleep after)

-In those moments, who was with you? Significant events don’t happen in isolation, it’s always with someone else, and Jesus wants to be that someone else for every human.

READ/PRAY

-What is this 1,000 years? One of the most hotly debated passages, with entire systems of theology built around interpretations of this.

-First thing to note: all of these positions are trying to make arguments from the text of Scripture, therefore none of them are heresy. You can believe any of these positions and still be a faithful, orthodox Christian, if anyone tries to tell you that you HAVE to believe certain things about the end times just give up the conversation because it won’t be worth your time! 

-Second is this 1,000 years is used 6x in the entire Bible, and they’re all in vs. 2-7 that doesn’t mean we just ignore them, but keep them in perspective!

-Third: the main point of this entire story isn’t the 1,000 years, it’s the new heavens and earth! In the timeline of eternity, 1,000 years is nothing! 2 Peter 3:8 “Dear friends, don’t overlook this one fact: With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.” When we have eternity, 1,000 years is as significant as we count a day. It matters, but it’s not the main thing.

-So what MUST you believe about the end times?

1. Jesus is coming back physically, for real. He will return bodily to enact His perfect, just, and eternal reign. His kingdom will be established, and it will be a physical reality, not just a spiritual one. Everyone agrees on this point.

2. No one knows the day or the hour. The only thing we can say with certainty is each day gets us 1 day closer to THE day. That’s it! And if you try to predict it you’ll ruin it for the rest of us because NO ONE knows!

3. Jesus isn’t going to become King. You can’t become something you already are. Jesus is already ruling from His throne, and He invites us to join with Him in His work of reconciling the world to Himself (2 Cor. 5:19)

-3 positions (all of which have subsets of thought): premil, amil, postmil. None of these positions require the 1,000 years to refer to a literal 1,000 years (numbers are often signs) This is the only time I’ll use charts in Revelation!

-Amillennial: many prefer to call this “realized millennialism” “a” means no, they argue that this 1,000 years refers to the time between Jesus’ 2 comings, not future. This was the predominant thought among the church from the 400s until the 1800s, due to the influence of Augustine. They argue that the binding of Satan took place when Jesus died, and since then, God has regularly been working to draw people to Himself and conform them into His image, literally stealing them from the domain of Satan (we’ll get there)

-Postmillennialist: the gospel will continually spread across the globe until we get “1,000 year” time period where God’s peace and justice are the predominant focus across the world.

-Premillennial: Jesus returns before (pre) His millennial reign. This one has a sharp divide between historic (classical) vs. dispensational premillennial. Historic appeal to early church fathers like Papias and Irenaeus for their support, and dispensational premil didn’t come onto the scene until the 1800s. Dispensational argue for a secret rapture 7 years before Jesus’ return, and that was what most evangelicals in America believed in the 20th century (if you ever heard teaching on Revelation it was probably this kind) I don’t agree with it for 3 reasons (1) partly because most of church history was dominated by amil, (2) nothing in Revelation points to a secret taking away of the church because the church remains throughout the entire book, and (3) the passages people appeal to for a secret rapture I would argue shouldn’t be interpreted as a secret rapture, but should instead be read as either punishment/judgment or being a part of God’s welcoming committee. If you want to talk more about that, let me know!

-There is a very tiny difference between postmil and classical premil, they both use the same interpretive tools for approaching all of Scripture, including this text. My caution to you is to not use this text as a way of trying to interpret the rest of Scripture. Remember: numbers throughout Revelation are symbols and not statistics. However, the reason I’m still in the premil camp (barely) is because nowhere in Revelation does time serve as a symbol for something other than time (which is my issue with amil), my issue with postmil is it’s too positive, and my issue with premil is it tends to be too pessimistic!

-Every interpretive option has “problem” texts, does better with some verses than others, as we work through today, I’ll be primarily arguing for the historical premil, but will also share how the other options make their arguments.

  1. Serpent Bound (1-3)

-We’ve seen lots of angels! And we saw an angel holding the key to the abyss back in Rev. 9 to allow the locusts to escape. This time, instead of letting things out, he’s throwing something into the abyss.

-Apparently different than the lake of fire, as we’ll see in vs. 10. 

-Binds Satan for a thousand years

-Last week we saw the 2 beasts captured and thrown into the lake of fire

-Lots of emphasis given to this binding: seized, bound, threw, closed, sealed.

-Premil believes this is part of Jesus’ return

-Amil believes this binding happened when Jesus was rose from the dead (based on Mark 3:27 “But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can plunder his house.”)

-Do you think Satan is currently bound and not deceiving the nations? Seems to miss the way the beast has been the puppet master behind all the political persecution throughout this section.

-Released a second time, or is this recounting the same event we saw last week: the final “battle” where God’s rule is enacted? 

-I believe this is referring to a second battle, but you’ll need to wait until the end to see why! It comes up in vs. 9

  • Saints Seated and Share (4-6)

-John’s focus shifts from the dragon to the saints. Some work needed to understand what John’s saying here! 

-Thrones, people seated on them with authority. Rev. 2:26

-And the souls who had been beheaded, connects back to Rev. 1:2

-Don’t push the idea of beheading too far – most likely a stand in for all believers, who may be required to pay for their belief with their life, because the descriptions are true of all believers.

-They reigned with Christ, which we are currently doing! Eph. 2:6, right now we’re meant to serve as Jesus’ ambassadors, that is we represent Him and His rule and reign to the rest of the world. 

-If what I’ve proposed on vs. 4 is true, then vs. 5 refers to the resurrection of the unbelievers. John calls this the “first resurrection,” but he never goes on to talk about a second resurrection, so we need to do some inferring.

-Blessed – every other time it’s used in the book (6 others for total of 7) it refers to all believers. Priests – same, every other time it refers to all believers.

-“Second death” John never refers to a first death, so once again we’re speculating. 

-This is where the premil position is probably weakest and amil is strongest because there’s some things here that seem to not make sense to us. At face value, it appears that all believers will be resurrected to receive their glorified bodies, and will be living and judging on earth at the same time that unbelievers have their normal unglorified bodies for this thousand year time period (however long that actually is!) Is that even possible? Is that correct?

-I’m going to go ahead and argue yes! But why? Because God is FAR more patient than any of us, and once again in the grand scheme of eternity 1,000 years isn’t that long. I believe this 1,000 years is the final demonstration that even when people are no longer blinded and deceived by Satan, they’ll still reject Jesus and choose sin.

-The other reason I think this is because we already have an instance where a glorified body was here walking around the earth hanging out with people who didn’t have their glorified bodies yet, and people still didn’t believe Him, that’s Jesus. Believe it or not, we do have a picture of this reality and if God’s done it once, why wouldn’t He do it again?

-If this feels or sounds odd to you, it may be because of how culturally conditioned we are, and how much we tend to view the material as only bad and negative.

-I was at a funeral recently where the speaker mentioned that the important part, the spiritual and immaterial part was saved. But that’s wrong! That’s platonic philosophy, not Christianity! God’s plan is to renew both heaven AND EARTH. So God’s plan includes a period of time where the world will be operating as it should have been operating forever. Where He is on His throne and all of us are given a job to spread His influence across the world. 

-The hard part for me is that I’ll have to find a new job when we get to this point, because I theoretically won’t need to preach anymore! But anyone who has a job outside of ministry will be able to take that vocation with you (we’ll get there in a couple weeks, this is just a teaser!) 

-And remember, this isn’t the ultimate end for us. This is just a taste of how great it will be! Yet even when everything is as it should be, with Jesus on His throne and His followers faithfully following after Him, people will still reject Him. That’s just how depraved humans are, just how prone humans are to reject and walk away from Him, at the end of time no one will be able to blame God for being unkind or impatient with them.

-If you’ve ever read The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, this is the closest you can find in the Bible as evidence for his beliefs in there.

  • Satan’s Demise (7-10)

-After these 1,000 years, Satan is released for what was earlier called “a short time” to conduct the true final battle.

-Similarities to last time, drawing the armies up, but where in 19 it only listed kings of the earth and their armies, now it says all nations. So interpreters argue that Gog & Magog are a stand in for the nations of the world (picking up on the terminology Ezekiel uses Ezek. 38-39). Much larger army than before!

-Shows that even after all this time where Jesus was ruling, the world was as it should be, as soon as Satan is released the people flock to him with their plans to attempt to overthrow Jesus’ perfect reign.

-“Beloved city” aka “encampment of the saints” which is Jerusalem, but not the Jerusalem we know today, because that’s a stand in/representative for the entire universe (which you’ll need to come back for in 2 weeks to see how!)

-Once again, a very anticlimactic battle. 

-Saved the illustration for this week: end of ROTK, Aragorn and a tiny army of men and elves (with a dwarf and a couple hobbits) draw up against Sauron and all the forces of evil. Aragorn whispers “For Frodo” and charges. Outnumbered, impossible odds, and then the moment the ring is destroyed the earth caves in on itself and Mordor is destroyed, leaving only the good guys standing.

-Similarly here: fire consumes the army, reminiscent of another showdown in the OT (1 Kings 18) where Elijah confronts the prophets of Baal and attempt to call down fire from heaven. Spoiler alert, Elijah wins, and to connect it to last week, he wins by speaking and asking God to respond.

-Devil, dragon, ancient serpent, Satan (deceiver) finally thrown into the same place as the 2 beasts. Place of never-ending torment “day and night forever and ever.”

-We’ll look at this more closely next week, but the lake of fire is the same place unbelievers are thrown, too. After all this time to repent and turn to God, even at this late stage they refuse.

-Shared a story before of someone I heard at school saying he would just wait until he was on his deathbed to confess and get into heaven, this shows us that won’t actually happen. His choices even up to the end will be to turn away from God and pursue his own sin.

-Friends, everything we do has consequences, either positive or negative. That’s why you have to walk by a sign that say “One Step Closer” each time you walk into our doors. Every day is a new opportunity for us to grow closer to Jesus. Unfortunately, it’s also an opportunity to walk further away from him.

-PDT life isn’t made up of a few major decisions, it’s made up of millions of tiny decisions that turn into your life. What decisions are you going to make today?

-Talking with staff this week about technology – how do we use technology as Christians, as something that draws us closer to Jesus? 

-Conversations with others: how do we engage with other people in a way that allows us to better model Jesus to them AND push them closer to Jesus?

-Watching the Vikings tonight, how can we walk that in a way that brings us closer to Jesus? 

-Friends, Jesus wants every tiny little part of your life to be a way of engaging with Him. Will you allow Him in?

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by mikethestrand on November 3, 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon, Theology
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Posted by mikethestrand on November 3, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/11/03/revelation-201-10-sermon-manuscript/

Revelation 17 – Sermon Manuscript

-What animal do you see on the screen?

-Is this a picture of an old woman or a young lady?

-Last one: vase or face?

-Fun tricks! What we’re going to see in today’s text is that Satan is great at pulling optical illusions. Paul summarizes it well in 2 Cor. 11 “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. 15 So it is no great surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will be according to their works.” 

-Today’s text is a call for us to not be seduced by Satan’s schemes, to remain alert to his schemes, and to remember that the end of following him is destruction

READ/PRAY

  1. A Woman on a Beast (1-6)

-Recapitulation: repeating the same story from a different perspective, hence the 7 seals, trumpets, bowls are recounting the same event from different perspectives 

-7th all recount lightning, thunder, earthquake, and hail. Exact same language in each section, as if they’re recounting the same event but focusing on different aspects of the end.

-Intro from Discipleship on the Edge

-As I said earlier, I think today’s text is the most explicit call to wake up and live differently because the world will continually, day after day work to seduce us with her charms.

-Friends, this is why it’s SO important to meet here every week. This gathering isn’t an optional add on for when you have free time, this is your lifeblood to remember what’s truly true, to be reminded that there are spiritual implications to everything we do. It’s so easy to question and doubt when you don’t have this, and even when you have this it’s easy to doubt!

-I wrestled through this in 2021. As I’ve shared I listen to a lot of podcasts, found one that had a lot of musicians that I like and listened to it. The problem was all of them were ex-vangelical and talking about deconstructing their faith, without any sense of rebuilding. Things at church were difficult in that season, we were adjusting to having 3 kids (laughable now) but I found myself starting to get disillusioned with the church. I’ve shared before the need to preach to yourself more than you listen to yourself, and I found myself listening a whole lot more than I was preaching! I’d think really dumb things like church doesn’t matter, God doesn’t care, His ways are harmful: guys I know better than that! What snapped me out of it was listening to one of those musicians again who shared a similar story of wrestling through dumb questions and he realized it was because he had been touring too much and not spending time with his church family. About this time a Psalm became a balm to me, Psalm 73. I share that because I want you to understand that we’ll all wrestle through seasons of doubts, and the temptation is to not tell anyone about them. Friends, bring them to the church! When you’re discouraged or doubting, bring it here!

-Graphic warning: John uses pretty strong language!

-“One of the 7 angels” reference back to last week

-Zooming in on the 7th bowl for these next 2 chapters, how the destruction of Babylon will take place

-This is also intentionally contrasted with another woman that we’ll get to in Rev. 21, but listen to the description there: Does that sound similar to anything we read this morning?

-John is contrasting the city of God against the city of man, described as women. One destined to last forever, one destined for destruction.

-Babylon is taken from Gen. 11 the tower of Babel where the goal was for the people to build a name for themselves, which is idolatry. Throughout history you see the city of man continually trying to go their own way and refuse to submit to God’s will for them.

-The imagery picks up in vs. 3

-The woman’s sitting on a beast that we saw in Rev. 13 (signified by the 7 heads and 10 horns, remember John doesn’t follow a linear approach to this story)

-At first blush she sounds beautiful, well dressed, well put together, but it’s all a façade. In her hand is a gross cup (Fear Factor, youth group games)

-Label on her forehead, just like we saw the mark of the beast in Rev. 13, not a literal mark, but a way of identifying their MO. This woman’s primary motivation is the mother of everything deranged on earth

-What’s in her cup is the blood of the saints, she keeps oppressing and killing them, just like a drunk person can’t stop drinking, she can’t stop killing them. A way of demonstrating the city of man: opposed to God and His people.

-John is amazed. The word he uses here for “greatly astonished” was used earlier in Rev. 13:3

-Just as I shared earlier, even John isn’t immune to the allure of the woman! She’s seductive, pulling people in, and it takes an angel to wake John up.

  • The Beast Is… (7-14)

-Ever been zoning out and it takes someone pushing you or saying something repeatedly to get you to snap out? That’s what the angel does here.

