Let’s get some religion!

After worship on Easter Sunday morning, a young man approached me about the sermon and told me that I needed to ‘make it hot in here.’  As the conversation went on he told me that ‘good’ preaching needed to make people feel guilty, that I needed to be more clear about sins of our society. He proceeded to name a few thing he thought were wrong. I smiled inwardly. That man has a good dose of ‘religion’ but I I wonder if he grasps the heart of the Gospel of Christ? Do you? Do I?

Jesus was challenged repeatedly by people who thought he needed to be ‘tough on sin.’  The leaders of the predominant religious system of the day roundly condemned Him for healing on the Sabbath because He was ‘working’ and that was forbidden.  That He would love and touch lepers offended them because their assumption was that those with leprosy were being condemned by God for some sin and deserved their horrible situation. Jesus’ touch spoke volumes about the worth of those regarded as ‘outcasts.’  He scandalized the religious by spending time with people who were immoral, who drank too much, Samaritans, and tax collectors.  When asked about all that, Jesus’ reply  - “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." (Luke 5:31, NIV)  

It was not that Jesus had no moral standards or that He thought His Father was ‘soft on sin.’  He knew that the real way to change was not condemnation or rigid religious rules. People had been trying that and failing for too long. His message was about powerful love and great promise.  Knowing Him was the key to pleasing God then, and it still is.   “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life." (John 5:24, NIV)  “Crossed over,” He said. The fullness of the good news is that we are saved from sin and the penalty of death – spiritual and physical – not by doing enough good, but by faith in the One who is Ultimate Good. It’s not a new thought but how quickly we tend to obscure the grace of Jesus with our religious behaviors, somehow thinking that the result of salvation – holiness – is the cause of it.

Those religious leaders really believed that their hope of finding God was found in their scrupulous observation of religious law. "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life." (John 5:39-40, NIV)  They studied the Scripture to draw out the finest distinctions in behavior – what was right, what was wrong, thinking that moral perfection would earn them a home in Heaven.  What they could not and would not see is that the Scriptures point to God’s Savior, to Jesus.

Religion is not a terrible thing.  When we truly know Jesus as Savior, we will become His disciple, living with an aim to love and serve God. The Spirit will bring about changes in our daily behavior. I suppose we might even be described by some as ‘religious.’  The heart of our hope will always remain “Jesus” and in knowing Him we will discover the delight that is found in serving the Lord God.

Before you rush off to other things today, take a few minutes to meditate on this passage. Paul was once scrupulous about religious rule-keeping. Then, he met Jesus. As you read, note the shift of perspective. And, may the joy of God’s grace and favor find you this day.  "The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness. I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself." (Philippians 3:7-10, The Message)  That’s a religion worth living and dying for, isn’t it?

_____________

Knowing You

All I once held dear built my life upon

All this world reveres and wars to own

All I once thought gain I have counted loss

Spent and worthless now compared to this

Knowing You Jesus knowing You

There is no greater thing

You're my all You're the best

You're my joy my righteousness

And I love You Lord love You Lord

Now my heart's desire is to know You more

To be found in You and known as Yours

To possess by faith what I could not earn

All surpassing gift of righteousness

Oh to know the pow'r of Your risen life

And to know You in Your sufferings

To become like You in Your death my Lord

So with You to live and never die

Graham Kendrick © 1993 Make Way Music (Admin. by Music Services, Inc.)

CCLI License # 810055

Do you like your misery?

The Easter worship service closed with a high note as we sang the declaration of Christ’s victory.  

Christ has died, and

Christ is risen,

Christ will come again!

Celebrate His death and rising!

Lift your eyes, proclaim His coming!

Celebrate His death and rising,

Lift your eyes, lift your eyes! – Mystery, Charlie Hall

My spirit soared with the congregation’s praise. I saw eyes wet with tears, hands raised in praise, and faces glowing with the joy of the proclamation. It was wonderful!

The question this Monday after Resurrection Day is – what will it mean, if anything, for our future? Was the emotion momentary, the affirmation of faith unable to survive the ‘real’ world outside of the church sanctuary? Or, will we, like the first disciples be powerfully changed by the proof of Life eternal that the empty Tomb of Jesus provides?

Change happens by faith and faith is more than a feeling!

John was with Jesus one morning when He visited a place of misery in Jerusalem. "Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches. Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches." (John 5:2-3, NLT)  One encounter that day made an impression on John and years later when he wrote the Story, he told about a man who was challenged to faith and change. "One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked." (John 5:5-9, NIV)

“Do you want to get well?” is a worthy question for us. Please do not read this as ‘blaming the victim.’ I am fully aware that people suffer all kinds of difficulties and often through no fault of their own. It is also true that some of us learn to live in our misery, unable to think that we can be different even if life is not.  God has given us two great gifts – the renewal of heart through Christ’s grace and the ability to choose how we will live.  That man had lived as an invalid for 38 years. Even thinking about healing introduced all kinds of new challenges to his life. His relationships would change. He would have to learn to support himself after surviving on the charity of others. He would have to learn to think differently. Jesus question was not a simple one - “Do you want to get well?”