-One of the few places in Revelation we get a description of what’s happening. Now, that explanation doesn’t fill every detail in, but it does give some clarity.

-Mystery in the NT isn’t the same way we use mystery today. Something previously concealed that’s now been revealed in God’s redemptive plan.

-The beast is trying but failing to copy Jesus’ atoning work. It was, currently isn’t, but is about to come up.

-Governments and regimes opposed to God and His work. At the time it was Rome, and it will continue coming back again and again. I really enjoy reading thrillers, got really into Tom Clancy, the threat of Communism, but then it seemed like communism died, but now we’ve got a whole new threat of totalitarian regimes in other parts of the world.

-Who’s astonished? (same word as before) those who have not been written in the book of life, aka those who are following the beast.

-Mind that has wisdom, just like Rev. 13

-Wisdom for what? To understand and live faithfully as someone who follows the Lamb instead of the beast. Again, the world is enticing, it looks beautiful but at the end of the day it only leads to death.

-7 heads are 7 mountains:

-Rome. Rome was built on 7 mountains, and now we see the woman sitting on them. And just to make it even more confusing they’re also 7 kings! 

-But wait, we’re just getting started! Because 5 of the kings have fallen, the 6th us, and the other hasn’t come yet. No one has figured out what John’s referring to here. And then to get going even more, the beast that we’ve seen is an 8th that’s one of the 7, and pretty soon you start to think that John doesn’t even know how to count!

-Best explanation I read involves 2 previous ideas. First is the number 6 which is the number of man and falling short, which signifies that the current king continually falls short. Then the 8th is similar to Proverbs: 7 things I hate, 8 are an abomination, just a way of bringing emphasis to that one.

-Next verse we have 10 more kings who will serve for a short time.

-Has no 1st century parallel, so most likely referring to the complete turning away from God in preparation for His return as the world draws near to the end. It seems that what John goes on to say validates this interpretation.

-They have 1 purpose, they go to make war against the Lamb. That’s coming up, but just bear in mind each time it talks about this coming war is there’s a ton of buildup and when the final showdown happens there’s no war! Jesus shows up, speaks and wins, which is what John says here.

-The world will continue fighting against Jesus, but what they don’t realize is Jesus has already won. He’s already sitting on His throne, He’s already ruling and reigning, but He’s waiting until history has been completed to come back. He’s Lord above any other lord and King above any other competing king.

  • The Woman Is… (15-18)

-Even more explanation of the vision: the waters the woman sits on covers the world. No one is exempt from the influence of this woman. Anywhere you have people you’ll have the pull of the woman.

-And here’s the irony. While it initially looked like the woman was ruling over the beast by riding on them, that’s shown to be a farce because they turn around and destroy her. Her clothes will be ripped off, they’ll eat her flesh, and then burn her carcass. It’s gross! But it’s also a picture of how evil always, always, ALWAYS will turn in on itself. It’s never satisfied, it never rest, and it will continually seek to exert its’ control further and further. You can see this in literally any totalitarian government in the world! 

-Think of Russia with Putin. With all the bodies left in his wake how feasible would it be for him to step down? That’s a death sentence for him! Or Kim Jong-Un in North Korea, he claims to be a god. How likely would a transfer of power be from him? How long would he live if he willingly resigned? And on and on we could go throughout history.

-Yet who’s still in control? God. Everyone is still culpable for their choices and actions, yet God can still work to carry out his plans. 

-How does that work? I don’t know. I’ve done a fair amount of reading and research on this topic, and I want to be very careful to not go further than the Bible goes in discussing the things of the Lord. 

-Somehow and some way God is in complete control such that nothing can stand in the way of His ultimate plans. And at the same time, humans are responsible moral creatures who can willingly choose actions and activities that have real consequences. We’re not robots forced to choose things we wouldn’t willingly pursue. And I would argue that we’re at another mystery that we get to spend eternity discussing without the same sinful constraints we have here! I love the word paradox when we talk about some of these things. According to google, a paradox is: “a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true.” When we reach a paradox we’re reminded that God’s ways aren’t our ways and His thoughts aren’t our thoughts, so our response should be to fall on our faces in worship of Him. 

-Jesus being fully God and fully man. God being 3 persons and 1 God. God being completely sovereign and humans being willingly able to choose sin or obedience to God. Paradox, a reminder for us to worship Him.

-Finally the woman is solidified: the great city (Rome, Babylon, Washington DC, New York City, London, Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai) All of the cities on this side of eternity will be marked by the allure of this sinful woman. Opposed to God, hating His people, doing everything they can to take more and more power. 

-Think of what cities are: mass densities of people. One of the first things we learn about people in the Bible is people are sinners. So if you take a bunch of sinners and throw them together in 1 location, what do you think the consequence of that is going to be? Lots and lots of sin. You see that reality all over in the Bible!

-But the craziest thing about that reality is in the new heavens and earth God’s people live together in a city, New Jerusalem, a city where this woman will have no power or influence, where the effects of sin are non-existent. Can you imagine that? I struggle to even process something like that! I’ve been to some pretty cool cities and all of them have sinful pulls in them.

-The unfortunate thing is it’s not just cities that are marked by sin, even if you move to the middle of Antarctica and live alone, this prostitute will still find you because you’re still with you, and I hate to tell you but you’re a sinner. And this is where we once again get to the good news of Revelation: you don’t need to stay there!

-Once again, the message we’re seeing in Revelation is the reminder that there are 2 ways to live, in the city of man (Babylon) or the city of God. Both of the stories of these cities originate in Genesis and continue fighting against each other throughout history. The dragon (the old serpent) leads 1 city, and God leads the other city.

-And right now these 2 cities look like they’re in competition with each other, and many times it looks like the city of man is winning, doesn’t it? We hear of pastors falling out of ministry (again), we hear story after story of people deconstructing their faith, of Christian influence waning.

-Yet at the same time, I keep hearing more stories of revival and renewal breaking out across the world. Football players at THE Ohio State meeting for testimonies and prayer, 10,000 students at Univ. of Arkansas met for a night of prayer and baptisms, University of South Carolina, TX A&M Corpus Christi. Friends even when it feels like the world is getting worse, God is still on the move and at work! The city of God continues breaking in against the city of man, and it requires us being faithful to continue bringing the light into the darkness, to remember that we are first and foremost citizens of heaven and to live differently because of that. 

-What does that look like?

1- Walk by faith and not by sight. Remember that this woman looks attractive and appealing. Even John was tempted by her!

2- Be ok living differently than your friends and neighbors. We have different goals, we’re living as citizens of a different kingdom which means we need to look, act, and think differently than many of the people we’re rubbing shoulders with on a regular basis. Work hard, but don’t let your work define you. Steward your possessions, but don’t let them control you. Care for your kids but remember they’re first and foremost God’s and not yours.

3- Practice the regular gifts of grace God has given (Bible, prayer, church) Bible is God’s very Word, He still speaks to us in and through His Word. Prayer is us responding to Him, speaking back. Church is the new nation that we belong to, our citizenship is in Heaven and church is a glimpse of that reality where we’re brought into and invested in people that we wouldn’t naturally get along with (different ages)

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by mikethestrand on October 6, 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Relationships, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on October 6, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/10/06/revelation-17-sermon-manuscript/

Revelation 16 – Sermon Manuscript

-When you think of God, what comes to your mind? Is God in your mind like a divine Santa Claus who’s there to give gifts? Is He like Zeus who just waits for something to displease him and send out a lightning bolt? Is He like the dad from Full House who’s always understanding and patient? Is He like the perfect grandfather with flowing gray locks and perfect hair as Michealangelo pictured Him in the Sistine Chapel? 

-I hope the past few weeks have been stretching to you! In our world today we emphasize the love and grace of God, but we tend to miss the justice and wrath of God as just as true as His love. It’s jarring to our Western mind to think about justice and wrath as right attribute of the God of the Bible.

-But what about this explanation of God by Richard Dawkins? What Dawkins (and many others) miss is God hasn’t changed! The culture around us has changed significantly since Genesis 1 was written (and Revelation 16) but that’s for us to process through, not God!

-We’re continuing today with the theme of God’s wrath being poured out like bowls. Friends let me pause to remind us that while God is a wrathful God, that’s not the only attribute of God. God’s wrath is only poured out on those opposed to Him, God’s wrath is meant to be a warning to lead people to repentance. Listen for that theme as we read the text together:

READ/PRAY

-Last week, Micah prepped us for this week. God’s wrath is promised to come on those who refuse to serve Him. But before we look at the bowls, I think we need to think about why we’ve now gotten to God’s wrath being poured out, and in order to do that we need to understand the storyline of the Bible.

-In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The culmination of that was humans who were tasked by God with imaging Him in the rest of creation, stewarding and caring for the creation, and ruling over the creation, but they were also given limits, a law to follow in order to flourish in the world as God intended. But our first parents (Adam & Eve) rebelled and disobeyed God’s law. 

-From that point humanity split into the followers of God and those opposed to God. The followers of God were meant to serve as representatives to the rest of creation what true life looked like. By obeying God’s law it would lead to flourishing and peace. But time and time again God’s people disobeyed. 

-Then Jesus comes and lives the perfect life where He completely obeys every law of God. I don’t it’s a coincidence that one passage describes Jesus as weeping over Jerusalem (Luke 19), how frustrating do you think it would be to see the brokenness in the world and people’s refusal to live as God intended? Jesus then dies for the sins of the world, and offers people a new way to flourish in the world, which Jeremiah describes as having God’s law written on our hearts: instead of being written on stone tablets our internal drives and desires will shift and be able to align with God’s law, His instructions for living as He intended. 

-But we don’t see the full implications of that yet. It’s hard to obey God’s law, we don’t always pursue Him, we continue to rebel and disobey which is why we have Revelation to remind us that this struggle will someday end.

-One of the phrases that I’ve intentionally been using throughout this explanation is God’s law. His expectations for His people have never changed since the creation of the world. The way that looks has changed as His plan has unfolded, but we still need to obey God’s law, and the reason for that is summarized by a quote I read this week: “God’s law is not an imposition, but an exposition.” E. Stanley Jones. 

-I think that when we think of God’s law our minds drift towards the imposition (that was true for Adam and Eve). We view God’s law as shackles and restraints preventing us from living our “best life.” Friends, your best life isn’t going to happen until Jesus comes back! But the only way to have a life of flourishing is by living according to God’s law, hence it’s an exposition (explanation) of this world. And I love how even scientific study regularly backs up God’s law. Like the fact that loneliness is being described as an epidemic today, God says in the beginning it’s not good for humans to be alone. First thing for us to realize is God’s law is good and leads to life.

-Secondly, we are storied people, even though we often don’t realize it. We define ourselves based on stories/accounts that happen to us, and what God invites us to do is align our stories with His and move to start identifying our lives based on the 1 true story of history that will stand the test of time. What that means is you have the choice to either live in God’s story or pursue your own story, which God calls sin. One of the most striking things to me as I’ve been studying Revelation is how much the Exodus story is meant to serve as a primary story for God’s people, and it’s especially true in today’s passage. 

-Exodus plauges

-The thing to keep in mind is there are only 2 ways to live, either you obey God or you don’t, either you live in God’s story or you live in the dragon’s story. So as we look at God’s wrath, we need to remember something J.I. Packer said: “Nobody stands under the wrath of God, save those who have chosen to do so.” J.I. Packer. 

-Friends, we have a choice in our lives to follow after God’s law, or to follow after God’s wrath. We’ll once again see the destruction that comes from disobeying God, but even in the midst of that be reminded of God’s mercy.

-Bowls are a natural, automatic reflex of holiness (just as you have a gag reflex)

7 seals: from the church, 7 trumpets: from the world, 7 bowls: from the temple of God

-There is at least a closer connection between the bowls and the trumpets, but remember as well the increasing severity of the judgment. Seals affected ¼ of the earth, trumpets 1/3, now with the bowls it’s the whole earth.

  1. 4 Bowls on the World (1-9)

-From the temple – God is done with the rebellion and sin and is going to deal with it once and for all.

-The punishment fits the crime for every bowl that comes out. First bowl: Rev. 13 those who received the mark of the beast are given a mark of judgment. What they thought would be their saving grace earlier (literally the only way to participate in the economic system) ends up being their demise.

-And friends, how often is this true of us? We adopt sinful habits or practices that we think will help us succeed, but then they end up consuming us later. I think of the house projects I’ve been working on – I keep finding stuff that the previous owner did that were done completely wrong! And if I weren’t going through and cleaning them up could have let to my house literally being destroyed! And most of the time the issues we struggle with aren’t major things at the beginning, but if we’re not regularly reminded of the way the world lulls us to sleep and tries to get us to stop living in God’s story, it will consume us.

-We see it again with the next 2 bowls, the thing that people view as saving them is what leads to their demise, and I think this has 2 implications to it. First is what’s spoken in the text:

-This is a just judgment given to the earth, because they’ve killed God’s messengers, so in response the earth is suddenly covered in blood. God talks about this all the way back in Genesis when he says if someone sheds blood their blood will also be shed. There will be retribution for the disobedience of people. 

-But the second implication we can draw from this is in the way people look to money and wealth as their primary focus in life. Shipping back then, just like today, serves as a way people can expand their wealth and status, and fish are a great source of food! I love a good sushi! (good, my general rule is I won’t order seafood at a landlocked state)

-A couple weeks ago I talked about the reality that we become like what we worship, which is true! But what if God’s response is to take what we worship away from us? What if this water being turned to blood means people no longer are able to profit from the normal means they’ve typically used?

-Just this week, some new legislation came out banning any Chinese or Russian software in our cars (that’s a weird thing to say) What would the implications be of every vehicle in our country was hit with a software bug? (I know some of you with old school cars would be fine!) The great depression was not that long ago! I know I’m always told that if I invest now it’s guaranteed to grow by 3% until I retire, but what if it doesn’t? This is John’s reminder that we’re not as in control as we think we are. God can call down judgment at any moment, and someday He will! Are we ready for that day?

-The last thing to note from this is the last line of vs. 6 “They deserve it!” GRK “they are worthy” Worthy for what? Judgment! This is picking up an idea from Rev. 4:11. This communicates the same idea I’ve been sharing: everyone is worthy of something, every human (apart from Jesus Christ) is worthy of condemnation because they’re not realizing that only God is worthy to receive praise.

-Which is what the next verse reminds us of. The altar is the place where the martyrs are. The martyrs, who had begged God earlier to avenge them, are now acknowledging that God is right and true and when He judges, it’s just. 

-Think of it like if you got caught blatantly disobeying the law (officer pulls you over for driving 20 mph over the speed limit). There are consequences to your actions, it is just for the police officer to give you a ticket. Similarly with God it is just for Him to judge you, but God doesn’t just leave you there, He provides a way for your judgment to disappear, we’ll get there at the end.

-Similarly to the previous bowls, this time people are scorched, but notice their response

-Instead of repenting and moving towards living in God’s story, they blaspheme and refuse to repent. Friends, even in His judgment God wants people to move towards Him! In this verse it’s saying there’s the choice to repent! God wants everyone to follow Him, to live as they should, to find life to the full, but not everyone will. C.S. Lewis quote.

  • 3 Bowls on the Beast (10-21)

-The focus of the bowls moves in a different direction now to the throne of the beast, and just like in the Exodus, the beast’s power is shown to be deficient because his kingdom is completely dark.

-Response of the people here seems weird, doesn’t it? Why are they gnawing their tongues? Not in the text, but I think they’re doubling down on their refusal to repent. If they don’t have tongues it’s going to be difficult to be forced to praise God, isn’t it? This is demonstrating a people who have become so calloused they’ll do everything they can to continue in their ways instead of repenting and trusting in the one true God.

-And it leads me to asking a question for you: do you have any areas in your life where you’re proverbially cutting off your tongue so you don’t need to submit it to God? Do you have little secret impulses or desires that aren’t honoring to God? I had a friend over the summer share that he’s working on better worshipping God with his dreams. Dreams are often the outworking of your thought life, are you worshipping God with your thought life too?

-And notice again the purpose of this pain: to lead them to repentance, but they continue refusing to repent. Friends, pain and suffering is often a kindness of the Lord that’s meant to lead us to repentance. It shocks us out of our stupor, focuses our attention and energies, and demands we pay attention to it. God walks with you even in your suffering. C.S. Lewis quote

-The sixth bowl focuses on 1 specific river that served as the Eastern border to Israel, and the place where a feared enemy in the 1st century resided. If there’s no river, there’s no protection from them.

-Unclean spirits, demonic influences. Frogs (again notice the LIKE here, not literal frogs), referencing back to the plagues of Egypt again! Text explicitly says they are demonic spirits who are opposed to God. They’ll continue fighting day after day until the great day with God comes back.

-Then there’s an interesting parenthetical note that Jesus is coming like a thief so be careful so that you don’t end up naked (guessing you didn’t think you’d be hearing that at church today) This is a warning to the church to not end up like the world. Same warning to the church at Laodicea in 3:18, reminder to store up your riches in the right place.

-Hebrew Har-Maggedio (mount Meggedio), not a mountain but a plain. A battle was fought between King Josiah of Judah and King Neco of Egypt (2 Kings 23), Judah was defeated and led to being captured by Babylon. John is recounting the great reversal of history: the new Babylon will bear the judgment of God in the exact same place the previous Babylon had conquered God’s people. See, God has an eternal scorecard, He never loses track of what takes place in the world and He will bring about perfect justice (which at times means divine irony)

-Last bowl into the air, sounds similar to Jesus’ last statement before He breathed His last, but this time what’s finished isn’t a sacrifice, what’s finished is God’s wrath being poured out. The creation is being uncreated and turning back into chaos. Similar language to the 7th seal and trumpet.

-And once again, after all this, what’s the response of the people? Blaspheming God, shaking their fist in anger at Him.

  • Judgment or Repentance?

-Friends, which side of this story are you going to be on? Part of the reason we have this book is to shake us out of our stupor, to wake us up to the realities of the life to come, and to remind us that even though Satan looks powerful here, he has no ultimate power in the end. Because even as we read this text (that sounds shocking and awful) we’re reminded that there’s still mercy, but not how we think:

“There is no refuge from the judging God. But there is refuge in the judging God. Mercy!” Darrell Johnson

-Who could imagine that? We can be preserved from the wrath of God only by running to the wrathful God because that God is also the only loving God. In the coming weeks we’re going to see how the dragon uses and abuses people promising riches and life but it only leads to their destruction, just like in the garden at the beginning. As Jesus has promises, He offers life to the full, but it comes by being obedient to Him.

-So I’ll leave you with 2 questions today: 

-Have you brought your story in line with God’s story by repenting and putting your faith in Jesus?

-If you are following in God’s story, are there any areas in your life that you’re holding on to too tightly and not allowing to be brought into God’s story?

-Either way, God’s mercies are new every day, including today, so I’d encourage you to repent and align or realign your life with God’s story.

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by mikethestrand on September 28, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on September 28, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/09/28/revelation-16-sermon-manuscript/

Revelation 14:14-20 – Sermon Manuscript

-I HATE scary movies! Thrillers I can handle (and often enjoy, even when they keep me up late because I need to find out what happens)

-Even though I don’t watch them, I know all the tropes that come with scary movies: don’t go near the basement, stay away from windows, make sure you stay in a group. Good lessons to be learned if you ever find yourself in a horror movie!

-One of the pieces I hope you’re taking away from our study in Revelation is similar – that there are only 2 options to how you’re going to live your life: either worshipping God or worshipping the dragon. Today’s text is meant to be like a horror movie where we run away from these consequences and run towards God. See sometimes God tells stories that are repulsive to serve as models for us so that we run away from sin and death and run to Him. 

-C.S. Lewis “Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”

-Part of the reason we (and the 7 churches) need to read about true justice is because we need the encouragement to remain faithful in the midst of this difficult world. When you’re used and abused, sometimes the only encouragement is to keep your eyes on Jesus, knowing that He will bring about perfect justice.

READ/PRAY

-Same section as last week, interlude between judgments, we’ve looked at 7 seals and 7 trumpets, then we’re in this interim leading into the 7 bowls where I believe John is given a glimpse of the arrival of Jesus through a heavenly perspective. 

-Jesus, the Creator of everything, came into creation as a baby. Didn’t appear out of nowhere, didn’t float down out of the sky, didn’t crash to earth on a spaceship like Clark Kent, he was born the same way you and I were born, which meant Satan thought he had the perfect opportunity to finally destroy God’s plans, but each time he’s thwarted! He gets angrier and angrier and works to destroy God’s plans and bring praise on himself instead of praising God, that’s why there’s this repeating theme of worshipping and praising God throughout this book, Satan’s aim is to steal that worship.

-Today we see 2 stories of reaping, but before we dive in there’s some debate about this section (much like the rest of the book) 3 options as to what this refers to:

-Both are negative judgments against those not following God

-1 is positive (grain) and the other is negative (grapes)

-Both are positive judgments referring to salvation.

-Yes, every interpretive option is on the table! Personally, I don’t find the first option convincing, and only found 1 person who argued that these both refer to negative judgments from God, and I’m currently leaning toward the middle option that this is recounting 2 separate harvest that serve 2 different purposes, as I’ll explain when we go through.

  1. The Grain Harvest (14-16)

-The next thing revealed to John is one like the Son of Man, some debate about who this could be referring to, some angel that looks similar to Jesus? Jesus himself?

-I would argue it’s Jesus. This title (taken from Daniel), last time referred to Jesus in 1:13, so it would make sense that when it’s used again it’s referring to the same person, this time instead of standing among lampstands (the church), he’s seated on a cloud. Jesus says his return will be “on the clouds” which is being realized in this vision to John.

-Golden crown on his head, connects back to the elders, signifies his rule and reign. Last time we saw the Son of Man, he had 7 stars in his hand, this time what does he have?

-A sharp sickle. This time he’s not standing sovereign in the church, this time he’s standing sovereign in harvesting.

-This would have been a common theme in the 1st century. Think of one of the pivotal scenes in the Gladiator: walking in the wheat field. When’s the last time you took a stroll in a wheat field? This is part of where we can miss some of the stories or implications in the Bible because we live in a different day. In the 1st Century their lives were dominated by the changing of seasons, and if the fields weren’t taken care of, death was immanent. When I need food it comes in saran wrap that I rip open! 

-So when John sees Jesus with a sharp sickle in his hand, we tend to miss the implications, too. My mind jumps to something like the grim reaper, or a horror movie (doesn’t help that people already have Halloween decorations up). Not a positive idea. What John’s readers had in mind was more like this: farmer’s out in their fields reaping their harvest, that means it was another successful year, they were going to continue having enough food, it’s a positive connection.

-Then “another angel” appears. Remember from last week, we’d seen 3 angels who delivered various messages: eternal gospel, fall of Babylon, the cup of God’s wrath. This angel comes out of the temple.

-The temple is where God lives, so this angel is sent from God with a message that it’s time to reap. This is where people have attempted to argue that this Son of Man couldn’t be Jesus then, because angels are sent from God, angels don’t tell God what to do. I would disagree with that sentiment, because it doesn’t say Jesus is submitting to them, all the angel is doing is sharing the message from God, and if you remember, one of the things Jesus said while He was on earth was that He didn’t even know when He was going to come back. How that works when He is God is a mystery, but we know that in everything Jesus does, He submits Himself to the will of the Father. 

-Why is it time to reap? Because the harvest is ripe. This is full of a bunch of previous imagery John would have heard from spending time with Jesus! Just a couple examples:

-Jesus tells a couple parables about sowing and reaping in Matt. 9, one is very well known where the seed is sown on all sorts of different soils which leads to different outcomes, but the second parable is applicable for today’s passage. 

-He shares a story of a good farmer who’s taking care of his field and plants his seed faithfully and lets it start to grow, but during the night one of his enemies throws a different kind of seed into the field to compete with the wheat. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to us, think of this like 2 businesses who are in constant competition with each other and continually look for ways to undercut the other. When the plants start to come up, they notice that wheat and weeds are growing together! The servants come to the master and ask if they should pull up the weeds, and he responds:

-This is a picture of what happens all around us all the time! Just as the eternal gospel is being sown and people are being saved, Satan (the enemy) is continuing to work to fight against God, just like this image shows us. Friends, this should give us hope because it means there is hope, even if it feels like the world is just getting worse!

-The second passage that illumines this text is from John 4 right after he met a sinful woman at the well and told her that He is the Messiah. His disciples come back very confused, and here’s how Jesus answers their questions:

-His disciples can read the signs of the seasons, as can we! As the temperature drops at night, we know the leaves will start changing colors, and then the first frost will come and kill all your plants. But how good are we at reading the signs of the spiritual seasons? See, we’re supposed to be looking for opportunities to share the gospel indiscriminately, we’re supposed to be like the Sower who doesn’t care what soil we’re in we continue throwing out seed.

-Because here’s the other reality: the harvest is abundant. Friends, spiritually it’s harvest season all year long! You don’t need to wait for pumpkin spice season to invite people in!

-What we see in Revelation is the implication of the gospel going out. As the seed of the gospel takes root in people’s lives they continue to grow and produce more fruit in more people and eventually will be harvested into heaven. Jesus uses so many different harvesting illustrations that John would have remembered and picked up on as he saw this vision from the Lord. 

-And because Jesus talked about this so much, I don’t want us to miss one of the applications for us today. Look at vs 38 here:

-Friends, this means we need to actively be praying that the gospel continues to go out, that more people are called by the Lord to go out and share the gospel. But this message isn’t just for others, we’re included in that “workers” word. There’s a reason we end every service saying: “you are sent.” God welcomes you in each week, and then God sends us out each week to live as his witnesses and to share the gospel in our words and our lives.

-But that’s only 1 harvest, John is given a glimpse of another harvest:

  • The Grape Harvest (17-20)

-Differences: first is done by the Son of Man, second by an angel. This one has some connection to the altar and the fire on the altar. This second one talks about the implication of the harvest, first one just mentions that the earth was harvested, so it seems like a bit of a stretch to argue that this is exactly the same as the previous one.

-First thing is an angel with a sickle, we’ve seen a sickle before! He’s ready to go, but he’s waiting for the call, so yet ANOTHER angel comes with a message.

-“Authority over fire” connection back to 8:3-5, judgment coming because of the prayers of the saints, which I think is also signified by “came from the altar” which also connects us back to the saints in Rev. 6:9 There the martyrs are begging God to return in judgment and avenge them, but they’re told to wait a little longer. Now we’re seeing that time has come.

-Instead of wheat, this time he’s to gather clusters of grapes because they’re ripe, and this is where the story diverges from the previous harvest. The grapes are successfully harvested, but then they thrown into a great winepress of God’s wrath.

-This connects to last week’s text again, 10 “he will also drink the wine of God’s wrath,” so John is saying where this judgment is coming from. Wine pressing is an interesting phenomenon in the 1st cent. The way wine was made was stomping on the grapes in a winepress until the juice flowed out, that juice was collected and preserved to let it ferment and create wine. 

-This idea is actually picked up in Rev. 19 in a description of Jesus. The one who’s enacting God’s judgment is Jesus. We talked a bit last week about God’s wrath, but don’t miss that Jesus is also wrathful. So often Jesus is pictured as a hippy who walked around with long flowing locks and told everyone to just get along, but that couldn’t be further from the truth, the difficulty is Jesus just doesn’t play by the same earthly rules that we tend to get so bogged down in. He doesn’t have to play the power game because He’s already reigning supremely. And while His first coming was in humility, His second coming is with a vengeance.

-But there are some things for us to note about this pressing of the wine. First: outside the city. We have an opposite idea of the city today than the 1st century would have!

-City provided protection and safety from the oppression of the wilderness where you could be robbed or attacked by wild animals. I have a friend who lives in downtown St. Paul and anytime he offers to host a meeting I ask if it’s safe to come in there from the burbs! Outside the city is where you were left to fend for yourself, and this is even more true when you realize that coming up in Rev. 21, the city of God will come down to be the place where God’s people can live securely, so being pressed outside of the city is a terrifying reality.

-And even more terrifying: what flows out isn’t juice but a river of blood up to about 5’ for 1,600 stadia (which is approximately the length of Palestine 1,664 stadia), symbolically it’s 4×4 by 10×10 – if you can think back to 7:1 we saw the 4 corners of the earth, thinking back to Rev. 4 there are 4 living creatures, so 4 is often referring to all of creation, then 10 refers to completeness, so what’s signified is the way God’s wrath extends to all of creation.

-One of the most significant things we’ve seen through this book is the reality that there are only 2 ways to live: either for God or against God, and everyone is moving closer to one of those realities with each decision they make.

-One of the incredible things about this section in Revelation is the judgment only comes after the eternal gospel has been proclaimed. Look back in your Bibles to 14:7 “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship the one who made heaven and earth.” How do we do that? 