Last week I found an article online that told the story of a man who received a football scholarship to university, who went on to teach in New York City school, and then went back to earn his PhD and is now a professor! I knew him as a boy in a church I pastored.  He had all kinds of ‘reasons’ not to succeed. He was being raised by a single Mom who struggled to support her children while she worked as a house-keeper. He was an immigrant, without a network of connections. When I read about what he has done with life in the 2 decades since I knew him, I was full of joy.  Of course none of this happened just because of his own determination.  I knew his Mom! She was a disciplinarian who had dreams for her children. He grew up in a country that offers opportunity. But, there was also a major piece in his success that came from his willing to choose day in and day out to work hard to make something of his life.

So, Christian, do you want to become a disciple of significance?
Do you want to make your life one that honors the Lord, that makes a difference in the world in which you live, that will find a rich reward in Heaven?

Or have you learned to live as you are today, unwilling to engage in the spiritual disciplines that open your life to the inflow of the Spirit’s transformative Presence?

A consistent theme of the Gospel is change, restoration, hope!  Believe it. Receive the grace. Change!

On this day after Easter, Peter’s words are our challenge. As you read them, pray for a new vision for life and hear the Lord asking, “Do you want to get well?”

"By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires.

In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone.

The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." (2 Peter 1:3-8, NLT)

_________

Abba, thank you for finding me with love while I was still living in my sins,
offering to forgive and heal me.
Inspire me to choose to live today as Your child.
Give me faith, courage, and determination to choose
to live with a higher calling guiding my every choice.

Jesus, thank you for the message of triumph

which I heard and celebrated yesterday.
Now, through the power of the Spirit,

make me a person who desires, more than anything,

to live with excellence for Your glory.

Amen

The UGLY beautiful day

It’s Good Friday, the day we remember Jesus’ death on a Roman cross. Why did it happen?  Let’s make it personal.  What is the darkest, ugliest part of your life, some choice you made, something you did, an attitude that hangs on? What memory brings regret, is buried so deeply you hope no one else remembers it?  God sees it, knows about it. That is why Jesus went to the Cross!  Oh yes, much of sin is much more ordinary than the moments just recalled.  When we are Self-willed, when we worship something or someone other than God, when we choose to ignore or dislike another person, when we refuse to love – we sin, too.  But, those things are so common in our experience we come to accept them as normal. But, that is why Jesus went to the Cross, too! That is the UGLY.

Now the beautiful – there is an invitation offered to you, to me.
Here it is - “Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:20-6:1)  The Holy One calls us close, despite the filthiness.  How can that be? Because the Son of God became a sin offering for us so that we could become beautifully whole and holy.

Do not make the tragic mistake of many; minimizing your sin by comparison, excusing your behavior with rationalization. Most likely you have not brutally murdered anyone but have you assassinated another’s reputation with malice?  You have not worshiped an idol god, but have you loved your money with a fervor like religious devotion?  Getting the picture yet? 

Isaiah does not spare the graphic description of our state without God’s grace. "We continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved? All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags." (Isaiah 64:5-6, NIV)  Even our best choices are compared to dirty, greasy rags!

And yet, God loved us. "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!" (Romans 5:8-9, NIV)  That’s why Jesus went to the Cross!

Today, an ugly, beautiful day, let those thoughts weigh heavily on you.  Jesus once asked a self-righteous man who loves most.  The man was deeply offended that Jesus would allow a prostitute to touch Him, to bath His feet with her tears of gratitude and worship because of the release from shame He gave. But the Lord reminded the man that his own sense of well-being kept him from knowing God’s love. “I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love.” (Luke 7:47, NLT)

Spend some time with the ugly.  I did! But, I looked past that to the beautiful – my sins carried by a Savior, my relationship to the Father secured by His willingness to become sin for me.    

Ah, yes, this is Good Friday!

_______________

Glorious Day (Living He Loved Me)

(worship at this link)

One day when heaven was filled with His praises

One day when sin was as black as could be

Jesus came forth to be born of a virgin

Dwelt among men my example is He

The Word became flesh

And the light shined among us

His glory revealed

Living He loved me dying He saved me

Buried He carried my sins far away

Rising He justified freely forever

One day He's coming

O glorious day (glorious day)

One day they led Him up Calv'ry's mountain

One day they nailed Him to die on a tree

Suffering anguish despised and rejected

Bearing our sins my Redeemer is He

The hand that healed nations

Stretched out on a tree

And took the nails for me

One day the grave could conceal Him no longer

One day the stone rolled away from the door

Then He arose over death He had conquered

Now is ascended my Lord evermore

Death could not hold Him

The grave could not keep Him

From rising again

One day the trumpet will sound for His coming

One day the skies with His glories will shine

Wonderful day my beloved one bringing

My Savior Jesus is mine

O glorious day glorious day

O glorious day

John Wilbur Chapman | Mark Hall | Michael Bleecker

© 2009 My Refuge Music (Admin. by Capitol CMG Publishing)

Be Essential Songs (Admin. by Essential Music Publishing LLC)

Word Music, LLC (Admin. by WB Music Corp.)

CCLI License # 810055

Pastor Jerry Scott

FAITH DISCOVERY CHURCH

www.FaithDiscovery.com