  • Blood Enough?

-Throughout this section there has been this idea of wine and blood almost intermixed. Those who have the name of the beast will drink the wine of God’s wrath, here we see that wine is actually blood and condemnation on those who are opposed to God, but even in the midst of this, there is good news because someone has drunk the entire cup of God’s wrath, and now stands willing to welcome us in with open arms where we won’t need to drink that cup or be crushed in the winepress of God’s wrath, someone who took all of God’s wrath on Himself and now gives the freedom to live a new life: Jesus.

-The reality is this description of brutality described here could also be seen as describing the payment Jesus made. Do you know where Jesus was crucified? Outside the city. And think of how Isaiah describes the crucifixion in Isa. 53 Jesus was trampled so that we don’t need to be, his blood poured out so that ours doesn’t need to be.

-And what about the 1,600 stadia? Quote from Discipleship on the Edge What an incredible blessing that we have! Jesus was crushed on our behalf, His blood ran freely so that ours wouldn’t. His blood is enough to cover every sin of those who repent and believe in Him.

-Jesus talks about this idea on his last night before the crucifixion, He pleads with His Father to take the cup of wrath away, but submits Himself to His Father. Friends, Jesus drank the whole cup, not a drop of wrath needs to be given to any of us IF we trust in Jesus as the one true Messiah, the Savior of the world.

-Salvation is both the most difficult and easy thing in the world. Difficult because it meant someone had to die, someone’s blood had to run, someone had to drink the full cup of wrath. But easy because now you don’t have to, now the Bible says salvation requires 2 things: confess and believe. Confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, that He reigns over everything and is worthy to be worshipped and praised, and then believe that truth in your heart which means focusing your life in a different direction, and this is true for all of us, whether you’re a brand new believer or you’ve been a believer for 100 years, if you believe that Jesus Christ is Lord, do you live like it? What step do you need to take today to better live in Jesus’ kingdom here? 

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by mikethestrand on September 15, 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Relationships, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on September 15, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/09/15/revelation-1414-20-sermon-manuscript/

How to Go to Church – Sermon Manuscript

-In 1940, a philosopher named Mortimer Adler published what has become an often used book that remains in print even today, titled ‘How to Read a Book.’ 

-The irony is you need to know how to read a book to read this book, and often we assume we already know how to read a book. But where this is helpful is it demonstrates to you different ways of reading that we often just assume as when we pick up a book. You used to be able to demonstrate this with a newspaper (anyone remember those things?) maybe a better way of thinking today is reading differently based on the website you’re using. I read ESPN differently than CNN. I read a blog differently than I read The Onion. Because we know the kind of writing that’s taking place, we interpret what we read differently. I don’t read ESPN to learn how the stock market is doing (nor do I look to athletes for help on political opinions, but that’s a talk for a different day!)

-We approach buildings similarly, even though we don’t often think about it. I don’t go to Cub Foods to buy clothes, I don’t go to a hospital to try to buy a car (or for their coffee!) So how do we approach the church, and how should we approach the church? What should we be looking for, what should we expect, and what should our attitude be?

PRAY

-To help you remember today, I used alliteration and fill in the blanks!

  1. Excited 

-How are we supposed to be excited about coming to church, where we have to sit still for over an hour, listen to me talk for half of that time, and then miss the beginning of football games pretty soon? Do you think that maybe that’s overly idealistic?

-To see why and how we should be excited, we need to look at a few Bible passages.
-1 Thess. 5:16-24:

-We’re excited because the Bible commands us to rejoice always. Always, explicit command. This means even on Sunday morning we’re supposed to be joyful, filled with joy. That doesn’t mean we pretend everything is fine when it’s not, this joy is talking about the implications of our salvation. If our sins have been fully paid for, how should we respond? With joy! With excitement! Friends, can you believe that NOTHING can now separate us from God’s love? Death can’t, life can’t, angels can’t, the rulers of the earth can’t, anything you see now can’t, anything that’s coming in the future can’t, any other power can’t, you can’t climb high enough to escape it, you can’t dig down deep enough to outrun it, NOTHING can separate you from God’s love! Isn’t that amazing? Not only is that true, but we also now have a family of people to remind us of that truth every week, an entire group of people who are committed to rejoicing together because of the salvation Jesus has purchased for us. If you can’t get excited about that, I don’t know what to get excited about! No matter what happens to me, NOTHING is going to change my eternal position.

-What else do we see here? Constant prayer: we can be in constant conversation with the God of the universe. He not only hears us, He also cares about us and responds to us when we cry out to Him. Yet another reason to rejoice!

-And give thanks all the time. Give thanks when things are going well, give thanks when things aren’t going well. And part of the reason we can give thanks is because we never go through life alone. God is with us, and He’s given us an entire church body to walk with us!

-Finally, who’s the one who actually does this work God or us? Yes! God himself will sanctify us completely, that means He will make us perfectly holy. But it comes about by living out what all the previous verses said. God works in us, and expects us to work out our faith along with Him. Jesus gives us a picture of what this looks like when He says that He can only do what the Father tells Him to – God wants us to be completely surrendered to Him, to represent Him in every area of life and to walk with him day by day in fellowship with other believers.

-Heb. 10:25

-I was recently listening to a podcast from a Christian rapper who said this verse doesn’t mean what we tend to think it means in America, that we need to go to church each Sunday, and I’m going to disagree with this rapper here because he’s only half right. It actually means that going to church on Sunday isn’t quite enough, it means that we need to be involved and engaged in one another’s lives so much that we can know how best to encourage each other.

-There’s some provocative language here: provoke love and good works. I don’t know about you, but I don’t ever think of provoking being a good thing, and I see a lot of provoking happening in my house! A sister provokes a brother until he hits her, a twin grabs his other twin until he provokes crying. But what if we provoked each other in positive ways? Provoked someone to better love other, provoked someone to act kindly toward others. How much more excited would you be to come to church if you knew the outcome was being provoked to love and good works? Yet that’s exactly what this tells us we should be doing! The way that happens is by encouraging, how much? Even more! Anyone in here just feeling overly encouraged today, like your encouragement tank is just completely full and you can’t handle anymore? And look at the urgency that we should have for our encouragement: ALL THE MORE. What’s “the day”? Bible talks about 2 days: today, and THE day. Today we’re supposed to be faithful, because THE day when Jesus returns is coming. Each day brings us 1 day closer to THE day, so be faithful today in encouraging others!

-Rom. 12:10

-Last verse has 2 ideas in here: first is be devoted to one another in love. That’s an incredibly strong commitment, isn’t it? I heard someone recently say that the Bible talks about being devoted in 2 places: to the church, and in marriage. What I saw was the Bible primarily talks about being devoted to the Lord, but here it says we’re to be devoted to each other. That’s a much stronger commitment than just showing up 1 day a week, isn’t it? That means remaining involved in each other’s lives.

-I had someone at one church I served who was trying to take this idea to heart, and would take time each week to randomly stop by church member’s houses! Might have been taking it a little too literally, but I think the sentiment was good.

-Then we see how we’re supposed to compete with each other: outdo one another in showing honor. If you see something that God is doing in someone, encourage them in that! Honor them in that! Don’t worry them being overly encouraged, or getting a big head, let’s compete with honoring each other!

-We’re excited because we get to be with our family to be encouraged and encourage others.

  • Expectant 

-What do you expect when you come to church each Sunday? Are you expecting (as one pastor has called it) a U2 concert followed by a TED Talk? Are you expecting a choir? Are you expecting some good coffee? What is it you expect, and what should we expect?
1 Cor. 11:18

-First I want you to notice that there’s the expectation (twice) that we gather together as the church. Gathering together isn’t an optional add-on for those who claim to be Christians. 

-Second is that there are divisions where there shouldn’t be. Divisions come about when we’re not outdoing one another in showing honor, but they’re not supposed to be markers of the church.

-Finally, when there aren’t divisions, then we can celebrate the Lord’s Supper, otherwise we’re just taking a tiny piece of bread and little shot of grape juice that has no deeper significance or meaning, which we’ll see next:

Matt. 18:20

-You may have this one cross-stitched on a pillow at home! Some bigger context: Jesus is talking about church discipline. Jesus actually gave the church His authority before He left that means part of the church’s role is to help the world understand who is a part of Jesus’ kingdom and who is not. 

-It’s a delegated authority, not a final authority.

-While this verse applies specifically to church discipline, the principle is true: when we gather as the church, Jesus is here among us. So when we gather together, our expectations should be that we are meeting with God. There is something sacred and unique about our weekly gathering as the church that marks this as different than the other 166.75 hours in our week.

-We’re expectant because we actually get to meet with God

-Because we come excited and expectant, that means that we need to come:

  • Engaged 

-Church isn’t a passive spectator sport. It’s not like what I do on Sunday afternoons during football season where I turn into Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite “I could throw the pig skin a quarter mile. Would’ve won us state.” I would yell at Captain Kirk Cousins on the regular! You know what I’ve never done? Had a 400 pound lineman trying to kill me while attempting to throw an oblong ball at some of the fastest human beings on earth. It’s easy to be an armchair quarterback, but I’ll never get into the game. The church is the opposite! Church requires every single one of us playing our part in the whole body for us to function as we should, for us to be a healthy church. Think if you’ve ever broken a bone, doesn’t it make everything more difficult? 
2 Tim. 4:2

-There’s a reason preaching takes up so much time on a Sunday. We see this explicit command in there: preach the Word! We want everything we do to be built on God’s Word, and anything that doesn’t come from there needs to disappear. It doesn’t matter what season we’re in, the solution is the Word. Our lives are meant to be changed and shaped by the Word. Each week we gather to learn more about God’s Word, and then apply that Word to our lives this next week. Paul says “correct, rebuke, and encourage”

-Do you expect God to speak to you when you come here each week? An old Reformed Confession called the Second Helvetic Confession states “The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.” When I stand up here each week, I’m claiming to be God’s mouthpiece, which is a terrifying thing! It leads to much prayer on my part, and I have copied John Calvin’s practice of each step I take on my way up here saying “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” But that also means you have a responsibility to each word you hear. I have a little book here titled “Listen Up! A practical guide to listening to sermons” that I think gives some good advice on how to remain engaged each week.

-But preaching is only half of what we do, there’s a couple other passage that show us how else to remain engaged. 

Col. 3:16

-Once again, we see the emphasis on the word of Christ, AND we’re supposed to admonish and teach one another through our singing, the word Paul uses has this idea of setting right or correcting. So singing is meant to be a teaching tool where we admonish/teach each other AND sing to God. 

Eph. 5:19

-Which is what this passage says! Speaking to each other through our singing. This is why I love listening to you all sing every week! It teaches me, but it also means you need to sing! We were laughing this past week about former pastor Bruce’s ability to sing loudly enough to be heard across the room even when he doesn’t have a microphone! But that’s a blessing and encouragement to me, because he’s engaged!

-We’re engaged because we need to teach others

So be:

Committed 

-I understand that we live in a transient and consumeristic culture. Transient in that people come and go pretty regularly without any thought given to where and how they’ll remain connected to a local church body. One of the things I’ve started encouraging people if I hear they’re thinking about moving is to factor in the church into their decisions. Friends, it’s better to get paid a little less if it means you have a place where you can serve and grow more like Jesus. The math isn’t even close! But our world is also consumeristic where there’s a tendency to pick and choose the things that I like or want instead of committing myself to a body. I’ve known of people who would go to 1 church for music, then hop in their car and drive to another church for the preaching, and then were involved in a life group in a different church! Friends, commit to a local church where you engage holistically with the same people on a regular basis. It’s the best way to grow!

-Micah and I have been chatting recently about this tendency, if you are a member of a church you’re supposed to be “devoted” to it, similar to marriage. Yet I’ve had numerous conversations with people who say they’re “just looking around” at other church for a season. How do you think that would go if you told your spouse you were going to stay married to the, but you wanted to take some time to just date around for a little bit? That’s why we need to commit to 1 body.

Concerned

-Paul actually gives us instructions on how to encourage each other when we gather.

-Warn those who are idle. One of the expectations of someone who follow Jesus is to work hard. There’s no place for laziness in the kingdom of God. Just as with most things in our faith, there’s a fine line to walk because there is lots of room for play, enjoying God’s good gifts, but the Bible commands us to work hard as if everything we were doing was done for God (because it is). In 1 Tim. 5:8 Paul says that if someone will not provide for his family, he is no longer following Jesus, and is worse than an unbeliever. So one of our jobs when we gather is to exhort those who aren’t working.

-Comfort the discouraged. Friends, the church is a place for you to receive comfort. It’s the only place where you can find lasting, eternal comfort, and we as Christians are meant to comfort others just like Jesus comforts us. This is a joyful privilege for anyone who is now in Christ – we get to minister to each other as Jesus would minister to us if he were here. Do you look for ways to comfort other people?

-Help the weak. At some point, I can guarantee, you’re going to be overwhelmed by something in your life. Sickness, loss, wandering children, the troubles of this world will catch up to you, and will stretch you far beyond what you can handle. Where do you turn? My encouragement is to turn to the church! They’re people who are committed to you, concerned about you, and want to help you when you’re weak. I don’t know how anyone survives without a church family!

-Lastly, if you don’t fit into the idle, discouraged, or weak camp: then be patient. What a good reminder, because just like a nuclear family, sometimes your church family will drive you nuts, offend you, or even hurt you, so when that happens, remember to be patient with EVERYONE. At some point in my life, I’ve been all of these, and I’ve needed other people to be concerned enough for me to help me work through my issues.

-Paul summarizes this as always pursuing what is good for one another. You can’t just worry about you and God, it always has to be about WE and God, what can I do to encourage my brother or sister? How can I pursue their good? We actually need to care and value others more highly than ourselves.

Compassionate (forgiving)

-Because we live on this side of Eden and Eternity, there is going to be conflict, tension, turmoil, difficulty. That’s a guarantee. The question is what do we do with that? We are kind, compassionate and forgiving. One of our jobs is to assume the best in others instead of the worst.

-How do you go to church? Excited, expectant, engaged, which means we all need to be committed, concerned, and compassionate.

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by mikethestrand on August 25, 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon

Posted by mikethestrand on August 25, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/08/25/how-to-go-to-church-sermon-manuscript/

Psalm 40 – Sermon Manuscript

–A few years ago, a man and a woman met online and started dating. Unfortunately, he lived in Holland and she lived in China. The man eventually got fed up by the distance and decided to buy a plane ticket to visit her. He sent her all his flight information and boarded the plan. When he landed, he looked all around for his love and she wasn’t there. But he was in a new county that spoke a different language, and he had 1 mission on this trip, so he decided to wait for his girlfriend. And wait he did! After a couple days he started trending on social media, a local new outlet did a segment on him, and after 10 days of waiting he had to be taken to the hospital because of physical exhaustion. A news outlet tracked down his girlfriend, and she thought he was joking! 

-We wait pretty much daily, don’t we? I waited at a stoplight driving here this morning (just 1 thankfully)

-How do we wait for God? Today’s Psalm instructs us in what it looks like to wait for the Lord, and it doesn’t involve being ghosted at an airport

READ/PRAY

-John Stott’s outline was really helpful, so I just borrowed this from him. 

  1. Looking Backward (1-3)

-David begins by looking backwards and reflecting on God’s provision, notice past tense “waited”

-Heb. “waiting I waited” have you ever noticed how slow it is to become like Jesus, and how much effort it takes? There’s a theme throughout the Bible of periods of waiting and preparation before God uses you.

-Abraham promised a child at 75, child at 100. Joseph spent decades in servitude after being his dad’s favorite child, then he rose up to the number 2 in all of Egypt. Moses was exiled in Midian for 40 years before God came to him in a burning bush, David was anointed young and didn’t become king until 30, Paul had this radical conversion story and then he goes off to the wilderness for 3 years. But none of these experiences were wasted, and God wasn’t ignoring any of these people, instead God was using these experiences to shape and form all these men to be ready to be used by God later.

-The waiting season is rough, you may be in one now! Waiting for a new job, a new house, to go back to school, lots of life is waiting. But waiting isn’t doing nothing, despite how it often feels to us. If you just remain faithful in the midst of the waiting it is always remarkable how much work God does in those seasons, isn’t it?

-Just reflecting this past week with some people over my waiting to come here! It took almost 2 years of me looking and hoping and praying and waiting to find a church that would hire a young guy like me! Was told from 1 church that I wasn’t a good enough singer, another church told me they loved everything about me but wished I was 3 years older it was humbling and stretching! But God was still working. So friends, keep waiting! And if you’re not waiting encourage those who are waiting that you know! This will come up again, but you’ll have to wait.

-After the season of waiting, David is saved from God, notice the description in vs. 2 Hiking in mud is awful! Through my trip I experienced this, your feet get heavier, literally start weighing you down and wearing you out. Unlike that is walking on a rock-solid road. Clear path ahead, nothing to burden you. 

-And friends, that’s what it looks like to follow after God. By being obedient to Him, it allows you to be brought from muddy clay to a rock. It doesn’t mean that life will be easy, but it does mean that God will be with you in the midst of it. God’s way it right, good, true, and beautiful, it leads to flourishing as a human.

-Have you ever noticed how sociological data demonstrates this truth? I was just this week listening to a podcast that talked about all the benefits of biblical marriage: between 1 biological man and 1 biological woman in a lifetime monogamous covenantal relationship. Financial stability, healthier children, healthier lives for both spouses, it’s almost as if God knew what He was doing! 

-New song – the response of God’s movement in His people is singing. Friends, there’s a reason that we sing so much each week! Singing has been marker of God’s people since the beginning. Some theologians believe that God created through singing, I think when Adam meets Eve he bursts out in singing, this book of Psalms is an entire book dedicated to songs of God’s people. In Rev. (pick up again in 2 weeks) it says there’s singing around the throne of God 24/7. We must be a people who sing God’s truth to each other and back to Him 

-When this salvation is happening and God’s people are singing, what will other people see? They’ll start to see how God saves His people, and what’s their response? Fear and trust the Lord. Notice it doesn’t say the David will trust in the Lord, it says THEY

-Our lives are meant to be a witness to others, this means that our lives need to look different. Does yours? I think one of the reasons we need to gather together as the church is to be reset to this reality that we have a reason to trust in the Lord, that He has proven Himself faithful over and over again, so we can know that He’ll continue to!

-If you’ve ever been a part of team you’ve experienced some of this reality. When you’re running suicides with the rest of the bball team it helps when you can look over and see someone else persevering. Same thing in the church, when you’re struggling and hurting it helps when you can look down the pew and see a brother or sister who has walked through something similar to you. This is why God brings us into a new family called the church when we’re saved, we need that support and encouragement.

  • Looking Upward (4-5)

-Same idea that we’ve seen the past few weeks, God’s ways are the best way, they lead to our flourishing as humans, including happiness (not the pursuit of happiness, true lasting happiness)

-Same word here as the beginning of the whole book, another reminder that we need to read this as a whole book, there’s an intentional ordering to it that builds on certain ideas or topics.

-It’s wisdom literature, similar to Proverbs, just structured slightly differently. But this whole book is meant to give us language to express ourselves in the midst of life’s circumstances. We’ve seen language from the past few weeks on how to suffer well, how to voice those complaints to the Lord. This week we see how we wait on God in the midst of those times, which David goes on to tell us what we should be doing when we struggle:

-By remembering all the things God has done for David and His people. What are these wondrous works that David would think of? Exodus, wilderness wanderings, safety from enemies, food.

-God not only has done wonderful things in His people, but He also has future plans for them. What are God’s plans? Salvation in Jesus, which leads to life with God, which is the only way to have lasting happiness. God wants us to live life to the full! God wants us to enjoy His good gifts of food, drink, observing His creation. But notice that His plans aren’t just for God, He has plans for US. God throughout history has always been identified by and connected to a people. Adam and Eve, Noah and his family, Abraham and his family, this is why the Bible calls Him the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Those who aren’t in the family don’t get the family blessings. 

-Think about how many things God has done to the people in this room. How many are God’s wondrous works in this room? David describes them as “more than can be told.” How often do you talk about and reflect on how God has been good to you? Multiply that among all of God’s people throughout all of history and how great is our God?

-One encouragement I have for you all is to find ways to be celebrate when God works in you. An old song we sing “Come Thou Fount” has a line that makes no sense to our modern ear: “here I raise my ebenezer, hither by thy help I’m come” When I was growing up all I thought of was Ebenezer Scrooge (and not even from the original story, from the Muppets Christmas Carol). What that song refers to is a Hebrew word ebed (stone) ezer (help) a stone of help. God’s people would build stone altars when God saved them so that in the future when they were struggling and hurting they could look at these altars and remember how God had provided for them. What can you do to give thanks for God’s provision in your life so that you can remember His faithfulness when you’re struggling?

  • Looking Inward (6-8)

-The next place David looks is inside Himself, how does God’s provision affect his internal life?

-A bit of an exaggeration here, because God does delight in sacrifice and offerings. David mentions all the required offerings from Lev. 1-4 here. Leviticus can be a difficult book for us to understand, but the point of the whole book is: how can an unholy people be in relationship with a holy God? What does it require? It requires a sacrifice, a way for the penalty for sin to be paid, as David says here it takes sacrifice, offering, burnt offerings, and sin offerings.

-I think David is actually picking up a story about his predecessor in the office of King of Israel: King Saul. He’s commanded to completely destroy an enemy, including all their animals, but he doesn’t. He leaves the king alive and takes all the spoils of war. Because Saul doesn’t obey, God rejects him as King, and sends Samuel to confront Saul. In that confronting, Saul says he was just saving these spoils as an offering to the Lord, and Samuel replies 1 Sam. 15. Yes, God does demand sacrifices and offerings, but the heart of even those offerings is to create a spirit of obedience in His people.

-Jesus picks up on this idea in Matt. 23. Jews loved creating a hierarchy of laws, prioritizing some over others, but missed what all these laws were pointing to: a life fully surrendered in obedience to God. Jesus summarizes them as: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. What God wants from us is growing in holiness, taking 1 step closer to God each day. What does that take?

-God’s Word, obedience to God’s Word, internalizing God’s Word so that it becomes evident in your life. This is what David had been fixating on, mediating on, soaking himself in day after day. Friends, just as God works in the waiting, God also works through things that seem very ordinary and at times boring. It’s not magic or rocket science, it’s what have been referred to as the ordinary means of grace: the Bible, prayer, the church. All 3 of those elements are what it takes to have our internal life grow more holy.

  • Looking Outward (9-11)

-After working internally we can move to looking outward.

-Last week we saw the need to keep silent in the midst of wickedness, this time we see what we should talk about: righteousness. Means “straight” or “what is in accordance with law or social norm.” (EDOT)

-There is an external drive to the way God wants us to live, we’re supposed to speak out about God’s faithfulness, about how to pursue righteousness, we’re supposed to tell others the truth of who God is and that He continues working and moving in the world.

-This also means we need to tell each other how God has provided for us. Twice in here David refers to the “great assembly” The word “church” is taken from the word “assembly.” Again we see one of the purposes of our gathering together so that we can remember who God is, and remind each other the to live differently because of that.

  • Looking Around (12-15)

-Faith has precedent because of what God has done in the past. We are commanded to be students of history, our faith literally hinges on historically verified events. If the tomb is not empty, that everything we’re doing in here is worse than pointless, it’s a waste of time and we should be pitied. But because the tomb is empty, we can cry out to God when we’re surrounded by evils. 

-Because we’re supposed to be students of history, we’re offering a class at 9 AM this fall titled ‘Echoes of Faith” I heard someone said this class isn’t helpful or practical, but the truth is knowing church history helps prevent us from making the same errors, and demonstrates to us the validity of our faith. Church history is theology applied – 

1- gives us a broader perspective on God’s working in the world. It can be too easy to see our moment as the most important moment and each crisis as the worst crisis ever, but when we see how God has worked in the past it gives us confidence in the future.

2- it helps us to evaluate theology. I remember learning about the liberalizing tendencies of the German church in the late 1800s and realized that many people were doing the exact same thing today!

3- it helps us to mediate extremes. There’s a tendency to overreact (think of deconstruction today), but when we know church history we can understand the way things come and go not overreact to either side. It helps us to know that those who are opposed to God will someday be dealt with.

  • Looking Forward (16-17)

-Because of how God has moved in the past, we can continue to say that the Lord is great. God has promised to be our helper and deliverer, all these promises find their fulfilment in Jesus. 

-If you love God’s salvation (which I hope you do!) then we should moment by moment say “the Lord is great!” 

-Tertullian, the great North African theologian, said about David, “He sings to us of Christ, and through his voice Christ indeed also sang concerning Himself.” These Psalms are meant to point us to Christ, and Jesus used Psalms at key moments of His life to demonstrate that He was the fulfillment of all the promises to David, but this Psalm has a double application to Jesus

–Heb. 10:5-10: Jesus’ arrival means there’s no more sacrifices we can make, His death was complete and final, there’s nothing else you can add and nothing else is required. That’s the message of the gospel, the message that Jesus came to save sinners like you and me, so because of what Jesus has done we can walk in a new way and we can with Jesus say the Lord is great!

-What does this require of us? We’ve seen a few things in this text:

-Waiting patiently. God doesn’t work on our timetable

-Celebrating when God provides for you. Find ways to commemorate those moments

-Both of those mean that we must live unique, sacred, set apart lives

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by mikethestrand on August 18, 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Life, Sermon

Posted by mikethestrand on August 18, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/08/18/psalm-40-sermon-manuscript/

Psalm 39 – Sermon Manuscript

-Do you know anyone that never seems like they’re actually interested in talking to you? They always look just past you to see if there’s someone else they should be talking to so you end up feeling like an inconvenience. I know someone like that, and it frustrates me every time I talk to him! I’d rather he just tell me he’s busy than stand there and pretend to listen to me! At the other end of the spectrum I’ve met a number of people who are “Christian famous” who will remain completely engaged and focused on you no matter what’s going on around them. Met Matt Chandler once, and it really stood out to me!

-Which one of those responses do you view God’s way of engaging with you?

READ/PRAY

  1. Silent Suffering (1-3)

-Who is Jeduthun? Psalm 62, 77 – 1 Chron. 25:1

-Remember, these are written as the songbook for God’s people, just like we might make notes to Tami, Richie, or Micah

-David begins by contemplating how to be a happy person, which is the aim of this book! “How happy is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked or stand in the pathway with sinners or sit in the company of mockers! Instead, his delight is in the Lord’s instruction, and he meditates on it day and night.”

-How are we happy? By living the way God commands us to!

-He starts by pursuing holiness with his mouth, the way he speaks.

–James 1:26. 3:6-10. Isn’t it fascinating the way James talks about the tongue? He says that the tongue is the marker of whether or not someone is “religious” (said in a positive way here, truly following after God). He goes on “no one can tame the tongue” no one. Out of the same mouth praises God, and belittles humans who are created in God’s image.

-Reflection on Jesus’ words in Luke 6 – the mouth reveals what’s really in your heart. 

-Maybe you’ve had this experience where something happens to you that you know isn’t good or right, and you overreact. Anger, frustration, flippant, and even in the middle of your poor response you tell yourself that you’re overreacting, but you can’t stop! 

-Swindoll “Life is 10% happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” Jesus talks about this reality earlier in Luke 6: If anyone hits you, turn the other cheek. If anyone takes your coat, give them your shirt. You can’t control what other people do, but you can control the way you respond, and that’s what God cares about. We’ll talk more about this idea later, but keep it in mind as we work our way through it.

-This is what David is meditating on in this Psalm. He doesn’t want to sin against God, but he’s seeing the wicked sinning and seemingly not suffering for it. He kept silent even when he wanted to speak good, so he got more and more frustrated at the lot of the world.

-Don’t expect the world to act like Christians, they’re not saved! But you will feel an inner turmoil about it, I know I do! It’s hard when it feels like Christians are being increasingly marginalized, when pastors are no longer trusted (read this week that trust in clergy fell to the lowest on record at 32%), when pastors fail at what feels like an alarming rate. Is there anyone actually following after God? What’s the point?

-We’re not the first people to feel that way! This is part of the reason the Bible remains relevant even 3,000 years after it was written – humans haven’t changed! We have the same desires, we still sin, and God is still God.

  • Short Shadows (4-6)

-Eventually, the tension builds up in David and he can’t help but talk, but just as last week he directed his focus in a specific direction, this week he does the same thing. 

-Look at the first word of this verse: Lord. Up to this point the pressure had been building in David, the frustration was increasing, but instead of blowing up at someone standing nearby, he aims his direction to the only one who can truly help him with his situation.

-Maybe you’ve been in a situation like this, where you were working your hardest to not respond in a mean way. Kids, maybe you’ve had that experience where your sibling just keeps pushing your buttons and they won’t stop! David is demonstrating for us here the right way to respond: go to God! Pray! Ask God to help you! God can handle your complaints, He knows all your emotions, and He’s promised to walk with you through every situation in life.

-But what David asks isn’t help in the present situation, it isn’t for God to destroy his enemies, this time he asks God to help David remember the end of his life.

-That’s a fascinating thought, isn’t it? All of us are mortal, we will someday die, and the older you get the shorter you realize your life is. Calvin turned 7 this past week, and I don’t feel like I’m old enough to have a 7-year-old! In my mind he’s still crawling in diapers! One of the things I’ve tried to do with my kids (imperfectly) is to not make them feel like they’re growing up too quickly, because of this reality. Calvin has lived 7 years, he should be a 7 year, regardless of how I feel, and if I just try to keep him stuck at where I feel like he should be both he and I miss out on the joy of our relationship today! This is what David’s expressing in theses verses. Our lives are nothing when you compare them to eternity. That’s why last week’s message is so important: endure in the midst of suffering and difficulty, because the end is coming! 

-There’s a sobering that comes when you reflect on your future, isn’t there? It shifts your focus, keeps today’s difficulties in perspective, and should bring joy to today’s experiences. I think this is where it’s so important to spend time with people older and younger than you. Older people help you remember that life is short (“just you wait, blink and they’ll be in high school”), younger people help you remember to take advantage of each day. Every day when my kids wake up they ask “what fun thing are we going to do today?” Every day is full of potential, if we are willing to be faithful with it!

-There’s a phrase that David uses here at the end of vs. 5 that is most often used in Ecclesiastes: vapor. It’s the Hebrew word hebel which has led to all sorts of debates about its’ meaning! It’s translated as breath, or emptiness, or vain, or futility. Some have translated it as fog.

-And David is comparing human life to that hebel, that vapor. Thankfully, winter hasn’t come yet, but during a cold winter day when you walk outside, what happens when you breathe out? You can see your breath! How long can you see your breath? A couple seconds? That’s how God sees human life, just like we see our breath.

-But this is only true of our earthly life. That’s what David means when he talks about being aware of our end! We need to factor eternity into our daily lives, and by keeping an eternal perspective, it will shift the way we engage our lives today. 

-There’s a missionary named CT Studd (1860-1930) served as a missionary in China, India, Africa who wrote a poem that has a refrain that is embedded in my mind: “only one life twill soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last.”

-Selah. Contemplate the idea that your life is a vapor.

-David then continues contemplating the how short his life is, describing life as a “mere shadow,” where people rush around to get stuff, but they don’t know where they’ll end up. Have you ever considered that nothing you have will last forever?

-We see this in history, I think. Think of how we’ve discovered the Egyptian Pharaohs buried: with all their stuff, and sometimes even some of their slaves, which his incredibly morbid. But they didn’t believe this! They thought they were able to take all their possessions into the afterlife! 

-I read a couple stories this week about some of these realities that helped me to understand some of what David’s saying. The first was a man who looked at the average life expectancy for a male in the US and calculated how many days he had left. Each day he would knock a number off to remind him to “count his days.” Similarly, my dad’s dad died of a heart attack at 62. My dad and his brothers calculated the exact day, and when each of them turned that age they send a text out to the thread to give thanks for their good health. How do you number your days?

-The second story was about a man who lost his wife in his late 60s, but by God’s grace was able to meet another woman who had lost her husband about the same time. This man worked hard, but he wasn’t wealthy by any means! The woman he married, however, first husband was VERY wealthy! So this man who never had much suddenly had access to this other man’s wealth: friends you can’t take anything with you, even money! Only one life, twill soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last.

  • Substance (7-13)

-Once again, David turns his attention to the Lord. He asks a question that’s true for all of us: What are we waiting for? 

-I think just as he’s been contemplating the realities of living in the world, here he’s continuing to ponder that idea. Another component of being human is waiting, isn’t it? You wait for food to be done, you wait in line at the grocery store, you wait at traffic lights, you wait for your kids to get ready, or you wait for your mom and dad to play with you! But then as you get older, you’re waiting for bigger things: you wait for your dream job, you wait for your dream car, you wait for the perfect house, you wait for a vacation, you wait for retirement. Yet each time you achieve what you were waiting for it changes, doesn’t it? That dream car doesn’t seem to be quite a dream when you have to take care of it, the dream job isn’t quite as dreamy as you had thought when you run into issues and conflict, and it’s not quite as fun or enjoyable as you thought it would be.

-What does David wait for? He says his hope is in the Lord, he’s hoping for God to be present to him. He’s asking God to be with him, to come alongside, to support him. If God is with him, it changes all the other waiting that we do on earth, doesn’t it? Suddenly all the other waiting starts to make sense because God is doing a work in us even as we wait. It shifts our perspective and mindset as we wait for the events on earth.

-But there’s a second component to this hope because David needs salvation from God. Another component to numbering our days is pursuing holiness instead of dabbling in our sin.

-We talked quite a bit about this in last week’s Psalm, but there are consequences to our sin, the question for us is what do we do with our sin? Do we continue to play with it assuming that it’s not that big of a deal, or do we confess our sins and bring them to the only person who has provided a way for our sin to be dealt with?

-When we keep our focus on eternity it begins to make our sins look really dumb. God doesn’t give us a list of rules as a punishment or as chains, God tells us how to live so that we can have life to the full! He wants us to live full, healthy lives in this world that He’s created, which means He knows best how we should live and desires that all of us can be in lasting relationship with Him.

-So friends, deal with your sin. Because your life is just a moment, keep short accounts. Because your life is just a vapor deal with your sin today.

-Selah. 

-The last place David goes is asking God to hear him because this world isn’t his home.

-I don’t know about you, but I love home (the place where your phone automatically connects to the Wi-Fi). I know where everything is (most of the time), I’ve got my earthly possessions there, I can grab food from the fridge whenever I want, it can become too easy at times to remember that this world isn’t actually my home. It can get too easy to get comfortable here and not count my days, not deal with my sin, not keep God as the focus of my life, which is why I need reminders like this Psalm. I need the reminder to keep an eternal perspective each day so that I don’t become complacent in my walk with God.

-As we wrap up, I want us to contemplate David’s direct requests to the Lord throughout this Psalm, there’s 3: (4) make me aware of my end, (7) what do I wait for, and (12) hear my prayer. 

-These 3 requests together are how we are able to keep eternity as the focus of our lives. The first is the reminder of our mortality. Because of sin, we will all die at some point. Because we will die, we should live differently today, which is what leads to the second request.

-We wait for the Lord! I think Paul gets at how we do this in Phil. 4:6-7. Because of what Jesus has done for us, we can live a worry-free life! That’s a whole lot easier to say than to live. But look at the outcome: the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds. Friends, lasting peace is possible, but only through Jesus, which gets us to the third one, and what Paul also mentions here:

-In everything, through prayer and petition, present your requests to God, or as David says “Hear my cry!” Bring everything to the Lord: your hopes, your sickness, your sin, your joys, He’s honestly the only one who’s patient enough to deal with it all! 

-Just as we saw last week with David’s reaction to being sick was to run to God, we see the same thing this week. We need to each day run to God because He cares for us, because He helps us to number our days, and because He’s the only one who can bring lasting peace to our lives. 

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by mikethestrand on August 11, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on August 11, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/08/11/psalm-39-sermon-manuscript/

Psalm 38 – Sermon Manuscript

-People handle sickness differently. Kids seem to get sudden onset sickness, like running around playing like everything’s normal, then stop and projectile vomit. And then go straight back to running around. As you get older, the approach to sickness has to change because you don’t bounce back quite as quickly, and sometimes that’s a difficult lesson to learn! 

-During college, I remember learning this lesson through a difficult experience. I had perennial sinus infections (at least once a year, hence surgery last week), so my way of combatting the these infections was trying to load myself up with EmergenC, the little powder form of vitamin C, and I’d mix it with my Mountain Dew. I don’t do that anymore, but I still will sometimes take EmergenC (with water)

-In this week’s text, we see David’s response to sickness.

READ/PRAY

  1. A Plea and a Prayer (Psalm 38)

-Helpful summary of this Psalm: “The Psalm opens with a prayer (1); continues in a long complaint (2-8); pauses to dart an eye to heaven (9); proceeds with a second tale of sorrow (10-14); interjects another word of hopeful address to God (15); a third time pours out a flood of griefs (16-20); and then closes as it opened, with renewed petitioning (21-22).” Spurgeon

-I’m going to spend our time in this Psalm looking at what David asks of God. The other parts are a continuation of how terribly David feels, and I want us to focus more on David’s prayers, and then look at some different responses to sickness.

-First thing to note is the first word David uses. When sickness comes, where do you look? 

-The impulse for believers should be to look to God! Acknowledge His oversight, His control, His plans.

-Do you trust in God’s direction in every area of your life? David doesn’t try to exonerate himself, doesn’t make excuses, but the consequences are heavy.

-Chatting with Micah this week about 3 different kinds of suffering: general fall, righteous suffering, being dumb. 

-God created the world good, without sickness or dying, everything working perfectly as God intended. But with the Fall, disobeying God’s law, comes death, destruction, chaos, and pain. Because of sin entering into the world, suddenly everything becomes difficult because of what scientists call “entropy” that things always fall into chaos and disorder, that’s a result of the Fall, it means life is going to be hard, it means your car will break down, your body won’t recover as fast as it did when you were a kid. 

-There’s also suffering that comes from being righteous and facing the influence of the devil, where Jesus tells us in this world we will have suffering and difficulty. 1 Peter says we should rejoice when we suffer for the sake of being righteous (in good standing with God). A subset of this is so that we can encourage others, 2 Cor. 1:4 “He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” Don’t miss that sometimes your suffering isn’t just for you! We need to remember that God sends us to others as well.

-Finally, sometimes suffering comes as a consequence to your own dumb decisions. Think of David who lost a son because of his adultery and murder, or Moses who missed out on the promised land because of his anger, or Peter whose impulsiveness during Jesus’ trial meant he betrayed his Savior. Your sin will find you out, either in this life, or the next.

-In this case, David is dealing with the consequences of his sin: look at the end of vs. 3 into 4.

-We live in a world that doesn’t have any space or understanding of the spiritual realities around us all the time. We look for purely naturalistic explanations for everything. We read passages in Scripture about demonic influence and use terms like epilepsy to describe it. When we talk about sickness, we often talk about germs and bacteria. And while that is right and true what we don’t often talk about is sickness being the consequence of spiritual decisions.

-As I say that, I want to be careful in the way we talk about this. Not all sickness is a consequence of a sinful decision, but I worry that we have gone SO far to the extreme that we have no room in our minds for sickness as a consequence of spiritual decisions we’ve made. Not health/prosperity gospel, but acknowledging the complex realities of being human where we’re impacted by biology AND theology! We have become so focused on the material world (taste, touch, see, smell) that I worry we too quickly neglect the spiritual world, the things that have eternal value. We’ll talk about that more in a bit, but don’t forget that in the meantime! 

-What does David ask God? To not be punished in anger. 

-Spurgeon: “I must be rebuked, for I am an erring child and You a careful Father, but do not throw too much anger into the tones of Your voice; deal gently although I have sinned grievously. The anger of others I can bear, but not Yours.” When we sin, there are consequences. David admits that, recognizes that reality, but he still asks God to be merciful and gracious to him.

–Heb. 10:31 “It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Terrifying, living. God is completely unique among all the gods, the only one who’s alive, therefore He’s the only God who can punish sins committed against Him.

-Next: 9 Every desire is known to God. This is why God’s judgments are right and true, He can see down to every motive and desire of every human heart. 

-So why hide? If God knows everything we can’t hide from Him, so don’t! Confess yours sins to God, it’s not like it’s a surprise, and it’s not like He’s going to stop loving you because of it!

-Then 15 in the midst of recognizing the implications of his sinful choices where does David put his hope? In God. Friends, it’s far better to trust yourself to God’s judgment than the judgment of the world.

-Sin looks so enticing until you realize the implications of your sins. “If you understand what holiness is, you come to see that real happiness is on the far side of holiness, not the near side. Holiness gives us new desires and brings old desires into line with one another.” Keller

-Friends: sin always and only leads to death, either in this life or the next. We have to decide if we’re going to die to the sin in ourselves or die to Christ, but we will all face a death of some sort.

-And sometimes, but not always, the implications of our sin will be felt and experienced here and now, as David does. But I can guarantee even if you don’t see or feel like you’re facing any problems because of your sin here, you will face eternal realities due to not living according to God’s commands. 

-Last request 21-22 even though David is facing consequences from God, he realizes the only hope he has for salvation is by running to God. Being saved can’t come from anything or anyone else, even though we often act like it can.

-Why do you think food and drink are so enticing? Because we act like they can save us! Why are drugs so addicting? Because we act like they can solve our problems. Why do people cheat to get more money? Because we act like money can fix our deepest longings.

-Friends, David serves as a model here for how we should handle sickness and disease in our lives: run to God, He’s the only one who can truly save you!

-One of the people on my big hiking trip is an ER Dr, and he made the comment one night that we need to change the way we pray for medical issues. We often pray that God would guide the surgeon’s hand, as if the surgeon is the savior, when what we should be asking is God to intervene DESPITE the accident prone human working on us! (No offense to anyone who’s Dr) but doesn’t that put a different perspective on it? Ultimately the only hope we have for salvation here and in eternity is by running to God, putting our hope anywhere else is guaranteed to let us down.

-This Psalm is a glimpse of the physical implications of our sin, but there’s another important place in the Bible that shows not all sin is because of a specific sin, so I want to look at John 9.

  • Whose Sin? (John 9)

-Ultimately all sickness is traced back to the Fall, but what about individual sickness? There are accounts in the OT of physical sickness being traced to a specific sin (Miriam, Moses’ sister), but does that happen today, when we’re under a new covenant that came after Jesus’ resurrection? Yes! This story looks at the way we view sickness, and how Jesus views sickness.

-John’s primary point in this whole book is to demonstrate that Jesus is the promised Messiah, which includes healing people. He does this by connecting Jesus’ teaching to His healings. Jesus’ message isn’t just a proposition or intellectual argument, it’s supposed to be connected to physical wholeness and flourishing as a human.

-Cara and I were talking about this a few weeks ago – Jesus desire is for us to be truly human, sin causes us to become sub-human, or less than human. So Christianity is the process of becoming what God truly intended us to be: fully human. Jesus was the only true human to ever live!

-Think about that! Part of the implication of that is there was no division in Jesus. He is the only person who didn’t talk better than He walked! He both talked the talk and walked the walk, and He’s called us to do the same, which is the process of slowly, day by day becoming more human.

-The reason I want to take a look at this passage is because it shows the way we tend to respond to suffering, which has been a problem for a really long time. His disciples see a blind man and ask who’s responsible for this man’s problem?

-I don’t know about you, but one thing I’ve discovered is true of me is when I’m facing something difficult, I tend to ask God “Why me!? What did I do to deserve this!?” But I’m very slow to give thanks to God when things are going well. Maybe you’re the same way. Maybe you forget all the good gifts God’s given you! The fact that you’re here today is a gift that we shouldn’t neglect or take for granted. That’s our response, but look at how Jesus answers that question:

-SO THAT God’s Work might be displayed. Friends, our view of sickness and suffering is often way too short-sighted. Part of the reason we get so off base when we suffer is because we are so focused on the immediate feelings we have, but feelings come and go based on a moment. I read a fascinating article this past week that looked at being spiritually sick. Often it’s easy to tell when your physically sick (something’s not working as it should), but how do we tell when we’re spiritually sick? Have you ever been spiritually sick? See, Jesus tells us that sickness is meant to serve as different purpose than we often admit, and even sickness and suffering are meant to be tools to bring true healing in our lives, to make us more like Jesus, to make us more human.

-There’s a beautiful picture of this in The Chosen. A couple caveats, and then the story. This is extra-biblical, we need to use our imagination to fill in some of the details of these stories, just like the writers of this show are doing. Doesn’t contradict Scripture, but isn’t explicit in the text. Same reason we get caught up in stories, they help shape our imagination in things are good, true, and beautiful. Also, don’t pray to Johnathan Roumie who plays Jesus in this show, he’s just an actor! Story: Jesus has just commissioned his disciples to go out 2 by 2 to start preaching the gospel and heal people, just like Jesus had done. One of the disciples (little James) has a limp (actor has scoliosis). Jesus has healed a number of people of all sorts of maladies, but not one of the 12 disciples, and he was just tasked with healing others. It’s a few minutes long, but I think it’s worth watching.

-Do you see the kindness of Jesus here? He doesn’t promise an easy life, He doesn’t promise healing, but He promises Himself. That doesn’t mean life will always make sense here, but it will make sense if we have a long-term perspective instead of worrying about the immediate feelings. 

-Friends, even sickness and debilitating disease is only for a moment compared to the glory of eternity that is coming. Can we be faithful and endure suffering now for the glory that’s coming in the future, or do we expect God to fix all our momentary issues now?

-The final piece that I think we need to consider on this topic is God as our Father. Fathers are given a unique role in the family to represent and image God to the rest of the family. We know that no earthly father will do that perfectly, but they’re supposed to give us a little picture of what God does in all our lives.

  • Loving Discipline (Hebrews 12:7-11)

-We need to talk briefly about the role of parents here. Parents are meant to shepherd the children God gives them. This means training them morality, providing for them, and at times disciplining them as a necessary consequence to disobedience. 

-It’s not fun or easy to discipline, but it is necessary. I once heard a comedian say that he was spanked as a child, and everyone who wasn’t is just entitled today. Every parent has to discipline somewhere. For example, you’re not going to let your kid play by the stove without supervision (up to a point), or you’re not going to let your kids play in the street without first teaching them that cars would win in any battle they had with one! 

-Yet that discipline (though painful and difficult in the moment) leads to better outcomes because the children learn how to pursue the right things. God does the same thing with us. Sometimes He allows suffering to come into our lives (righteous suffering) so that we can be made more like Jesus, that is so that we can become more truly human. The question is can you be faithful in enduring that suffering, or will you just give up?

-One of my favorite quotes I’ve ever read: “Why do bad things happen to good people? That only happened once. And he volunteered.” R.C. Sproul

-Friends, any suffering we face is a tiny sliver of the suffering Jesus faced when he bore the penalty for our sins. He did that both to provide salvation for us, and to demonstrate to us how we can endure in the midst of our suffering, so for anyone who is sick today, either physically or spiritually: run to the Lord! Salvation, true eternal healing is found in Him, and Him alone. 

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by mikethestrand on August 4, 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, Life, Sermon

Posted by mikethestrand on August 4, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/08/04/psalm-38-sermon-manuscript/

Sermon Manuscript – Psalm 36

-One of the comments that most stood out to me from my galivanting across Europe was standing near where John Knox is buried in Edinburgh. All these walking tours going by, overhearing the way his influence was described: demeaning to women (believing that the office of Elder is reserved for men), and working to expand Christianity in Scotland.

-Christianity is often viewed as opposed to: flourishing, happiness, fun. I learned in Geneva one of the jokes for kids is “Post Lux Tenebrae” after the light darkness. I even thought this growing up! That to be a Christian was the hardest thing in the world, that it meant no fun, no enjoyment, and came with only following incredibly difficult rules. Don’t want this movie, don’t listen to this music. It felt like a chore! I felt the same way that tour guide in Edinburgh did: we need to move on from the shackles of Christianity. But what if that thinking is wrong?

–John 10:10 “I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance.”

-“There is a general assumption prevalent in the world that it is extremely difficult to be a Christian. But this is as far from the truth as the east is from the west. The easiest thing in the world is to be a Christian. What is hard is to be a sinner. Being a Christian is what we were created for. The structure of this world was created by God so we can live in it easily and happily as his children.” (Peterson, 115)

-We can caveat this a bit – Christianity isn’t necessarily easy, it involves dying to yourself which apart from the Spirit is impossible! But the sentiment is true: God created this world for His people, which means being a Christian begins the renewal process in your life to become what God has intended you to be all along in the world that He created you to flourish in.

-So why doesn’t it always feel that way? Let’s read this Psalm and find out

READ/PRAY

  1. The Motivations of the Wicked (1-4)

-To understand this Psalm properly, we need to go to the very beginning of the book Ps. 1:1 “How happy is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked.” 

-Wisdom literature, how to live in the world God has created. Not cute little sayings with no meaning, or even things that are always true, but give general guidelines for living in obedience to God. That’s true wisdom: Prov. 9:10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” True wisdom is found only in God. 

-Does this mean that only Christians can be wise? Yes and no. Our way of measuring needs to change. Many of the big existential questions don’t often get discussed anymore: why are we here? What is the purpose of our existence? Listened to a podcast this week about 1 Kings 10 when the Queen of Sheba visit Solomon to interrogate him. The speakers contended that what Solomon provided for her was an explanation of God and the world that provided a solution to all her existential doubt!

-But how do we process what looks like those who are evil prospering? If the only way to true wisdom is through God, why do so many atheists seem to have all the recognition and acclaim? Doesn’t God care about those who follow Him? These have been questions throughout history, things David questioned too!

-He begins by stating the purpose of this Psalm: reflections on the transgression of the wicked. And remember where true wisdom comes from: fear of the Lord. But the wicked person doesn’t even dread God. 

–Heb. 10:31 “It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” How frequently do you realize that God can’t be messed with? How often do you recognize that God is holy and separate from us, and that He can’t tolerate one little speck of sin?

-Look how David goes on to describe this: flattering opinion of self. Can’t assess himself properly, therefore he can’t see and fight against his sin. Using the wrong measurements of holiness and sin. We can’t compare ourselves to each other, there’s always someone worse. And have you noticed that people only tend to compare themselves to someone they think is worse, not someone they think is better? 

-I was talking to a friend on my trip recently about his sister who has had a few failed marriages (husbands cheated on her) and has become convinced that there’s no good guys out there anymore. When my friend asks about all the pastors he knows he’s told “you and your friends don’t count!” Don’t we often do the same thing? We interpret all the events around us from our own perspective.

-David moves from internal realities about the wicked to the external consequences of their living.

-The way they talk is malicious and deceptive. Jesus in Luke 6:45 “his mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart.” Do you want to see what’s in someone’s heart? Listen to how they talk. If someone complains about others all the time I can guarantee when you’re not around they’re complaining about you! Words matter greatly, they can build someone up or tear someone down.

-The wicked have also stopped all pursuit of wisdom which means they no longer do good. Who defines what good is? God! Rooted in God’s character. If they have no fear of God it means they also won’t be demonstrating goodness.

-Even on his bed: even times of rest are spent pursuing evil. Rest is a good gift from God, a reminder that we aren’t God, but even those moments can be used for evil!

-A path that is not good: I’m working on framing out my basement, and it’s incredible tricky because no house is built perfectly plumb! And when you’re trying to build straight walls it can quickly become a nightmare! When you’re building long walls, being just a degree off quickly becomes massively out of line! Same with our lives: 1 degree of unholy living doesn’t look like much at the beginning, but over the course of a lifetime it becomes a chasm separating you from what is good, right, and true.

-The reality of all these descriptions is they can be true of us! 

-Some debate about whether David is referring to the wickedness in his own heart, or if he’s contemplating in his heart the way of the wicked. One person translated the first verse “An oracle of the transgression of the wicked in the midst of my heart.”

-Our culture today tells us to look inside our heart to find our meaning and purpose to life, but the Bible tells us that our hearts are desperately wicked, and apart from God intervening in our lives we would continue in the path of wickedness! Only because of His grace and pursuit of us can this next section be true of us:

  • The Motivations of the Wise (5-9)

-Notice that David had only been talking about the way wickedness thinks and acts, and in order to remedy that he has to lift his eyes to a different direction. I was reflecting on this idea while touring the Roman Forum. This was the place where the emperor would stand and look down on his kingdom. But if he’s only looking down it’s going to be hard for him to look up and understand himself the way God understands him. And how prone are we to do the same thing? That’s why David begins by directing his gaze up toward the Lord.

-Acknowledging the Lord is the most important decision you can ever make! All of us begin as wicked, and only because of God’s saving work is there hope for renewal and reconciliation with God. I love the way Eph. 2 summarizes this idea as us being dead, BUT GOD who is rich in mercy has made us alive in Christ. This turn from death to life, from wicked pursuits to wisdom is the most significant change any of us can make. Look up to the Lord and cry out to Him, and everything else in your life will change and start to make sense. See, even suffering and difficulty can make sense when you have the Lord at the center of your life. This is why Christianity alone can actually lead to a flourishing life! 

-David is going to give us 5 aspects that are true about God, and then 5 blessings that come from walking with God. First, the things about God:

1- Faithful love: Hebrew word chesed covenant faithfulness, never ending love. It’s not just love, it’s faithful love. Love that means no matter what happens it will not stop. We can hardly start to get our minds around this kind of love because we have endings to everything we do. But God doesn’t. God is eternal, and so is His love. His love is so much that it goes to the heavens!

-“Guess How Much I Love You” a little brown rabbit is trying to communicate to his dad how much he loves him. Spreads his arms, dad does. Jumps high, which his dad jumps higher. Ends by saying he loves his dad to the moon, then falls asleep and his dad says I love you to the moon and back. That’s our love compared to God’s love. Our love will fall short, but His won’t.

2- Faithfulness: has the idea of being steadfast, immovable, unchanging. 2 Tim. 2:13 “if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.” This one reaches all the way to the clouds. 

-Hiking trip: clouds on top of clouds. We can’t reach them, we just see them.

3- Righteousness: in right standing. This, too, is only possible because of who God is. And God’s righteousness is like the highest mountain. Solid, unmoving. If you’ve ever been to CO you’ve seen this! The mountains are breathtaking and nothing can stand against them. That’s like God’s righteousness: nothing can fight against it.

4- Judgments: connects to the deepest sea in that God is able to see to plumb the depths of everyone’s inner most desires. God’s judgments are perfect because He knows every detail, so we can trust the outcomes He determines. Even in His judgments He is perfectly right.

5- Preservation: other translations have care or save people and animals. God wants to see His entire creation saved and redeemed. That’s why He sent His Son to the world. He hates wickedness, He hates sin, He hates the bondage that creation was subjected to, and His intent is to see all of creation serving Him once again.

-Do you see that God even cares about the animals? The wicked person won’t be saved because he’s living outside of God’s plan, but not the animals!

David then transitions to 5 blessings that come from walking with God.

1- Refuge: During my hiking trip we stayed at places along the hiking trail called refuges. They’re definitely not a 5-star hotel (most of them probably wouldn’t be considered 1-star hotels!) but after hiking 10 miles in rain and snow and 45 mph headwinds, there’s something incredibly comforting about seeing shelter, regardless of how many stars they have. You know it means rest, warmth, and food. And that’s what God provides to those who trust in Him. It means that when the storms of life come He will take care of you. The picture David’s painting here is like a mother hen who tucks all her chicks under her wings to protect them. 

2- Flourishing: Following God means satisfaction to all the deepest longings of your heart. It means God’s provision for everything you need to grow like Him. Nothing else can ever fully satisfy you. Food, drink, sex are all good gifts from God, but they pale in comparison to having Jesus! Once again, we see that the only way to get true and lasting provision is from God. And it’s not just eternal, it’s abundant! More than enough!

3- Joy: what are these refreshing streams? God Himself! Ps. 16:11 – “You reveal the path of life to me, in your presence is abundant joy.” Joy and flourishing are 2 implications of being found in Christ. We flourish only when we are in Him, which means we can have joy in our lives despite the circumstances around us. 

-Think of the Apostle Paul who claimed to learn the secret to being content. In seasons of plenty and seasons of want, he still claims that because God is in him all his circumstances can change and he’ll still have a life of flourishing!

4- Life: wellspring, the starting point of life is found only in God. But this also connects to

5- Light: God illumines everything else in creation. I love the example CS Lewis shares from a moment in a little shed. He was able to see the beam of sunlight shining in, and it made him realize that God is like the sun. We don’t stare into the sun, but the sun illuminates everything else so we can see it. Because God is light, he allows us to see and understand the rest of His creation as He intends us to understand it. This is what Eugene Peterson was saying in the quote I shared at the beginning. None of the rest of creation can make sense until you understand the Creator behind it all.

-And this is where we see this Psalm pointing us directly to Jesus. Think of how the Gospel of John begins. See how light and life are connected to Jesus? And how all creation comes about by Him? The only way to have a life filled with abundance and joy is by being found in Jesus. Only when you’re in Jesus can you then go on to pray the way David prays next:

  • A Prayer for Wisdom (10-12)

-David’s first request is asking God to spread his faithful, covenant love over those who follow Him. Just as he previously said that people take refuge in the shadow of his wings, here he’s asking God to spread his wings of protection over His people.

-Similarly, His righteousness is spread over the upright in heart.

-Connects to God’s judgments going down into the deepest parts of a person. God knows if someone is upright in heart and knows how to faithfully judge them.

-David’s big request is to be saved from the wicked. He doesn’t want to be in their company or be cast away from the places God brings.

-If we’re honest, I think we all need this reminder regularly in our lives. We are tempted to be selfish, we are tempted to neglect God, we are tempted to give in to our sinful impulses. But they can never lead to life, much less a flourishing life! God has given us exactly what we need for growth in Christ-likeness: his Word, His Spirit, and His people the church. This is why God has built into the created order these rhythms of gathering with His people each week. Our hearts slowly become cold toward the things of the Lord, we start to question His goodness and His love and care in our lives, but then we have the Lord’s Day each week to remember who God is and remind each other that God is transforming us.

-Friends, remember that it’s easy to be a Christian. Don’t give into the ways of wicked, walk in the ways of wisdom and find life to the full. Once we see that God’s ways are the best way and get a taste of the goodness that comes from following Him, we’ll never be satisfied with settling for our sins. Take these last 3 verses and pray them for yourself each day this week, keep your heart warmed toward the things of the Lord so that you can find life and life to the full in Jesus.

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by mikethestrand on July 21, 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, Life, Sermon

Posted by mikethestrand on July 21, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/07/21/sermon-manuscript-psalm-36/

Sermon Manuscript – Geneva Reflection

-Isaac Newton: “If I have seen further it is by standing on shoulders of giants.”

-I love studying history (almost majored in archaeology in college), and getting to walk in the places that have impacted me was one of the most impactful moments I’ve ever had. It’s a reminder that this isn’t all there is, we have ended up here for a purpose and there are reasons behind what we as the church do today. It is chronological snobbery to pretend that we have all the answers, that we are self-contained, that we are completely independent.

-Purpose of this trip: learn more about the historical developments of the pastor and the church, go for a LONG walk (113 miles), and grow closer to these other pastors. Additionally, 1 of the pastors has been a friend for a while, so we added some extra time on the front and back ends (with the support of our wives) to do some of our own exploration.

-Backwards church history tour: stopped in Dublin and explored the city. I’ve shared before the way Arthur Guinness used the proceeds from his beer to bring Sunday school to Dublin, did a ton for worker’s rights and care for his employees, used brewing of beer as a way to glorify God. Descendent today is Os Guinness. Lesson: part of the reason we need to build institutions and organizations is because they will outlast us – will our institution (church) be a force for good or bad in the world? We tend to think too immediately and need to do better to think generationally. 

-Flew to London: British Museum – they claimed the spoils of the world, so it’s only fair that they let the world come and see them. If you’re able, it’s free! The Rosetta Stone: opened the world to interpreting ancient languages. Contained an edict in 3 different languages. Statues from the Parthenon, statues that Paul would have walked by on his second missionary journey. My friend and I talked about when we get to heaven chatting with Paul about his perspective on the statues! But when he saw them, they were painted! And then we turned another corner and found this. Remnants from the Assyrian empire! Friends, this was a brutal, brutal period. Doors, reliefs on the doors depicted their victories in war. Killing children, impaling on stakes. From there we went to tour Westminster Abbey. They don’t make churches like that anymore! Operating since 1066. Unbelievably ornate. But what stood out to me was the mixing of politics and religion. Here is the coronation chair, for anointing the next ruler of the nation in this chapel. Right next to Westminster is Parliament, where the governmental decisions are made. But I think you also see it in the people that are buried there. Christendom has given way to “influence” in many minds of Westerners. How else could Hawking, an atheist, be buried in a church? Our last visit was to Metropolitan Tabernacle (proof I was there), and here’s the back of that beautiful façade. Protestant influence is so different from RCC or Anglican. It’s just a building! We can meet anywhere! What’s fascinating to me is there’s a theology behind that. On our hike if we came across a RCC we would peek in, and every time the doors were open, because for them there are sacred spaces that people may need. For Protestants the building is secondary, so it doesn’t need to be open for God’s people to meet. We’re in God’s presence whether we’re gathered or scattered. 

-Train to Oxford, one of the oldest universities in the world, and probably my favorite town that we visited. Both Lewis & Tolkien taught at Oxford (you knew I’d have a LOTR connection in here somewhere!) and we stopped by the pub their writers group (Inklings) would frequent, as well as walking the path they would often take together (Addison’s Walk), a walking path next to Magdalen College, where Lewis taught. While not as big or impressive as London, I enjoyed Oxford much more, and was reminded of the need to be connected to God’s natural creation. Walks like this are hard to find in the US, and I think contributes to the sense that we can exist apart from God. If we don’t see His rule in the rest of creation, why would we see His rule in our lives? I pulled up a Mere Christianity recording as we were walking this path and thanked God for Lewis’ influence in my life (some weird theology, but I’m still profoundly thankful for him).

-Train to Edinburgh: John Knox and Scottish Presbyterianism at St. Giles (1124). What I didn’t realize is this was also the birthplace of Harry Potter! Edinburgh was VERY different from any of the other places we went. They’re not sure what to do with their Christian heritage. Heard a tour group say the best thing to do to Knox is to stomp on his grave as you walk over. Where the other places still acknowledge their Christian influence, Edinburgh celebrated humanist philosophers, actually a number of philosophers who influenced America’s founding. It was also a very dark city, buildings not cleaned as well, foreboding architecture, it felt like a picture of a country where the Christian influence has been all but snuffed out. We attended a church of maybe 100 people downtown, a tiny percentage of the population, and when we exited we walked through a group of tourists taking pictures of the building. Are we ensuring our faith isn’t dying? Are we passing on our faith to our children, and our children’s children so that the church continues to flourish? 

-Fly to Geneva where we had an extra day before meeting up with everyone else and got an official tour from a native Genevan. The next day, we got a tour from a Calvin scholar, as well as a couple lectures from him. Calvin’s house, St. Pierre, Geneva from the tower, mosaic ruins from an early church. Reformation museum: The sermons of Luther from 1523, a Bible from 1562, Protestant propaganda where the Bible is heavier than all the works of the RCC, finally I was relieved to see that not even the great John Calvin could keep his students engaged all the time, here’s some doodles from the margins of his students’ notebooks! So if you need to doodle, feel free, you won’t hurt my feelings. One of the things that stood out to me about Geneva was the reality that in many ways it’s a post-Christian nation. There’s a Reformation wall, but it doesn’t talk about the theological distinctions of the Reformation, it talks about the political distinctions which led to Geneva being a democracy, and it made me wonder if what we’ve been trained in is political engagement but not Christian witness.

-Then we hiked the Tour du Mont Blanc (the tour of the white mountain) which passes through France, Italy, and Switzerland, covered 113 miles, about 10 miles a day. Each night someone would lead a discussion on an aspect of pastoral ministry (mine was counseling, which Cara laughed at when she heard), but each night was a new aspect of pastoral ministry that we discussed and shared and prayed about together. It was incredibly helpful to have men who are laboring together discuss these important things: prayer, administration, personal discipleship, physical health, delegation, worship, equipping the saints, evangelism, church discipline. Not all easy topics, but necessary. 

-Then, because 113 miles wasn’t enough, we ended flying to Rome (toured the Colosseum and Vatican and did MORE walking). This blew my mind! All the biblical or Christian events that have taken place here. Think of how impressive this city would have been before it was ruins! And Paul says it doesn’t matter. Here I am standing where the emperor would have stood looking down on his kingdom, thinking he’s a god. If you’ve watched the new trailer for Gladiator they’ve got a scene that shows this view in it. And I walked by the emperor’s tomb. He’s still there. But do you know who’s not in his tomb anymore? Jesus. Paul was taken to Rome, he saw this in all its’ glory and he says all of this is dung compared the riches of the glory of Jesus. None of this matters! 

-One of my favorite pieces I got to see was this arch, finished in AD 72. The destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.

-To end on a lighter note: as we toured the Vatican we ended in St. Peter’s Square, which is probably what it would have been like to tour the Roman ruins when they were still up. But what stood out to me was the fact that it’s sponsored by Samsung!

1. John Calvin 

“History is theology’s laboratory, in which it can assess the ideas that it espouses or considers espousing” (Erickson, Christian Theology, 28).

-Initially dad wanted him to work in the church, then had a change of heart and wanted him to pursue law. He pursued that, but had a friend who become convinced of the Protestant ideas, which Calvin joined in. He had to flee the place where he was getting his education and began applying what he’d learned in law to theology. 

-Humanism: not the way we would think about it, going back to the original sources, original languages, church fathers.

-3 years later writes his first edition of the Institutes (only 250 pages) and plans to become an academician, serving in obscurity for the rest of his life, but his travel plans led him to Geneva. Calvin was a Frenchman, who ended up as a refugee. William Farel finds out Calvin is in town and sets out to convince him to remain in Geneva and serve as a pastor. Calvin refuses, so Farel calls down a curse on him if he continues on: Calvin caves in and spends the rest of his ministry (minus a couple years) serving as a pastor in Geneva.

-Sought to bring Reform to every part of life, using the standard of Scripture for everything. There wasn’t the same unity between RCC and government, nor the complete separation we have today: the church worked with the local government to deal with sin. I know we can hardly fathom that today, but this idea was revolutionary at the time.

-How did Calvin structure the church?

-Services everyday of the week, with everyone in the community expected to attend at least 1 service. But there were also churches all over: 3 in Geneva, as well as smaller churches in the surrounding communities. This required pastors to serve in! But the Reformation was still in its’ infancy stage, so he needed to train them, leading to him building a college for pastors (drawings).

-What shocked me was how similar Calvin viewed the pastoral office then to what we do today: primarily centered around the word, praying for the congregation, visiting the congregation. He changed the liturgy (service order) to better teach people the truths of the Bible, he created a catechism so people would know how to explain what the Bible teaches. But Calvin essentially reformed the pastoral office (with help/influence from Martin Bucer, then passed to Theodore Beza)

-What was fascinating to me was he created 4 offices: elders, deacons, pastors, and doctors (teachers) of the church. We’ve somewhat morphed that into separating the doctors from the church and placing them in the academy (Seminary), but the seminaries were meant to be the place where pastors are trained.

-Friends, God’s plan for all of human history is traced back much before our present day, much before Calvin’s day, God’s plan begins in eternity past. But now we’re in our era of human history – how are we going to preserve the faith that has been passed down to us? We have a job to do: we need to love the church, we need to help people take 1 step closer to Jesus in every area of life. God can use us just like he used Calvin or Luther, Lewis or Newton! 

2. Stretching

-There are all sorts of spiritual allusions to hiking, and we talked about many of them while our bodies felt like they were falling apart. From hoping that we could be like Christian in Pilgrims Progress to have our loads released, to just taking 1 step at a time, to the need for continual persevering. But a trip like this is absolutely exhausting! 20 lbs on your back doesn’t feel like a lot until you’re going up and down 8000’ a day!

-One of my friends asked on the trail: what adversity have you faced on the trail, and how has God met you in that adversity? 

-Answers were all over the place, my friend who asked that question had his rain jacket stolen from the place we had stayed the night before, I had a moment where I felt like my body was giving up and didn’t think I’d be able to make it. Another friend had a similar experience. But we’re all going to reach those times and moments in our lives where we are pushed absolutely beyond our comfort zones, where we feel like we won’t be able to go any further: how do you respond? Do you ask for help? Do you cry out to God? Do you throw a fit and demand things change? It’s amazing to me the mental spiraling you can do when you’re exhausted, not sleeping well, and being forced to walk 10 miles through mountains! I asked a couple guys to pray for me and got some much needed encouragement to persevere!

-The other key is to remember to receive and ask for help: we tend to try to do everything by ourselves. We’re independent people after all, aren’t we? We look up to the “self-made” person. What we often fail to realize is just how dependent we really are. 

-Our bodies, our vocations, the air we breathe. Even a trip like this was dependent on everyone putting training before the trip, being willing to carry their equipment on the trip, we relied on a Dr. who was able to guide us through any medical issues, we relied on the plans of a group to ensure we followed the right trails, and at times we relied on each other to share food and water! 

-There is something amazing about doing physical activity in creation. Ps. 121:1 “I life my eyes toward the mountains. Where will my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” 

-Impressive mountain, beautiful views, variety of people plants and animals. 6 countries visited, each with its unique culture, food, geography, and the Lord God made them all! It made me incredibly excited for all those things to be redeemed and renewed when Jesus returns and has the rulers of these places bring their riches into the new kingdom.

3. Fellowship

-Friends, life is hard, but one of the ways life becomes more manageable is by sharing life with others. Just as I couldn’t have done this hike alone, and would have definitely given up without others pushing me on, I can’t do my daily life alone and need others who can push me on to remain faithful.

-Not just that, but there were incredible conversations had on the trail. You know when you get together with likeminded people and can let all the fake fall off and allow conversations to get to a deeper level so much quicker? That’s what happened on the trip.

-DS said You guys have had years of time together that can’t be duplicated in any other setting. I made new friends on this trip that could be men that I serve alongside for the rest of my life! We’ve already got a text thread going continuing to share memories and thoughts (as well as weight gained or lost).

-I share that to encourage you: surround yourself with people who will push you toward holiness. Hold tightly to them and allow yourself to be open and honest with them, and I would hope and pray they can come from the church.

-camaraderie: Psalm 133:1 “How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in harmony!” There are some great EFCA Pastors in MN who I consider it a privilege to serve with! We are not the only church (praise God), we’re not even the only healthy church!

-Similar goals in ministry (contextualized), similar convictions, similar training, and a similar desire: to see Jesus glorified and His church built up. 

-I’ve shared before that it seems like God is doing something amazing in our area of the EFCA, one friend said he thinks we’re living in “the good old days” right now. I sure hope not! I hope this is just the beginning of those days as we see more people come to a saving knowledge of Jesus and see people strengthened to live more holy and faithful lives for the good of God and others.

-can’t survive the Christian life alone. If you’ve been trying to clean your life up or fight your sin by yourself you’ll never find victory. God has called us into a new family 1 Pet. 2:9 “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.” We are all together those things! We need each other, we rely on each other, and we can’t exist by ourselves, and the best part is we don’t! God has brought us into a global family called the church where God continues working today. So church, keep persevering today! Keep encouraging others, and keep serving God with joy!

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by mikethestrand on July 14, 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Blog, History, Life

Posted by mikethestrand on July 14, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/07/14/sermon-manuscript-geneva-reflection/

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